NUMBER 70 SUMMER 1979/80 TWENTY CENTS Khomeini fanatics grovoke illlR8rialist threats
Over a month after well in the Pentagon is for the organised Muslim "students" bombing of Khomeini's seized the Ame.rican Embassy headquarters in the'holy and staff in Teheran, the city of Qom. It is not most dangerous imperialist hard to see almost any power in history remained President other than locked in confrontation with Carter sanctioning an in a priest caste of Shi'ite vasion of the oil fields." mullahs who want to return to the seventh-century puritani Liberal imperialist "dove" cal desert "paradise" of the George McGovern has been Koran. In Iran, the young right out in front, calling zealots' seizure of the for "an outright blockade to building and 62 (now 49) prevent anything from moving American hostages and their in or out of fran" (Newsweek, demand for the extradition of 3 December). But all these murderous ex-dictator Shah options are fraught with Re.za Pahlavi from his New dangers for world capitalism, York City hospital bed has among them the malicious r~vitalised ~aning popular destruction of the vital oil support for the theocratic supplies and the econpmies, of other iIDP-"l'ri:
Split Spartads, .League leads anti-KKK t 'in the 1- United Secretariat rally in Detroit
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work, the Arabs of Khuzistan, and the oil workers utionary. tribunals" no less sinister than the Iran crisis. • • -- can remain in effect. However, Carter's belli shah's Vicious SAVAK. On the other hand,.One can Continued from page one cosity has provided the tinpot "Imam" wi~h just be sure that the papers of the more than 270 the excuse his reactionary regime needs to jus Iranians studying in the US military academies tify the privation of the Iranian masses for a will be found to be in order. the felt outrage of the American people in order generation: blame it on the Americans. to get re-elected to the White House over the We oppose these draconian reregistration/ bodies of tens of thousands of Iranians. whose Internationally, the Khomeiniites' action has deportation orders above all because of the just desire to take their own country back has met with disfavour from governments of aimost history of such acts of victimisation and the been mobilised by a clerical-medievalist fanatic. every st,ripe. The USSR (which no doubt figures precedent it would set. ,In this century the US US imperialism has well earned the hatred of the its Teheran embassy could be next) voted in the has seen for example the 1919-20 Palmer Raids in people not only of Iran bUt of the entire Near UN Security Council to condemn the seizure, and which thousands of foreign-born conununists, Eastern region. and a military intervention could in its propaganda has backed off from its initial socialists and anarchists were expelled from the not fail to shake the stability of the despotic muted approval to call for the release of the country in response to the Bolshevik Revolution. US-backed Arab regimes who supply the advanced hostages. Even radical-bonapartist "Third World" Carter's measure recalls in particular the regimes usually eager to thumb their noses at rounding-up of Japanese-Arnercians and Japanese capitalis~ countries with oil. Yankee imperialism have been noticeably reticent. nationals during World War II when 160,000 were For decades the essential thrus,t of American DiplQmatic inununity and territorial sovereignty held in West Coast prison camps. Such racist ,.: policy toward Iran has not been just to plunder of embassies are seldom violated even by nations measures as Carter's decree lay the basis for the country. but also to make it a fortified at war, though every diplomatic office conducts restrictions like an internal passport system~ regional bastion in an anti-communist crusade its share of spying and intelligence gathering. and must be opposed by all those concerned to agains~ the Soviet degenerated workers state on These diplomatic rules of the game are necessary defend democratic rights. Iran's northern border. The US has continued to to maintain international relations between Carter also upstaged the Khomeini regim~'s fr supply Khomeini's Iran with weapons for exactly nation-states, until the nation-state itself has threat to cut off petroleum exports to the US by the same purpose: to aim them against the Soviet disappeared in a socialist world. ordering a ban on 12 November on Iranian oil Union. The possibility of a confrontation was Khomeini explained his o~der to the students (which supplies about 4 percent of American con pointed to last month when the Russians staged an to release women and black hostages not suspected sumption). Then, when the Iranian government "exerdse" involving the airlift of 10.000 men to of being spies as an expression of Islamic "re threatened to with4raw its investments and South Yemen and Ethiopia. The USSR remains the gard" for women and the oppression of racial deposits from US banks -- estimated at $8-12 chief obsession of anti-communist cold warrior 'minorities in the US. Nonsense! Islam's "regard" billion -- Carter froze these assets. Khomeini's Brzezinski. And as John F Kennedy showed in the for women is expressed in the chador, the response was to have his (now dismissed) foreign Cuban missile crisis of 1962. when it comes to head-to-toe veil which is the symbol of their minister Bani Sadr announce that Iranian external taking the world to the brink of a nuclear holo enslavement and imprisonment within the horne. debts contracted under the shah's rule would not caust. the US bourgeoisie is'no more rational Islam has also given institutional support to the be honoured. The escalating economic ,tit-for-tat than the ayatollah of Qom. slave trade, and to this day black chattel has worried the world bourgeoisie: "Financial The American working class must militantly slavery exists in Islamic countries on the wars are just as dangerous". warned the Financia], oppose these war threats. In the event ~f actual Arabian peninsula. And Khomeini's "regard" for Review (16 November), as journalists elswhere US armed intervention. workers and socialists Iran's ethnic, national and religious minorities began checking their copies of Paul Erdman's must stand for military defence of Iran. while novel The Crash of '79 to see if it wasn't all , opposing the reactionary mullah rulers. and stand coming true after all. ready to adopt a revolutionary defencist position The report of the holy man's purely retaliat toward the Soviet degenerated workers state as AS FOR THE SHAH ... ory debt cancellation was enough to send the well. Proletarian revolutionaries', Socialist Workers Party (SWP) into a delirious Mad mullah's fake "anti-imperialism" demand, "No asylum for spasm of praise. It would be a "staggering blow the butcher shah!" Of t,o imperialism", a "gigantiC step forward" for The mullahs claim. that the American embassy in course, it would be fitting the "Iranian revolution", raved Direct Action Teheran has been a "nest of spies". The New York if this sadistic murderer (29 November). With 12 of their OliJn comrades of Times reports that "The White House and State is shipped back to Iran to the now-split Iranian HKS still sitting in the Department have refused to comment directly on experience the vengeance , ayatollah's dellth cells, these contemptible that accusation". And for good reason. Under the of a ",justice" which mullah-lovers then went on to compare Khomeini's shah. the US embassy was notorious as a branch equals that of his own announcement with the repudiation of all foreign office of the CIA. a coequal and sometimes pre reign in the lack of due/ debts by the Bolshevik government of Lenin after dominant seat of,power with the Niavaran Palace. process and the barbaric October 1917! In fact Iran's bank officials have High CIA officials were posted to Teheran as practice of torture. But it been frantically reassuring imperialist credi American ambassadors. including Richard Helms and is Khomeini and not the tors that only "fraudulent debt" connected with William Sullivan. We shed no tears for the im sick and deposed "king of the shah was at stake. This is not hard to under perialist diplomats. NSA/CIA agents and career kings" who is now the stand unless one ignores, as only such unscrupu Marines captured by the Islamic students. oppressor of the Iranian lous opportunist cynics as the SWP could, the , Having made this clear. we must point out that toiUngmasses. And we . little "detail" that Rus,sia ,after OctQher 1917~",,".o'_"" - this was hardly the heroic Tet offensive of 1968 demand that Khomeini be ,was a ~rkers state resting on soviet power, ---- • which besieged the US embassy in Saigon. nor the put on trial for his own whereas Khomeini' s Iran is a capitalist state run 1958 rock-throwing attack on then Vice~Presid~nt crimes by his own victims, by a bunch of medieval fanatics.
