No 59 July 1984 20p/1 Op to strikers BRITAIN Break the strikebreakers! II

rl II

'Thirteen weeks into the present coal strike, a Mor~ poll found 35% of Britons supporting the claims of the leadership of the National Union of Mine­ workers -- not many fewer . than the 41% supporting the National Coal Board. To the sort of people who read or write The Economist, this extent of public support is astonishing.' (Economist, 30 June) What 'astonishes' ·this ruling-class organ is that sixteen weeks of·hard class struggle have won the miners widespread support and re­ spect; Neither,hunger, arrest miners through one after an­ other pitched battle with the capitalist strikebreakers. On 18 June, in the most climactic of a series of fierce battles at Orgreave, ten thousand miners engaged thousands of cops and forced BSC to tempor­ arily call a halt to coke de­ liveries there. But with two strikers dead, more than 1000 injured and nearly 4000 ar­ rested, and after sixteen weeks of bitter struggle and hard sacrifice, the miners are fighting alone against Thatcher/MacGregor. And the fault for that li~s squarely ~ at the feet of the trade union Determined to fight until victory: miners from all over Britain in Po.ntefract. 22 June. ·at funeral of picket martyr Joe Green. bureaucrats, who are stabbing the miners in the to the miners for a lead. 'If the miners can age pensioners, young women wheeling prams, back and sabotaging class solidarity. WE CAN'. reads ,a sign }n a small factory occu­ printers in their thousands lining Fleet Street, Millions of workers arid minorities chafing pation in Dundee. When the miners marched thousands more office workers in Holborn, under this viciously stri.kebreaking, racist, through London on the 27 June day of action, pinstripe-suited clerks in the City. There were anti-Soviet warmongering government are looking they were greeted, cheered and applauded by old- continued on page 3 Joe Green, union martyr On 15 June Joe Green, a 55 year old miner at Kellingley colliery in Yorkshire was murdered. He was crushed to death by a scab lorry while on picket duty at Ferrybridge power station. Exactly three months after the murder of David Jones on a picket line at allerton colliery Joe Green became the second miner in this strike to have given his life for the cause of the miners and of the whole working class. It is as a courageous fighter for the union that working people will remember Joe Green. Talking to a Spartacist Britain reporter on the day of his funeral, his old friend and fellow striker Cliff Knott requested that he be remembered 'in the following way: 'A great worker. As active in '72 and '74 strikes as he was in this one. He was very much a loner 'in his social life but always willing to join~n a laugh and a game. He will be missed by a lot of guys who knew him.' Like many miners Joe· Green had experienced the hardship of pit closures. Twenty years ago he was forced to leave Fife in Scotland when the pit where he worked was closed down. On June 22 in Pontefract many thousands of miners, young and old, marched quietly behind his funeral cortege in a solemn display of respect, strength and determination. Hundreds of people from the town lined the wayside in silent tribute. There were NUM banners 'He will never be forgotten' from virtually every mining area in Britain with Kellingley and continued on page 4 Workers Power on the miners Waiting for Murray What can you say of an organisation which, to get one. Central to our perspective has midst of the NGA dispute last December -- when at the same time as demanding a general strike been the need to spread the strike to key ancil­ the General Council was openly split between to smash the Tory attacks on the NUM, disgust­ lary industries like steel, rail, power the 'left' backers of the NGA and Murray's in­ ingly goes along with the Tory/right-wing furore stations and the docks. Our supporters in the transigent 'new realists' -- after the TUC in favour of a scab ballot? Or that character­ unions have fought to implement this perspective. policy committee had just voted to back the NGA ised the leadership of Reagan/Thatcher's fav- At every step' of the way, a fight to extend the despite a provocative government ban on a 24- ourite 'union', Polish Solidarnosc, as 'pro­ miners strike in the direction of a general hour NGA strike. But to address this call to the capitalist' and says it defends the Polish strike means fighting against the outright sab­ TUC today -- after the consolidation of the Cold planned economy, but nevertheless supported otage of the TUC bureaucracy -- from Murray's War 'new realist' victory at Blackpool has been Solidarnosc' counterrevolutionary bid for power open denunciation of even a token one-day strike drawn in blood over the NGA -- reminds one of in 1981? Of an organisation that pronounced 'No in Yorkshire in May to the TUC steel committee's nothing so much as the Stalinised Comintern's to an Islamic Republic' before Khomeini came to seal of approval for Bill Sirs' blatant scab­ refusal to break with the TUC in the Anglo­ power in Iran, but called for an 'armed united herding in the steel industry. The mistrust of Russian Committee after the General Council had front' to put him in power and hailed his vic­ militant trade unionists in Murray's TUC is so betrayed the General Strike. tory as an 'anti-imperialist' revolution? Con­ widespread that even Workers Power (16 May) was The practical import of WP's calIon Murray fused? You bet! Trotsky deft'ned centrism as forced to note: is to deny any responsibility for fighting to 'crystallised confusion' and this description 'Many striking miners ... know that the TUC spread the miners strike on the ground. For fits none better than the centrist Workers General'Council ... cannot be trusted to call example, with BL blatantly stockpiling scab Power (WP) group. for, mobilise or lead a victorious general coal, particularly at its Birmingham Longbridge WP's coverage of the miners strike has been strike. ' factory, an SL supporter at BL Rover Solihull full'of left criticisms of the sellout Labour/ But in the very same article they add: has fought for all action necessary, including TUC misleaders. They attack Benn, the hero of 'The alternative is to ... demand the TUC strike action, to stop the movement and use of the openly Labour-liquidationist fake Trotsky­ call an immediate general strike to win the scab coal. Weeks after the mass distribution of ists, for his parliamentary reformism, they de­ miners strike and smash the anti-union laws. an SL leaflet at Longbridge exposing this vile nounce Neil Kinnock as a 'Judas', they criti­ Put in plain English, WP's position amounts to scabbing operation -- supervised by 'left' con­ cise the 'left' leaders of the rail unions. But telling NUM militants to hand their strike over venor Jack Adams -- 'wP finally issued a leaflet what are their practical conclusions? On two to a bunch of proven scabherders and strike­ (dated 14 June) noting, 'Some reports have been key questions facing strike militants -- TUC breakers. made of coal stocks being moved into Long­ intervention and the ballot -- they stand to the To read Workers Power, you would think this bridge'. This is a disingenuous cover for the right not only of thousands of the most militant' was 1972 when under the pressure of a mass up­ fact that WP has an active supporter in Long­ strikers but also of the NUM leadership itself. surge the TUC felt compelled to call a (one-day) bridge who has not so much as raised the ques­ WP's key demand during the miners strike has general strike over the Pentonville dockers. tion of scab coal in the stewards' meeting, much been for the TUC to call a general strike. As thb It is correct at times to place demands, includ-. less fought for blacking or strike action. Spartacist League has consistently pointed out, ing the call for a general strike, on the re­ Central to spreading the miners strike in the a general strike is objectively necessary to formist TUC misleaders. The Spartacist League direction of a general strike is the defence of beat back the Tory assault. The question is how demanded the TUC call a general strike in the the picket line. Where does WP stand? They de­ nounce Neil Kinnock as a 'Judas' -- but share his central position in this strike: the ballot. .When the NUM right wing (and the NCB) began HADFIELDS - their campaign for a ballot, WP tried to put a 'left' gloss on this attempt to break the strike Scabs' 'THE VIEW FROM from within, arguing 'At pithead meetings a show of hands should precede the constitution - ally prescribed ballot' (Workers Power, 5 April, 'INSIDE, our emphasis). And this after counselling the join Ihe strike, Id By 'a Hadfields worker The closure thre~ls ~hou NUM militants that 'Bureaucratic routine and t be taken all that seriously, rulebook fetishism should go into the dustbin.' mouthpiece .., __ .ro ..... -' -_ ...... "Deets no _'.1_ :~ n~ .. n"...-I ,",,, the Even after the NUM delegate conference, respond­ Agecroft walk-out ing to the pressure of thousands of militants, The fake-Trotskyist Socialist Action has had had rejected the scab ballot, Workers Power (2 May) argued: as its central preoccupation through the miners 'In refusing pOint blank to call for any strike trying to convince the ballot-mongering, violence-baiting Neil Kinnock that if he were to form of national vote for or against a national 'back the pickets' it would increase his chances The strike strike, Scargill, Taylor and Co have left of getting into Number Ten. That in itself themselves without any weapon for winning ought to be enough to disgust any militant who over Nottingham miners except mass picketing has been on the picket lines these past sixteen still spreads and demonstrations.' weeks of bitter class war. Then came the 1 June This speaks volumes about WP. In the parliamen­ tarist tradition of the British Labour Party, issue, which under the headline, 'The strike Irly 70 secretary, told the meeting ing, to the miners to win still spreads', featured an uncritical and in­ ,ecroft, that ali Agecrofl men have this bailie. We should ali WP sees the picket line as a weaker instrument king in been suspended from the deed favourable interview with an Agecroft miner have been out from the for class struggle than a ... ballot. d out unton, even those who star!. OK, we did wllnt a who had been crossing picket lines for ten weeks ket for weren't working, ballot in the first place, but For all WP's talk about throwing out the ·out 10 now we've got 80 per cent rulebook, it is wedded to the institutions of into the strike. 'It wasn't very hard for us to Ick. of the NUM' fighting for British reformism. Tied by this umbilical cord come out' says Alan Chadwick. 'For many weeks he day our job,s, now we've been thinking we should join in.' r com­ 'It wasn't very hard for to the womb of social democracy, WP has no pers­ dng of­ For many weeks, the small minority of Agecroft us', to come OUI, For pective for forging a revolutionary leadership . Man­ many weeks 'now we've militants who know that picket lines mean don't md the been thinking we should of the proletariat in political struggle against Idy pro-, join in. To the rest of the reformist misleaders. Their politics exemp­ cross had been getting their heads busted by the n office Agecroft I',d say this. Try lify the left wing of 'the possible'. Workers cops while Chadwick and his mates waited until and forget the past, if we they were forced out by the threat of being lWICK do stick together then iI Power is not averse to making sharp criticisms Ie strike will be a batHe well worth of the Labour/TUC 'lefts'. But it always falls branched and ~ recognition that they weren't poke 10 , taking pat! In, It can lead going to get their strikebreaking ballot after So 40 of us went to the to a victory' f.:>r miners' down on the side of the Labour Party, always all. 801!on offices and Sid jobs and 'our' children's calls for a vote to Labour in elections, always Vincent told us this was futures. ' Not surprisingly this interview has created wrong, and we wouldn~t My messag~' to miners continued on page 11 an uproar within the so-called Socialist be suspended if we didn't stili working is this, If you work, The lads who came are adamant about the League. Many supporters conspicuously did not --""'~-"",,,...l~h,::,p'~_ioined the ballot, realise that there sell that issue; one even replied to our com­ ,d we isn't going to be one, so please come out so that we rades' challenge that he refused to take Scabs' mouthpiece: 1, vp'" -- ~ rI responsibility for the article. And the pro­ Socialist Challenge (6 March US Socialist Workers Party wing within the 1980) gave 'view from the inside' of scab Hadfields steel Once the Trotskyist party deeply-divided Socialist League is trying to plant; now Socialist Action (1 June) prints musings of in the United capitalise on this for its own factional ends. Agecroft miner who was still at work nine weeks into the strike States, today the But we recall that Brian Grogan and his lot SWP (US) is an were all around four years ago when, in the 'When a scab comes down the street, men turn openly anti­ midst of the steel strike Socialist Challenge their backs. No man has a right to scab so Trotskyist and increasingly (6 March 1980) ran a little item entitled, long as there is a pool of water to drown his irrelevant shell. 'Hadfields -- The view from inside' while that carcass in, or a rope long enough to hand his Read the SWP's notorious bastion of scabbery was being daily body wi tho ' political obituary surrounded by mass pickets. And the American We doubt it. For these characters the class line - and our SWP they look to stood as its candidate in the is a 'tactical question'. Just as they condone revolutionary crossing picket lines when it suits them, so alternative - in 1980 presidential election one Andrew Pulley, this new whose claim to fame was that he had crossed they and their American SWP friends love the Spartacist picket lines at his workplace during a Chicago Polish scab union Solidarnosc and support pamphlet, 55p railway strike in September 1978. Khomeini's viciously reactionary regime in Iran. inc p&p from Maybe the Socialist League can learn a lesson In fact, the American SWP has openly renounced Spartacist Publications, PO its Trotskyist past. Good -- these scab-lovers from the WelSh miners who have been distributing Box 185, the Jack London poem which includes the have nothing to do with revolutionary London WC1H following: Trotskyi sm .• 8JE,

2 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Spartacist Britain Strike ...