Nixon in Caracas -- both clearly blows by left through proletarian > The US government's continuing desire for a wing forces against US imperialist strongpoints revolution! stable anti-Soviet bulwark in the Near East led and rulers. The mullahs have not been waging a them to seek an understanding with Khorneini, struggle against imperialism at all -- on the despite Washington's earlier unconditional back contrary. Khomeini's government had most recently ing of the shah. After the embassy takeover,' the been negotiating with Washington for resumption is demonstrated by his savage persecution of the New York Times (9 November) editorially com of billions of. dollars in military aid to be used Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkish-speaking na plained about Khomeini's ingratitude: against Kurdish rebels, Arab oil worker~. Iranian tionlllities and minor religions (like the. Ba 'hai). "He knows that Washington tried to appease him leftists and the Soviet Union. The Teheran em by discouraging the Shah from settlinc here in bassy seizure and hostage-taking was a diversion, C~auvinist backlash: "a 'USA first' America" the first place. The Ayatollah also knows that fundamentally an attempt to refurbish Khomeini' s The mullahs claim their action is directed the Carter Administration gave him military anti-shah credentials in a period of growing dis against the US government which granted the shah aid to crush various rebels and encouraged illusionment with, and opposition to. his "medical asylum" and not against the "American American business to help re~uild his clerical-reactionary rule. . people". But that is not the way the American econoIlJY." At least in the short run, it has clearly people are viewing it, as Iranian students in the By granting the shah "medical asylurn"~ Carter worked. And Carter's threats of imperialist in US Who'carried Khomeini icons in the streets of gave Khomeini the '~pretext to channel the mounting tervention have reinforced the effect. Thus the Washington, DC and Houston, Texas as if they discontent with his clerical tyranny into fury Kurds in rebellion against Khomeini's Persian thought they were in Teheran soon found out. In against,the distant ex-dictator and the US chauvinist regime have vowed to fight alongside Houston a November 7 Iranian student march call government. Yet US imperialism itself helped the government against any US attack. and an ing for the extradition of the shah was followed create Khomeini, by helping the shah crush the nounced a ceasefire -- provided the regime ended 'the next day by a protest by 1500 angry demon labour movement and thereby leaving the mullahs all military operations in Kurdistan (Sydney strators at the Iranian consulate, chanting "Take an open field as the main. organised opposition to Morning HeraZd. 27 November). It is not clear how Your Oil and Shove It", burning Iranian, flags, the bloody autocrat. The shah's attempts at long this sort of truce -- not only with the waving the Stars' and Stripes and brandishing modernisation alienated all sections of society signs that said. "Camel Jockeys Go Home". Kurds but also with the growing and desperat~ from him, especially the clergy who opposed his numbers of unemployed who stormed government It is not just the right-wingers who have been half-hearted reforms for going too far. As for offices in Teheran in early November to demand organising these demonstrations. The past month the deposed monarch we are in favour of the shah has seen a proliferation of acts of anti-Iranian getting his just deserts, with as unfair a trial chauvinism, from bosses who have sacked their as possible. and oppose any attempt to grant Iranian employees to the owner of a brothel out him asylum in the US or. elsewhere. But the side Reno who banned Iranian students until the tyrant-in-power is no less guilty of crimes hostages are released, fed up, he said, with the againSt the Iranian working people and oppressed hypocrisy of students who support Khomeini' s than his predecessor. Revolutionary Marxist monthly of the Spartacist League of Australia and puritanical policies yet patronise his establish Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is an BO-year-old New Zealand, section of the international Spartacist tendency, for the ment. Watching American tourists and contractors religious fanatic convinced that he will soon be rebirth of 'the Fourth International. . working in Iran dragged out of hotels and offices greeted by a special delegation from allah, and and thrown in with the hostages, hearing Khomeini ready to take everyone with him ina fiery EDITORIAL BOARD: Inga Smith (production manager), David Garden denounce not just the "nest of spies" but also twilight of the gods. He is determined to impose (Melbourne correspondent), Steve Hooper, Chris Korwin, David Reynolds, Jim Shaughnessy. the "corruption" of "decadent Judeo-Christian" a theocratic "Islamic Republic" which is closer Western culture in his holy war against the to Jonestown, Guyana than Calvin's Geneva; and if PRODUCTION: Linda Brooke. Ron Stahlmann. "Satan America". the US population has responded the Iranians are not ready, they deserve to with a wave of national chauvinism, catalysing perish. To Carter's threats he responds: "We are CIRCULATION MANAGER: Toni Somerset. the emerging mood of "a 'USA first' America", as a nation of 35 million and many of these people are looking forward to martyrdom .... After they Published monthly, except January, Printed by trade union labour. the FinanciaZ Review put it. Registered at the GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication - Category B. Carter responded first by ordering a chauvin have all been martyred, then they can do what Subscriptions $3 for 11 issues; airmail $5 for 11 issues (except Europe! jst round-up of ,the estimated 50,000 to 100,000 they want with Iran". This apocalyptic vision and North America), $10 for 11 issues (EuropelNorth Amer!ca). Address all Iranian students in the US in order to deport program offers no future to the Iranian masses. correspondence to: Spartacist Publications, ~GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, those who do not meet stringent visa require It is only through proletarian revolution, led by 2001. Telephone (02) 235-8115. ments. While students who hailed the ayatollah an IraniaIL. Trotskyist party, that the oppressed Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not should have no complaints about returning to join can break the chains of imperialism and Islamic necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. the "Islamic Revolution", such expulsion orders obscurantism and emancipate themselves from the would also be applied to those who opposed both shahs and ayatollahs forever .• Printed by Eastern NSW. the shah and Khomeini, who would face "revol- (abridged from Workers Va~guard no 244, 23 N~vember 197~) 2 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST Down with government terror in Sri Lanka! p. '\ ~~ --, , .... /' :.: During the last four months on the island of ..'" t ft' pared for emergency action. Jayewardene has a ",~ 'Ceylon, the United National Party (UNP) govern ¥ )' '..w- I "strong state" now: an increasingly bonapartist ment headed by President JR Jayewardene has im f .. , regime that is closely linked to the military posed a regime of police-state repression on the ~ high command, through both political and familial oppressed Tamil-speaking minority. Using as a ties. When the emergency was declared, pretext alleged incidents of Tamil terrorism, the Jayewardene's marching orders went to his nephew cabinet on July 11 declared a state of emergency Brigadier Tissa Weeratunga, who had been ap in Jaffna, in the northern district populated pointed chief of staff of the Sri Lanka army predominantly by the Indian-derived Hindu Tamils. shortly after the UNP took office two years ago. The following week the UNP rushed through parlia With the declaration of emergency-in the north ment sweeping draconian legislation called the and the enactment of such sweeping repressive "Prevention of Terrorism- (Temporary Provisions) legislation Jayewardene, while claiming to pro Act". tect parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka, has Under this act the armed forces and police are actually taken significant steps to make the cen free to terrorize and even murder with impunity, tral executive power more and more independent of while the government has at hand a mailed fist of legislative controls. After the UNP came to reactionary sanctions that co~ld be used at any power, Prime Minister Jayewardene created the time to smash political opposition. In particu office of president so that he and his cabinet lar, they will be used to suppress opposition to could wield more power than traditionally held by the economic austerity measures recently imposed the prime minister. In addition, the UNP regime by the'openly capitalist Jayewardene regime, Exclusive photos of revised the election laws such that a candidate which is no less Buddhist/Sinhala chauvinist than must poll a certain percentage of the vote cast the preceding Bandaranaike/LSSP/CP popular front. anti-Tamil terror in his constituency in order to be elected -- an The anti-working-class measures include drastic anti-democratic system clearly intended to keep cuts in the food subsidies on which millions de leftist parties like the JVP out of office. pend for their daily existence. Armed with an arsenal of emergency powers, the Although the government has clamped strict Jayewardene regime intends to bring the Tamils in censorship on all coverage of the emergency, the the north to hee 1 an-d to impose its economic authorities have not been able to completely sup policies through the classic carrot-and-stick press news of the terror unleashed against the approach. Imposition of martial law in Jaffna was Tamils. It has become known that three days after clearly intended to intimidate the masses of the imposition of the emergency two Tamil youth Tamils into submission -- the actual incidence of wer'e taken from their homes by the pol ice. Later even alleged Tamil terrorism has never assumed the same day they were found dead by the side of threatening proportions. (over the last three a public road, killed by blasts of gunfire and years 15 policemen were killed, allegedly by badly mutilated (see exclusive Workers Vanguard Tamil separatists). Jayewardene would like to nip photos of this atrocity on this page). It is also in the bud the "Liberation Tigers", young Tamil 'known that a third youth; who had. been arrested nationalists who reportedly number only several on July 13, was assaulted by the police and suc hundred, and is prepared to use the same kind of cumbed to his injuries while under detention in murderous repression unleashed against the the Jaffna prison. leftist Sinhalese youth who participated in the 1971 insurrection. Initially, the act also empowered the police The iron-fisted police-state measures directed to seize and dispose of corpses in any way with against the Tamil minority have been prepared by out a coroner's inquiry to determine the cause of the reactionary communalist policies that the UNP death. However, this sanction was withdrawn after has pursued since coming to power in 1977. Last the Tamils living in the area where the police year hundreds of Tamils were killed or injured, murdered the two youths on July 14 closed their and many more were forced to flee north, when shops and businesses in protest. Yet under the mobs of Sinhalese chauvinists ran amok in pogroms emergency act even this protest could be deemed that were encouraged, if not fomented, by the terroristic and punishable with sentences of up UNP. At the same time the government has called to 20 years. for negotiations with the bourgeois politicians So far the communalist drumbeaters of the UNP Tamil youths arrested 14 July and found dead by side of of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), who have been successful. It has not been challenged road the same day. Bodies were mutilated to remove bullets. did not even protest the declaration of the state by militant action of the working class, even of emergency or the police/army rule in Jaffna. though the cuts in consumer subsidies and the re of militancy, on the island. Its politics, how Here the carrot is the offer to discuss "devol pressive powers sanctioned by the emergency act ever, are really nothing more than a "new left" ution" -- an autonomy ploy that would give TULF threaten Sinhalese working people as well. version of Stalinist popular front ism, a kind of leaders a rationalization for shelving the demand But this is a testimony not so much to mass class-collaborationism-with-a-gun reminiscent of for "Eelam" (a separate Tamil state), which they support for the UNP as to mass disaffection with the Chilean MIR. adopted reluctantly and reactively, and resume their role as respectable "statesmen" who since the traditional reformist workers parties -- the Thus today no less than under the LSSP/CP/SLFP Lanka Sarna Samaja Party (LSSP) and the pro-Moscow the 1977 elections command the largest opposition coalition, intransigent proletarian opposition to bloc in parliament. Communist Party (CP) -- which supported and par popular frontism remains the touchstone of a rev ticipated in the popular-front governments of the olutionary perspective on Sri Lanka. Support, Popular front paved the way bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which however "critical", to any component of the popu predominated in the period 1964-77. During these Today the opposition parties that formed the lar front is a roadblock to winning over on a last popular-front government -- Bandaranaike's years the LSSP and CP enabled "Mrs B" (as former principled basis subjectively revolutionary youth Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike is widely bourgeois SLFP, the LSSP and the CP -- issue from the layer of militants that coalesced around polite denunciations of the cuts in food sub called) to break strikes, drive down the living the New Left Stalinist JVP. standards of the working people, foment virulent sidies and criticisms of UNP policy in handling anti-Tamil chauvinism and massacre thousands of Skimpy carrot, big stick the Tamils. These hypocritical protestations young leftists who participated in the 1971 carry little credibility, however, coming from For more than 30 years the Ceylonese govern rebellion. those who have long since become identified with ment has subsidized basic foodstuffs and pro viciously racialist Sinhala chauvinism. The LSSP No wonder the reformists' cynical exhortations vided free medical services and education. It once championed the rights of the Tamil minority, for mass opposition to the government cuts in could do so in large measure on the basis of-the demanding full citizenship rights for the plan food subsidies today largely fallon deaf ears. superexploitation the British extracted from the tation workers and equal status for the Tamil Routed in the general elections of July 1977 that . Tami 1 p lantat ion laborers. Now the UNP and its language. But with the overwhelming victory of swept the UNP into office in a landslide vote, imperialist patrons can no longer afford to ex the first SLFP government in 1956 on the basis of the CP and LSSP two years later are still widely pend over $US200 million annually whi Ie the "Sinhala Only" communalism and calls for despised. It was not sheer cynicism that led economy is ever more squeezed between soaring "Buddhist socialism" (against the Hjndu Tamils), JR Jayewardene to attend the funeral of LSSP market prices internationa(ly and stagnation the LSSP' s tendency toward narrow national leader NM Perera (who had been a top minister in domestically. centeredness and preoccupation with parlia the Bandaranaike coalition government) and eu After thi rice ration was eliminated for mentarism began to blossom into full-scale logize this veteran reformist with the farewell, class-collaborationism and Sinbala chauvinis~. "Well done, thou true and fajthful servant, well better-paid workers in February of·1978, the UNP now has dumped the entire ~ood subsidy system, The LSSP's slide into unprincipled coalition done" (Ceylon Daily News, 30 August), offering in its place food :md fuel stamps for ism had a I ready reached the stage of defin i ti ve But a New Left that has emerged around the workers earn i ng less than $US65 a month. Even capi tulat ion \'ihen after the 1960 elections, which Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP -- People's Liber with the stamps most workers will not he able to returned the SLFP to office, it announced a pol ation Front) docs pose more of a threat to the maintain their meager standard ~f living, given icy of "genera I support to the government". This UNP. As a result of its 1971 uprising against the the runaway inflation and chronic shortages of culminated in 1964 with the formation of an SLFPj Bandaranaike popular front, the JVP is seen by bas ic necess i ties. I f the trade unions or oppo LSSP coali t ion government. One of the most no many -- espec ially the youth, \'iomen and even some sition parties mount any serjous struggle against torious acts of this short-lived popular-front Tamils in urban centers -- as the only repository the government policies, the UNP is already pre- Continued on page six
SUMM~R ~919/80 3 '.';.f tt '" t ~ ' .. "l 'l -1"t-. .~ .~ \. ",--",."\. .... ". ...."". ·Split in the United Secretariat
The United Secretariat has just become the liquidation into the petty-bourgeois FSLN. A enough, but the discovery is about 18 years "Untied Secretariat". Up until three months ago split along these lines could open the way to a late). And the parity committee adopted a BF pro it was still balmy "unity" weather in the USec. struggle for consistent proletarian independence posal for a "democratic conference open to all The main factions had disbanded and Ernest Mandel and against those who would build a "Trotskyist" forces claiming to be Trotskyist" -- ie, a was promising one and all an international that party in. order to pressure the Sandinistas. But counter-world congress -- for January 1980. This brought together "95 percent of the world's Moreno, while a charlatan of the first order was the chance which the "historical leadership" Trotskyists" (leaving aside only a few "sectarian whose policies at home are deeply reformist, is of the LCR, Alain Krivine and Daniel Bensaid, had grouplets" like the Spartacists). The "Fourth", an inveterate manoeuvrist given to bursts of been waiting for. After dragging their feet for he bragged, hadn't split in 16 years; in recent bravado and verbal leftism -- as with the Bolivar ye.ars at the Mandel- and SWP-backed proposals for European elections "Trotskyist slates" had gotten Brigade and his Bolshevik Faction. Yet the BF a rapprochement with the OCI, they gleefully close to a million votes. The USec was on the presents itself in tandem with Lambert's hardened jumped at this provocation. That same evening verge of becoming an "alternative pole of attrac and not-very-left social-democratic OCI, whose they circulated to the cells a motion demanding tion" to the "3 or 4 million voters~ bf the far pseudo-orthodox critiques of Mandel are a cover condemnation of the OCI/LTT/BF meeting as a left" on the old continent. Shining in its diadem for virulent anti-Communist Stalinophobia. No "split attempt". Not voting for the motion would would be a French section of 10,000 members. And real Trotskyist can join with those who sided mean instant "exclusion". with that, he said, echoing another centrist of with CIA-financed counterrevolution in Portugal! the 1930s, "everything is possible!" No more. His The big showdown came at the extraordinary LCR grand schemes lying in tatters around him, Ernest The big loser in the present USec split will congress which began November 1 in the Paris Mandel looks today like a stock market speculator surely be Ernest Mandel, who bit off more than he suburb L'Hay-les-Roses. When the motion condemn on the day after the Crash of '79. could chew and now has lost the whole pie. ing the "parity committee" was raised, over a Externally he has sought to broker a welter of quarter of the delegates (37 LTTers and 4 Moreno- Now it is the hour of split in the USec. On the eve of its "Eleventh World Congress" a provocation/expulsion/walkout has ripped out a quarter of the French Ligue Communiste Revol utionnaire (LCR). The expellees were mainly sup porters of the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT) , the USec friends of Pierre Lambert's Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI). This means that the long-rumoured marriage of the LCR with the OCI is definitely off, and Mandel is left with a French section not of 10,000 but 1200. In Latin America more than two-thirds of the USec's supporters have gone with the Bolshevik Faction (BF) of Nahuel Moreno, tempor arily and miscegenously allied with the OCI and certain to be expelled at the world congress (it Jack Barnes, exited along with the LTT in France) .···As the now top-dog in split spreads through the USec's crisis-ridden USec; Ernest European sections, many would-be leftists will Mandel (right) - face the question of remaining loyal to this fake left lamenting "Fourth International" or going with the Moreno/ the ones that -\ Lambert lash-up, likely to be one of the shorter got away. " lived, rottener blocs of all time . . Le Monde (1 November) commented wryly that "the motive, or the occasion" of the split was a "difference in evaluating the Nicaraguan revol ution". Occasion, si; motive, no. In a document opportunist fusions with anti-Trotskyist "far ites, out of 160 delegates at the conference) establishing a "parity committee" of the OCI/LTT/ left" reformists, from the OCI and Pablo's AMR in refused to vote and walked out. In an article BF, the splitters argue that: France to Tony Cliff's SWP in Britain, all of entitled "The French LCR Spits Out Its Seeds", which have fallen through. Meanwhile, within the "The danger of dispersing the forces of the Liberation of 2 November noted the "satisfaction" USec he has allowed the hardened reformists of and rapidity with which the LCR tops "seized the Fourth International is much more serious than the American Socialist Workers Party to pick off pretext thus offered by their adversaries". After the one provoked starting in 1951 by Pabloism, and grind down .centrist Mandelite oppositions in all, six weeks beforehand it was s1mply a ques since the attack on our principled positions their own bailiwick (eg, the demolished Inter tion of what pace for a fusion with the OCI which is even more brutal than in 1951." nationalist Tendency in the US, the absorbed would have left Krivine/Bensaid out in the cold. Certainly the provocations have been spectacular, Canadian RMG and Australian Communist League). Up Now they're back in the saddle again, and with beginning with the USec's support for (and al until now Mandel has had the votes to call the the most obstreperous oppositionists gone their leged complicity in) the Sandinista Front (FSLN) shots at the USec HQ in Brussels, but Barnes' SWP "solid" 43 percent plurality on the CC should be expulsion of the Morenoite-led Simon Bolivar has the tremendous advantage of a consistent enough to ensure a more-or-less stable "minority Brigade from Nicaragua last August (see Austral political line. With the departure of the LTT/BF cabinet" in the hectic politicking at the LCR asian Spartaaist no 69, November 1979). True and various leftists they drag along behind them, helm. enough, where Pablo ordered the "deep entry" of the USec will likely consolidate around a reform On the other side there is the momentum of an sections of the FI into Stalinist CPs in the ist axis with the SWP holding the whip han~. early '50s, today his epigones order their aggressive split, but with plenty of fraying at Nicaraguan followers to liquidate into the FSLN. The hammer goes down at L'Hay-les-Roses the edges. The Morenoites, of course, knew long before that their number was up and they were But aren't Lambert/Moreno forgetting something? The pretext for the split in the United Sec just carrying out rearguard actions as they The USec was founded in 1963 on the basis of retariat was a deliberate provocation by the OCI/ pulled out of the United Secretariat. (Their fac total support to Castro ism. Where do they claim LTT/BF bloc. The weekend prior to the LCR confer tional rampaging has been so blatant that more to have been for the tas t dec;:tde and a hal