(Continued from page 1) contingents of primarily Asian workers from the giant Ford Dagenham complex; black workers from transport, hospitals and elsewhere; banners from virtually every trade union in the London area; and, everywhere, the banners of the coalfield women's support groups. 'Pavements filled with office and print workers', reported the Times (28 June) 'helped to ensure there was no trouble'. In so many words does this Tory mouth­ piece reveal that it is not the workers but the professional strikebreakers paid to maim and kill them who 'ensure trouble'. Everybody now knows: the cops and the scabs have been given a licence to kill strikers. When young David Jones was murdered one week into the strike, it was treated with hushed em­ barrassment, not least by the fake lefts. Things like that aren't supposed to happen in 'little England'. Now 55-year-old Kellingley miner Joe Green has been crushed under the wheels of a scab lorry. Many miners on the march wore black armbands and, when they crossed over the Thames, threw wreathes and red carnations into the river in remembrance. But the image etched on every face recalled the words of Joe Hill, an­ other miner martyred in the class war against the bosses: Don't mourn, organise! Miners march through London, June 27 As the flowery speeches of solidarity droned through the PA system at Jubilee Gardens, one the steelmen are not one solid anti-strike mass. The single greatest obstacle to victory in Welsh striker remarked bitterly, 'Why don't they When Yorkshire NUM official Dave Barker called this strike is not the cops, not the recal­ stop talking about it and do something?' for solidarity at last month's ISTC conference citrant scabs in Nottinghamshire, not the Fleet Speeches, marches and more speeches -- while in Scarborough, he received a standing ovation Street union-haters, but the workers' own mis­ trains and lorries continue to run coal, and from the delegates. Sirs followed Barker -­ leaders. Neil Kinnock and Len Murray are rightly blast furnaces and power stations continue to with a tirade against 'foreign competition' and despised by most miners today. There isn't a burn it. 'If the miners lose, we're all in the pleas for import controls -- and was hardly ap­ militant anywhere who would calIon them to or­ plauded. Protectionism is counterposed to class shit' commented one printer on Fleet Street. Yet ganise ~ football match, much less a general the reformist leaders who stand at the head of struggle, and fits right in with the bosses' strike. Murray, Sirs and their 'new realist' lot the labour movement would rather see seventy 'divide and rule' ploys. are doing their best to make the trade unions years of hard-won union rights destroyed and the What has allowed steel production to continue pliable tools for Reagan/Thatcher's imperialist best fighters murdered than unleash the social this long into the strike is the series of war preparations against the Soviet Union. And power of the working class against the capi talist shabby deals negotiated by NUM area leaders like that means strikebreaking. From the Cold War state. We say: Dump the class traitors! The Emlyn Williams in Wales, Jack Taylor in Yorks witchhunt against Scargill at last September's miners must not stand alone -- Spread the strike and McGahey in Scotland. And while Scargill oc­ Blackpool conference for his opposition to to rail, steel, power, transport and the docks! cupies himself in worthless negotiations with Reagan/Thatcher's favourite 'union' Solidarnosc Break the strikebreakers before they break us! Sirs and the rotten TUC (which has not surpris­ to the NCB-backed campaign for a scab ballot to ingly given its seal of approval to the scabbing the threat of a Solidarnosc-style splitaway in Stop scab coal - shut down steel! in steel), there are no NUM mass pickets outside Notts, the Cold War splitters have made the NUM the major steel plants. This is an open invi­ their main target. Defence of the Soviet Union Through sheer tenacity and hard struggle, the tation to scab. Already unionised lorry drivers is integrally linked to defence of the workers' miners have stood their ground against the over­ are carrying coal and iron ore into Llanwern in gains at home! whelming might of the capitalist state arrayed an effort by BSC to make the rail blacking a against them. But Thatcher/MacGregor continue dead letter. ASLEF militants in Wales who have A programme for power is key to bay for miners' blood. Over fifty miners, in­ put themselves on the line complain that the cluding strikers at Betteshanger and Tilman­ NUM is not attempting to blockade the blackleg The lefts are no better in practice because stone, have already been sacked for occupying lorry convoys. In Scotland the TGWU has applied they're tied to the same nationalist/protection­ their pits to prevent blacklegging. for dispensation for its drivers to scab. And all ist and Labourite policies as the right. The Meanwhile the NCB and courts are openly pro­ the NUM leaders talk about is taking action to coal keeps rolling because to seriously put a moting a Spencerite company union splitoff in black scab haulage firms after the strike. The stop to it means shutting down the whole Notts. The cop that knocked Arthur Scargill to time to fight is now! No more scab deals! Every country. They won't mobilise a real fight the ground at Orgreave expressed the bour­ lorry driver and railman that handles coal is against redundancies in steel, rail and the geoisie's intent to bloody and break the whole scabbing -- and something ought to happen to pits because that would shake the whole rotting union. That's why -- despite Peter Heathfield's scabs! Union militants in the NUR, ASLEF and edifice of capitalism to its foundations. And talk of redefining 'uneconomic' pits and the TGWU must ensure there is concerted collective the Labourites hate and fear revofution as much evident willingness of several other NUM leaders action to back the miners and the motto of as the Tories. After Orgreave Tony Benn talked to seek a sellout compromise -- the sham nego­ striking Harlan County miners in the US ought about civil war in the coalfields and urged tiations with the NCB broke down. to become the rule here: scabbing is dangerous workers not to wait for their leaders to take MacGregor and Thatcher can be brought to to your health! industrial action with the miners. But Benn their knees, but this requires bringing the de­ In his speech at the London day of action, beat a hasty retreat from his brief foray into cisive weight of the trade union movement behind Scargill called for the election of a Labour the realm of 'class struggle' rather th~n alien­ the miners. The Wirral railworkers who briefly government which would ban overtime! But it's ate his ballot-mongering friends on the Labour shut down commuter traffic in early April in a Kinnock and the Labour Party tops who are trying NEC. In fighting to defend their jobs, their successful action to defend a comrade victimised to kill this strike. A classwide fight for jobs picket lines and their union, the best militants for blacking coal, the Yorks signalmen who crip­ must be waged now! The miners' fight against are learning that they can't rely on the Labour/ pled rail transport on the regional day of ac­ redundancies must be extended to a joint class­ TUC misleaders, 'left' or right. It is out of tion in May, the Welsh railmen who are today wide fight for jobs through a shorter workweek these militants that the core of' a new revol­ solidly blacking coal and iron ore into Llanwern at no cut in pay, thereby enabling the miners utionary leadership of the labour movement must -- all point to the possibility for genuine to make a clear class appeal to railmen, steel­ be forged now. In the midst of the 1926 General solidarity on the strike lines. But two months workers and dockers threatened with their own Strike, Leon Trotsky explained: after the leaders of the Cripple Alliance redundancies. Such a fight requires breaking 'An English proverb says that one must not pledged to black all movement of coal, it con­ with the reformist trade unionism of even mili­ swap horses while crossing a stream. This tinues to be transported by rail and lorry. With tants like Scargill who don't want to unleash practical wisdom is only true within certain fully half the workforce at Shirebrook rail an all-out fight that challenges the whole capi­ limits. It has never yet been possible to depot in Notts facing management discipline for talist order. continued on page 11 refusing to handle scab coal, the NUR/ASLEF Miners: Build solid mass pickets outside the • leaders refuse to mobilise their unions against steelworks that nothing and nobody crosses! CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: the victimisatio~s. Following the Wirral walk­ Commit the NUM to joint strike action with BIRMINGHAM ...... (021) 554 7711 out, ASLEF head office issued a directive steelworkers, railworkers, powerworkers and against any further strike action. The hundreds LONDON ...... (01) 278 2232 dockers for decent pay and jobs for all! Steel­ SHEFFiElD ...... : ...... (0742) 737067 of suspensions are hushed up by paying victim­ men: Come out with the miners! Dump the traitor ised members out of union funds, while a sub­ Sirs! Railmen, lorry drivers, dockers: Put a stantial section of NUR/ASLEF scabs on the stop to all coal and iron ore shipments through strike. This farce must be terminated: miners solid national strike action! Dump the sellout SPARil\CIST and railmen must link up, set up solid picket wage agreement with BR! Elected strike commit­ lines and shut down Shirebrook and all coal tees must be constituted in all areas and dele­ 'BRITAIN Monthly newspaper of the Spartacis! League, British section of the traffic in Notts. gates selected for a national strike council! International Spartacist tendency. A crucial battle is again shaping up over Delegates from women's support groups, minority EDITORIAL BOARD: Len Michelson (editor), Caroline Carne steel. The ISTC leadership under right-wing (production manager), Alec Gilchrist Faye Koch, John Masters, communities, the unemployed and unions taking Eibhlin McDonald, Ellen Rawlings anti-communist Bill Sirs remains disgustingly industrial action alongside the miners (like th CIRCULATION MANAGER. Jeff Pascoe defiant in its scabherding, hiding behind the Published monthly, except In January and August, by Spartaclst Welsh ratlmen blacking coal) should be drawn in, Publications, PO Box 185, London we 1 H 8JE. argument that it's the way to save jobs. The thereby laying the basis for joint strike com­ SubscriptIOns 10 issues for £2.00; overseas airmail £5.00. closure of Hadfields and Sheerness after their Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU). mittees that can lead a powerful classwide Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily notorious scabbing in the 1980 steel strike fight! Disciplined trade union defence guards express the editorial viewpoint. proved otherwise. Contrary to the bosses' lies, must be organised to smash cop/scab terror!

JULY 1984 3 BL strike against racism sold out

On 24 May, two days before the spring shut­ all black workers' policy at Cowley to Zedekiah. would have continued, The workers were 'offered' do~n, 300 mainly white internal transport Mills today: BL isn't going to let minority instead the perspective of 'fighting through drivers at BL's Longbridge plant launched a workers forget that Michael Edwardes got his legal channels' -- even though it was admitted determined strike fo~ the reinstatement of training in South Africa. that an industrial tribunal could not order Stacca truck driver Zedekiah Mills -- a black From the start union officials and the works reinstatement even if it found in Zedekiah worker of 13 years standing. Brother Mills was committee (convenors and deputies) made no move Mills' favour! harassed, racially abused and manhandled by a to callout the whole plant on strike. The The Spartacist League contacted Zedekiah white foreman. When he defended himself the BL strike was knifed by the 'left' national of­ Mills at the start of the strike to offer our management sacked him. His union brothers im­ ficials of the TGWU and the plant leadership, support for his fight, and distributed 2500 mediately struck, paralysing the movement of particularly Communist Party (CP) supporter and copies of the leaflet printed below, including parts in the factory. Only the intervention of works convenor Jack Adams. Their role should at the two mass meetings held during the a full-time TGWU official prevented pickets go­ come as no surprise. Jack Adams has been presid­ strike. Black workers particularly readily ing up on the plant gates. For two weeks the ing over union collaboration with BL in the use agreed with our title, 'Smash BL's racist drivers stayed out, bringing the whole of Long­ of scab coal in the foundries at Longbridge (see frame-up!' Neither the CP nor the Militant bridge to a halt in a matter of days. The strike report in Spartacist Britain no 58, May 1984) tendency -- both with a significant presence in eventually led to 19,000 layoffs throughout since the start of the miners strike. The last BL in Birmingham -- put out a leaflet on the Austin Rover plants in the Midlands, as pro­ thing the bureaucrats wanted was for the strike strike, reflecting their deep loyalty to the duction of most of BL's vaunted new model range over Zedekiah Mills to ignite a counteroffensive racist social-democratic trade union ground to a halt. against BL and its government backers, along­ bureaucracy. This anti-racist strike, even though kept iso­ side the miners. The racist victimisation of Zedekiah Mills is lated and eventually defeated by union leaders' The drivers were on their own, facing not only part of the capitalist war on workers and connivance with the management attack, stands the company's propaganda but open backing for out as a hard fight by organised labour to de­ the management line from some union leaders. minorities that is the reflectl.on at nome of the fend a minority worker. Despite an avalanche of Most disgusting was the statement, emblazoned imperialists' anti-Soviet war drive. Against the management propaganda in the local Evening Mail, allover the front page of the 8 June Evening all-sided attacks on minorities we say: Down and backstabbing, racist statements from local Mail, of Arthur Harper (convenor at BL's Drews with the bosses' immigration laws! Smash the­ union officials, the strikers showed the poten­ Lane Tractors and Transmissions plant, with a Nationality Act: No racist deportations -- full tial for class unity in this factory (the big­ reputation for militancy in the 1970s): the citizenship rights for all workers and their gest in Birmingham) where large numbers of West strike was 'absolutely stupid .... Everybody in families! The 5000-strong labour/black mobilisa­ Indians, Asians and Irish work, against the this company knows that if someone hits another tion which drove the fascist Ku Klu Klan out of racial divisions which the capitalist class in­ person it means instant dismissal .... No one Washington DC two years ago and the successful cessantly promotes in its effort to beat down condones racial discrimination but you have to defence of Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero, an and destroy the strength of the organised work- have some sort of discipline.' This was the open interracial couple, both phone worker militants in California, against a racist anti-labour ing class. . face of union racism (and incidentally an object The management at Longbridge, in a statement lesson in the logic of simple wage militancy a frame-up last year -- both initiated or heavily built by the Spartacist League/US -- point the which literally nobody would believe, maintained la the Socialist Workers Party that Harper once way to a programme of class struggle to sweep that there is 'no racial prejudice' in the belonged to.) plant. Zedekiah Mills' own experience just in The national TGWU officials responsible for away this racist, capitalist system once and for all. the last few months shows the reality of life the automotive industry said the Mills strike for a black worker in BL: first a foreman swears was a 'local issue' to be resolved at local Likewise the class-struggle unity demon­ at him and says 'coloured people' shouldn't be level -- ie the union wouldn't back the strike. strated in the Longbridge strike, if harnessed working in the plant; then a contract worker On 14 June a mass meeting voted to end the behind a revolutionary leadership, offers a tells him to 'go back to the jungle'; now he is strike. Infuriating many of the strikers, Jack powerful example to workers and minorities sacked for defending himself arrainst racist Adams himself announced on local radio before throughout Britain. BL militants must fight to abuse and harassment from another foreman, who the meeting that it would be off. All reports reverse the rotten sellout of their misleaders. called him a 'black bastard'. From the 'search indicate that with union backing the strike Reinstate Zed Mills with full back pay!.