f? ence scheduled to elect delegates for the USec than two years ago Mandel/Barnes threatened to The OCI/LTT/BF split will pick up a number of world congress, the Lambertists and Morenoites chuck them out at the next opportunity). Lambert sincerely leftist elements aghast at the spec met to form a coordinating committee for the tacle of their comrades being arrested at gun has nothing to lose at this point on the USec stated purpose of fighting the SWP leadership's side, and presumably felt it better to start point and expelled by the Sandinista regime with capitulation to the Nicaraguan FSLN. Barnes and carving up the spoils of their raiding operations the approval/;:tid of the USec tops. And if the company were accused in the founding document of before Moreno starts making inroads north of issue was really that of maintaining an indepen the parity committee of "abandoning the terrain the Pyrenees and the Alps. In France it is calcu dent section in Nicaragua, genuine revolutionists of Trotskyism and the Fourth International and lated that the take from the LCR will be roughly would stand on the same side with those opposing going over to the terrain of Castroism" (true 350-400 militants. Already the expellees have set up tgeir own formally independent group, the Ligue Communiste Internationaliste (LCI), and have started publication of a paper, Tribune Get the goods! Ouvriere. In due course this set-up will probably simply be swallowed whole by the OCI. Faced with the cynical treachery of the Forty-one pages of documentary exposure: USec fram Iron to Nicaragua, many honest However, there are those who may balk at the + Moreno in Argentina I: would-be Trotskyists will be looking for a prospect of life under Lambert. In France the From Left Peronism to Social Democracy revolutionary alternative. This "Moreno parity committee gambit was decided at the top, T ruth Kit" is to warn the workers move +Moreno in Argentina II: leaving many rank-and-filers disoriented as .the ment against one particular self-styled Bock to Peroni sm next day they were faced with peremptory demands "alternative": Nahuel Moreno, leader of for a loyalty, oath. Meanwhile, across the channel +Moreno's Left Face: the Argentinian PST and Bolshevik Fac in Britain LTT leader John Strawson was talking Portugal, Angola, Eurocommunism tion of the USec. We soy - and the bulletin of the "French split" and swearing fealty to the explains why - that this man is an adven +Opportunist Chameleon Sui Generis International Marxist Group (IMG) and the USec. turer, a political chameleon and financial + Moreno the Swindler swindler! If you wont the real facts about Strawson is a political quick-change artist his political record, get your copy now. Price: $1.50 whose main talent hes in borrowing a political ~;}::~,:,\: ,,;: ..
;, 'Cr -, --
ment, provokes in short order brutal right-wing necessarily an outpost of Indian imperialism. In Sri Lanka -. military repression, as occurred in Spain in the contrast, genuine Marxist-Leninists, while coun • • 1930s and more recently in Chile. But a different 'seling at present against separation, neverthe- Continued from page three variant was played out in Sri Lanka. The tra less insist that as an oppressed national ditional workers parties were able to discipline minority the Tamils have the right to form their regime was the Sirima-Shastri Pact legalizing the the working masses so thoroughly that the popular own state, if they so choose. forcible deportation of tens of thousands of front could run itself into the ground and openly Tamil plantation workers to India. But a revolutionary policy for the emanci reveal its bourgeois, counterrevolutionary pation of the oppressed Tamils must go beyond the The latter, generally referred to on the character. In Sri Lanka the coalition government struggle for democratic rights. Even if some lib island as the "Indian Tamils", were largely land itself carried out the bloody repression of the eral capitalist government were to grant all less "low caste" peasants brought from southern insurgent masses. Tamils full citizenship and language rights, India by the British to work the upland coffee But the reformist working-class parties of the their oppression would continue as a result of (later tea) plantations in the middle of the last popular front reaped the bitter fruits of their the superexploitation of Tamil plantation labor- century and have been denied all citizenship betrayal. Along with Mrs B's resounding defeat in up to now the heart of the Ceylonese export econ rights since independence. In contrast, the the 1977 elections (the SLFP lost 72 of 81 MPs!), omy. And even if "Eelam" were established in the "Ceylon Tamils" of the north and the eastern the LSSP and CP lost every single one of their north, allowing the bourgeois traders and bureau coast, whose ancestors inhabited the island more parliamentary seats, including some they had held crats to become the ruling class of an enclave than a thousand years ago, were allowed to retain continuously for 40 years! Today the LSSP is a linked to India, the large number of "Indian their representation in parliament even after the stinking corpse. After the debacle at the polls Tamils" locked in the Sinhalese heartland as "Indian Tamils" were disenfranchised. in 1977, a section of its cadres scurried like agricultural workers would either remain the most Bandaranaike's coalition government fell after rats from the sinking ship, launching the "LSSP oppressed in a virulently Sinhala-chauvinist (New Leadership)". The latter's main difference' only eight months, brought down by the principled state or at best become unemployed pariahs in the with the NM Perera/Leslie Goonewardena/Colvin De opposition of two Members of Parliament from the "liberated" Tamil land to the north, like the left wing of the LSSP, Edmund Samarakkody and Meryl Fernando, who refused to vote approval for the work of the bourgeois popular front. Six years later Sri Lanka was again under a coalition government, this time of the SLFP/LSSP/CP, and "Sinhala Only" became the official government policy in every field. Thus the "Ceylon Tamil" intelligentsia, who had enjoyed enhanced access to positions in the Briti~h colonial bureaucracy, by fiat became illiterate in the official language of their country. Buddhism was made the state religion. And'the "Indian Tamils" on the plantations bore the brunt of pervasive economic discrimination. Sinhalese chauvinism on the key issues of language rights, university admissions, land colonization and employment was more intense under the coalition than earlier under the former UNP regime, so that even the bourgeois Tamil leaders of the TULF felt compelled to adopt the demand for "Ee lam". Life for the Ceylonese working class grew ever more grim with each passing year of the popular front. What limited state control and nationaliz ation df the economy was imposed by the govern ment served only to stifle the motor of capitalism, producing stagnation, unemployment and parasitic bu~eaucratism. And when in 1971 the petty-bourgeois radical JVP launched an ill Sirimavo Bandaranaike. JR Jayewardene. prepared insurrection by un- and under-employed Sinhala ex~students, including many young women, the "socialist" coalition imposed a draconian Silva old guard is that the LSSP should have Biharis in Bangladesh. Additionally, a sizable state of emergency and unleashed the military and played a more "independent, militant" role in the component of the upland estate proletariat con police to hound, murder, mutilate and maraud coalition. Such after-the-fact excuses are the sists of women workers, posing the need for through the insurgent-held areas. stock in trade of reformist betrayers, from the special methods of work to reach this key sector, After seven years of popular-front government, surviving leaderS" of the IndonesianCP d.ecimated while a struggle must also be waged to overcome which brought nothing but false promises and pri in 1965 to the Chilean Stalinists after the fall the caste lines that divide the Tamil masses. vation, the masses enthusiastically returned to of Allende. The oppressed Tamil population will be able to office a nakedly Tory party in a country where Today the LSSP is rightly hated by the masses achieve social liberation only through working even the Buddhist monks speak of socialism. Popu who identify it with racism, mass murder and class revolution, led by a Trotskyist party which lar frontism, as Leon Trotsky wrote, is together economic impoverishment. Its apparatus is mori fuses together the conscious vanguard of all with fascism the last defense of the bourgeoisie bund, its Colombo office closed, its unions left sectors of the proletariat. The critical signifi against proletarian revolution. But while collab to drift, and the largest public meeting that cance of the Tamil question for Ceylonese revol oration in the capitalist government with the utionaries is enhanced as well by the myriad ties the LSSP has recently been able to muster was parties of the class enemy by the reformist mis which link the island to the Indian subcontinent the funeral for N~l Perera. Even the mi serabl e leaders may deflect the workers' 5truggle, the Communist Party was able to mobilize more sup on the other side of the narrow Palk Strait. A popular front cannot provide the bourgeoisie with porters than the LSSP at its last May Day rally. successful proletarian seizure of power in Sri a stable political solution. In a July 1936 Lanka could not long survive unless it sparked a But it is the JVP, which at its ~lay Day demon article Trotsky forcefully argued this point in stration attracted some 60,000, that now appears more general South Asian revolutionary confla respect to the Spanish popular front: to the masses as the only militant opposition. gration. And for the laboring masses of southern "Incapable of solving a single one of the Thus in Ceylon, where for decades ostensihle India, the program of Ceylonese revolutionaries tasks posed by the revolution -- since all Trotskyism has been the historic left wing, the toward the Tamil minority will be seen as a key these tasks boil down to one, namely, the total bankruptcy of the LSSP has allowed a new test of their internationalist intentions .• crushing of the bourgeoisie -- the People's generation of Stalinists to gain the ascendancy. (abridged from Workers Vanguard no 240, 28 September 1979) Front renders the existence of the bourgeois The task of an authent ic Trotskyist nucleus on regime impossible and thereby provokes the the island is above all to break this hold of fascist coup d'etat. By lulling the workers the popular-frontists-with~a-gun by posing and peasants with parliamentary illusions, by itself as the only consistent opponent of class paralyzing their will to struggle, the collaboration in all its forms. Public Meeting People'S Front creates favorable conditions for the victory of fascism. The policy of co Sri Lanka today is anything but politically alition with the bourgeoisie must be paid for stable. Not without reason does the UNP fear a by the proletariat with years of new torment mass protest movement akin to what led to the KKK murders militants in and sacrifice, if not by decades of fascist 1953 hartal (general work stoppage) or perhaps terror." ("The New Revolutionary Upsurge and even renewed insurgency like the JVP uprising of the Tasks of the Fourth International") 1971. Today the JVP has a Robin Hood respect for Greensboro, North Carolina! In most cases, unleashing the expectations of its insurrection, which has gon~,down in popular the working class, politically disarmed by il memory not as a criminal adventure like the 1921 lusions that the popular front is "their" govern- March Action in Germany, hut as a great patri THE FIGHT AGAINST THE otic action against oppression by the hated Bandaranaike government. Even the e,.nemies of the KU KLUX KLAN IN THE Spartacist League JVP now grudgingly hail the revolt. Perhaps the most graphic example is the book Insurrection -MELBOURNE ...... (03) 62-5135 1971, an account hy the chief government pros UNITED STATES GPO Box 2339, Melbourne, VIC, 3001 ecutor, which carries a dedication to "the sons and daughters of Sri Lanka who died in the course SYDNEY ...... (02) 235-8195 of the April insurrection". Spartacist League leads 500 GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 In addition, the .JVP has demonstrated- organiz ational capacity and determination to become an at Detroit labour/black active political factor, ~unning candidates in parliamentary elections and making overtures to Sydney Spartacist League the Tamils. However, unahle to grasp the key rally against Klan terror reason for its defeat in 1971 -- the total iso publie office lation of the revolt based on rural Sinhala youth Date: Friday, 7 December Time: 7.30 pm from the dec is i ve urban I allor movement and Tam i I Thursday: 5.30 pm estate proletariat -- the JVP remains wedded to Venue: Ground bar - Trade Union Club, 111 Foveaux St, 2nd floor to 9.30 Surry Hills 112 Goulburn St, Saturday: 12 noon to 5 pm its eclectic Stalinism and is still tinged with Sydney Sinhalese chauvinism. Thus the .JVP refuses to Tapes of Detroit rally speakers will be played at meeting recognize the democratic right of the oppressed Tamils to self-determination, silllply calling for For more information phone (02) 235 8195 or write to GPO an "anti-communalist front" to fight anti-Tamil Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. repress ion. Thus the .JVl' opposes "Eelam" as ' 6 . AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST '------
No, in fact the latest word from the SWP's logised him as "the only pol'i tician to have Split in USee Zahrahi was that, "As strange, as it may seem, spoken up in defence of gays" ( I ), denouncing ~the • • • there has never been as much freedom in Iran as performance of that group at the back who don.' t Continued from pa,. five now" (quoted in Le Matin, 3 October). The cynicai even support the existence of the gay movement"'. leading the blind. Walker himself concluded his empty homilies the chance to back (or engineer?) the expulsion apologetically: "I hope no one really believes of the Simon Bolivar Brigade in Nicaragua. And Recreate the Fourth IntematiOllal! that I was responsible for those arrests ..•. " the SWP not only did the job itself, but it Those who know that Trotskyism does not mean Not responsible? Not much I Many of the charges strong-armed the Mandelites into shamefacedly telling the working people of Iran that they against last year's arrested demonstrators shuffling along behind it. While the latest USec "never had it so good" -- and that it does mean arising from a march against the reactionary resolution on the subject has the mildest putting forward an independent communist program, Festival of Light were dropped, but it was not critique of the FSLN, in the final'analysis it against both the butcher shah and the bloody Walker's fault --.the cops were caught out-on a goes along with the SWP's policy of 1'I2dbaiting ayatollah ~- should investigate the record of the lie which ruined their frame-up case. And Walker and fpaming up BF and LTT supporters in international Spartacist tendency; Those that Nicaragua. and the cops were more successful with those of agree with Zahrahi will find it more congenial the arrested who ended up with convictions, the Iran! Iran! with Barnes, Mandel, Lambert or Moreno ... pro normal course of bourgeois "justice" for people But in Nicaragua it is only a dissident fac vided they aren't in Iran and don't have to live cons idered "deviant" in capitalist society. with the consequences of these betrayals. tion in the USec that immediately pays the price. Frank Walker is no naive, starry-eyed civil-, The even greater betrayal is the one that none of 'In early 1977, the iSt proposed that if, under liberties lawyer. He runs part of the bosses' the competing Pabloist-liquidationist USec gangs the pressure of revolutionary events in Portugal machinery for'repression. He was at the Fourth. dares to mention, for they are all deeply com a section of the USec had polarised around oppo National Homosexual Conference in 1978 when tnj' plici t: Iran. For it is there that the "women, the sition to popular front ism and in favour of dual anti-Festival of Light march was organised. Asked ~urds, the Arabs, other ethnic and religious min power and