Reinstate Zedekiah Mills Joe Green. • • (Continued from page 1)

Scotland leading the march. A lone Scottish piper played as the coffin was borne into the Smash BL's racist frame-up! crematorium. Several wreaths were presented, in­ cluding one from the family of David Jones with the message, 'You will never be forgotten'. On Thursday, 24th May, Zedekiah Mills, a smash fascist and racist terror! The blood of Joe Green and of David Jones is black Stacca truck driver who has worked in When Longbridge workers spontaneously came on the hands of Thatcher and MacGregor. The Longbridge for 13 years, was sacked for de­ out on strike in defence of Derek Robinson bosses are out to kill the miners -- in order to fending himself against a vicious stream of they were right! They recognised that man­ defeat the NUM and the entire trade union move­ racist abuse from a foreman. Blacks, Asians, agement's witchhunting of 'Red Robbo' was ment. Then their lying press describes Joe Irish and other minorities have to face this setting the scene for the smashing of trade Green's murder as a 'road accident'. As miners kind of racist abuse day in and day out at BL. union militancy in BL, for wage cuts, unem­ president Arthur Scargill said 'Joe Green gave The union should be declaring war on these ployment and speedup. But Terry Duffy ordered his life for the right to work. Every miner, 'divide and rule' tactics of the management. the BL workforce back to await his scab every trade unionist in Britain must ensure that An injury to one is an injury to all! The 'enquiry'! Robinson went along with this sell­ he did not die in vain.' Fighting for a victory whole of Longbridge should come out now and out. His CP politics of trying to 'save' BL in the battle Joe Green died for, is the most stay out until Brother Mills has been re­ through deals with management lost him his fitting tribute to this man. For Joe Green, for instated with full back pay -- and the strike job. NO SCAB ENQUIRIES FOR BROTHER MILLS! David Jones, for the miners and the other should be "spread to the whole of BL if The trade union leadeTship's betrayal of millions tar~etted by this vicious ruling class necessary! Derek Robinson and their subsequent capitu­ vengeance will only come when the working class But the future of BL workers cannot be lation to management attacks on BL workers is mobilised in its full strength to end once separated from the life and death fight that have led to the present situation in BL. And and for all the misery of capitalist exploi­ the miners are now locked into. They are black workers and other minorities are in the tation. Striking miners defending their picket fighting for the rights of all workers. If front line of these attacks, from the. security lines will not forget the murder of Joe Green! the miners lose, we all lose! Spartacist mili­ officers at BL Cowley ordering all black Miners must not stand alone! Steel, transport tants have been fighting to stop the scab coal workers to be searched leaving the plant, to and power workers, dockers and railwaymen, in BL. BL workers have got enough to strike Junior Williams being framed and viciously strike with the miners to win!. about -- what better time than now? They beaten up by the racist cops, to Brother Mills should link up with the miners, as they did in today. 1972 when thousands of car workers and engin­ A victory for Brother Mills could start to ~IJR/(ERS ~'N'IJ'RIJ ~ eers in Birmingham downed tools and marched turn around the attacks on the BL workforce, Labor !'!kIst Sma n - - out to back the miners picket of Saltley and send the racist filth in BL back into Workers Vanguard ~""="",,,sh!.!Phe::!!!1!I,1!!' Do!!9!! !!nion-BusI!!!gJ Gates. Remember Saltley Gates! their holes! But we need a multiracial class no 357 Whilst Thatcher meets apartheid butcher struggle leadership, not just in BL, but . Class War in . Botha, her policies of anti-Soviet war fever, throughout the trade union movement to replace 36p including p&p racism and unemployment feed fascist and the sellout bureaucrats, if we are to stop Arizona Copper Mines racist terror at home. But the CP and the Thatcher's attacks on workers and minorities ..=...":- Labour 'lefts' call for import controls to , ...... -. ,..,,! -- from her drive to thermonuclear war against 'save' British capitalism, fuelling deadly the USSR in league with racist butcher Botha racist divisions in the working class and em­ and the KKK endorsed anti-Soviet nut in the b0ldening the fascist sewer rats of the White House to the Police Bill and the martial National Front, who last year goosestepped law in the coalfields. their way through the solid working class All out strike now to reinstate Zedekiah Mills! fl Longbridg~ area calling for 'British jobs for For union/minority mobilisations against British workers'. Drive NF scum out of Long­ police/fascist ~error! Make payable/post to Spartacist Publications. bridge! For union/minority mobilisations to Smash Tory rampage against the miners! PO Box 185. London We1 H BJE

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Try·t traitors Sakharov!

The reported hunger strike of Rus'sian 'dissi­ Western correspondents, stripped him of his dent' Andrei Sakharov, said to have begun on May various medals and sent him into internal 2, has become the latest anti-Soviet cause exile in Gorky. celebre. A New York Times (25 May) editorial, But it was Sakharov's open letter in the 'The Cold Winter in Gorky', denounced the Summer 1983 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine 'ugly', 'dangerous' and 'vindictive' behaviour which rea,lly showed. this counterrevolutionary's of the Soviet 'tormentors' who have, they say, traitorous perfidy. Here Sakharov came out for 'cruelly denied medical treatment abroad' to Reagan's plans to build the MX miSSile, the Sakharov's wife Yelena Bonner, and who are aI- first-strike weapon against the USSR, as well 'legedly forcing an 'aging scientist' on protrac­ as for US deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise ted hunger strike to the 'ultimate calamity'. missiles in Europe! This places him to the right Ronald Reagan has taken up the case, as has of right-wing CIA-loving Labourites and the every anti-Communist leader from France's Mit­ capitalist Democratic Party mainstream. 'If it terrand to West Germany's Hans-Dietrich Gensch­ is necessary to spend a few billion dollars on er to Australia's Bill Hayden (the foreign min­ MX missiles to alter this situatipn, then per­ ister, not Karla's mole). Mitterrand used the haps this is what the West must do', he wrote, occasion of his first official visit to Moscow arguing the imperialists should continue the for a provocative attack against the Soviet arms race for 'ten or fifteen years'. This is government over Sakharov. The Times (25 June) concrete aid to the enemy. Reagan used the applauded this 'Socialist' Cold Warri,or for Sakharov article to whip up support in Congress 'plain speaking' -- 'when Western powers come to since Sakharov was banished to Gorky in 1980. for the MX, whose purpos~ is to give the Ameri­ deal with the Soviet Union it is vital that they But TASS said at the time: cans the capability to engage in nuclear black­ '. do so without ambiguity'. 'It has been repeatedly pointed out in the mail, anni'hilate Soviet cities, and pose 'the Now the American HBO cable network is rushing Sov~et press that, by virtue of his acien­ destruction of the Soviet state itself. The to broadcast its new TV film Sakharov, starring tific ac'ti vi ty, Sakharov is a person possess­ S~harovs should be tried as traitors! ~ Jason Robards and Glenda Jackson. A network ing important state and military secrets. For The mass bloodletting of the Stalin regime executive crowed, 'We do not think that this this reason and in the interests of national is a thing of the past; today's 'political op­ subject will disappear in a day no matter what security, he is deprived of the possibility ponents are now frequently confined in the happens to Sa~arov.' The bourgeois press has to go abroad. This ban stems from Soviet straitjacket and tranq'Uiliser nightmare world begun printing rumours that he has died, and in­ legislation and is the sovereign right of any of the mental hospital. Some, such as pre­ deed, Sakharov could be worth even more to the state. ' eminent Soviet historian Roy Medvedev, are kept West dead, as a supposed martyr of 'Soviet J'ust imagine what would happen, by way of in isolation from the outside world, with a 24- totalitarianism'. This 'free world' hullabaloo comparison, if an eminent Israeli physicist hour guard posted outside their door. As Trot­ over the Sakharovs is a patent attempt not only working on their nuclear weapons tried to obtain skyists, whose forebears were the prime target to defame the Soviet Union but to blackmail Mos­ 'asylWlt in Syria! And when American atomic scien­ 'of Stalin's campaign of slander, suppression cow into handing over to the West' the father of tists Alfred Savant and Joel Barr left the US at and murder, we know full well that the Kremlin the Soviet H-bomb, who may well have knowledge the height of the Rosenberg witchhunt hysteria, bureaucracy knows only the methods of frame-ups, of vital military secrets. they were labelled spies by the US on the basis mindless intimidation, anti-Semitic slander and The imperialists are not screaming for the of no evidence at ,all. ~n addition to Sakharov' s similar sledgehammer-techniques. But our com­ freedom of Nelson Mandela, the black South Af­ specific ,knowledge of military secrets, ~is munist opposition to the bureaucratic degener­ rican liberation fighter locked up for more than intimate familiarity with Soviet defences, based ation of the Soviet ,Union is based on ,.unflinch­ a quarter of a century in the Robben Island on 20 years' work at the highest levels of i~ defence of the gains of the October Revol­ ution. We insist that the USSR has the right prison fortress, whose wife Winnie Mandela is Soviet military industry, would be of incalcu­ banished to an impoverished rural 'bantustan' and lable aid to imperialism ..Even the New York to take measures to defend itself. At bottom it forbidden to speak publicly. No, these 'demo­ is the bureaucracy itself -- with its concili­ Times admitted that Sakharov has knowledge that crats' brandish economic threats in the case of 'would probably still be of major value to ation of imperialism and commitment to 'peace­ a Sakharov, who is a traitor to his c<;>untry _and ful coexistence' -- which has historically Jor-e,:i,gn, gQv.ernments'., the October Revolution. He performed great ser­ posed the greatest danger to the defence of the vices to the Soviet Union, developing its ca­ Nuclear blackmail Russ'ian Revolution. pacity to defend itself against the imperial­ , The Stalinists frequently portray all dis­ ists' nuclear domination, for which he was duly The anti-Soviet propaganda mills like to senters as agents of imperialism. Indeed, with rewarded. But today he actively campaigns for present Sakharov's appeals to the liberal in­ rare exceptions, the current generation of the US to develop nuclear first-strike weapons telligentsia of the West. In 1975 he was dissidents have become increasingly and and to blackmail the Soviet pepple with grain awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. ThiS,' of course, blatantly pro-imperialist, that is"" to say, boycotts. We say: Try ,the traitors Sakharov! has nothing whatsoever to do with peace, but counterrevolutionary. They even go so far as to was in fact an award for The Sakharov plot contributions to the anti-Soviet war drive, While the imperialists claim that Sakharov is as shown by its award starving himself, to death to press demands for tw~ years earlier to medical treatment in the West for his wife, the imperialist mass mur­ statements have not specified exactly what is derer Henry Kissinger. wrong with Ms Bonner, alluding only vaguely to The bourgeois media pre­ a heart condition " nor where it is she wants to ferred Sakharov, having go. (The Soviets insist that Ms Bonner has no had certain difficulty need to seek medical treatment in the West as selling an open wor­ she has access to the best clinics of Gorky and shipper of the tsar like to the central clinical ho~pital of the Soviet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Academy of, Sciences.) And a May 30 ,TASS state­ man who tl],inks houses ment denied Sakharov was on a hunger strike, should be no more than claiming he 'takes regular meals and leads an two stories high, who active way of life'. Ms Bonner, they added, is praises the anti-Semitic not hospitalised and 'does housework and types Black Hundreds and de­ a lot on her typewriter', adding sardonically nounces the 'decadent that her writings go straight t~ the US embassy West'. In fact, however, in f,{oscow. in recent years Sakharov The Soviet statement reiterated earlier has become so reactionary charges that the whole business had nothing to that his views are as 40 with her health, but was part of a plot anti-Soviet as those who cooked up in the American embassy where Bonner want to return to the military power has prevented U.S. Imperialism from Igniting nuclear would take 'asylum' while Sakharov began his days of the obscurantism holocaust. Sakharov, father of Soviet H-bomb, would gladly spill military secrets to Peotagon and CIA. hunger strike. US officials at first screamed of the Russian Orthodox the Sakharov plot story was a total fabrication. Church when the knout of But on May 18 Washington admitted that copies of the tsarist autocracy reigned supreme. pass on state secrets, as was the case with letters to the US ambassador from Yelena Bonner Andrei Sakharov has long be~n the US imperi­ Anatoly Shcharansky, the Zionist computer pro­ detailing plans ,for the hunger strike and alists' favoured anti-Sovi'et 'dissident'. Just grammer found guilty of treason in J4ly 1978. Bonner's temporary asylum had been left in an weeks after Jimmy Carter took office in 1976" While the liberals shrieRed in outrage at our embassy car. It was also confirmed that American Sakharov became the linchpin of the Democrats' headline,' 'Shcharansky Is Guilty as Hell!'(Wor­ embassy officials had regularly ~ept in touch anti-Sovi~t 'human rights' crusade. Blustering kers Vanguard no 212, 28 July 1978), we insisted with Bonner, and that on April 12 when the State Department warnings were followed by a that was Ii terally the case, even attested to by letters were found, American diplomats had well-publicised 'private' Carter letter to bourgeois journalists who reported Shcharansky driven her to a railroad stat~on in Moscow where Sakharov. In January 1980 Sakharov really had passed on plans of secret defence plants. But she caught a train for Gorky. emerged as the imperialists' darling as he for the rest of such SoViet dissidents, no / called for an Olympic boycott a,nd for the West matter how reactionary and anti-socialist their Behind the s~okescreen about Ms Bonner's to take steps to force Russia to withdraw its poli.:tical views, as long as they are not ac­ health, for the past year the Sakharovs have troops from Afghanistan. A Western correspon­ tively engaged in attempting to overthrow the been trying to defect to the West. A New York dent reported the S'akharovs lamenting the gains of the revolution, we would as a norm up­ Times article of 12 May 1983 reported that 'weakness' of US 'resolve in the face of Soviet hold their" freedom of expression. These Trojan Yelena Bonner had told Western reporters that totalitarianism'. It was then that the Kremlin, horses for Reaganite imperialism inside the the couple was prepared. to emigrate to eIid the complaining that Sakharov had blabbed m~litary. Soviet bloc should be fought politically. 'nightmarish existence' 'they had been living secrets in his innumerable chitehats with continued on page 11

JULY 1984 5 Trotskyists suppo.. ted wo.. ke.. s ! ow minea-s loagl The fortieth anniversary celebrations of the D- striking illegally at Betteshanger colliery in Day landings once again revived -- this time for Kent. At Tareni in South Wales three more were the purpose of banging the anti-Soviet war drums sent to prison for 'impeding production'. In -- the myth that World War II was an 'anti- Yorkshire, miners at Cortonwood, today faced fascist' or even a 'people's war' waged by with MacGregor's axe, were fined for striking. - Britain and the United States. For the Morning Nearly 300 miners at Hatfield Main were dealt Star and sections of the Labour 'left' the war the same treatment. The capitalist press spewed In ~ is viewed as a golden age of 'anti-fascism', out slander upon slander against these heroic national unity and friendship with the Soviet men and against the Trotskyists who alone de­ Trotskyist cadres in World War II fought, Union. This is a lie. The imperialists fought fended them, wailing about 'Nazi infiltrators' heroically and often against great odds, for for the same reasons they fought in 1914: to de­ and 'subversive forces'. This campaign continues this perspective. Many paid with their lives and fend their 'right' to oppress and exploit the even today: a 30 March 1984 article in the rabid liberties, suffering alike at the hands of the toiling masses of the world. Whilst Nazi Germany anti-union Sun rails against the Betteshanger Nazis, the 'democratic' imperialists and the was unparallelled in its barbarity, the Anglo­ miners' strike of 1942, 'They went on strike in American Allies were by no means fighting for war -- They're still pig-headed'. 'democracy' or 'freedom'. Hundreds of thousands During World War II only the Trotskyist move­ rheywenton of German civilians died at the hands of Allied ment defended the workers' struggles, sought to strille in war ~ ____ -.~..... Bomber Command firebomb terror raids, hundreds give them'a lead and consistently politically of thousands of Japanese were killed and maimed opposed the imperialist war. As war approached by atomic bombs' dropped on Hiroshima and Naga­ in the mid-1930s Leon Trotsky spelled out the saki, and millions of oppressed subjects of the necessary revolutionary working-class stance in British Raj died as a result of British imperi­ his 'War and the Fourth International': alism's deliberate starvation policies in South 'Remaining the determined and devoted defender Asia. of the workers' state in the struggle with In Britain the Churchill/Attlee coalition in­ imperialism the international proletariat will terned 150,000 'aliens' and introduced anti­ not, however, become an ally of the imperial­ working class measures so draconian that even ist allies of the USSR. The proletariat of a the Times commented that not~ing like them had capitalist country that finds itself in al­ been seen since the seventheenth century. liance with the USSR must retain fully and Policed by Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, and completely its irreconcilable hostility to the Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary, the working imperialist government of its own country .... class was deprived of its right to strike out­ The transformation of imperialist war into Rabid anti-union Sun (30 March 1984) rails against Kent miners' strikes today and in 1942. side official arbitration. Workers could be civil war is that general strategic task to moved from town to town and job to job arbi­ which the whole work of a proletarian party trarily and by the end of the war more than during war should be subordinate.' (Writings 18,000 had been fined or jailed for lateness or 1933-34, emphasis in original) absenteeism. D-Day Wil Like today, the miners were in the front line against the bosses' war on the working class. Churchill's war machine demanded massive in­ creases in coal production and sought to ride roughshod over mineworkers to aChieve them. But again and again throughout the war miners fought Tbe Russians eru: back to defend their rights and conditions. In 1942 three were jailed and over 1000 fined for As. the news media cranked up the old wartime propaganda machine, the. chieftains of the Allied imperialist powers scurried off to the Normandy beaches for the fortieth anniversary of D-Day. What brought these assorted imperialist war­ mongers and monarchs together, more than a celebration of the past, was a reaffirmation of their commitment to the next world war, and to the anti-Soviet NATO alliance. A piece in the Times (6 June) said, 'The D-Day landing in Nor­ mandy on June 6 1944 represents the zenith of achievement for the Anglo-American wartime partnership.' This was the last popular war for the Anglo-American imperialists, and it was popular because it was advertised as a 'war against fascism', against Nazi Germany -- a genuinely evil empire which turned Europe into a nightmare, exterminated the Jewish people, millions of Slavs and other peoples, strangled all working-class organisations and threatened to destroy the Soviet Union, the world's first workers state. Reagan and Thatcher would dearly like to revive the crusad~ atmosphere of World War II to mobilise for war against Communism. Once again the US and British imperialists are trying to claim credit for 'defeating fas­ cism'. It was a lie then, and it's still a lie. It was the Russians who crushed Nazi G~rmany. In a column entitled 'Chernenko Deserves To Be at Normandy', an anti-fascist liberal, Allan A Ryan, Jr, pOinted out: 'In July 1943, the battle of Kursk broke Hitler's back in the East -- an estimated' 70,000 Nazis died and 5,000 tanks, planes and artillery were destroyed. Had the outcome been different, there almost certainly would have been no Allied landing in June 1944 and the swastika might have flown in Europe until 1950.' (New York Times, 5 June) May Day 1945: Soviet Red Army liberates Berlin from Nazi rule In fact, during most of the war in Europe there was no Western front to speak of -- nearly 95 percent of all German troops were engaged Reagan complained in his speech near Omaha against the Russians until the 1944 invasion as Beach. Lost for whom? 'The great sadness of this Soviet Marshal Ustinov noted bitterly last loss echoes down to our own time in the streets week. of Warsaw, Prague and East Berlin. The Soviet But even as Reagan paid lip service tribute troops that came to the centre of this continent to the 20 million Soviet citizens who died in did not leave when peace came', he said. That the war (the US lost 292,000), he managed to complaint is really what the D-Day ceremony was Trotskyist Rep's Socialist Appeal backed workers' turn the ceremony into an anti-Soviet demon­ all about. The Times (4 June) grudgingly ad­ struggles, fought for colonial independence, opposed stration. 'Some liberated countries were lost', mitted, 'The Russians did indeed fight formi- the bosses throughout the imperialist war.

6 SPARTACIST BRITAIN - ruggles, CP supported· Churchill It the govea-nment ~

Stalinist bureaucratic rulers of the USSR. Scores of Trotskyists were shot by the Nazis throughout Europe, including 65 French and German Trotskyists shot in 1943 for building revolutionary cells in the German armed forces. Ceylonese Trotskyists who had gone to India to '. spread anti-imperialist propaganda and set up the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India were tracked down by the British and jailed. As the German army attacked the USSR Stalin had thousands of imprisoned Trotskyists, who had asked to be re­ leased to fight the imperialists, taken out and executed instead. Merchant seamen members of the US Socialist Workers Party were lost on Allied convoys sailing to Murmansk where they sought to distribute copies of Trotsky's 'Letter to Russian Workers'. In 1944 the Roosevelt govern­ ment jailed 18 SWP members for their opposition to the imperialist carnage. Here in Britain the Trotskyists, fighting under the Leninist banner 'The Main Enemy is at Home! " were denounced as 'Hitler's Agents' by a popular front stretching from press baron Lord Rothemere to the Churchill government to the Communist Party leader Harry Pollitt addresses pro-war Communist Party (CP). In June 1944, a week after 'Open the Second Front' rally in Trafalgar Square in 1942. AKE THE (HAINS Off PROCUCTI 1942 CP poster says 'Take the chains off production'. Stalinists hailed strikebreaker Churchill, denounced a sideshow miners' strikes. the D-Day landings, four members of the Revolu­ tionary Communist Party (RCP), British section of the Fourth International, were jailed for their involvement in apprentices' strikes hed Nazi Germany against conscription into the mines. Like today, the capitalists had no hesitation in using the redividing the booty of capitalist profits, and might of the state to try and crush those who for this 'cause' they dearly wish that Hitler opposed their war on the working class. But the had broken the power of the Soviet Union. As Trotskyists did not bow before the bosses and Senator (and later President) Harry Truman put their war; indeed as the war continued they sig­ it in June 1941, the day after Hitler invaded nificantly increased their influence and hearinf, the Soviet Union: 'If we see that Germany is among the workers, particularly in the mines. winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and ,War and the Fourth International in that way let them kill as many as possible' (quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of On the eve of the war the British Trotskyist Containment [1982]). Thus D-Day was repeatedly movement had split into two organisations: the delayed by the US and Britain in the hopes that Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), official Nazi Germany would bleed Russia (and vice section of the Fourth International, and the versa). Workers International League (WIL). The WIL had However, Russia defeated Germany on its own split on an unprincipled basis from what became and carried out an anti-capitalist social revol­ the RSL leadership and refused to attend the ution, albeit bureaucratically deformed and from founding conference of the Fourth International above, in Eastern and Central Europe. Shortly in 1938. Its national-centred, cliquist origins after World War II ended, Western imperialism rendered this organisation all the more suscep­ launched the Cold War to 'roll back' Communism. tible to the powerful pressures of nationalist No imperialist politicians are as fanatically and 'democratic' illusions among the prolet­ committed to that aim as Reagan and Thatcher. ariat. It adopted for a time a variant of the 'Proletarian Military Policy', implicitly posing Operation Barbarossa sealed Hitler's doom the utopian idea that British workers could fight German fascism without the existence of a The assertion that D-Day was the 'turning workers state in Britain through controlling point' of the war is a total myth. Although the British imperialism's army. This led the WIL's Normandy landings were the largest amphibious Ted Grant (today leader of the left Labourite operation ever launChed, the guts of the German Militant Tendency) to declare in a burst of en­ army had already been destroyed on the Eastern thusiasm in 1944 'Long live our Eighth Army!' Front, especially in the decisive battles of Such SOCial-patriotic remarks were not typical Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943. The Eastern Front, of the work of the WIL, however -- and despite and this front only, saw the titanic struggle its cliquist origins it proved to be a more between fascism, the most barbaric expression active and effective organisation than the RSL of capitalism's death agony, and the Soviet (with which it eventually reunited in 1944 to state which originated in the Bolshevik Revol­ form the RCP). It carried out generally prin­ ution of 1917. cipled and often impressive work in the miners' The Russian people paid a terrible pric~ for and other trade unions and championed the im­ their victory over Nazism. Wben Hitler first mediate and unconditional independence of India Imer and sickle fly over the Reichstag. launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet and other colonies shackled by Empire. Indeed Union on 22 June 1941, the German army swept in 1942 a Tory MP called for the WIL's Socialist dably against Nazi Germany and wi thout them it is across the country on a devastating thousand­ Appeal to be banned after it printed photographs doubtful that Hitler could have been defeated.' mile front. In the first three monYhs alone, of British atrocities in Burma. In October But, it added, 'They were not fighting for free­ Soviet losses (those killed and taken prisoner) 1943 the WIL and the Indian Workers Association dom, democracy, self-determination or even for were three million: By the end of 1941 the Ger­ (which the WIL had been instrumental in setting reconciliation.' The South Asian masses are man armies stood at the gates of Leningrad, up five years previously) picketed a Birmingham well-acquainted with the freedom and democracy where the Bolshevik Revolution was born, and of meeting of Secretary of State for India Leo British imperialism brought them during the war! Moscow, the Soviet capital. Amery in protest against Churchill's starvation For the US and British imperialists, World Hitler's blitzkrieg almost succeeded because policies which led to 150 people dying every War II was not about smashing fascism but about continued on page 8 continued on page 8

JULY 1984 7 in a titanic battle which decided the course under the Smith Act: of the war. 'The considerations which determined our at­ D-Day ... After Stalingrad and Kursk the Red Army titude toward the war up to the outbreak of began sweeping west as the Germans fell into re­ hostilities between the United States and \ l-'~'::::'~:::.Jta from page 7) treat. By June 1944 most of the Soviet Union had the Axis powers retain their validity in the the defence of the Soviet Union had been under­ been liberated and the Russians were preparing new situation. mined and sabotaged as a result of a political to enter Nazi-occupied countries from the 'We considered the war upon the part of all counterrevolution -- the rise of Stalin's bu­ Balkans to Poland. The defeat of Nazi Germany the capitalist powers involved -- Germany reaucracy usurping political power from the was in sight. For the Western 'democratic' and France, Italy and Great Britain -- as an ~orking class. Stalin consolidated his bureau­ allies, who had let the Soviet Union bear the imperialist war. cratic regime in the 1930s through bloody purges brunt of the Nazi war machine for three years, 'This characterization of the war was de­ in which many of the Red Army's best officers the question now arose: 'Who gets Berlin?' 'And termined for us by the character of the state were killed, including Marshal Tukhachevsky, therein lies the origins of D-Day -- the race powers involved in it. They were all capital­ the most brilliant general in the civil war of for Berlin and Ger~any, the key to Europe. ist states in the epoch of imperialism; them­ 1917-21. Leon Trotsky, the commander of the Red selves imperialist -- oppressing other Army during the civil"war, was driven into 'exile The Second Front and the popular front nations or peoples -- or satellites of im­ in the late 1920s and finally murdered by a perialist powers. The extension of the war to Stalinist agent in Mexico in 1940. For three long years Stalin pleaded with his the Pacific and the formal entry of the Stalin relied on the paper promises of the Western allies to open up a second front to take United States and Japan changed nothing in 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact to avoid war. Even when the pressure off the So;iet Union. This was part this basic analysis .... Operation Barbarossa was clearly imminent, he of the 'popular front' strategy of relying on 'This characterization of the war does not tried to stave off attack by ordering his armed the good will of the 'democratic' imperialists apply to the war of the Soviet Union against forces not to fire at German planes, not to ap­ in Washington and London. In the name of the German imperialism. We make a fundamental proach the frontiers, not to provoke the Germans 'war against fascism' the Stalinists of the distinction between the Soviet Union and its at all costs. Chief Marshal of Artillery N N American Communist Party supported Roosevelt's "democratic" allies. We defend the Soviet Voronov later recalled: sending Japanese Americans to concentration Union. The Soviet Union is a workers' state, 'My heart was very troubled. The war was camps, opposed all' strikes (CP leader William although degenerated under the totalitarian drawing closer with every hour .... But at the Z Foster tried to lead a back-to-work movement political rule of the Kremlin bureaucracy. People's Commissariat of Defense little at­ in the 1943 coal miners strike) and denounced Only traitors can deny support to the tention was paid to the danger signals .... efforts to eliminate racism .in the armed forces. Soviet workers' state in its war against 'It was clear that the General Staff did not But the Stalinists' slavish support to US fascist Germany. To defend the Soviet Union, believe that there would be war in 1941. This imperialist militarism did not prevent their in spite of Stalin and against Stalin, is to point of view emanated from Stalin.' (Seweryn hero Franklin D Roosevelt from seeking to defend the nationalized property established Bi,aler, ed, Stalin and His Generals [1969]) bleed Russia white while preserving American by the October revolution. That is a pro­ What saved the day was the devotion of the military/industrial power intact. This treacher­ gressive war.' ('A Statement on the War', Soviet working people to defending the gains of ous policy has been publicly admitted by Fourth International, January 1942, emphasis October 1917 despite Stalin. In Leningrad the Averell Harriman, who was US ambassador to Mos­ in original) entire City was mobilised for a determined cow during the war: .' I believe he [Roosevelt] Today, when Reagan's America is p~anning a nu­ battle to the death. In one typical heroic epi­ had in mind that if the great armies of Russia clear Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet sode when the giant Izhorsk factory, which pro­ could stand up to the Germans, this might well Union, we Trotskyists again stand firmly on the duced such critical items as the T-34 and KV-60 make it possible for us to limit our partici­ barricades in defence of the gains of October. tanks, came under fire from German artillery, pation largely to naval and air power' (quoted Abridged. from Workers Vanguard no 357, 22 June 1984 the workers formed a battalion and went to the in Gaddis " Strategies of Containment). The US front. After the initial German thrust was ruling class intended to enter the European halted, the city dug in for a siege of 900 days, theatre at the very end, as it had in World a true horror which tested the limits of human War I, and dictate its terms to all the war­ WWII. endurance when starvation ran rampant in the ravaged European powers, its allies no less than •• winter of 1941-42. Over 800,000 died within the the defeated Axis. (Continued from page 7) city, but the Nazis never succeeded in taking It was the Red Army's un~xpectedly rapid ad­ day in Calcutta at that time. In the.midst of vance toward Eastern and Central Europe, not it. imperialist war the slogans of the picket read, The historic turning point of World War II any desire to finish Hitler off, which deter­ 'Down with Amery and Churchill!' and 'For com­ came at Stalingrad, a fact later admitted by mined the timing of D-Day. The second front plete Indian independence!' even such an arch anti-Communist as Winston was launched not to save the Soviet Union but Whilst c~lling for unconditional military de­ Churchill. Here the Soviet army and the city's to save imperialist interests from the Soviet fence of the Soviet Unio'n and the immediate population fought street by street, house by Union. In a scholarly work, Second Front NOW -- despatch of arms to the USSR under the control house, factory by factory. Soviet Marshal 1943 (1980), Scott Dunn Jr extensively W~lter of the trade unions, the WIL opposed the Stalin­ Vasili I Chuikov, who led the inner city de­ analyses ,11 the resources available to the ist CP's call for the opening of a second front fences, described the monumental struggle years Allies and Germans -- tanks, submarines, landing in Europe because 'the boss class cannot liber~ later: craft, aircraft, combat soldiers, intelligence, ate Europe'. 'Capitalist Second Front will crush 'The local authorities and thousands of in­ etc -- and concludes that the 'timing of the European Revolution' read a Socialist Appeal habitants in the factory areas were giving second front was influenced by both political headline. It unconditionally opposed the the 62nd Army every help they could. For ex­ and military considerations'. The military re­ Churchill/Attlee coalition and refused to even ample, at the Tractor factory, right up to quirement for the invasion of France 'was met by consider critical electoral support to Labour the last minute, until October 14 [1942] April 1943'. Retired US General A C Wedemeyer whilst it was in the coalition, raising the that is, our tank crews were repairing tanks. endorses this view in a foreword to Dunn's book slogan 'A vote for Labour is a vote for with the help of the workers, and at the and now laments that the Americans did.not get Churchill'. In the 1945 Neath (Glamo:r:gan) by­ Barrikady works the workers and our artillery to Berlin before the Russians: election RCP (and former WIL) leader Jock Haston men together were repairing guns.' (Vasili I 'They, instead of the Soviets, could have stood on this platform against a'Labour co­ Chuikov, Tne Battle of Stalingrad [1963]) seized and occupied much of Central Burope. alition candidate and, under the slogan 'A vote Again and again the German army stormed Soviet Postwar history could then have unfolded for Haston is a vote for communism', gained 1781 defences, and in October 1942 they got within under political and economic conditions much votes in a solid mining community, a total far 300 yards of Chuikov's_defences. Finally more favorable to the interests of the Free higher than CP leader Harry Pollitt had won on General Zhukov launched a massive counterattack, World. ' the two occasions he stood in that region. and in February 1943 German Field Marshal Fried­ US imperialism wanted to dominate all of Eurqpe; rich von Paulus surrendered his forces. For the the Soviet victory prevented that. CPGB: His Majesty's Communist Party fi,rst time in the war an entire German army· While the Stalinists were agita~ing for an (some 334,000 men) had been destroyed. The myth American/British invasion of continental Europe, While Labour participated in Churchiil's of Nazi 'invincibility' was smashed, setting the the Trotskyists recognised that a victory for coalition government with direct responsibility stage for the decisive battle of Kursk five Roosevelt's America in World War II would enor~ for cracking down on the working class, the CP months later. mously strengthen the most powerful iml>erial­ acted as Churchill's direct agents within the At Kursk in July' 1943 the cream of the German ist country on earth. In early 1942, shortly after trade union movement .. The Stalinists prostituted the US entered the war, James P Cannon, leader army, the tank corps, was smashed to smither­ the legitimate anti-fascist and Soviet-defencist of the then-Trotskyist US Socialist Workers eens in the greatest tank battle ever fought sentiments of the thousands of militants who (3600 Soviet tanks versus 2700 Nazi tanks). Party (SWP) , stated the revolutionary position looked to the CP into social-chauvinist support Over 1.33 million Soviet soldiers engaged on World War II just as Roosevelt was moving to for an imperialist· war. As is clear even f~om nearly a million German troops for over a week throw him and the other SWP leaders into prison the Morning Star's (6 June) fortieth anniversary apologetics for its 'second front' campaign, the -----Spartacist League Class Series ------~-,j Allied imperiali·st war effort had nothing to do with defending Russia and was in no way respon­ sible for defeating Nazi Germany. Thus we read Fundamentals of Marxism: that 'Their strategy was to stand by while the Soviet and German armies beat each other into The guide to building a Leninist lparty mutual destruction -- leaving the West as vic­ tors in control, ready to crush revolutionary Sheffield London and progressive movements, securing Western Europe for capitalis~.' Forty years on the CP Roebuck Tavern Prince Albert pub Charles St 37 Wharfdale Rd now acknowledges that Churchill was 'inspired Sheffield S 1 London N1 by anti-Communism and imperialist self-interest' (what would you expect from the butcher of 17 July 10 July Why and how the workers movement must crush fascism Tonypandy?). Troops out now! For a proletarian perspective in Ireland 17 July The Soviet Union could only be defended ,/ National oppression and socialist revolution through a resolute policy relying on the revol­ 31 July' 24 July utionary mobilisation of the working class For women's liberation through socialist revolution throughout the capitalist countries; this was For women's liberation through socialist revolution 31 July counterposed to .the ep's role as the most Britain needs workers revolution: Leninism v Labourism vicious strikebreakers for the notoriously anti­ 7. 30 pm (for further details tel 0742 737067) Time: 7.00 pm (for further details tel 01 2782232) communist Churchill. The CP was quite clear in its propaganda that it was imperialist Britain

8 SPARTACIST BRITAIN above all that it was defending. As Pollitt said at the 1942 CP conference: 'We do not call for the Second Front with such insistency because we mean it to save Report from Mansfield Russia .... We call for it in order to save There has been a gradual 'drift back to work, Britain herself .... This wave of strikes in I spent four days with a striker's family in more pronounced in Nottinghamshire than in the coalfield, while it is the direct re­ Mansfield. Mansfield is a town under police North Derbyshire. For instance at Warsop there sponsibility of the coalowners, cannot be con­ occupation -- the cops are everywhere, patrol­ are now 10 miners at work. The NUR and ASLEF doned by the miners themselves .... The trade­ ling on foot and in cars. Near a colliery or began blacking coal only when Knapp and Buckton union official who said in Lancashire 'Let the an estate where miners live their presence went to Shirebrook to appeal to railworkers strike continue, it will help negotiations', reaches saturation point. The method of patrol­ there. The NUM had put up a picket outside the was doing a disservice to his own Union and to ling/surveillance is exactly the same as they depot at one point but it was only token, es­ his country .... ' (quoted in Robert Black, used in Handsworth after the 1981 ghetto ex­ sentially they were waiting for Scargill to ask Stalinism in Britain) plosions: cops walking in pairs about fifty Knapp to give the orders. Even so, about two In the name of defending 'democracy' the CP yards apart -- only this time they are on the thirds of the workforce were still moving coal not only opposed the working class at home but look-out for young, and not so young, miners about last week. trampled over the democratic right of the Indian instead of black and Asian youth. As I was While I was there, Socialist Action had a people to independence. The 1944 Congress of the walking to the picket line at Sherwood on the meeting on Cuba which consisted of Jonathan CP explicitly opposed this demand, calling in­ Wednesday morning I was stopped by two cops, Silberman showing slides of his holiday in stead for 'Freedom for the Indian people to asked if I was a miner,and when I said no was Cuba and recounting how fantastic it was. It choose their own form of government after the told that if I went to the picket line I would was all very reminiscent of starry-eyed fellow war' (emphasis added). be arrested. travellers returning from their holidays in the Nor could the CP's support to English and The other tactic the cops are using is the USSR in the thirties. The main thing he was at American imperialism fight the fascist danger. intimidation squads. Aside from plainclothes pains to demonstrate was how democratic Cuba Echoing its own bourgeoisie the CP joined in -the cops in the pubs listening to conversations, was, in particular in comparison to the Soviet jingoistic anti-Hun racism, demanding of Germany the intimidation squads are there to investi­ Union -- the point of it all being that Castro that 'the entire nation must take responsibility gate claims of 'inti~dation' from the scabs. should be more acceptable to social democrats for crimes committed in its name' (Daily Worker, Any scab with a grievance simply has to ring up than the nasty Russians. I interv~ned on the 21 July 1944). Were the German workers, many of the cops who then undertake 'investigations'. need to defend both Cuba and the USSR against them socialists and communists, then to be held The scabs' word is law. Miners who house pick­ the imperialist war drive, how Castro's poli­ responsible for the fascist scourge which had ets from other areas are particularly singled cies of 'peaceful coexistence' are essentially crushed them under heel? Indeed the policy of out by the cops. The split between the miners no different from the Moscow Stalinists and the the Stalinists acted only to drive the German and the scabs is total, there is no communi­ need for workers political revolutions to oust workers deeper into the arms of their own bour­ cation between them at all. One young miner the Stalinist bureaucracies. But at least geOisie, just as the social chauvinists did in cancelled his wedding because he didn't want it Castro opposes counterrevolutionary Polish World War I when they justified support for to be paid for by his fiancee's father who was Solidarnosc -- a key question for the miners - their respective bourgeoisies as a 'democratic' still at work. unlike Socialist Action .• war either against the Kaiser or the Tsar. And the German proletariat well remembered that the outcome of that war was the humiliating and rapacious Versailles treaty. The CP's support to the imperialist war de­ Smash NF march in Kent! rived from its allegiance to the Stalin bu­ On 14 July, the race terrorists of the fore the brick that felled the young strike reaucracy, which subordinated the international National Front intend to stage a provo- militant was hurled. The large minority com­ interests of the proletariat to diplomatic ma­ cation in Maidstone, on the edge of the mili­ munities from nearby London, who face fascist/ noeuvres with the imperialist powers, dressed tant Kent mining area. These vile scum have cop terror every day, have a vital interest up in the 'theory' of 'soci al ism in one coun try' . invited Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French fascist with the Kent miners and other workers in The Stalinised Communist International betrayed leader, a torturer of Algerian freedom driving these genocidal murderers out! Local the struggle of the German workers against fighters in French imperialism's dirty col­ politicians have appealed to the state to ban Nazism when it allowed Hitler to come to power onial wars. At a time when Thatcher's cops the fascist rally. Calling on the bosses's in 1933 without a shot being fired under the have declared open season on the miners, these state and its cops to ban the fascists -- a slogan 'After Hitler, us'. This world-historic fascists seek to parade their grisly 'final strategy advocated by the Communist Party, betrayal represented the decisive rupture of solution' in Kent. whose supporters are prominent in the leader­ the Comintern from the revolutionary inter­ Crushing this planned fascist mobilis­ ship of Kent NUM -- is suicidal _ Just look at nationalism of Lenin and Trotsky. Beginning in ation is part and parcel of breaking the the massive police strikebreakin~ operations 1934 the Comintern clamoured for a Franco/ strikebreakers and winning the strike. It is no­ in the coalfields, including roadblocks to pre­ British/Soviet pact to resist Germany while the table that at the inquest on murdered NUM picket vent miners leaving Kent! The only way the CPs i~plored the parties of the imperialist David Jones, a witness revealed that 'extreme fascist, strikebreaking NF scum will be bourgeoisies to enter 'anti-fascist' popular right-wing' leaflets had been distributed to stopped is through mass union/minority fronts. the gang of thugs who had gathered shortly be- mobilisations! So when the Stalin/Hitler pact was signed in August 1939 most of the Stalinist membership, and leadership, were taken by surprise. Never­ the 'national interest'. The CP was at the fore­ not have been clearer. The CP threw its members theless, at the outbreak,of war the following front of setting up 'Joint Production Committees' behind the attempts of Yorkshire Miners Associ­ month, the CP supported the war effort of the of workers and management to boost production ation President Joe Hall to get the strikers British. Within days word came from Moscow and overcome such difficulties as union demarca­ back to work whilst Socialist Appeal called for that the war was to be characterised as imperi­ tion lines and the unwillingness of workers to the organisation of strike committees and all­ alist and to be opposed. The CP, which had just work longer hours. The Daily Worker (September out support to the miners. The popularity of the published a pamphlet, 'How to win the War', was 7, 1942) hysterically demanded that Churchill WIL's programme, particularly amongst young forced therefore to sharply reverse its line. 'mobilise every able-bodied man and woman for miners, sent Hall into a frenzy. After trying to Some like Pollitt, remained recalcitrant in con­ war service in the armed forces, civil defence beat up WIL members outside a London meeting he tinuing to support the war, resolving the con­ and industry. No evasions to be tolerated. Speed launched a vicious witchhunt against the tradiction between loyalty to the Stalinist the training and placing of women in all indus­ Trotskyists when he told striking Darfield regime and to their own bourgeoisie in favour of tries to release large numbers of men for the miners that the WIL was 'definitely subversive the latter. The social-chauvinist premise of the armed forces.' and pro-Nazi'. - CP's subsequent support to the war is today re­ This opened the floodgates for the yellow flected in the retrospective position taken by Trotskyism v Stalinism in the coalfields press, the Labour Party's Daily Herald leading the anti-Soviet Eurocommunist majority that the ~he pack with the headline 'Pro-Nazis at work to CP should have supported British imperialism Due largely to conscription, the wartime in­ upset coalfields'. In Parliament the Tories de­ during the period of the Stalin/Hitler pact as crease in the demand for coal had to be met by manded to know what Home Secretary Morrison in­ well. an older and smaller workforce. After JUne 1941 tended to do about the Trotskyists. Morrison Even then the CP's opposition to the war had the CP set itself the task of mobilising its replied that he doubted whether Socialist Appeal nothing in common wi th Leninist revolutionary de­ considerable base in the mines, especially in had 'any appreciable influence' in the coal­ featism. Its 'neutral' stance tilted toward Nazi Scotland and South Wales, in the 'battle for fields but nevertheless promised to make Germany and, instead of calling for civil war production'. CP member and South Wales Miners 'further enquiries'. At this CP MP Willie against the bourgeoisie the CP called for an im­ Federation President Arthur Horner outlined the Gallacher leapt up to ask Morrison if he would perialist peace. Thus the CP's October 1939 Mani­ party's policy: also 'enquire into the good effect that the festo called for the 'ending of hostilities and 'There is too much avoidable absenteeism in [then banned] Daily Worker would have?' That is, the calling of a peace conference'. Indeed in the mines, particularly on Saturdays and Sun­ a 'good effect' for the bosses in suppressing the first months of the war the CP was giving days. It should be regarded as a crime to the class struggle! Tory MP Sir Jocelyn Lewis called backhanded support to Hitler's 'peace initiat­ First and Eighth Armies and to the Red Army for the internment of the WIL leaders and the ives'. And the CP's main work up to June 1941 not to work every available shift, including ending of paper supplies for Socialist Appeal. was focussed on the 'Peoples Convention' which weekend overtime in the present period of The impact the Trotskyists' ideas were beginning met in January 1941 sup'ported by the Obligatory crisis. The avoidance at all costs of strikes to have among miners was shown at that year's Anglican Bishops, without whom no British and the suspension of the custom where a pit Miners Federation of Great Britain conference, popular front would be complete, and called for closes down after a fatal accident would where National President Will Lawther felt com­ a 'Peoples Government to fight for a peoples greatly increase production.' (Daily Worker, pelled to say of the WIL, 'Their sort of tactics peace' . 1~ December 1942) must be stopped.' When a delegate shouted from the floor, 'They have a right to critiCise', This was dumped when Hitler's Wehrmacht However, to many miners it was clear that the Lawther replied, 'We have a right to be criti­ smashed into the USSR in 'June 1941. Pollitt, now bosses were using the war as an excuse to drive rehabilitated after being exiled to Manchester down wages and working conditions. Supporting cised by the people we serve, not by tools out­ for supporting the war, outlined the Cp's policy the many strikes and other struggles which re­ side .... Anyone associated with that attitude is now as 'a fight for a united national front sulted, the Trotskyists called for the national­ playing Hi tIer's game' (Daily Telegraph, 22 July [which] means support for Churchill's government isation of the mines, without compensation to 1942). and all measures for common victory' ('Britain's the coalowners and under workers control. The CP contributed two pamphlets to the capi­ Chance Has Come', July 1941). Consequently the In 1942 a strike wave swept through the coal­ talist witchhunt: 'Clear out Hitler's Agents~' CP often worked for Tory candidates at by­ fields, and in South Yorkshire the contrast in 1942 and 'Hitler's Agents Exposed' in 1943. elections and opposed all strikes as harmful to between the Stalinist and Trotskyist lines could continued on page 20

JULY 1984 9 at pits and engineering factories throughout the of Defence Billoux was placed in charge of country. Needless to say, the CP opposed the French imperialism's drive to crush the Algerian WW II ... strikes, announcing in the Daily WaLker 'Lads and Vietnamese struggles for national liber­ duped to aid Trotskyist and ILP anti-war (Continued fLom page 9) ation. In Greece heroic rank-and-file Communist campaign', and even attacked a judge for being Complete with extensive Big Lie quotations from Party militants were left to die by Stalin, who too lenient on an apprentice brought to court the Moscow Trials, both pamphlets purported to agreed with the imperialist powers that Greece for refusing to go down the mines! But not only 'prove' that the Trotskyists were in the pay of would not be in the Soviet 'sphere of influence' the Stalinists were watching the Trotskyists' Hitler. In this task the CP was aided by Lord and thus allowed the victory of a monarchist and activity with trepidation. On 22 February the Rothemere and his Daily Mail, which less than a imperialist offensive. deputy secretary at the Ministry of Labour decade before had been screaming 'Hurrah for the Some Stalinist apologists claim that the wrote, 'I think it is clear from this [repor.] Blackshirts!' The Mail not only retold the CP's presence of US occupying forces in Europe meant that the militant socialist movement is piaying lies but also recommended its readers should that any revolutionary moves by the West Euro­ an exceedingly active part not only in the ap­ read CP literature to get the 'truth' about the pean proletariat would have been immediately prentices agitation but also in the mineworkers Trotskyists! The WIL responded with a leaflet crushed, giving the PCI and PCF little choice troubles .... It is likely that the Minister will entitled 'Clear out the Bosses' Agents!' which but to oppose revolutionary struggle against the be asked to take steps to intern these agi­ detailed the CP's opposition to strikes and bourgeoisie. This is self-serving pro-capitalist tators' (quoted in Richard Croucher, 'Engineers colonial independence and exposed the CP's claptrap. (Moreover, it ignores the fact that at War'). backing for Hitler's 1939 'peace' moves. The the Stalinists called for American inter~ention On 5 April Bevin cracked down. The RCP's head­ leaflet ended with an offer of a £10 reward 'To in the first place!) By the end of the war sig­ quarters were raided and in Newcastle RCP mem­ any member of the Communist Party who can prove nificant cracks had appeared in the US army. In bers Ann Keen and Heaton Lee were dragged from that the so-called quotations from Trotskyist France and the Phillipines there were mass dem­ their beds at three o'clock in the morning and publications in the pamphlet "Clear out Hi tIer's onstrations of GIs calling for demobilisation arrested in connection with the strikes. At Agents!" are not forgeries or, to any member of and the right to return home. A revolutionary Bevin's request the TUC issued a statement the CP who can show any page of this pamphlet appeal to these soldiers, particularly the black warning 'all workers against persons and organ­ which does not contain a minimum of five lies.' GIs who still faced Jim Crow discrimination in isations that have been active in fomenting No CP member ever dared respond and the £10 was the forces, coupled with a revolutionary mobil­ disturbances' and called for a return to work never claimed. isation of the working class, could have split by all strikers. In Parliament Bevin introduced The CP's Nazi-baiting was unable to prevent a the base of the army away from the officers and the dictatorial Regulation 1A(a) which provided steady trickle of recruits to the WIL from the destroyed its capacity to act against the for five years prison for advocating support CP, particularly after Stalin formally dissolved working class. to or providing financial aid to an unofficial the Communist International as a gesture to the But of course the Stalinists would not and strike. Within days the strike wave had col­ imperialist 'Allies' in May 1943. In 1943 a could not do this. Upholding the programme of lapsed under the government's iron heel. group of German Communist Party exiles was won 'socialism in one country', they were pledged On April 28, Rep leaders Jock Haston and Roy to the WIL. Their 'Declaration for the Fourth to support their own capitalist classes when Tearse appeared alongside Keen and Lee at New­ International' stated that 'It is to the credit they allied with the Soviet Union and to plead castle City Police Court. With the court sitting of Leo Trotzki that he first perceived the with a supposedly 'peaceloving' wing of the in camera, all four were charged under the 1927 cancer growing in the body of the Comintern and bosses during the Cold War. The CP's desire to Trades Disputes Act and the Conspiracy and therefore inspired and organised the Fourth defend British imperialism during WWII led it Protection of Property Act, Unprecedentedly, International .... The Third International is to oppose the miners' fight for their rights bail was refused. The case came to court seven dead. Long live the Fourth International!' and to support Churchill. So today, the CP's days after the Normandy landings. The Trotsky- desire to 'save British industry' through Churchill and Bevin crack down ists freely admitted aiding the apprentices nationalist import controls and other capitalist By'late 1943 preparations for opening a while (unfortunately for the prosecution) the measures leads it to cover for the Labour/TUC second front in Europe wel'e well underway, and nine apprentices called as prosecution wit­ misleaders of the working class who are moving it was clear that sustaining the military ef­ nesses all admitted that they were prepared to might and main to sellout the NUM. And the fort required coal production to be increased strike without the RCP's assistance. Summing up, Eurocommunists, now dominant in the party, have dramatically, In December Bevin announced the the judge told one of the witnesses, Bill Davy, taken 'socialism in one country' to its logical 'Bevin Ballot Scheme' whereby ten per cent of secretary of the Tyneside Apprentices Guild and conclusion and renounced even a pretence of de­ all engineering apprentices were to be con­ an RCP member, that he should have been in the fending the Soviet Union or fighting for pro­ scripted into the mines. Both miners and ap­ dock and not the witness box. Found guilty of letarian revolution. prentices greeted the proposal with outraged 'aiding and abetting' and 'furthering an il­ Thatcher, with Reagan and the rest of the opposition and after a series of demonstrations legal strike', Ann Keen was sentenced to thir­ NATO alliance, is today driving towards a and fruitless parliamentary lobbying 12,000 teen days in prison, Jock Haston to six months thermonuclear World War III against the USSR. engineering apprentices on Tyneside and Clyde­ and Tearse and Lee to twelve months each. And in order to wage anti-Soviet war the imperi­ side struck against the scheme in March 1944. The RCP immediately launched a vigorous cam­ alists must first crush the resistance of the At the same time 180,000 Yorkshire and South paign for the release of the Trotskyists. Sup­ working class at home. Militant miners who are Wales miners were on strike against a pay award ported by six Labour MPs, including Aneurin battling to save their jobs, rights and liveli­ which cut wages and 24,000 Belfast shipyard Bevan, the Federation of Indian Associations and hoods today can take inspiration and draw im­ portant lessons from the struggles of their workers were out over the jailing of four air­ more than eighty trade union bodies, the cam­ forebears during the Second World War -~ and craft workers for 'illegally' striking. This up­ paign also won the support of 82 Royal Engineers from the Trotskyists who uniquely supported surge of working-class militancy posed a direct serving with the Eighth Army in North Africa. their struggles and those of all workers and threat to Allied plans to invade Europe in order Finally in August 1944, when the strike wave had oppressed in the face of imperialist war. As to stop the Red Army liberating the whole of the safely ended and the second front was well es­ Socialist Appeal (July 1944) wrote as the four continent. tablished in Europe, the Appeal Court quashed RCP comrades were incarcerated for their anti­ The newly-formed RCP threw its forces into the the convictions, thereby demonstrating that the war activities: strike wave, distributing tens of thousands of whole affair was a frame-up, and released 'We declare that the trial has demonstrated leaflets headed 'Fight the Pit Compulsion Plot' Haston, Tearse and Lee. the terror that our political programme 'Capitalist Second Front strikes in the hearts of the class enemy. will crush European Revolution' They realise that only our programme can ~p'artacist League Public Meeting~ challenge their rule and that our programme There are no other words for the Communist can offer an alternative to the working Party's strikebreaking role in World War II than and social for the miners class. We declare that imprisonment and betrayal and treachery. And even after the war persecution will not still our voice, will the CP kept right on cheering for Churchill. not deter our course. With redoubled energy Miners must not stand alone! Doing its best to paralyse prospects for re­ we will continue the struggle for the victory newed class struggle the CP came out far to the of the workers under the banner of the Fourth right of even Major Attlee's Labour Party by Rail, steel, power, dock International. '. calling for a continuation of the wartime co­ workers - join the strike now! alition in the 1945 elections. As late as 1947 " the CP was still demanding.joint production com­ mittees to 'secure a greater outpnt per man on Europe of NATO • • • the basis of the existing equipment in the in­ dustry' ('Britain's Plan for Posterity', 1947). (Continued from page 12) Seeking to maintain the 'Great Peace Alliance' German imperialism. 'And in the end, as we have the Stalinists continued their wartime s~rike­ already analysed in 1979: breaking until the introduction of the Cold War 'The EEC was originally set up in the mid- Marshall Plan, which resulted in the CPGB dis­ 1950s as part of the American-directed re­ EIBHLIN McDONALD covering new criticisms of the Labour government organisation of West Europe against the Spartacist League/Britain Central Committee and the Italian and French CPs being slung out Soviet bloc. Washington policymakers were DICK HALL of their respective cabinets. concerned that French opposition to German North Derbyshire NUM (in a personal capacity) On the continent, where the CPs were gener­ dominance of Europe could lead to a revival JON BRULE ally larger and more influential and the revol­ of Paris' traditional alliance with Moscow, Spartacist League/US Central Committee utionary possibilities after the war greater, as in the 1935 Stalin-Laval pact. The Common Eye-witness report from German metalworkers these parties directly helped to crush prolet­ Market was and remains an economic compromise strike arian upsurges. The Italian CP in 1944 joined essentially between the French and German the monarchist coalition headed by Marshall ruling classes in the context of their pol­ Badoglio, who as a leading fascist had directed itical/military alliance against the USSR. Friday, 6 July, 7,30 pm the invasion of Ethiopia, and PCI leader and ' ... the EEC is the means whereby West Ger­ Duke of York pub Minister of Justice Togliatti was responsible man imperialism helps finance the unity of 24 York Way London N1 for disarming the workers and peasants who the "free world" .... (near King's Cross) formed the core of the Resistance. In France the , . .. We are implacably opposed to the EEC PCF joined de Gaulle's provisional government above all because it provides economic glue in late 1944 and was given the task of setting for holding together the Western imperialist IN BIRMINGHAM up production committees. Opposing strikes as alliance against the Soviet Union.' (Sparta­ After the-miners' rally, Saturday, 7 July harmful to production PCF leader Thorez counter­ cist Britain no 12, June 1979) Dr Johnson House signed the order to bomb the Vietnamese city The Marshall Plan and the creation of the EEC Bull St Birmingham of Haiphong, resulting in the deaths of over were closely linked to the intervention of the 6000 men, women and children. Stalinist Minister CIA in the European workers movement in order

10 SPARTACIST BRITAIN to weaken and split it. Entire sections of the dition, turned down by virtually every Western duranoe. But time is running out. Waiting for social democracy were placed at the service of 'democracy'. Even requests to visit Germany for the strike to 'bite' next December is no pers­ 'US imperialism and its anti-Soviet crusade. medical treatment were turned down. 'I could pective for victory. A real breakthrough is But the 'European' orga~s of the Cold War are appreciate the full advantages of democracy necessary now. The future of the unions is at also the organs of counterrevolution in West only as a corpse', wrote Trotsky in the last stake. Militants must act decisively to turn Europe. NATO's committee for 'civil defence' chapter ('The Planet Without a Visa') of his this into a classwide fight against Thatcher/ prepared the c1vil war in Greece and Italy. The 1929 autobiography, My Life. In contrast, he MacGregor, to smash the Tory assault and lay economic aid offered by the EEC countries t~ noted, the toppled shah of Persia and the king the basis for the forging of a revolutionary Portugal was part of the counterrevolutionary of Afghanistan had no difficulties obtaining Trotskyist party that can lead the working class intervention in that country. asylum from the crowned heads of Europe. Nor to overturn this decadent capitalist system .• would the 'dissident' Sakharov. The main enemy is at home! It is perfectly clear that Dr Sakharov would Our opposition to the Common Market is the blab everything he knows to the West. Even today Waiting ... very opposite of the traditional anti-'boche' he has valuable secrets which haven't necess­ (anti-'kraut') chauvinism of the Eurostalinists arily decayed with time. And we have a modest (Continued from page 2) of the PCF which opposes the 'German' Common proposal. Since the Cold Warriors and Reaganites supports the 'left' against the right in trade Market in the name of defending 'national in­ claim their only concern is 'humanitarian' ,and union elections (and even proposed that Labour dependence' and 'French interests ,'. not strategic-military, the Kremlin might MPs take a loyalty oath to Michael Foot three Certain recent departures from the PCF re­ suggest a simple trade of 'aging' scientists: years ago). WP is p:r;-epared to call for a .general grouped in the Committee for the Reconstruction Sakharov in exchange for Edward Teller, the strike at all times and in all places -- except of the Communist Party (generally termed 'anti­ father of the American hydrogen bomb and now when the reformists are in power. They refused opportunists') also oppose, the Common Market and a prime mover of Reagan's plans for the 'Star to call one during the 'winter of discontent' NATO, but in a bloc with .•• the residues of Wars' programme to annihilate the Soviets from which brought down the Social Contract Callaghan 'left' Gaullism, the Union Democratique et space. Labour government; they refuse to call one today Populaire! Scarcely parted frqm the PCF in op­ against the Mitterrand-led popular front in Adapted from Workers Vanguard no 356, 8 June 1984 position -- they say -- to its reformism and its F~ance. The reason is very simple: a general rejection of internationalism, and scarcely strike poses the question of power. If you're more than a handful (making the whole affair committed to going through the Labour Party, even more ridiculous), they rush to mimic the what do you do when Labour is already in power? Strike ... Four years ago under the impact of the im­ activities of the PCF in the 50s 'against Ger­ man rearmament': popular-frontist coalitions (Continued from page 3) perialist furore over Afghanistan, WP took an with bourgeois elements on. the basis of anti­ cross the stream of Revolution on the horses important step to the left in breaking with its 'bochisme'. It is not the USSR which they de­ of reformism, and the class which has gone prior Soviet-defeatist position. But when the fend in this way, but after all the subjugation into battle under opportunist leaders is com­ Russian question really hit home in Europe over of the proletariat to its own bourgeoisie and pelled to change them under enemy fire. This Poland, WP fell into step behind the social­ thus to the 'civil peace' which is the necessary determines in advance what the really revol­ democratic Colti Warriors. Their support to domestic component of the foreign politics of utionary elements of the British proletariat counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc puts them on 'peaceful coexistence'. . must do -- above all, what the Communists the same side of the fence as the Cold War Everywhere in the world the imperialists must do. They must support in every way the witchhunters who went after Scargill and the NUM multiply their provocations against the USSR: unity of mass action, but they cannot permit at Blackpool last September. No wonder they can look to Murray to call a general strike today. in just a few months, using the KAL 007 air­ even the appearance of unity with the oppor­ liner to test Soviet air defences, a Soviet sub­ tunist leaders of the Labour Party and the The requirements of the anti-Soviet war drive marine rammed in the Sea of Japan, mining of trade unions.' (Preface to Where is Britain dictate that the Cold War right-wing majority in the General Council would rather split the union Nicaraguan ports, overt and massive support for Going?, 6 May 1926) the anti-Sandinista contras etc. Finally, Miners who have been reading our paper will movement than move a muscle to support the threats of kidnappings and violence against know that it is the only one that does not miners. Soviet athletes and their security services at whitewash and excuse the betrayals of the Labour Whether it comes to fighting against scabbing the Olympic Game~ in Los Angeles. (Happily, and trade union misleaders or coddle cops and or fighting for socialism, WP is ready to leave there, the Soviets said: 'Enough! Nyet!' A clear scabs. This is a sharp contrast to the message it to somebody else -- ie the Labour Party and warning to Reagan that he'd better not 'mess' of the fake left. The supposedly Trotskyist the existing leadership of the trade union move­ too much with the Russians!) In the past, wars Socialist Action (30 June) rushed Benn's speech ment. That is what all their talk of building a have broken out for less than this! onto their front page just in time for him to 'rank-and-file movement' -- whose main task will rene'ge on it. Socialist Worker urges 'Turn sym­ be to 'hold their leaders to account' -- boils For the Socialist United States of Europe! pathy into solidarity' but refuses to 'fight for down to. But forCing reformist leaders to be

But.111.~_working class has not been broken. solidarity that counts -- spreading the strike. accountable gets you no closer to building the ----Jus...tj:or example, the powerful German prolet­ Militant wants cops unionised and scabs given revolutionary leadership needed to defeat the ariat has not been destroyed by the Nazi dic­ 'dispensation'. And the Morning Star is busy bosses. And that makes all their left criticisms tatorship like in the 30s. On the contrary it is peddling lies that Kinnock is backing the and their tactical offerings (flying wedges etc) today engaged in gigantic combat against its miners. And where Spartacist League supporters at best adVice to the class traitors who head bourgeoisie. The workers in struggle across in the NUR in London and the T&G in British the labour movement today. Workers Power would Europe must inscribe on their banners the un­ Leyland fight to mobilise the unions in indus­ like, in the words of Trotsky, 'to cross the conditional military defence of the USSR against trial action alongside the miners, the fake left stream of Revolution on the horses of reformism' . the imperialists and internal attempts at the policy of tailing after the trade union tops And their fancy words notwithstanding, from that restoration of capitalism. Today's proletarian means in practice opposing the fight for soli­ starting point, they end up doing nothing more battles evoke the possibility of the Socialist darity strikes with the NUM. than condoning scabbing and sowing illusions in United States of Europe; but for that, the The miners have shown great courage and en- strikebreakers. And that ain't Trotskyism .• social-chauvinist leaders of the proletariat and their 'far left' valets must be unmasked and swept away in the struggle to reforge the Fourth International, world party of the revolution •• ~ ~.~g~ Sakharoy ... Labor's Gofta fo (Continued from page 5) i~'a~ Hardball Win The Sakharovs have been treated with kid "'~I 'IV ._a.a .. ~-.&I .. gloves. Far from being confined in the cellars of Lubianka or the frozen gulag, their move­ ments have been limited to the city of Gorky which is, while off limits to foreigners, no SUBSCRIBE NOW!. Siberian tundra but a thriving metropolis of one million, 250 miles east of Moscow. Here o Strike~peciat5issues ~fSp~rtacistBrit;':nf07" I they have a four-room apartment, and with £1. Sakharov's membership in the Soviet Academy of o 10 issues of Spartacist Britain for £2. Sciences, access to all the speical stores. Despite Sakharov's penchant for hunger strikes o 10 issues of Spartacist Britain plus 24 issues of for personal ends, Moscow has, if anything, Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the been rather flexible in this case. In 1981 the Spartacist League/US: £6 (all above subs include Spartacist, organ of the internationa~ Kremlin even relented to their demands to allow Spartacist tendency). Yelena Bonner's daughter to emigrate and join her husband-by-proxy in the US, where he was a 04 issl(es of Women & Revolution for £1.50. graduate student at Brandeis. And this while PLUS: FREE PAMPHLET with £2 or £6 subs: Sakharov has been beating the drums for Reagan's war drive, and Bonner hobnobbing endlessly with o The Great Coal Strike of 1978 - reports from Western 'correspondents', who almost to a man the coalfields and articles on the way forward during the US miners' historic battle. (75p inc are connected with the CIA, M15, or what have p&p separately). - you. or All this hue and cry is part of an imperial­ ;lst prbpaganda barrage against what --Heag.an calls o Solidarnosc: Polish Company Union for CIA the Soviet 'evil empire'. Headlines proclaim and Bankers - the truth about the only 'union' Thatcher and Reagan love. (50p inc p&p 'Sakharov's Kin Urge West to Act for His separately). Freedom'. Extortion, not freedom, is their aim. Compare this to the reception accorded the Name ______Phone great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky when Address he was booted out of the Soviet Union by Stalin. Postcode He was confined to a Turkish island, his re­ Make pay~ble/post to: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE quests for asylum, a historic democratic tra------~------

JULY 1984 11 BRITAIN The Europe of workers st gles against the Europe of NATO We reprint below (translated from Le Bolchevik German metalworkers strike for no 58, June 1984) a statement by our comrades of 35-hour week; NATO heads of state the Ligue Trotskyste de France (LTF) on the re­ on Normandy beaches: Mitterrand. cent elections to the so-called 'Parliament' of QEII. the grand duke of Luxemburg. the European Economic Community. The most dra­ Reagan (left). matic (and ominous) result of these 'Euro-elec­ tions' came in France, where the fascist Front spite of the bureaucracy which Nationale of Jean-Marie Le Pen gained more than has usurped political power from 11 per cent of the vote, nearly surpassing that the working class and which must of the French Communist Party (PCF). be ousted through political The present growth of French fascism is revolution by the proletariats graphic testimony to the dangerous consequences of these countries). of a popular front in power -- the anti-Soyiet In its balance sheet of the austerity government of Francois Mitterrand, in­ Strasbourg 'Parliament' ,--Ie ______cluding PCF ministers. When the fascists staged Monde (30 May) concluded on ~ a race-hate march through Paris 14 June, the failure of the Assembly in the reformists organised a tepid counterdemonstra­ realm of the community', but in tion away from Le Pen's rally. But more than contrast noted that 'the con- forty demonstrators joined in with a spirited demnation of the Russian troops' LTF contingent, drawn behind our banners calling intervention in Afghanistan and for mass trade union/minority mobilisation to the support given to the resis- sweep the fascists off the streets and for a tance of the trade union Solid- general strike to smash Mitterrand's austerity arity to the Polish regime were drive and open the road to a revolutionary a constant concern among the workers government. European parliamentarians'. Most of the self-styled 'left' in Britain re­ Thus, fOT example, Mitterrand's sponded to the Euro campaign with pathetic pleas recent speech about 'relaunch- for workers to get out and vot~ for Neil ('I de­ ing the West European union' plore the miners' violence') Kinnock's Labour was concretised in only one in­ Party -- notwithstanding their own 'little itiative: a noisy campaign by England'-centred nominal opposition to the Already, hundredS of thousands of Europeans have the EEC in favour of the prO-imperialist dissi- Common Market. Socialist Action (1 June), self­ mobilised against NATO's decision to make Europe dent Sakharov. (The imperialists woul~ like to appointed dogsbodies for the Labour bureaucrats the 'theatre' of its 'limited' nuclear war, even blackmail the USSR and force it to send the whined that 'it's not going to be an easy job polarising certain countries like West Germany. father of the Soviet H-bomb to the West, and marshalling the ranks and getting Labour's sup­ -To be sure, the missiles (6 or 8 minutes from with him his vital military secrets which even porters to the polls' ... and indeed only 31 per Moscow) are an acc'omp1ished fact. But, today, the New York Times says are 'probably still of cent of the electorate even bothered to vote. the fantastic social power of the proletariat major value to foreign governments'.) We defend Most striking, however, was the centrist Workers is finally on the rise, counterattacking through­ the right of expression for the dissidents, in- Power group(WP} .Its 6 June article correctly out Europe against the capitalist austerity cluding anti-socialists and reactionaries, so labelled the EEC a 'bosses market', pointed to plans. And in France, if the immigrant workers, long as they are not actively engaged in an the EEC's significance to European imperialism's above all in the motor industry, are the special attempt to overturn the gains of the 1917 'role as junior partner to the .USA in its at­ target of Mitterrand like the reactionaries of Revolution. In the case of Sakharov, there is no tempt to put pressure on , to undermine and to all stripes, this is precisely because they doubt that he would proceed to tell all he knows break open the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe simultaneously have been the spearhead of to the West and, in this case, we insist that to capitalist exploitation' and then urged ... a workers' struggles for the past three years and the USSR has the right to take measures of self­ 'vote for Labour'. And for what? So that the are the least susceptible to the chauvinist protection. strikebreaking, pro-imperialist Labourites would propaganda for the indispensable 'Sacred Union'. Such anti-Soviet campaigns orchestrated have 'a tribune to denounce the policies of The West German metalworkers like the British around a Sakharov or the counterrevolutionaries Europe's capitalists'! Don't hold your breath. miners or Italian workers are engage~ in class of Solidarnosc, spiced up with the biggest lies Trotskyists draw conclusions from their analy­ battles among the most important known in these possible (like 'the so-called 'victories' of the ses. We said: Boycott the 'elections' to NATO's countrie~. And it is these sorts of battles Afghan mullahs who are in fact, and happily, re­ Common Market! which will decide the fate of'Europe and of the treating before the Red Army -- see the planet. Guardian, 27 May), seek above all to prepare For the second time since 1979 elections are public opinion for war against the 'evil em­ taking place for the European 'Parliament' -­ Boycott the 'European' elections! ,pire'. And the snivellings of Mitterrand, against the background of a West Europe deeply Revolutionaries generally seek to partiCipate Thatcher or Kohl about 'human rights' are always shaken by the combined effects of the rise in in elections and in national bOUrgeois parlia­ accompanied -- as if by chance -- by the mili­ class struggle throughout the continent, and of ments in order to use them as tribunes for tary reinforcing of the imperialist bloc (heli­ the imperialists' preparations for war against propaganda and agitation for the revolutionary copters, ,spy satellites etc). the USSR and the deformed workers states where programme. But the Strasbourg 'Parliament' is a The initiatives for constituting the states the bourgeoisie has been expropriated, in order parliament only in name. A structure without of capitalist Europe into a military bloc to give a transfusion of new blood to the power, its political function, alongside that of turned. against the USSR came with the first sclerotic veins of capitalism. the other structures of the EEC, is to maintain Cold War. Already in 1946, Churchill, in a re­ But, as Trotsky explained Defore the Second and give voice to the common interest of all sounding speech in Zurich, launched the idea World War, 'war requires "civil peace"'. The these rival imperialisms: their fundamental of 'a sort of United States of Europe' founded bourgeoiS1es cannot wage war against the USSR class antagonism against the countries of the principally on an 'entente' between French "and without having first defeated the proletariat. Soviet bloc, which remain workers states (in continued on page 10

JULY 1984