a Leninist party, we would welcome the what the police would do, he sugges'ted that the orities, the oil workers, leftists, homosexuals opportunity to join with them in common oppo march be cancelled -- and warned he would takebo and drinkers are now suffering murderous-re sition to the Mandel/SWP USec leaderShip. As a responsibil-ity for its consequences. He kne"'!The pression at the hands of Ayatollah KhOine1ni and model for such a principled' Trotskyist program we courts he administers are in the process of rail his Islamic fundamentalist mullahs. The 12 mem put forward a draft platform of nine points, roading the two IS supporters, Martin Hirst and bers of the USec's HKS now sitting on death row including: no political or electoral support to Phil Lee, jailed during an anti-Fraser demon are the least of the thousands of victims. For popular fronts; for proletarian leadership of the stration and framed by his government's cops. The over a year we have exposed how the SWP, Mandel national/social struggle; for military, but no IS reports (Battlep, 15 September) that Walker. political, support to bourgeois nationalist ites, Morenoites and Lambertists all hailed signed their petition to drop the charges aga~nst Khomeini's "Islamic Revolution" as "anti forces fighting imperialism -- build Trotskyist Hirst and Lee -- with a false name. This cynical imperialist", "one of the greatest revolutions of parties in every country; for unconditional de careerist gets a sordid little laugh out of > the century" (this from Moreno, of course, who, fence of the deformed/degenerated workers states trampling on the democratic rights of leftists. against imperialism, and political revolution to 'does everything with bombast), "the beginning of As for the chimera of the "autonomous gay ;;.. the proletarian revolution", etc. The inter oust the Stalinist bureaucracies; against viol national Spartacist tendency alone said, "Down' ence in the workers movement; for communist frac movement" Pearce and his friends in the GSG with the shah, Down with the mullahs" and warned tions in the unions based on the Transitional iconise, let them answer this: what good is a that Khomeini would put "women in veils, workers Program; for the communist tactic of the united "movement" of sycophancy for gay-bashing minis front from above, for revolutionary regroupment terial hypocrites? What good is a "summer offens in jails". We, and only we, told what would corne ive" that crawls before enemies of gay rights? , if the Iranian 'proletariat did not forge it,S own and intransigent exposure of centrism; rejection independent leadership. of the claims of the ostensibly Trotskyist inter Militant gays who are interested in smashing But finally it was too much for even Iranian nationals, for the reforging of the Fourth Inter capitalist oppression can compare the record of USecers, and following the HKS' shameful national through the political destruction of this "autonomous movement" with that of the SL's plebiscitary "election" for an .Islamic "Council Pabloism ("Reforge the Fourth International!" communist program for mobilising the working of Experts" last August the "fused" (SWP/ Workers Vanguapd no 143, 4 February 1977). That class in struggle against the capitalist system Mandelite/OCI) Iranian group has corne apart at is the program that stood the test of time .• and the capitalist state. They should examine the the seams. The HKS was patched together, early (adapted from Workers Vanguard no 243, 9 November 1979) history of the Red Flag Union, the West Coast this year as -Iranian exiles returned from Europe "gay communist" group which broke from sectoral (Mandelites) arid the US (SWP), with the SWP sup ism to fuse with the Spartacist ~eague/US on the porters arriving on the scene first and domi basis of the Trotskyist Transitional Program; The nating the new organisation and its political alternative is to continue on the path which led the GSG to shamelessly betray the victims of line. As the most rabid mullah lovers and legal "Summer II. ists, the SWPers naturally wanted to participate offensive • • Wran's Mardi Gras rampage and the struggle for in the rigged "vote", even though Khomeini was Continued from page eight homosexual rights. For these are the inevitable denouncing all Marxists as "Satanic elements" and fruits of vain sectoralist strivings'to reform had already arrested mQre than a d&zen,HKSers. at the Mardi Gras] beaten up in his cell I" the capitalist system •• But as the ranks began to get worried about what The protesters, .de.manded that th~man respon was in store for them, the Mandelites got a sible for prosecuting the victims after the cops majority in favour of boycott and flew off to were through get out; Davis and company called Europe to get USec backing. While they were away, for all those who supported Walker's presence to however, Babak Zahrahi, leader of the pro-SWP applaud, and tried to get a motion voted that the Frank Walker • • • forces, overturned the decision and publicly protesters shut qp and sit down or leave. An SL Continued from pap eight· announced the HKS would participate in the spokesman declared that this "'gay rights" meeting voting. The result was an open split, now con was "a real farce. Any honest militant concerned solidated into essentially separate organis Walker, an atrocity as bad as any the SWP has with gay rights would walk out". The 13 pro been responsible for .•.. ations, as Mandelite candidates withdrew at'the testers who did, including one member of the If it weren't for the fact that Walker is last minute. International Socialists (IS), were later fol So the HKS split becomes part of the crisis their prosecutor-in-chief, the IS would be just lowed out by 5 other ISers only when Walker as eager to hobnob with this fake-left ALP par in the USec, and in September the LTT issued finally started speaking. a statement condemning the SWP for "its shame liamentarian as the rest of the GSG is. Of course ful policy of 'participating' in the ••• so The delegation from the IS, which remains part the IS must be defended against Walker's vicious called 'election' to a supposed 'Constituent of the GSG, had shown up to play. the role of a frame-ups: but the IS is no more capable of Assembly' •.•. " But where'ciid this policy come "Iooyal opposition" to the Walker invitation, mobilising a class-struggle defence for itself from? The LTT only denounces it ,for having which they ventured to meekly, criticise in a than it was for last year's jailed demonstrators "ruined the unity" of the HKS in the "initial leaflet as "pOlitically irrespop,sible and naive". or for workers confronted with Wran's strike moments of the Iranian revolution". That "unity", Although Walker's department is currently trying breaking. Those ",ho ape toyal to Labop in pOlJer which included all of the competing USec fac to get two of their members put away for up to cannot defend its victims .••• tions, was based on the program of helping the seven years in a vicious frame-up, the ISers Wran and Walker have already given us an ob butcher Khomeini to achieve power. The "disunity" huddled silently in their chairs throughout the ject lesson on the class character of the state comes when it is time to pay the piper -- and it protest. When the call for a walkout came, they toward which the GSG and IS are so obsequious. is not the SWP that flinches at the bloody sight. ,stayed glued to their seats -- except for puta The armed might of that state is there to defend tive IS leader Mick Armstrong, that is, who found capitalism's profits and. property, as well as its himself alone outside in the hall, at a loss to nuclear family and repressive morality which explain to the protesters what his comrades were underpin homosexual oppression in the first doing still inside. The embarrassed Armstrong place. It does not change because it is currently finally slipped back into the meeting, re run by class traitors at the head of a reformist emerging a few minutes later with his shamefaced workers party. comrades in tow. Ultimately the gay movement sectoralism of the Even the IS must find it hard not to gag on GSG and the fake-left rag-tag and bobtail which being in a group which sponsors their prosecutor. spawned it is a suicidal course. Revolutionary bscribe 11 issues - $3 Yet the IS' belated exit really was an anomaly; Marxists are the only consistent defenders of put on the spot, they "walked out" as inconspicu democratic rights for all the exploited and - Overseas rates: ously as possible. Their leaflet suggests pol oppressed because we understand that the fate of surface mail - $3 for 11 issues itely that the decision to invite Walker indi homosexuals -- liJ " '~~:7·"'~. _ ... -.,'V"'" ','0", ~ ~! GSG f.tes Mardi Gras prosecutor Gay "summer offensive'l comes out crawling Attorney Geheral Frank Walker, Wran's chief the SL as "anti-gay" because as communists we put the Spartacist League organised a protest at the prosecutor, opening a campaign for gay rights? politics, not lifestyle, first; because we recog 21 November meeting in Trades Hall, it drew the Outrageous, but true -- and on the invitation of nise that in an oppressive sOL:iety "coming out" same fundamental line as last year's campaign to the self-styled "radicals" of the Gay S'olidarity is a recipe for disaster as a strategy for win defend the arrested demonstrators did: militant Group (GSG). Eighteen months ago the idea would ning homosexual rights, and can also be an invi class-struggle defence of democratic rights have been greeted by' an angry uproar from Sydney tation for victimisation for homosexual commu versus servile fawning before "liberal" adminis gay activists. The cop attacks and mass arrests nists. trators of the bourgeois state. of gay rights protesters by the Wran government, 'We warned then that the GSG's sectoralism was A line of Spartacist protesters met Walker starting with the June 1978 Mardi Gras, was the intrinsically reformist, and could only be a pro when he arrived. Chants of "no left cover for most significant assault on gay rights in Sydney gram for crawling before their persecutors. The Walker, gay basher, strikebreaker" -- referring in recent years. It certainly should have shat GSG fake-lefts could not have more starkly con to such union-bashing exploits of Wran as his - tered illusions that homosexuals could expect any firmed this truth than with their sponsoring and smashing of a government printers' 'picket line reforms from Labor -- the ALP tops' true charac Walker as. the keynote speaker at the during the state elections last year -- rang out ter as guardians of bourgeois law and order and defence of inaugural meeting of its so-called "summer as Walker joined the "slimmer offensive" organ its barbaric, hypocritical sexual repression was offensive for gay rights". isers on the platform. Several militants re bludgeoned home with police batons. sponded to our chant "militants to the back" by The potential for mobilising a labour-based This cynical act -- refurbishing the "civil joining the protest at the back of the room. One defence of the arrested protesters and of demo l,iberties" reputation of leftish ALPer Walker - angrily demanded to know if it was true, as the cratic rights for,' homosexuals was sabotaged and will only make it easier to smash the heads of Spartacist leaflet distributed at the meeting dissipated by the assorted fake-lefts who came those gays, workers on strike and others of the (reprinted below) charged, that the GSG had made together in the GSG. To the, Spartacist League's oppressed who make the mistake of banking on such a deal with Walker. to allow no questions or dis (SL) call for a class-struggle defence of gay illusions in the future. No genuine militant cussion in order to get him to come. Forced to rights, a call aimed at mobilising the social could have sat still and listened to this gay admit it, one of the GSG organisers, Ken Davis power of the proletariat, they counterposed a bashing minister expound on "gay rights"! When (an ex-member of the Socialist Workers Party -- sectoralist approach re SWP), still tried to stric,ted to the confines claim that our protest of the "ghetto" community ~ was breaching workers enclaves of homosexuals democracy! Earlier an SL adopting a "gay life supporter had put such style". They wanted to '5,' " COE' F9R<~GAY RIGHTS-' mealymouthed hypocrisy to pursue the mirage of shame: "Frank Walker government "protection" supervised the arrests of for gays embodied in close to 200 people .... their lobbying campaign Remember Peter Murphy for a "gay rights [CPA supporter arrested charter". They slandered Continued on page seven Walker (far left) on plat.form with GSG sycophants. Since when does· Frank Walker support gay rights? We excerpt below the Sydney Spartacist League Walker, can be invited to.speak to a meeting on last year's defence campaign was to success leaflet distributed at the Gay Solidarity gay rights. Why not invite Fraser to expound on fully smash it. After the June 1978 Mardi Gras Group's 21 NQvember public meeting. the plight of the unemployed? Or Bjelke-Petersen arrests it was the SL which successfully in on behalf of Queensland blacks? Or get Wran to itiated a non-exclusionist, united-front defence In the winter of 1978 Neville Wran's thugs in explain class struggle to government printing campaign with the aim of mobilising the power of blue rounded up 178 gay-rights demonstrators in workers whose strike he smashed? All militants the workers movement behind the demands: "Drop a series of unprovoked anti-gay rampages, brut must protest this gross insult to the victims of the charges" and "Full democratic rights for ally bashing many in the process. In charge of Wran's gay-bashing cops! lesbians and male homosexuals". The GSG and its the legal persecution of the cOP~ victims was fake-left animators ~tacked a meeting, took it Wran's sometime left-talking Attorney General, The choice of Walker to "open and introduce" over, and subordinated the campaign to their own Frank Walker. Tonight's meeting has been called the GSG's "summer offensive" exposes this cam impotent politics of classless, ghetto-oriented by the gay-lifestylist/reformist Gay Solidarity paign as a sectoralist fraud which can only gay sectoral ism. Having criminally split the de Group (GSG) to kick off what it calls a fragment and dissipate any militant struggle fence of the jailed demonstrators, the GSG did "national summer offensive for gay rights". The against oppression. And it should certainly nothing further except to beg for, as comrade GSGJ s featured speaker? None other than Frank prove to anyone who still has doubts that, in ~lcCarthy put it, "a 'charter of rights' from the Walker! And to top that off, the GSG is protect the words of former GSG activist, now Spartacist government who'd just busted their heads". ing Walker- from any of his victims who might League (SL) member " Jeff McCarthy, the GSG is These days the SWP has dropped "gay pride" in want to confront him with his crimes, by agree "little more than a pressure group with a'per ·line with its reformist "industrialisation" turn ing to his conditions: that ther« will be no spective of pressuring or coaxing the, Wran and is more apt to bait homosexuals as child questions or discussion directed to Walker while government into lending its protection to the molesters, having come out in support of reac he is here! 'gay ghetto' -- the same government that This obscene spectacle should-be enough to tionary "age of consent" laws '(see Australasian had launched the vicious police assault" sicken any decent militant. Wran, Walker and Spartacist no 64, June -1979). A number of ex-SWP (Australasian Spartacist no 67, September 1979). the rest of the government ,currently in charge "independents" cast off by this turn have made the GSG their political home. But they had better t of the bosses' state deserve only the hatred of Gathering together members of the Communist forget any ideas of posturing to the left of the homosexuals, the working class and al~ defenders Party, Socialist Workers Party (SWP) , Inter SWP after building a "gay rights" platform for of democratic rights. It is an outrage that any nat ional Socialists (IS) and sundry "indepen of this government's representatives, let alone dent" leftists, the GSG's main contribution to Continued on page seven 8 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST