No 110 October 1989 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League Northern Ireland: Labour votes big 'for trool's to stay British army incites death-squad terror '.

In recent weeks, "revelations" of the years-long collusion between the forces of the British state and the loyalist paramili­ taries in Northern Ireland have been splashed across the pages of the bour­ geois press. Reactionary Protestant thugs have obtained hundreds of "security" flles which they have now made public in an attempt to terrorise the Catholic com­ munity as a whole. These flles have been passed on from army headquarters, Ul­ ster Defence Regiment (UDR) bases and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUe) sta­ tions implicating the whole of the British "security" forces in the six counties in premeditated, cold-blooded killings of "suspected" republicans. Interviewing a well-known loyalist about the "leaks", the SundQy Correspon­ dent (1 October) quoted him: "It's been going on for 20 years, ever since the British Army arrived here; I don't know why anyone is surprised." True enough. As Magill (October 1989) summarised: and a pub in Co. Down and of council The "news" is that the bourgeois me­ British police in charge of investigating "UDR soldiers have been linked to some offices in Lisburn are also among the dia has now seen fit to publicly acknow­ the British army's crimes in Northern of the most notorious tillings in the hundreds of offences attributed to UDR North including the ShanltiU Butcher and personnel ... very many sectarian murders ledge the body of evidence which has Ireland somehow lacks credibility. Dep­ Miami showband atrocities. The bombing of Catholics are among the many hund­ reached such a point that the Thatcher uty chief constable of Cambridgeshire of a Catholic church, and of an Irish pub reds of cases involving members of the government felt compelled to set up one John Stevens has been assigned to head it in London of a dance haU in Donegal regiment which have reached the courts." of its whitewash "inquiries". Putting the continued on page 8 For free abortion on demand! Opponents of the right to abortion doctors and the recent supreme court are mobilising in a renewed offensive. decision to allow individual states to The new parliamentary session is set to Stop "right-to-life" reaction! pass abortion laws have all been or­ debate an embryo research bill which chestrated in the campaign. In the West will be used as a peg for a reactionary best chance of victory since 1967. should be: an entirely private matter German state of Bavaria the heirs of assault on women's rights. One clause In August, it was announced as well between a woman and her doctor. Hitler are ilrosecuting Dr Horst Theis­ will give estranged husbands or unmar­ that the successful abortion pill, The organised workers movement sen, who has courageously defied reac­ ried fathers a veto over the use of fro­ RU486/mifepristone, would most likely and all fighters for women's and demo­ tionary abortion statutes, and over 500 zen embryos they have fertilised, and not be available in Britain for at least cratic rights must be mobilised against of his patients. This Kmder-Kilche­ on this basis the anti-abortionists are three years. The delay is not due to these attacks. For free abortion on Kirche (children-kitchen-church) witch­ pushing for a similar veto over abor­ scientific/medical doubt, but is the demand! Make RU486 freely available hunt aims to enhance nationalist poison tion. Sixty-plus Tory MPs are proposing result of deadly opposition launched by now/ and especially targets Dr Theissen's an amendment to oblige doctors to tell anti-abortion forces. Taken early, Here as elsewhere the domestic poor and foreign-born patients---op­ parents if contraception .or abortion RU486 acts in much the same way as reflection of the imperialist drive pressed Turkish working women and has been provided to women under an IUD and some contraceptive pills. against the Soviet Union is the ruling­ others. Immigration authorities have sixteen. And a cross-party campaign Later it is safer than a surgical abortion class assault on the living standards of threatened these women with ~eporta­ proposes to use the Embryo Bill to and cheaper. Last year, the makers­ the working people and on elementary tion as well. reduce the provisions of the 1967 Abor­ Roussel-Uclaf-halted marketing the democratic rights. In the US the attacks More than 200,000 women die an­ tion Law from 28 weeks to 18 weeks in drug in France in the face of intimida­ on abortion rights have become a nually worldwide from illegal, unsafe which a pregnancy may be legally ter­ tion and threats against the company spearhead of reaction. A mobilisation abortions in what should be among the minated. The Thatcher government has and its staff (government intervention of terror and intimidation-including safest of operations. As part of the promised time for the debate, which restored it to the market). Anti-abor­ arson and bombings of abortion international offensive against the cannot be filibustered like the previous tion lobbies have effectively halted clinics-is being carried out with the poor and oppressed, those organisat­ private members' bills attacking abor­ distribution in the United States. The blessing of the White House. Funding ions which assist women in having tion rights. The "pro-life" bigots are "right to lifers" especially object to the cuts, bans on the use of public facilities, abortions have had their funds cut by cock-a-hoop at what they see as their pill as it would make abortion what it "parental permission". restrictions on continued on page 11

" ASllum for Kurdish/Tamil refugees! Home Office killed Siho Iyigiiven

WNDON-Several hundred demon­ Another Kurdish refugee, Selahattin strated their outrage on 9' October at a Ozberk has received a temporary reprieve protest here called by the Union of Turk­ after a last-minute intervention by the ish Workers against the barbaric treat­ UN High Commission for Refugees. "He ment of Kurdish refugees seeking asylum has until 5pm on Tuesday to find ano­ in Britain. Twenty-six-year-old Siho Iyig­ ther country willing to take him or face liven is dead from severe burns suffered deportation to Turkey" (Gumdian, 13 after he and a fellow Kurdish asylum­ October). Kurdish refugee seeker Dogan Arslan set fire to their cell In their case, Siho Iyigiiven and Dogan Dogan Arslan at Harmondsworth detention centre on 5 Arslan had been served with removal (right) and his October. Dogan Arslan is still fighting for orders for return to Turkey, their applica­ dead comrade his life in Stoke Mandeville hospital. The tions for asylum status denied by the Siho lylgOven, . Home Office is as guilty of Siho Iyig­ Home Secretary. After reviewing their are victims of liven's death as if it had lit the fire which cases he was "minded to refuse". Both murderous Home took his life. men had been subjected to beatings and Office racism. This act of desperation by the two torture in Turkish prisons. The Observer incarcerated Kurdish men reveals starkly (8 October) reported: the criminal treatment being meted out "Mr lyiguven bad been arrested on by the go~ernment. Temporary admission several occasions in Turkey and accused to Britain has been given to some 3700 of association with left-wing groups. In death warrant. When in November 1987 In February 1987, 58 Tamils stripped Kurds fleeing the massive repression of detention he was severely beaten on tbe leaders of the United Communist Party off their clothes at Heathrow Airport in the Turkish regime. Vasa restrictions were bead and systematically on the soles of of Turkey (TBKP) Kutlu and Sargm an attempt to publicise and stop threa­ imposed in June to halt the flow of refu­ his feet. Blows to his jaw bad made it tened deportation back to Lanka. In the difficult for him to cbew. returned to Turkey after much advance gees. Of those who did arrive, hundreds publicity, they were seized the Istanbul case of five of those who were deported, "The other burned man ••• baa also been at have been left to languish in prisons and detained and abused 00 many oc­ airport, handcuffed and blindfolded and the Immigration Appeals Tribunal found detention centres while others have been casions.... He was a target for semi­ taken to the notorious "Deep Investiga­ that they had demonstrated a ''well-foun: summarily deported. Hunger strikes have official rigbt-wing paramilitaries and the tion Laboratory" of the Directorate of ded fear of persecution" in Sri Lanka and broken out in the Portsmouth and Haslar police because bia uncle was the founder Security. They are still being held, as are the decision to deport them wrong. of a banned youth Communist organisa­ detention centres. On 12 October Halil other Turkish leftists who have subse­ New Statesman & Society (29 Septem­ Guzel was led handcuffed on to a plane tion. 1be uncle bas been cm:uted. Mr quently returned to the country. ArsIan bad been in biding since 1987." ber) reported a visit by two journalists to bound for Turkey, deported despite UN To call attention to their plight and Sri Lanka, where they met one of the calls on the Home Office to reconsider For these Kurdish leftists, along with that of their comrades, Siho Iyigiiven an4 Tamils who had been illegally sent back. the "humanitarian aspects" of the case. hundreds of others, return to Turkey is a Dogan Arslan set themselves on fire in Vathanan was in hiding in Colombo and the British holding pen. Another refugee, "had twice been arrested since his return presently released from Harmondsworth to Sri Lanka and had once been seriously and awaiting word of his fate, said: Bolshevism in the colonial beaten up". The New Statesman's report and neo-colonial countries "If I am sent back I will face torture and includes the fact that two solicitors work­ repression again and I would die. I am a .ing on the ap~ had taken statements -- , ~:'-. wante!l penoIllo Turkey, we bIne been --- speaking to the Communist University of the from those men they could reaCh in Sri forced to Iea\'e our homes and villages. Lanka, discovering that: Toilers of the East in Moscow in 1924, Leon Since our childhood we bear that Great Trotsky stressed the application of the lessons of Britain is tbe cradle of democracy, dec­ "all of tbem were living precariously in the Bolshevik October Revolution to the countries ency and freedom; now we find the similar circumstances to Vatbanan and of the East. As the increasingly combative black trutb." that tbey or tbeir families bad been working class of South Africa has demonstrated harassed by tbe security forces. One The Tamil people and others fleeing man ... was allegedly imprisoned for tbree , . its social power again, the petty-bourgeois the Sri Lankan/Indian army/communal months. Another, Standarajab, bad been TROTSKY . nationalism and popular [rontist policies of the LENIN terror on that ravaged island have also arrested 00 his first day back at bome in ANC are a death-trap for the proletariat. The found out the "truth" about Britain. As Jaffna. He was held for ten weeks and revolutionary Leninist vanguard party ofthe working masses and oppressed must be forged. the Guardian (13 October) noted: "This tortured by tbe Indian peace-keeping During the war and at the present day we witness a feverish industrialization of [Kurdish] wave of asylum-seekers since [sic] forces. A third escaped from tbe colonial, semi-colonial, and, generally speaking, of all backward countries: Japan, India, country after the Indians raided bis borne May follows the 1986 influx of Tamils on several occasions and tortured mem­ South America, and South Africa ... in these countries there will be no time for the escaping the civil war in Sri Lanka, many bers of his family." refuse of past centuries to accumulate in the minds of the workers .... of whom were sent back after being Comrades and workers of the East, in 1883 there came into being in Switzerland the classed by the Government as economic Today, all have returned to Britain, but Russian group of "Emancipation of Labor" .... Only a third of a century has intervened refugees trying to better themselv~s." have not been granted full asylum. between the organization of the first theoretic-propagandist group of Marxist ideas in Sri Lanka has become an all-sided hell­ The overturn of the deportation of the reign of Alexander III and the conquest of Tsarist Russia by the proletariat .... hole. In the north the murderous oppres­ these five is a very rare occurrence. Un­ Russia was backward, not only economically, but also politically. Marxism preached sion of the Sri Lankan state has been der current immigration law, failed asy­ the inevitability of capitalism, and those bourgeois-progressive elements which wanted supplanted by the terror of the Indian lum seekers are forced to retum to their capitalism for its own sake and not for the sake of Socialism, accepted Marxism, having army and its Tamil collaborators like the country to mount a full appeal! There are previously depriVed it of its revolutionary sting .... But you have the advantage over the EPRLF. The main Tamil nationalist meanwhile some hundreds of Tamils who older genfrations of Russian, Rumanian, and other Marxists in that you live and work group, the LITE, ftgbts not just against have gone into hiding in Britain to escape not oruy in the post -Marxian, but even in the post-Lenin epoch. Your advantage consist'S the Indian occupation and its allies but deportation and death. These recent in having sprung directly from the epoch which will be known in history as the Lenin also engages in internecine murder of racist outrages against Kurdish and Tamil epoch. other critics and opponents. All the Tamil refugees seeking asylum are part and '-From The Age of Permanent Revolution: groups practise and uphold communalist parcel of the anti-immigrant policies A Trotsky Anthology, edited by Isaac Deutscher killings of Sinhalese civilians. Tamils in pushed by Labour and Tory governments Colombo, especially young men fleeing alike. The organised workers movement the forced levies of the rival Tamil groups together with immigrant organisations has in the north and east, continue to face the duty and social power to mount mass, government arid Sinhalese communalist militant protest on behalf of those seek­ terror. And in the Sinhalese majority ing asylum from murderous death-squad WORKERSIlAMMER ~ areas a bloody conflict between the UNP terror. government and the SiDhala-chauvinist The Partisan Defence Committee has Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League. British section of the International JVP. has left thousands murdered in sent a protest telegram to the Home Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). . recent months. The JVP which virtually Office demanding asylum for all refugees EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (editor). Jon Branche. Alec Gilchrist. Eibhlin from reactionary terror; it states of Iyig­ McDonald. Alan Mason. Len Michelson. Ellen Rawlings. Michael Riaz. David Strachan. controls large swathes of the south not PRODUCTION MANAGER: Michael Riaz only targets government supporters but liven and Arslan's desperate act: "For this CIRCULATION MANAGER: Ralf Eades has also gone after leftists, trade unionists atrocity the British government stands Published nine times a year by Spartacist Publications. PO Box 1041. London NW5 3EU. and others who oppo6C their rabid com­ condemned." Avenge Siho lyigilven/ Stop Subscription: £2 for 9 issues. overseas airmail £5. munalist policies. Under cover of the the deportations! Down with the racist Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial night curfew, army/policejUNP death immigration laws! Free the imprisoned owiewpoint. squads operate. Simply to be a student Kurdish refugees! FuU citizenship rights for Printed by Slough Newspapers Ltd (TU). ISSN 0267-8721 can be a prima facie case to be "neck­ all foreign-bom workers and their laced" by these forces. families!• .2: WORKERS HAMMER Save Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Black Panther Party proved he was a supporters from death row on 29 April: outrage against justice and decency-b;! committed cop-killer. This case is what "The death penalty in America is a sym­ abolished completely. the death penalty in the US is all about. bol, a ritual, a relic of a time of total Partisan Defense Committee co-chair­ It exposes not only the arbitrary cruelty dominance, of one people, by another. man Charles Brover, speaking at a public of this ultimate form of state terror, but Therein lies its attractiveness in the U.S., meeting in New York City in April on the and in the apartheid regime in South also the inherent racism of its application. Africa. That's why the system brandishes theme "Stop Racist Legal Lynch­ Mumia was targeted because of what he its electric chairs, its nooses, its gas ing-Abolish the Death Penalty!" noted: wrote and said, because of who he is: a chambers, and poison needles .... Your "I want to make it clear that although radical black man who became known as efforts today expose this modem-day racial politiCS define the character of the "the voice of the voiceless". At his trial • sacrificial system for what it is-I, my death penalty in America, the PDC M umia was denied counsel of his own wife, we all thank you for your active would oppose it in any case Oft principle. As internationalists, we oppose it every­ choice. To get a hanging jury of eleven support in our fight to pull the hood off the hangman, and send this ritual to the where it exists. In Iran. In the Soviet whites, the court permitted the seating of dust." Union_here the permanent introduc­ a white juror who admitted he could not In fighting to save Mumia Abu-Jamal tion of the death penalty in 1923, as be impartial, while excluding eleven pro­ opposed to executions in civil war condi­ from execution, the PDC has raised the spective black jurors. tions, accompanied the Stalinist degener­ call to abolish the barbaric death penalty. An appeal to have Jamal's death sen­ ation of the Soviet workers state. We do Today some 2100 wait on death row in tence overturned by the Pennsylvania not accord to the state the right to say American prisons. Nearly half of those on who will live and who will die." Supreme Court was denied in March. The death row are black and Hispanic. Al­ high court decision ignored a multitude of though never more than 12 per cent of Thousands of signatures have been Mumia Abu-Jamal is a death row fair trial violations and refused to con­ the population, black people accounted collected on petitions demanding: Save sider the political basis central in prose­ political prisoner in the US. A Black for more than two-thirds of all US execu­ the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The ''voice Panther Party spokesman at the age of cuting Mumia and sentencing him to tions between 1930 and 1967. No white of the voiceless" is again being 14, a prominent journalist known as a death. That appeal was supported by an person has been executed for killing a heard-Abu-Jamal's columns are now supporter of Philadelphia's MOVE or­ amici curiae (friend of the court) brief black person, with one exception in 1944. being published in US newspapers from ganisation, former president of the Phila­ from the American Civil Liberties Union In Britain, a section of the ruling class San Francisco to New York to Atlanta. Support has been coming in from an delphia Chapter of the Association of and the National Conference of Black longs to restore the death penalty. The impressive number of trade unionists, civil Black Journalists, Mumia Abu-Jamal has Lawyers. Congressman Ron Dellums hangman's noose was in use in Britain up rights organisations, death penalty aboli­ been sentenced to die by the racist capit­ appealed to Pennsylvania's Governor until 1965, when capital punishment was Robert Casey "to remove the cloud of tionists, religious leaders. Among those alist courts for his political views and suspended. It was "abolished" in 1969, death from Mr. Abu-Jamal". rallying to Mumia's support are tele­ activities. The Partisan Defense Commit­ however "treason" remains a capital tee in the US has campaigned to stop the The PDC and other supporters of offence today. Furthermore, the British vision's Edward Asner and Sabrina "legallynching"ofthis courageous fighter. Mumia's fight are continuing to mobilise, bourgeoisie did not require the death LeBeauf of "The Cosby Show"; Pat Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in the as have fraternal legal and social defence penalty to execute in cold blood three Turner, widow of blues great "Big Joe" cross-hairs of Philadelphia's racist killer organisations internationally. In Paris, at IRA members in Gibraltar or to preside Turner; Rev Daniel Berrigan; Rev Joseph cops for over 20 years. He earned the a demonstration on 8 July, supporters of over the death of H Block hunger-striker Lowery, president of the Southern Chris­ cops' undying hatred especially for his the Comite de defense sociale (CDDS) Bobby Sands. State terror is rooted in the tian Leadership Conference; Jack Healey, sympathetic interviews with imprisoned and the reggae music group Rising Soul dying capitalist system and will only be executive director of Amnesty Interna­ MOVE members after a 1978 cop siege collected over 1100 signatures on a peti­ fmally ended by the victorious proletarian tional and Robert Bryan, chairperson of of the MOVE commune. Seven years tion demanding Mumia be saved. Sig­ revolution. Today, Margaret Thatcher, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. later, on 13 May 1985, black Democratic natories came from a broad range of ~icholas Ridley and others favour the mayor Wilson Goode and his city ad­ people, from anti-imperialist youth to reintroduction of the death penalty out­ Join us in the fight to save the life of ministration in collaboration with Rea­ North African workers to supporters of right. It is necessary to oppose any such Mumia Abu-Jamal. For petitions and gan's federal government burned to death the Communist Party of France and the moves to strengthen the repressive ap­ other information, please write to the eleven members of the Philadelphia Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, paratus of the racist capitalist state and Partisan Defence Committee, BCM Box MOVE commune, including five infants principal organisers of the demonstration. to demand that capital punishment-an 4986, London WC1N 3XX.• and children. More than 60 homes were Here in Britain, the recently-launched burned to the ground in that section of Partisan Defence Committee is appealing black Philly, leaving 300 people homeless. to opponents of the death penalty and It was the signature of the Reagan defenders of black rights to take a stand regime: racist state terror meant to cow on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The and regiment the American population. Partisan Defence Committee is a class­ We have recently learned from Lois struggle, non-sectarian legal and social Williamson, Executive Director of Citi­ defence organisation which champions .-.- Parti§aft w.efen§e zens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, cases and causes in the interest of the U-£o...... ittee that since 1 October Abu-Jamal and nine whole of the working people. This pur­ other inmates at Huntingdon, Penn­ pose is in accordance with the political P!·"i"M';IiIdCJ"·)iijii~,"1'~(·I'#I.".. sylvania have been on a hunger strike to views of the Spartacist League. The PDC $1.00 protest the despicable conditions on death in Britain was formed at the time of the row. Driven to this desperate act by the successful international fundraising and FBI ContinUeS to HtUJd America's wholesale denial of even the most mini­ publicity campaign undertaken on behalf ForemoSt ClasS-war I'risDnerl mal norms of human decency, the hunger of the civilian victims of J alalabad, who strikers are calling for the prison ad­ have heroically withstood and broken the ministration simply to adhere to guide­ siege of the CIA's mujahedin killers. lines set down by the Pennsylvania gover­ International solidarity with Mumia nor's 1987 Interdepartmental Task Force Abu-Jamal can be an effective weapon in on Corrections Report: more reasonable the struggle to stay the hand of the ex­ visiting procedures, an immediate end to ecutioner. As James P Cannon, founder prison interference with outgoing mail, of American Trotskyism and National more phone access to contact families Secretary of the International Labor and implementation of better educational Defense wrote of the massive protests in opportunities. Send letters and telegrams defence of Italian-born radicals Sacco and supporting the hunger strikers and de­ Vanzetti: "It was this campaign for inter­ manding that Mumia not be executed, to: national solidarity that has so far saved SPEcIAL SlJppLEMENT Governor Robert Casey, Main Capitol Sacco and Vanzetti from the death chair, Building, Room 225, Harrisburg, PA and not the reliance solely upon the good 17120, USA. intentions and judicial honesty of the Mumia was framed up for the killing Massachusetts courts" (Notebook of an of a Philadelphia policeman in 1981. At Agitator). For a single copy of Class Struggle De/elise Notes, publication of the US Partisan the sentencing hearing, the prosecutor Defense Committee, send £1 to: Partisan Defence Committee, BCM Box 4986, argued for the death sentence by claiming "Pull the hood off the hangman" London WC1N 3XX that Abu-Jamal's prior membership in the As Mumia wrote in a message to his OCTOBER 1989 3 collaborators, the ERNA group organized in Fmland with German .support, by erecting a memorial on the site of a former Nazi monument (see "Stop Baltic Counterrevolution!" Workef3' Hammer no Ernest Mandel's USee 109, September). Now Lindmae dots the i's and crosses the t's-and the Mandelites shamelessly trumpet his fascist glorification. His ar­ ticle ends with the demand that the Soviet government rehabilitate these Baltic Nazi collaborators! He complains that the law salutes Estonian Nazis passed by the Supreme Soviet early this year annulling the verdicts of Stalin's frame-up trials "does not apply to traitors to the fatherland and punishment bat­ talions formed during the Great Father­ land War [World War II), to Nazi crimi­ nals, members of nationalist bands, their satellites and so on." And he concludes: "Such persons must also be considered rehabilitated." Lindmae has a fig leaf in the final paragraph condemning "summary execu­ tions" and participation in "mass repres­ sion outside the borders of the Estonian Republic"-he's well aware of how the Estonian Nazis had to go to Latvia and Lithuania to get in on the mass exter­ mination of Jews. But this is a call for the rehabilitation of practically all fascist murderers, armed anti-Communist squads and nationalist bands who fought along­ R. _ Bender Publlahlng YlVO InotHute side the Nazi invaders and then joined USee defends Estonian "Forest Brothers" claiming these Nazi collaborators were waging "liberation" struggle. the SS murder machine. What's going to (Left) Three Estonian officers of Waffen SS 20th Division. Altons Rebane (left in photo) led "Forest Brothers" unit appear in International Viewpoint next? A against Red Army, then Joined Nazi forces. (Right) Klooga death camp in Estonia, where 3000 people, half of them call for the rehabilitation of General Jews from the Vllna Ghetto In LHhuania, were exterminated. Vlasov, a defector from the Red Army whose "Russian Liberation Army" fought As thousands of Jewish slave labourers ing capitalism, Workers Power sagely it would be reestablished when Germany under the Wehrmacht in the name of left the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania for advises the Polish workers: "No return to los~ the war to the Western Allies." "anti-Bolshevism"? their work detail on the morning of 6 capitalism!" Like Nancy Reagan telling Here is the true longing of anti­ Mandel's USee is shamelessly oppor­ August 1943, they were surrounded by ghetto kids to "just say no to drugs"! But Communist Estonian nationalism: to have tunist, wildly impressionistic and given to Estonian Nazi troops. The Jewish men when Solidarno~t was preparing a coun­ been an "independent" puppet of either extreme zigzags in line. But this is an and women knew what this meant-de­ terrevolutionary coup in the fall of 1981, Nazi Germany or US imperial­ incitement. Even the anti-Communist portation to death, the Fmal Solution. Workers Power called for a "military ism-Ure-established" over the mass bourgeois press wouldn't touch such a Many resisted-they were bloodily united front" with Walesa & Co (see graves of Jews and Communists. blatant salute to pogromist counterrevolu­ mowed down. The rest were loaded onto article, p5). The Estonian Nazis played their full tionary terrorists. Although they claim to freight cars for transport to concentration part in Hitler's crusade against "Judeo­ be Trotskyist and in some sense to defend camps in Estonia. A month later, Vilna, "Forest Brothers": Bolshevism", as Arno J Mayer points out the Soviet Union, the Mandelitcs' em­ the historic centre of Jewish culture in Fascist pogromlsts in W7Jy Did the Heavens Not Darken? bracing of Baltic fascism in the name of East Europe, was "ludenrein" (1988): "Significantly, some of the first Any Red Army veteran of the war "anti-Stalinism" has a prehistory. Tailing -"cleansed" of Jews. the finalAktion and for a time the worst outrages against As against Nazi Germany, any survivor of the Eurocommunism in the mid-'70s, Mandel was being carried out in early September, the Jews were committed not by the extermination camps and of the Ein­ & Co championed pro-Western Soviet Estonian patrols stood outside the ghetto new-model Einsatzgruppen but by lat­ satzgruppen death squads would boil in "dissidents" like Andrei Sakharov, who gates to get those who tried to escape. ter-day local pogromists in the new'liber­ outrage if they saw International View­ called for imperialist economic warfare After the Soviet army drove the Wehr­ ated' territories-Lithuania, Latvia, Es­ point's disgusting glorification of their against the USSR. And they then glori­ macht out of the Baltic region in 1944, tonia, White Ruthenia [Byelorussia), the tormentors. A 1982 History of the Waffen fied the clerical-nationalists of Polish Ukraine ...." The Estonian Nazis had a many of these local Nazis escaped to the SS by Hugh Page Taylor, sympathetic to Solidarnosc, whose great hero figure is woods, where as the "Forest Brothers" particu~ar place of "honour" in Hitler's the Baltic nationalists, noted: "The Ger­ Marshal Pilsudski, the fascistic dictator of they continued to out terror against satellite legions: unlike the others, they carry man advance through southern Estonia Poland in the 1920s and '30s. were deemed to be full equals in the Communists and Jews until the early was greatly assisted by the efforts of A few years later the Australian USec 19508. Estonian guerrillas, those men who had German-Nordic Aryan "New Order". section, the Socialist Workers Party, Now we read that these sadistic beasts started to go into hiding as 'Brothers of Early in the war, Estonians formed the established close political collaboration were "freedom fIghters" who were part of the Forest' during the latter stages of the 658th and "Narva" volunteer battalions with an emigre group associated with the "The Armed Struggle Against Stalinism Russian occupation." A recent piece in and 17 border guard battalions; in 1943 Croatian Ustasha. When Nazi Germany in Estonia". And where is apologia the Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade was this the New Yorker (18 September), which invaded the Balkans in 1941, it es­ for Estonian Nazis to be found? Not in formed as part of the Waffen SS. Estonia conveys a sense of the virulent anti-Slav tablished in Croatia a puppet fascist state. the pages of some nco-Nazi "revisionist" was the main centre for Nazi concentra­ racism permeating the current Estonian The Ustashi bands were so bloodthirsty in history, but in a publication, tion camps in the Baltic. Of Estonia's tiny "left-win(' nationalist movement, interviews one slaughtering Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and International Viewpoint (18 September), prewar Jewish population of some 4000, Forest Brother who proudly recalls his many Croats that even some German the organ of Ernest Mandel's United the 1000 not fortunate enough to make it participation in the siege of Leningrad. officers sought to restrain them. The Secretariat (USee), represented in this to Soviet Russia had all been wiped out For 900 bitter days, at the cost of a mil­ anti-Nazi Yugoslav partisans led by the by the end of 1941. At the Tartu camp, country _, mainly by Socialist Outlook. lion lives, the people of Leningrad heroi­ hard-bitten Stalinist Tito, and drawn whose Estonian commandant Karl Linnas Mandel's outfit reprints without criticisrn cally held out and triumphed-and tod'ay largely from the peasantry, liberated the this piece by one Herbert Lindmae, ori­ Mandel salutes their Nazi attackers! was fmally extradited from the US in country from the Croatian fascists as well 1987, 12,000 people were slaughtered, ginally published in the monthly paper of Where many Baltic nationalists try to as Serbian monarchists. Postwar Yugo­ the Estonian People's Front. In its editor­ sweep the issue of Nazi collaboration most of them Communists. When the slavia was established on the basis of an ial introduction Intemational VIeWpOint under the rug, Lindmae positively crows: Red Army was about to liberate the camp anti-capitalist social revolution, albeit recommends Lindmae's article as an "In the expulsion of the Red Army from at Klooga, Estonia in 1944, a band of 30 bureaucratically deformed, and in a na­ answer to the Soviet press which "con­ the mainland and islands of Estonia, Estonian fascists killed as many Jews as tionallyvery uneven country. Since World tinues to cry scandal about any defense of Forest Brothers' self-defense units par­ they could get their hands on. War II emigre Ustashi groups have the 'Forest Brothers"'. Scandal? The ticipated along with the German armed The current Baltic nationalist move­ waged a terrorist campaign against Yugo­ "Forest Brothers" were anti-Soviet Nazi forces." He takes pride in the fact that by ment is being portrayed by the Western slavia, especially its diplomatic represen­ terrorists! May 1943 "there were already 22,849 media and most self-styled leftists as a tatives. from another pole in the The SWP's support for and collabora­ swinging Estonians in Hitler's armed forces." For noble struggle for democracy and free­ fake-Trotskyist milieu are the confused dom, symbolised by young girls in folk tion with Croatian fascists was quite a Lindmae, the Estonians in Hitler's armed centrists of the British Workers Power costumes carrying candles and flags of the scandal on the Australian left. The Us­ forces were engaging in a "national h"ber­ group, which has simultaneously come out pre-1940 "independent republics". We tasha affair was sufficiently embarrassing ation" struggle: for the Stalinist position of the in­ have warned that this movement is aimed for Mandel's centre in Europe to take its violability of the borders .of the Soviet Ulbe armed struggle against Stalinism at a counterrevolutionary restoration of Australian comrades to task over it. But Union while supporting the anti­ was fundamentally a struggle of the capitalism, that these flags stand for now there is an anti-Soviet "mass move­ democratic demands of the Baltic nation­ FMonian people for liberation.... The 'fascistic dictatorship, anti-Semitism and ment" in the Baltics, and with their long­ fact that during the war people involved standing support to any and every opposi­ alists. And after years of tailing pro­ in it fought on the side of fascist Ger­ anti-Communism. Last month we re­ capitalist Solidarno't in Poland, now that many is strictly the fault of Stalinism .... ported that Estonian nationalists in the tion to the Soviet government the USee is Solidarno't has formed a cabinet intent It was hoped that the Germans would city of Kohtla recently openly com­ openly defending the fascist fringe of on carrying out its programme of restor- reestablish Estonian independence or that memorated a gang of World War II Nazi continued on page 11

4 WORKERS HAMMER Workers Power on Solidarnosc: centrists covering their tracks

Eight years ago when we called Polish Solidarn~e a "company 'union' for the CIA and bankers" and demanded "Stop Solidarn~e counterrevolution!" the inter­ national Spartacist tendency (now the International Communist League) stood virtually alone on the left. Now as Soli­ darn~e takes the reins of government, it openly reaffIrms its agenda for capitalist restoration. Lech Walesa declares that the new government intends to pull Poland along the road "from a Communist sys­ tem of ownership to capitalism"(II Mes­ saggero, 22 August). Solidarnose-in league with laruzelski-intends to ad­ minister a massive "shock treatment" to the economy--pay cuts, price rises, mas­ sive redundancies and factory closings-rivalling that applied to Chile by US MandelHe leader Nat Weinstein (left) joIns wHh Pinochet after the bloody 1973 coup. In anti-Communists in December 1981 rally for Poland disillusionment with Solidarnose counterrevolutionary Solidarnolc. Workers Power has begun to set in. Its proletarian base honcho Mark Hoskisson (far right) showing has begun to perceive that SolidarnosC' "solidarHy"wHh Thatcher's favourHe ''trade union". leaders are traitors to the working class. Among the biggest political pimps for policies have already' disenchanted many the Polish proletariat, historically socialist, erate": "The confrontation is un­ Walesa & Co have been the leaders of of his former supporters, Workers Power into the arms of the Vatican and the avoidable. . .. I wanted to reach the con­ the British Labour Party and their as­ hollowly headlines an article on Poland imperialists. In the initial stages of Soli­ frontation in a natural way, when almost sorted hangers-on. Today there's more "No return to capitalism!" Polemicising darnosC' growth we noted both an open­ all social groups were with us. But I made than a little embarrassment and squirm­ against the SWP, it proclaims, "The ing for revolutionary agitation and the a mistake because I thought we would ing coming from these quarters. Long­ 'sudden' realisation by many on the left of awesome potential for reactionary mo­ keep it up longer and then we would time Solidarnose fellow traveller and the slavishly pro-western imperialist bilisation. The task of Trotskyists was to overthrow these parliaments and councils Labour MP Eric HefTer writes plaintive nature of this very leadership has caused split the workers from the clerical-nation­ and so on" (see Workers Vanguard no letters moaning over SolidarnosC' em­ considerable turmoil amongst Solidar­ alists on the basis of defence of the soc­ 295, 18 December 1981). With their bracing of Margaret Thatcher. The Soc­ nosC's fans" (Worlcers Power, October ialised property forms. But by September secret plans exposed, the Solidarnosf lea­ ialist Workers Party wrings its hands over 1989). And WP's French co-thinkers 1981, at the time of its first national dership made an open bid for power, the "tragic" attacks mounted by Solidar­ proudly announce ''we had said this ten congress, Solidarnose had consolidated announcing a national referendum for the nose on the Polish working class. Social­ years ago, he (WalesaJ envisages nothing around a programme of capitalist restora­ establishment of an anti-Communist ist Organiser admits: "In the Jonger term, less than the restoration of capitalism" tion couched in the language of "free government and breaking the military the leaders of Solidarnosc are fumly com­ (Pouvoir Ouvrier, October 1989). What a world" imperialism: "free elections" in alliance with the Soviet Union against mitted to the restoration of the private nerve! Workers Power didn't suffer any Poland; "free trade unions" throughout Western imperialism. Hours later the profit system ...." This does not, of "sudden" realisation-they knew it all the Soviet bloc; the dismantling of the regime struck back in a counter-coup, course, prevent the committed Stalino­ along and supported Solidarnose anyway. planned economy ("self-management" or checking the counterrevolutionary grab phobes of SO who no longer even formal­ When Solidarnose was moving to seize "autonomy" of enterprises); the call for for power. ly call for the defence of the deformed power in 1981, Workers Power stood with imperialist investment and an appeal for Workers Power's wilful blindness to workers states, from declaring: "Socialists Walesa's "slavishly pro-western im­ intervention by the IMF. A delegate's this was an attempt to evade their duty in the West must continue to support perialist" outfit. WP must hope that a motion to put Solidarnose on record for to take a clear side in the impending Solidarnosc against the Polish state... and collective fit of amnesia will grip its mem­ socialism in order to deflect charges of conflict, with counterposed class interests against the always-present threat of Rus­ bers and readers; today it simply doesn't pro-capitalism was defeated. At that point at stake. Yet the thrust of their position sian intervention" (Socialist Organiser, 31 mention its position on Poland in 1981. the international Spartacist tendency was clear: counselling the counterrevolu­ August). called to: "Stop Solidarnose counter­ tionary Solidarnose camp to confront Squeezed between various Labourite Poland 1981 revolution!" "more militantly" the Polish state. At a 9 reformists on its right and the Spartacist This call aroused the ire of Solidar­ October 1981 Spartacist League meeting League on its left is the centrist Workers One of the worst of the crimes of the nose supporters from the imperious Wall in Coventry, a Workers Power leader Power grouping. Today, when Walesa's Stalinists in Poland was to have pushed Street Journal to numerous fake-left out­ declared, " ... if Solidarity is armed under fits. Workers Power frothed at the mouth: its present leadership we will be for a "Spartacists--Cheerleaders for the Krem­ military united front with that leadership lin" and wrote under that headline: "It is against the Soviet invasion. Let us be ;.*\Nru: ~", . ... THAll ... "~ not the responsibility of the Polish work­ quite clear on that point, because we will ',' ". ", ers that the brutal Stalinist regimes have be on the opposite side of the barricades ~"aJU'"'' handed to the forces of reaction the from the Spartacists." Yes, that is quite : C/t~, Warsaw 1aruzeIski, demanding the implementation "hard-liner" Zbigniew Bujak as saying: of such measures as an indefInite general "The government should be fmally over­ strike and the formation of a workers G Mertllon/GAMMA thrown, unmasked and deprived of any militia to topple the regime. In its July Solldarnoic welcomed anti-Soviet Cold Warrior Margaret Thatcher on her credibility." In particular, the tapes ex­ 1982 "Theses" Revolution and Counter- November 1988 vlsH to Gdansk. posed Walesa, who postured as a "mod- continued on page 9 OCTOBER 1989 5 Smash CIA's cut-throats ront line nistan

Jalalabad, 7 July-Chantlng "Afghanistan Zlndabadl" (Long Uve Afghanistan) and "Marg ya Watanl" (Death or Country), thousands march to celebrate their victory over the months-long mujahedin siege. As part of our efforts in solidarity with soldiers were advancing.... The officers the struggle against the CIA's cut-throats, and soldiers of the Special Guard unit the International Communist League proudly showed us around, describing the (Fourth Internationalist) dispatched a weapons captured, while warning us to special correspondent to Afghanistan for stick to the areas that have already been four weeks in July to counter the lies of cleared of mines--ie, where a tank tread the imperialist press with reports direct has left its "signature". We could see the from the civil war. From Kabul and the damaged buildings of the housing com­ front line city of Jalalabad, our reporter plex, the school and the shop, and visit Not only has the months-long bitter you honourable friends that it is a must covered this country at war, its cities the big diesel power station. siege been broken, but Jalalabad and the that we would triumph, for we are strug­ under fire. We print below the "Front surrounding parts of Nangarhar Province gHng for a just right." Line Afghanistan" report carried in Worlc­ A city of determination of which it is the capital are once again The front has now been pushed back ers Vanguard (no 482, 21 July) along with secure from the threat of rocket attacks. to Samarkhel, some 12-15 kilometres At the head of the line of march of photographs taken of the heroic and long­ The rout of the mujahedin was so sweep­ further east, a key fortifIed outpost that today's victory celebration was an arm­ suffering people defending their gains, of ing that the initial impulse of advance was the scene of heavy fighting in March oured car atop which rode our team of the fighters who held out and then vic­ elements of the armoured unit was to roll and again now. We were taken by bus to journalists. Following the military and toriously broke the mujahedin siege at all the way up to Torkham, on the border Samarkhel. A few kilometres away, we civilian leaders of the city came dozens of Jalalabad. We urge our readers to attend with Pakistan. But the order came.from could see a tank firing shell after shell multicoloured banners and Afghan na­ the SL/B's public meetings organised in the High Command to consolidate their over a ridge, along which some Afghan tional flags and some five to ten thou- London and Glasgow where Workers positions before advancing further. VanguardjLe BolcMvik's special cor­ This reporter was with the first group respondent will speak (see advertisement, of journalists to visit J alalabad since May, next page). Those who contributed to the and only the second visit since the muja­ PDC's international campaign of human­ hedin siege began in March. It was par­ itarian assistance to the civilian victims of ticularly moving to be here on behalf of J alalabad, which raised over £30,000, will the international campaign of humanitar­ see a vindication of their stand in this ian assistance conducted by the Partisan report. Defense Committee and fraternal legal JALAlABAD, 7 July-Thousands of and social defence organisations in other people thronged through the streets of countries .... The English-language Kabul this revitalised city today to celebrate an Times (3 July) and the Dari-Ianguage important military victory over the CIA's Payam (2 July) had both carried articles mujahedin (holy warriors). Two days ago, reporting on a message of acknowledg­ the armed forces of the People's Demo­ ment from the Nangarhar Province De­ cratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) gov­ fence Council to the PDC. Part of the ernment, spearheaded by an armoured message quoted by the Kabul Tunes read: Special Guard unit and he,avily backed by "The Defence Council of Nangarhar Province representing all the PDPA the Air Force, forced the counter­ members, social organizations and the revolutiunaries to pull back to positions peaceloving people of Nangarhar, cordial­ they occupied before the March offensive ly thank you and express gratitude for against Jalalabad. the assistance extended by you, assuring Kareslmlr: Youth battalion guards northern approach to Kabul. 6 WORKERS HAMMER sand residents of Jalalabad. People were and 120 units of "reactive artillery" -were signing of the accords, war in the Repub­ eign minister headlined. "Except a Politi­ everywhere in the stte~. There was not supposed to occupy Jalalabad in 72.hours; lic of Afghanistan has further intensified." cal Settlement-No Other Way Exists for a sign of fear, but rather an evident de­ planes were ready in Peshawar to bring In fact, Gorbachev's pull-out has served Putting an End to War in Afghanistan." termination which exploded in loud the mujahedin "provisional government" only to embolden the imperialists and But to put an end to the imperjalist­ chants of "Afghanistan Zindabad!" (Long onto Afghan territory. "S-ut they could their cut-throats. backed war against social progress re­ Live Afghanistan) and "Marg ya Watan!" not occupy the city," Lt Gen Mangal The Soviet intervention in 1979 was quires rooting out-not conciliat­ (Death or Country) that punctuated the declared proudly. "Nangarhar men and mandated by defence of the gains of the ing-entrenched feudal and capitalist march throughout. Young and old, women fought valiantly," including PDPA 1917 October Revolution and opened up reaction through workers revolution. In women and men-many carrying their members as well as the military, he the prospect of extending those gains to the extremely backward conditions of weapons-Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus added. The Air Force played a major role Afghanistan; that is why the international Afghanistan, the tiny industrial prole­ joined together in this march from Jam­ in the defeat of the attackers. Spartacist tendency, now the International tariat does not have the weight to effect huriat Garden to Pashtoonistan Square. I asked the governor if the defenders Communist Le~e (Fourth Inter­ a fundamental transformation of society. After listening to a speech by Lt Gen and people of J alalabad are aware that in nationalist), proclaimed "Hail Red Army But next door in Bhutto's Pakistan, the Manookay Mangal, governor and chair­ man of the Defence Council of Nangar­ har Province, the participants adopted a resolution "expressing all-out solidarity with the victorious and heroic armed forces in the defence of homeland, in­ dependence, territorial integrity and na­ tional sovereignty of the country". The roofs of the mainly two-storey houses along the route of the march were guard­ ed by young militiamen (some appeared to be no older than 13), their Kalash­ nikovs slung over their shoulders looking almost too big for them. From the heli­ copter and from the road, it was clear that J alalabad, once renowned as a tourist resort for its beauty and greenery, is a wounded city, whose scars will take a long time to heal .... Between March and July, 973 houses were damaged along with 150 government buildings, shops and markets, mosques and temples .... The airport, some five kilometres to the east of the city, shows all the signs of the fierce battle that went on around and for it in March and April: hangars blown apart, the airstrip damaged, remains of jeeps and helicopters lying around, the control tower heavily damaged. It's clear that there has been no time to care for the niceties of appearance: the airport is War over women's rights: CIA-backed functional again and that's enough. mulahedin would force all women to wear The civilian population has suffered head-te-toe chadors (above); women are terribly: 1993 injured and 1002 killed, half fighting to defend right to cast off of them children. On the single day of 8 veil of enslavement (right). March, the mujahedin cut-throats bank­ rolled by the Pakistani lSI [Inter-Service many countries of the world, working in Afghanistan!" After the Soviet with­ home base for the CIA's mujahedin, Intelligence] and the CIA, bombarded people are following their struggle with drawal, Washington and Islamabad conditions for social revolution are brew­ J alalabad with 5000 rockets. But they did extreme·concern. "Certainly," he replied, thought the instant the Soviet troops ing, with national minorities in turmoil not succeed in overwhelming its heroic adding that the struggle of the Afghan pulled out, the Afghan government would and the regime divided. In Iran, the Is­ defenders. people is an "internationalist struggle". crumble. They have been proved wrong lamic theocracy is now headless and the At the Central Hotel we met some of Mangal mentioned specifically Pakistan's by the fighting valour of the Afghan peo­ population sick of a decade of bloody war the civilian victims ofthese rocket attacks. plan to dismember Afghanistan and to ple. and domestic terror. Among them was Hayatullah, aged 14, a impose a government that would join with Meanwhile, the PDPA's policy of Jalalabad besieged was the focal point bright kid who lost his right leg in Feb­ Pakistan and Turkey in a "new CENTO" "national reconciliation" aims at luring of imperialism's jihad (holy war) against ruary. He had been afraid of rockets, he anti-Soviet and anti-Indian US-dominated the reactionaries into a coalition. Kabul social progress and the Soviet Union. said. When one hit his home in the east­ alliance. He again thanked the PDC for papers regularly report agreements with Jalalabad victorious can inspire revolu­ ern district of Jalalabad, a brother was our efforts in support of the people of regional mujahedin commanders, eff­ tionary struggle throughout the region, killed and another lost his leg. Hayatullah J alalabad. The international aid cam­ ectively leaving them in control of their from India to Turkey. That requires was a student at the time and wanted to paign clearly boosted morale in Jalalabad. fiefdoms. The day after Payam reported above all the programme of Leninist become a teacher. With the stern look of The message from the Defence Council on the internationalist aid campaign by internationalism, the banner of the Inter­ a young man who had to grow up a lot said, "Your great and humane move is so the PDC, it carried a speech by the for- national Communist League .• faster than kids his age in luckier parts of noteworthy that no devilish eyes can dare the world, he asserted his resolve to see it." complete his studies, because he very In the course of these three months of much wants "to teach small children". fighting, the defenders of Jalalabad had ---Spartacist League Forums ~ ---­ When asked how he felt about those who lost some 800 killed. But using a com­ did this to him, he replied: "They should bination of high-level bombing by con­ all be eliminated", addmg that "Am­ verted propeller-driven Antonov AN-12 From our special Afghanistan erica" is ultimately responsible as the cargo planes-which can fly above the correspondent! country that supplies the rockets. range of the US-supplied Stinger mis­ siles-and long-range SCUD missiles An internationalist struggle fired from the Kabul area, the Afghan Towards the end of our eight-hour stay armed forces have inflicted far heavier IC>8~~.".Cf~~'iQ~bI_~~1II·tbroat81 in Jalalabad we met the governor. After losses on the enemy. At a 3 July press the deputy governor, who was accom­ conference in Kabul, Gen Alum~ head of ·NC)·tO·.thecv.I~_·A,gban··womenl panying the team of journalists, learned the military section of the PDPA and that this reporter was a representative of secretary of the Supreme Defence Coun­ the PDC campaign, he made it known to cil, explained that the counterrevolution­ London: Thursday, 2 November Glasgow: Sunday,S November the governor. When we entered the room aries have taken more casualties between 7.30 pm 3.00 pm Room 3A Queen Margaret Union for the press conference, Lt Gen Mangal March and June than "in any previous University of London Union University Gardens shook hands with every reporter, but two years of fighting taken together". He Malet Street Glasgow University embraced me enthusiastically, saying "Ah, gave a figure of 35,000 mujahedin casual­ Tube: Russell Square or Goodge St Partisan." ties (including 3000 Pakistanis) since the A doctor by profession, the 41-year­ signing of the Geneva agreement in 1988. Workers political revolution in the USSR old former chief of political affairs of the Bakhtar News Agency (5 July), report­ and deformed workers states! interior ministry in Kabul has been gover­ ing a meeting between bereaved Afghan Return to the communism of Lenin and Trotsky! nor of this crucial border province for six mothers and a delegation of Pakistani For proletarian internationalism! months. He said that "Pakistani militar­ journalists, quoted one mother saying: Defend the Soviet Union through world revolution! ists and the US ambassador in Islamabad "We were pleased with the signing of the decided to declare war on Jalalabad on Geneva accords, we thought that in the the 6th of March." The reac­ light of these agreements war in the For more information, phone London (01) 485 1396, Glasgow (041) 339 0993 tionaries-with a total of 40,000 troops, Republic of Afghanistan could be including two Pakistani tank battalions stopped. . .. But unfortunately after the OCTOBER 1989 7 ------

Irish Agreement. Nearly four years old, of a Leninist party based on a developed vinists on the one hand or fake-left cheer­ this NATO-brokered accord was designed revolutionary programme. This call is leaders for the IRA on the other, such an Ireland ... to keep the so-called neutral Republic in premised also on the demand for the elementary distinction does not exist. The (Continued from page 1) line with the anti-Soviet Cold War drive immediate and unconditional withdrawal Communist Party of Britain (CPB) is a up and was promised full "cooperation" (the island commands Atlantic ap­ of the British army. Not Orange against grotesque representative of the former: from RUC chief constable Hugh Annes­ proaches to Europe) by giving the Repub­ Green, but class against class! CPB general secretary Mike Hicks echoes lic some say in the affairs, particularly Mr Kinnock in denouncing the Deal ley-who made his original mark in the Deal: IRA blasts British notorious Special Patrol Group. Twenty­ those involving "security", of the North. It "outrage" (Morning Star, 23 September). eight members of the UDR were arrested was also designed to facilitate extradition, armed forces butchers In the same issue, the editorial accuses on 8 October and all but ten of them and the bourgeoisie of the Republic have the IRA over Deal of "play[ing] into the been turning over "suspected republi­ Public attention was diverted from the hands of the British Government. It takes were released without charge. The fate of dirty, criminal workings of the British such "inquiries" is well-documented: John cans" to the British. Information collected the pressure off those who defend the by the Garda in the Republic has been state as the press dutifully carried sensa­ continued colonial occupation of the six Stalker, victimised for his investigation of tionalist coverage of the IRA's bombing turned over to loyalist death squads. counties and encourages those who see the RUC's "shoot-to-kill" policies, of the Royal Marines bandsmen's head­ Now the Republic is demanding tighter the Irish question as purely one of law advised any cop assigned to such an quarters in Deal, Kent. Reams of sym­ vetting procedures, that RUC officers and order. Irish government ministers, investigation in Northern Ireland to "go pathy for the "poor schoolboys" who died accompany UDR members on patrol and who have been voicing misgivings about sick". in the bombing gushed from the pages of has balked at the issuing of plastic bullets the very existence of the UDR, can now The Labour Party, at its recent con­ the press. Tory and Labour leaders vied to the UDR. But these demands are a be expected to give that question a low ference in Brighton, took the opportunity with one another to make the strongest sick joke: the British government is al­ proftle." Not least because of its wretched to renew its commitment to serve as a "condemnations" of the IRA. Labour ready passing out plastic bullets by the chauvinism over Ireland, the CPB's loyal agent for British imperiali~m in seized on the "privatisation" of security bucketful. The 6500-strong UDR, the parent organisation the CPGB well-de­ Northern Ireland. A tepid motion calling for the bases. successor of the hated B-Specials, is part served the nickname "her majesty's loyal on the party to set a date for withdrawal The Deal bombing hit a military target. of British troops during its next term in of the British Army, responsible for 85 communist party". per cent of army duties in Northern Ire­ The "schoolboys" were from 22 to 39 office was massively defeated. For the Then there are those, like the centrists land. In the past years over 700 weapons years of age. An outfit renowned for Labour Party social imperialists who sent of Workers Power, who engage in vicari­ have "officially" gone missing from UDR being "tough", it was the Royal Marine the troops over in 1969, this is but a ous cheerleading for the IRA and sup­ stores; over 100 of its members have been troops who were particularly chosen by strong restatement of their longstanding ported its criminal Enniskillen bombing charged with murder and other serious the government to be stationed in North­ role. Labour's Northern Ireland spokes­ (defending "the right of the Provisionals offences, with few convictions. It is 97 per ern Ireland since last May to cover the man, Kevin McNamara, pontificated: to struggle by any means to end Britain's cent Protestant. Margaret Thatcher's period of the 20th anniversary of the "Those who believe that violence is an rule"). This is of a piece with their self­ "brave men" in the UDR will soon be British troops being sent in. Their deploy­ acceptable policy response and those who proclaimed task to "subordinate their rewarded for their services to the crown ment at the time was criticised by the flirt with the paramilitaries have no place criticisms of the IRA to the primary duty with the appointment of a member of the SDLP and questioned by the Anglo-Irish in this party" (Guardian, 6 October). of winning the unconditional support of royal family as their honorary head. secretariat. The Sunday Correspondent's But the violence of the British state­ (1 October) interview with leading Sinn British workers for the IRA". We noted with its intimate links with the loyalist Troops out of Northern Ireland! Fein spokesman Danny Morrison shed at the time that Workers Power's com­ paramilitaries-is staunchly defended by some light as to why: rades in the Irish Workers Group (IWG) the Labour traitors. From sending the The RUC is also mainly Protestant. It "unequivocally condemn[ed)" the Ennis­ "They are the same regiment which ar­ troops in and its imposition of the draco­ has been recently implicated in another rived in West Belfast and shouted to the killen bombing. This glaring public dif­ nian Prevention of Terrorism Act, to its scandal; according to the Irish Gay Com­ nationalist population 'The Marines are ference in line reflected the methodology initial cheering for the Gibraltar SAS munity News (October 1989) police har­ here: we're going to sort you out' .... of centrists like the IWG and WP: capitu­ murders of three IRA members, to its assment of gay men has reached "epi­ They are the same regiment who, last lating to different, and often contradic­ do-nothing response to the government demic" levels in parts of the North. In the Saturday in Beechmount, knocked a tory, social forces depending on the na­ ban on Sinn Fein-the Labour Party is an past few months, two gay men have com­ small boy's front tooth out, broke two of tional terrain. The Enniskillen atrocity avowed enemy of the workers on both mitted suicide after having been subjected his fingers and poured petrol over him to aroused deep revulsion throughout both frighten him." sides of the sectarian divide, both sides of to intense interrogations over alleged parts of Ireland; the IWG's line reflected the border and both sides of the Irish "indecency" charges. (In the clericalist And he noted: "how 'soft' would the this pressure. Sea. Republic, reactionary harassment of target have been if they had known any­ Now, we read in the IWG's Class Indeed, Kinnock & Co would have homosexuals is also long-standing.) one was coming? They would have been Struggle (October 1989): "the guerrilla been happy to place their own "ban" on The RUC and UDR are sectarian waiting to blow IRA brains across the campaign of the IRA has once more Gerry Adams at the Brighton conference. forces, the local bodies of the British pavement." proved counter-productive. Its bomb in ''There was nothing to stop him from state apparatus and the training ground The bandsmen for the Royal Marines Deal, as at Enniskillen during the crisis coming into this town, certainly nothing I for the present Protestant paramilitary or other regiments are hardly non-com­ over extradition, provides room for the could do to stop him", whined the arch­ groups. They must be smashed! Marxists batants! They are trained soldiers, used oppressor to get off the hook of their scab Kinnock. "He is a member of Sinn call for programmatically based anti­ both to gloss up the armed forces' image present difficulties over the UDR." This Fein, and as such I am very hostile to him sectarian workers militias to combat amongst the civilian population and as is the sole mention of the Deal bombing and he knows that very well" (Tunes, 3 Orange and Green communalist terror recruitment aides. If you really like bag­ in Class Struggle. Given its earlier con­ October). The Labour fringe meeting and imperialist rampage. These cannot pipes or the trombone, there are other demnation of Enniskillen, we conclude where Adams spoke was, in fact, attacked develop just out of trade unionism but ways. An Phoblacht (28 September) that the IWG condemns both actions in by National Front fascists (who were fundamentally require the existence of a wrote: ''They may' not stray onto the blanket fashion, a position more in com­ dealt with swiftly by Adams' bodyguards). strong and authoritative revolutionary battlefields of Ballymurphy, but the mon with the likes of Militant than revol­ The publicity surrounding the death cadre. Each militia unit would need at troops from Deal entertained their com­ utionary Trotskyism. lists handed out by the British state, its least one member of each community and mando colleagues behind Belfast barracks army, the RUC and UDR has caused the presence and strong influence of walls as they relaxed, joked and swapped For a proletarian solutlonl outrage in the Republic and the Irish trained revolutionary cadre. Consequent­ tales of how they'd wrecked nationalist Against the reformists and centrists, government is making noises again about ly, the demand for an anti-sectarian work­ homes and brutalised Irish civilians." revolutionary Marxists fight for a class the continued existence of the Anglo- ers militia is closely linked to the growth For Marxists, the Deal bombing was a determination to the struggle in Northern defensible act against representatives of Ireland. We demand the immediate and British imperialism. We shed no tears for unconditional withdrawal of the British the Royal Marines, just as we did not troops. Sharply counterposed to the have the slightest regret over the violent Provos' nationalist programme for a £2.50/$5 death of Earl Mountbatten. As we poin­ united capitalist Ireland-ie, the incor­ ted out then: poration of the North into the Southern "Following the killing, the Provisional Catholic clericalist state, forcibly against .. IRA stated that 'Mountbatten's execu­ the will of the Protestant majority-we t~~};9~~T! ~~~.ges"~";+ tion was a discriminate act in that it was say: No forcible reunification! For an against a leading figure' (Irish Times, 1 Irish workers republic within a socialist September). This is true-and while lr1cludes:. Nationalism, resistance federation of the British Isles! Our pro­ • Osvaldo Cogglola •••. criticising such individual terrorism as a misguided, ineffective act of despair, we gramme is premised on the recognition "The History of and Imperialist war defend against state repression those who that there are two communities in North­ Argentine Trotskyism" ~~ were responsible for the death of the ern Ireland, a situation of interpenetrated • John Sullivan /":::''" (~ Earl. Ukewise with those who ambushed peoples where under capitalism the self­ "Liborio Justo and. " " u'; ;(1\. the paratroopers at Warrenpoint. Yet determination of one people can be car­ Argentinian TrotskYism ,\\~"~ ,( .. f~'fhJ \ these actions stand in sharp contrast to ried out only at the expense of the other. the criminal indiscrimiruue terror which • Nils Kaare Dahl ~'" ,~":k'~>;' ,- It is the duty of proletarian revolution­ " I, J... .~ \.: a c.. \ the IRA has also willingly engaged in "With Trotsky in Norway '~ ct. ~, i I ~ ~" over the past decade, including attacks aries to advance a programme addressing • Berge Trolle. / \., '.;Ii /I.:.&:A , ~; on innocent Irish Protestant workers and the oppression of the Catholic minority "Danish Trotskr.'sm In , ';')( A"';~..' British civilians." and appealing to the common class inter­ World War Two \<:)~;~ 0 - "The burial of Mountbatten", ests of both Protestant and Catholic and others i,\ Spartocist Britain no 15, workers. In irreconcilable opposition to Trotskyism in October 1979 British imperialism, its Labour lackeys and nationalist/communalist demagogy, Order from: Argentina and Scandinavia Marxists distinguisp between, for in­ Inside. Trotsky gets the glasnost treatment. page 54 authentic Leninist vanguard parties Socialist Platform Ltd, stance, the Enniskillen bombing-an will be forged on both sides of the Irish Sea BCM 7646. London WC1 N 3XX indefensible anti-working-class crime intended to kill and terrorise civilians­ to lead proletarian revolution throughout and Deal. But, for Labourite social chau- the British Isles._

8 WORKERS HAMMER both the Stalinist and Solidarno&c unions, trying to tempt them ioto our camp, but a nascent proletarian political revolution. necessarily beginning around immediate we want the break up of the Warsaw The Hungarian workers on several oc­ Workers Power ... economic demands for survival but raising Pact." Whatever its paper disavowals of casions successfully fraternise.d with the (Continued from page 5) implicitly the perspective of a working­ the Walesas, Waldegraves, KPN et al, in Soviet troops by appealing to common class struggle for political power. This is practice Workers Power ends up in blocs socialist ideals. During the revolution, a revolution in Poland Workers Power possible because Solidarnosc and its with them because at some level it shares substantial majority of the CP went over refers to Bujak as one of the "leading imperialist backers have not been able to their anti-Sovietism. to the side of the workers. This would be militants [who] were urging the formation implement full-scale capitalist "roll back". Workers Power carries the political inconceivable if WP's line that the Stalin­ of workers' defence guards"-ie, a militia But Workers Power wants to harken baggage of its origins in Tony Cliffs third ist bureaucracy is "invariably counter­ to overthrow the government. Bujak was back to "the fighting strength of the early camp "Neither Washingd>n nor Moscow" revolutionary" contained a shred of truth. subsequently revealed as a conduit for days of Solidarity the trade union". Right, outfit. The Cliffites who regard the Red Trotsky defmed centrism as "cryst­ CIA funds, running Solidarn~e under­ the days when Walesa was appealing to Army as the personification of "Soviet allised confusion". Polemicising against ground operation until his arrest in 1986. Reagan while waving around CIA money, imperialism" would have little problem in the American SWP's Shachtman/Bum­ WP advocated more "militant" tac­ when Solidamosc strikers were kneeling accepting Workers Power's characterisa­ ham bloc which opposed defence of the tics ... in the service of the reactionary before the priests in the Lenin Shipyard tion of the Warsaw Pact as "the direct Soviet Union in 1939-40, Trotsky ad­ "mass movement". Had such a perspec­ and their leader was openly taking his agent of the counter-revolutionary poli­ dressed their plaint that they fail.d to tive triumphed, it would have meant a marching orders from the Polish pope in cies of the Kremlin bureaucracy". For "foresee" Stalin's occupation of eastern bloody counterrevolution that would have Workers Power, every time the Soviet Poland: "If our ill-starred politicians been anything but peaceful. It would have Rome. As Walesa & Co became ever Red Army crosses its border, this is failed to foresee 'this' it is only because unleashed such dark and sinister forces as more shrill in their counterrevolutionary "counterrevolutionary"-irrespective of they fail to think a single question seri­ the ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic scum of agitation, Workers Power hopped from whether its purpose is to smash an in­ ously through to the end" (In Defence of the KPN, whose pogromist methods one to another "left wing" of Solidar­ cipient workers political revolution (Hun- Marxism). For Workers Power, this is would be directed towards the wholesale nosc. Most recently it was the small congenital. If you begin with the premise victimisation of Communists and those that anti-capitalist social revolution is who championed progressive social causes J"J. "counterrevolutionary", then of course like abortion rights for women. Hersh ,,*,'""~ you won't be able to foresee a counter­ Mendel's powerful autobiography, revolutionary danger to these gains. Memoirs of a Jewish Revolutionary, gives Seeking to justify its military bloc with a graphic sense of the conditions endured Solidarnosc., Workers Power claimed in by communist militants under Pilsudskiite its "Theses" that "The existence of a terror. mass base" proved that "Solidarnosc was Anti-Communist hysteria abroad goes not a counter-revolutionary organisation hand-in-hand with union-busting reaction per se." So, ten million Polish workers at home. And events in Poland polarised, can't be wrong according to Workers shaped and demarcated the British trade Power. This is the methodology of tailism. union movement. Workers Power de­ Unlike the situation in Hungary 1956, the nounced miners leader Arthur Scargill's bulk of the Polish working class was refusal to support Solidarnosc as "partic­ poisoned by clericalism, nationalism and ularly despicable". Truly despicable was anti-Sovietism in 1981. A critical task in the fact that on the eve of the miners the forging of a Leninist-Trotskyist party strike Gerry Healy's WRP instigated a in Poland must be to re-appropriate the vicious Fleet Street red-baiting attack internationalist traditions of Rosa Luxem­ against Scargill because of his correct burg and the early Polish CP, which statement that Solidarnosc was anti­ struggled for proletarian unity between socialist. To isolate the miners, the TUC Russian and Polish workers. In words Russia-haters seized on the press frenzy. Workers Power calls for such unity, but To this day none of the decomposition inpractice its bloc with counterrevolution­ products of Healy's WRP has repudiated ary Solidarnosc in 1981, as well as its this finger-man job. During the strike, conciliation of the likes of the PPS-RD, Walesa praised Thatcher as a ''wise and Der Spiegel works in the opposite direction. brave" woman, while those British union In remarks directed at Victor Serge, leaders who most zealously baited Scargill Cracow, 1945: Polish masses welcome Soviet liberation from Nazi terror. who deserted Bolshevism for the POUM, over Poland, like the heads of the elec­ Twenty million Soviet citizens died in fight to crush Nazi machine. the left wing of the Spanish popular front, tricians union, also proved to be the most the fake left's then favourite "mass move­ zealous scabherders against the miners. ment", Trotsky noted: Polish Socialist Party (Democratic Revo­ gary 1956) or on the side of progressive Poland 1989 lution), heralded as a potential "nucleus reformers who believe women should be "But the masses are by no means identi­ cal: there are revolutionary masses, there Today when Solidarn~c is in a posi­ for forging an independent Polish inter­ taught to read (Afghanistan 1979). are passive masses, there are reactionary tion to carry out its "struggle" for a nationalist workers' party" (Womrs Trotsky observed that the Red Army masses. The very same masses are at return to capitalism and Polish workers Power, May 1989). During this period the mirrors the contradictions of Soviet soci­ different times inspired by different are already beginning to vote with their PPS-RD was in a political bloc with ety, a deformed workers state, in which moods and objectives. It is just for this feet against the government's drastic "Fighting Solidarnosc"-animated by the the bureaucracy plays a dual role, balanc­ reason that a centralized organization of austerity measures, it's hardly surprising rabidly anti-Communist and anti-Semitic ing between imperialism and the collec­ the vanguard is indispensable. Only a that Workers Power is no longer so en­ KPN-which greeted George Bush's tivised property forms. Denying this dual party, wielding the authority it has won, thusiastic about "solidarity with Solidar­ arrival in Gdansk last summer with signs role, Workers Power asserts that Stalin­ is capable of overcoming the vacillation proclaiming "A Good Communist is a ism is "invariably a counter-revolutionary of the masses themselves. To invest the nose'. What's "new" about Solidarnosc mass with traits of sanctity and to reduce for WP is that it's no longer a viable Dead Communist". Some nucleus for force" (The Death Agony of the Fourth one's program to amorphOUS 'democ­ "mass movement" to tail after. "an independent Polish internationalist International, 1983). So when the Red racy,' is to dissolve oneself in the class as WP reviled us for our statement after workers' party"! Now it seems the PPS­ Army in 1945 liberated Poland from the it is, to turn from a vanguard into a the coup that "If the present crackdown RD-which just opened up a very visible Nazis and Pilsudskiite mth, for Workers rearguard, and by this very ~hing, to restores something like the tenuous social public office in London-has disappeared Power this led to a "counter-revolutionary renounce revolutionary tasks. On the equilibrium which existed in Poland be­ into one of those ''blank spaces" in overthrow of capitalism" after 1947-8! But other hand, if the dictatorship of the proletariat means anything at all, then it fore the Gdansk strikes last August-a Workers Power's history. that's not all, Workers Power extends this means that the vanguard of the class is tacit understanding that if the people left In its programme for Polish workers appellation for the bureaucratically im­ armed with the resources of the state in the government alone, the government printed in its October issue, Workers posed social revolutions in Soviet­ order to repel dangers, including those would leave the people alone--conditions Power raises the call to "Defend the occupied Eastern Europe to the popular emar;tating from the backward layers of will be opened again for the crystalliza­ workers' states of the Soviet Union and movements led by Mao, Tito, Castro and the proletariat itself." tion of a Leninist-Trotskyist party". None Eastern Europe!" Yet this immediately Ho Chi Minh which overthrew capitalism -Leon Trotsky, The Moralists and of this for Workers Power, which "safe at follows the demand: "Russian troops out and established bureaucratically deformed Sycophants Against Marxism, 1939 a distance" advocated the sort of bloody of Poland, Poland out of the Warsaw workers states. Behind the wild vacillations of these confrontation-from the wrong side­ Pact!" This is patently absurd: how do In December 1979 we said "Hail Red centrists over events in Eastern Europe which US imperialism longed for in Po­ you "defend" the workers states by dis­ Army in Afghanistan!" The entry of and the Soviet Union lies their lack of a land. Our Trotskyist analysis was vindi­ solving the Warsaw Pact in the face of Soviet troops laid the basis for extending programmatic anchor (see also article, cated and what in fact is now posed is a NATO imperialism? Disbanding the the social gains of the October Revolu­ p4). They spurn the Trotskyist position of real struggle by the Polish workers in Warsaw Pact is the battle cry of the most tion to the economically backward Afghan unconditional defence of the gains of the virulent right-wing, nationalist reac­ peoples. Workers Power denounced the October Revolution against counter­ tionaries like the KPN, as well as the Soviet intervention as "counterrevoluti­ revolution and instead tail every "mass Correction imperialist revanchists. Hilariously, in its onary" and the CIA-supported mujahedin movement" that comes along. They tailed In the article entitled "Northern September issue, in an attempt to ''warn'' they were fighting as counterrevolution­ the mullah-led movement in Iran, and Ireland: for a proletarian sol­ Polish workers against "enemies disguised ary, too. With all sides "counterrevoluti­ ended up with Khomeiniite reaction; they ution!", WOIkers Hammer no 109 as friends over the border in the west", onary" they "suspended" the call for tail reactionary "anti-Stalinists" of every (September 1989), the second WP quotes William Waldegrave, Minister Soviet withdrawal. This mind-numbing stripe in Poland, and end up with a pro­ reference to our slogan "For an of State at the British Foreign Office gobbledegook was a carefully crafted capitalist, anti-working-class government Irish workers republic within a responsible for Eastern Europe, who dodge of the duty of revolutionaries to in Warsaw. What differentiates Bol­ socialist federation of the British advocates that Poland become part of a give unconditional military defence to the shevism from centrism is precisely the Isles", inadvertently omitted the block of " ... independent East and Cen­ Soviet degenerated workers state. capacity to "swim against the stream" word ''workers''. tral European countries that are not part On the other hand, in Hungary 1956 when the masses are being misled against of anybody's empire.... We are not the Kremlin used the Red Army to break the historic interests of the proletariat._ OCTOBER 1989 9 and Textile Workers Union a black-centred workers government ers charter" evoked the terrifying spectre South Africa ... (ACIWUSA), advocate "socialism" as through smashing apartheid capitalism. of Trotskyist "ultraleftism": "Those who the goal of their struggle. At the latest This poses the formation of a racially champion ... the cause of 'workerism' (Continued from page 12) COSATV congress in July, a focus of integrated workers party, drawn primarily against so-called 'populism' betray ... a discussion was ACTWUSA's call for a from class-conscious militants in the bias toward Trotskyism" ("What Is Trot­ pressure Washington and London to force "workers charter" to guarantee elemen­ predominantly black trade unions. This is skyism?", African Communist, Fourth the apartheid regime to the conference tary trade-union rights. One unionist the only road forward if the protestations Quarter 1988). The SACP revealed the table, while the imperialists have insisted commented, "They want to ensure that of "socialism" and ''workers power" by extent of leftist opposition to the bour­ that the ANC first accede to Pretoria's when apartheid goes, they will still be the left -wing militants in COSATU are not to geois-democratic Freedom Charter by conditions (ie "renouncing violence"). workers' watchdogs, not the pet poodles be simply a means of pressuring the reporting in their subsequent issue that Under Gorbachev, the Moscow bureau­ they had received a slew of letters disput­ cracy has begun placing intense pressure ing the article's conclusions. (They cyni­ on the ANC to give in to negotiations cally decided "not to publish" any of without any preconditions. In April, the them!) But even the wretchedly tailist first public Soviet diplomatic mission to SACP, which has been submerged inside South Africa in 33 years arrived in J ohan­ the pro-capitalist ANC for decades, ack­ nesburg. Yuri Yukalov, head of the Soviet nowledges the socialist aspirations of the foreign ministry Department of African South African proletariat with its stagist Countries, insists: "South Africa should slogan, "For a Democratic Victory and not be destroyed. It should also be spok­ Advance to Socialism". en to not only through threats or pound­ Yet there are self-styled "socialists" ing our fist on the table. There should be who explicitly oppose the struggle for dialogue" (New York Times, 16 March). socialism in South Africa. Jack Barnes' Yukalov cited the Angola/Namibia American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) "peace process" as an example of suc­ insists that the South African revolution cessful negotiation in which "all sides \vill have one stage only-democratic stood to gain" (Weekly Mail, 23 March). capitalism. "We could say", says Barnes The sort of "dialogue" Pretoria has in in a 1985 report (reprinted in New Inter­ mind can be seen from the first result of national, Fall 1985), that: the Namibia "peace process", as the "Yes, the key tasks of the revolution in apartheid butchers slaughtered 300 South Africa are clearly national and SWAPO . supporters who tried to cross Achilles' heel of apartheid capitalism is dependence on black labour: democratic in character. Yes, it would the border from Angola under the terms striking railworkera battle with Johannesburg police in February, 1987. be completely ultraleft for South African of the agreement. Meanwhile, as Cuban revolutionists to wage the struggle troops are shipped home, Angolan pea­ of the nationalist movement-as in Zim­ ANC. We are not talking about a reform­ around a socialist program. But, given sants continue to be massacred by the babwe." ist labour party as in Britain, but rather the development of modern capitalist in­ The road to liberating the toilers of forging a revolutionary workers party dustry and mining, and the size of the US/South Africa-backed UNITA ter­ Black working class, won't the overthrow rorists, who immediately violated the South Africa is not, however, through such as Lenin built in tsarist Russia, the of the imperialist apartheid state actually UN-negotiated "cease-fire" agreement. maintaining a strong trade-union move­ Bolshevik Party which in October 1917 establish the dictatorship of the proletar­ In the buildup to the 6 September ment under a petty-bourgeois nationalist led the first victorious workers revolution iat and open what we might call the elections, the ANC unveiled its "peace ANC regime which it is assumed will in history. democratic stage of the socialist revolu­ plan" at a summit of "front line states" replace white-supremacist rule. Furthermore, South Africa is not like tion?" held 10 August in Lusaka, Zambia. For Two key strikes this year have focused Zimbabwe or Zambia where petty-bour­ But even such a hackneyed Stalinist apo­ the nationalist ANC, the "defiance cam­ world attention on workers' opposition to geois African nationalists displaced the logia for betrayal in the name of revolu­ paign", like its sporadic guerrilla forays divestment schemes so beloved by the white colonial regimes within the frame­ tion in stages is too "ultraleft" for Barnes, into South Africa and its appeals for fake left internationally. In May, workers work of continuing imperialist economic who in 1982 explicitly denounced the imperialist disinvestment, are aimed at at nine Mobil Oil installations struck dominance and exploitation. Apartheid as SWP's distant Trotskyist past. He replies pressuring the apartheid rulers. As the against the company's plan to "divest" by a system of white caste domination will to his hypothetical question: Weekly Mail (11 August) noted: "It is selling out to Gencor, a South African not be ended without uprooting the entire "The answer is, 'No.' What is on the understood that the ANC sees the def­ system of capitalism in South Africa, agenda in South Africa is a bour­ mining conglomerate notorious for union­ geois-democratic revolution, not the iance campaign as a key vehicle for pur­ busting. The Chemical Workers Industrial which cannot exist without the super­ exploitation of black labour. This neces­ democratic stage of the socialist revolu­ suing a peaceful end to apartheid in Union called the action to protest Mobil's tion." conjunction with negotiations on the basis refusal to negotiate the terms of the sale, sarily means starvation wages and' the denial of democratic rights to the black Barnes insists to the black workers: this of equality." The ANC plan, subsequently but later agreed to call off the strike in far and no further! endorsed by the Organization of African return for a cash settlement of one majority. For the moment, Pretoria is dead set against any negotiated settlement The SWP's "democratic" programme Unity meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe on month'~ pay (about 2000 rand) per wor­ is flatly counterposed not only to the class 21 August, is modelled on the Namibia ker. In July, 1200 workers at Goodyear with the ANC. (Of the recent meeting near London between ANC representa­ interests of the black proletariat but to settlement. It envisages a transitional Rubber, represented by the National the struggle for democratic rights. South government-with the existing apartheid Union of Metalworkers, struck over the tives and a group of Afrikaners which included de Klerk's brother Willem, one Africa is a quintessential example of the regime-and "free and fair" elections for company's sale to the South African validity of Trotsky's perspective of per­ a constituent assembly which would then company Consol. The strike demands of diplomat said it was "talks about talks about talks".) But even were some future manent revolution: in this country the draw up a new constitution for South separation pay of 5000 rand per worker, black working class is patently the decis­ Africa. guaranteed conditions of employment, South African government to reach an agreement with the ANC-under the ive force in the struggle against apartheid. Despite occasional talk of revolution, maintenance of existing labour agree­ Trotsky explained: particularly at the height of the township ments, pay-out of pension benefits, and pressure of the Western imperialist powers-it could not "negotiate" the end "The theory of the permanent revolu­ rebellions four years ago, the ANC has writing off housing loans, reflect wide­ tion ... pointed out that the democratic long pursued a strategy aimed at "power­ spread anger over divestment's victimisa­ of apartheid, but only do away with the tasks of the backward bourgeois nations sharing" with apartheid capitalism. The tion of the black working class. Good­ more odious and obvious manifestations led directly, in our epoch, to the dictator­ ANC disavows ''wholesale nationalisa­ year's response, on 8 August, was to fire of apartheid. Ship of the proletariat and that the tion", calling instead for a "mixed" (ie all the strikers and go ahead with the South Africa's racial capitalism is both dictatorship of the proletariat puts social­ capitalist) economy, and the growth of a divestment deal. the generating force for the extraction of ist tasks on the order of the day." As we in the Spartacist League have superprofIts and at the heart of its in­ - Introduction to The Pennanent black capitalist class. Imperialist invest­ Revolution (1930) pointed out from the beginning, divest­ ability to advance as an industrial country ment would be encouraged, noted an The black proletariat of South Africa has ment is at best an empty moral gesture in the world economy. With the discovery ANC r~presentative, "on terms accep­ already amply demonstrated its capacity and if foreign companies did withdraw of diamonds at Kimberley and then gold table to the foreign investors". But while to fulfll its historic mission. What it lacks COSATU.supports the ANC's Freedom productive assets from South Africa this on the Rand at the turn of the century, the character of the economy changed is a revolutionary leadership worthy of its Charter, the combative and increasingly would hurt black workers and weaken the courage and aspirations. Forward to a organised black proletariat is far from black union movement. Today the pri­ from overwhelmingly agrarian to extrac­ tive. Mining of the low-grade ore was Trotskyist party, section of a reforged sanguine about this programme for a mary demands of the reformist divest­ Fourth International! For a black-centred "democratic, nonracial" capitalist South ment cheerleaders have been fulfilled, as labour-intensive, requiring a large reserve of unskilled and therefore relatively un­ workers government! Smash apartheid! Africa. much as they can be, yet apartheid re­ For workers revolution! COSATU has grown two and a half mains intact, while black unions are educated labour. Apartheid evolved out of and was dictated to a large extent by Adapted from WOlken Vanguard no 486, times larger since its formation in 1985, forced to try to negotiate the terms of di­ 29 September 1989. while strike activity in the first half of this vestment. Except in a period when the these conditions. The ANC seeks an year is almost triple what it was for the revolutionary overthrow of the apartheid accommodation with "progressive sec­ same period a year ago. Particularly with system is immediately posed, isolation tors" of the apartheid ruling class, like the banning of the United Democratic from the world market is likely to result Anglo American's Gavin Reily. But the Contact the Spartacist League Front and AZAPO (Azanian People's in massive dislocation and deprivation of black miners who toil and die in Reily's Organisation), COSATU has emerged as black workers, weakening their ability to gold and diamond mines know that their Glasgow PO Box 150 the strongest organisation of the black struggle. The wealth of South Africa must lives will not fundamentally change unless Glasgow G3 7TN proletariat in South Africa's history, and go not to the capitalists-American, Reily and his class are put out of business (041) 339 0993 the voice of broad sections of the op­ European or Afrikaner-but to the work­ permanently. pressed masses. A number of unions ers who created it. The only kind of "di­ London PO Box 1041 within C()SATV, particularly the Nation­ vestment" that will benefit the exploited Forge a Trotskyist vanguard London NW5 3EU al Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), and oppressed will be proletarian revolu­ in South Africal (01) 485 1396 headed by the recently freed Moses tion and the expropriation of these riches. For the Stalinist South African Com­ MayeIQso, and the Amalgamated Clothing What's needed is the establishment of munist Party, the debate over the ''work-

10 WORKERS HAMMER Smash SPUC offensive against Irish women!

On 11 October the High Court in When student leaders defied injunc­ communists", independent leftists and necessary but not the same thing as the Dublin threw out attempts by the tions to distnoute abortion information, the Irish Workers Group (IWG-inter­ right to free abortion on demand-a Society for the Protection of the Un­ their stand inspired support on the national affiliates of ae centrist Work­ particularly critical question in Ireland born Child (SPUC) to prevent student campuses. At the Trinity College ers Power group in Britain). Yet none where even modest proposals for a unions from distnouting information on Dublin freshers fair many students of these groups raised the call for the "Mother and Child Health Service" abortion in student handbooks. SPUC's wore badges reading "SPUC Off' while right to free abortion on demand. This were decisively spiked by the church. application to jail four students was SPUC lawyers wandered around trying should be the minimal starting point for Spartacist comrades visiting Trinity also quashed. SPUC's offensive comes to serve their injunction. On 9 October revolutionaries! The Irish Workers as part of our autumn subscription six years after the notorious referendum several hundred students staged a sit­ Group limited its calls to scrapping the drive reported that Women -and on the Eighth Amendment to the Irish down protest outside the law courts. Hamilton Judgement, by which SPUC Revolution, with its front-page coverage constitution which tries to illegalise There are a number of avowedly first gained inj unctions in 1986 against of the abortion issue, was enthusiastic­ abortion forever. Irish women face life "socialist" organisations at Trinity-the women's health clinics for giving out ally snapped up. Smash SPUC's re­ imprisonment for terminating an un­ Socialist Workers Movement (SWM­ abortion information, the 1861 Offences actionary crusade! For free abortion on wanted pregnancy. The sinister SPUC Irish co-thinkers of Tony Cliffs Social­ Against the Person Act which prohibits demand! For separation of church and works hand-in-giove with the Catholic ist Workers Party in Britain) and the abortion and the Eighth Amendment. state! Women's liberation through church. Socialist Society, a bloc of "anarcho- The decriminalisation of abortion is socialist revolution!

to-life" bigots and riddled with male provide the solution. Free quality health edy of AIDS to promote anti-homosexual chauvinist conservative complacency, the care for alll Free 24-hour childcarel hysteria. They seek to instil, fear and Abortion ... Labour Party will lead no fight for wo­ As we wrote in Women and Revolu­ impose social conformity in the service of (Continued from page 1) men's rights. tion (no 22, Spring 1981): all-sided reaction. the imperialists. As yet the "pro-life" The fight for abortion rights cannot be " ... reforms can be granted or taken The power of the working class must reactionaries in Britain have not broadly isolated from the struggle for decent away at the bourgeoisie's whim, depend­ be mobilised to defend women against embraced the terrorist and draconian living conditions and democratic rights ing on which way the political winds are this latest attempt to roll back the mini­ measures seen in the United States and for all. Just calling for "legal abortion" blowing. Abortion reform itself, as an mal rights that exist and to extend them. West Germany. Currently they figure to begs the question: the 1967 abortion law, isolated issue, does not threaten the in­ This is not a fight which can be won in make headway in that bastion of social while providing a legal right to abortion, stitution of the nuclear family, which the Houses of Parliament but rather as conservatism, the palace of Westminster. did not compel health authorities to remains the main source of women's oppression; thus we have always linked an inseparable part of the struggle for the Last year, the likes of the Society for the provide the service. As with other medical our fight for abortion and contraception emancipation of the working class from Protection of the Unborn Child needs, the dilapidated and threatened rights for all, without cost, to the fight capitalist exploitation and oppression. We (SPUC)-the same people who fronted NHS cannot provide timely and proper for a socialist, working-class program for communists fight for a society where the for the Catholic church's successful drive treatment and half the recorded abortions women's liberation." bourgeois family will be replaced by for the constitutional banning of abortion in Britain are done at expensive private Today, the anti-abortion fanatics are socialised housework and childcare, ena­ in the Republic of Ireland-tried (and clinics. The advanced state of decay of the ideological servants of the ruling bling women to be full participants in failed) with the Alton Bill. And as was this society renders meaningless Labour­ class, seeking to prop up the patriarchal social and political life. An authentic Bol­ the case with the draconian anti-homo­ ite patchwork reforms. Only hard class family as a basic institution of bourgeois shevik party, a tribune of all the oppress­ sexual section 28, Kinnock's vile Labour struggle under revolutionary leadership rule. More often than not the "right-to­ ed, must be forged to lead that struggle. Party aided and abetted the Alton Bill in with the aim of expropriating the wealth life" crowd is the same that clamours for For women's liberation through socialist Parliament. With its own crop of "right- stolen from those who produce it will the death penalty and seizes on the trag- revolution! •

.,.;.. .. "officiallanguage"-which was attacked Estonia ... by Lenin even before 1917-is inherently (Continued from page 4) anti-democratic. Ever since 1944, Workers Hammer Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian have Baltic nationalism. Where Mandel & Co been used in their respective republics' hail the Nazi "Forest Brothers", we salute governments, schools, media, etc, along subscription drive the real Estonian freedom fighters, who with Russian. Now the Baltic nationalists were the soldiers of the Red Army's demand that their languages be made the Estonian 8th Rifle Corps, which included sole "official" languages of the republics, 250 Jews. In June 1944 these Estonians thus degrading millions of Russian, Byelo­ helped liberate their homeland from the russian, Ukrainian and other inhabitants Nazi butchers and the "Forest Brother" to second-class citizenship. ----'- Week two of fOUf - collaborators. The large and largely proletarian Rus­ sian-speaking population has resisted this Local Quota Week % Workers Power lost in East anti-democratic measure, mainly through Qn points) Two Europe without a compass the "Internationalist Movement". But While the Mandelites embrace Baltic here is one mass movement Workers Nazis in the name of "national liberation" Power explicitly refuses to support, slan­ Glasgow 90 54 60 and "independence", the left-centrist derously dismissing the mass protest strikes organized by Inter-Movement Workers Power group mimics Stalin's London 165 78 47 opposition to any national secession from against the reactionary language laws with the Soviet Union. In reprinting excerpts the canard that the "KGB-organised from the 26 August statement of the 'Intermovement' is coordinating a chau­ Regional 85 119 140 Central Committee of the Communist vinist campaign". In its strikes, Inter­ Party of the Soviet Union on the threat of Movement has raised the demand for civil war in the Baltics (WV no 484, 1 "equal rights for all nations". In speaking ( National Total 340 251 74 September), we stressed that the state­ with the New Yorlcer writer, its spokesmen ment "leaves out the critical element, were a Georgian, a Jew and a Russian insisted upon by Lenin, that all nations who had lived in Estonia virtually their not seeking counterrevolutionary social entire lives. Even Boris Kagarlitsky, a change were promised the right to fully leader of the Moscow People's Front, administratively disaffiliate from the rest reported after visiting Estonia that "the r­ Subscribe Now! --I of the Soviet Union". Workers Power program of the Inter-Movement looked I I says nothing about the danger of capitalist much more democratic than the Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League counterrevolution in the Baltics today but [Estonian] People's Front program" I I simply declares, ''we oppose calls for (Intemational Viewpoint, 20 February). I Name ______I independence in the sense of secession For the first time in decades, the Sov­ I Address ______I from the Soviet Union" (Worlcer.s- Power, iet workers-including in the Bal­ I I September 1989). tics-have begun to assert themselves as I Postcode ------Telephone ______At the same time as it falls into line an independent social force. The situation I behind the old tsarist doctrine of cries out for revolutionary leadership, for I D 9 issues of Workers Hammer for £2 I I (Overseas Subscriptions: Airmail £5.00) "Russia-One and Indivisible", Workers Trotskyist parties, to whose construction D 9 issues of Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist I Power capitulates to some of the worst the slick centrists are an obstacle as they I League/U.S. for £7 I nationalist excrescences of the Baltic trot eagerly behind the illusions and false All above subs include Spartacist, organ of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) movements, supporting the demand for consciousness of the masses. I D 3 issues of Women & Revo/ution lor £t.5O I "recognition of non-Russian languages as Adapted from Worlcen Vanguard I Make cheques payable/po_I 10: Spartaclat Publications, POBox 1041, London NW5 3EU I official languages". The very idea of an no 486, 29 September 1989 OCTOBER 1989 ~------~11 -r-. ) WORKERS .Smash apartheid! For workers revolution! uthAfrica:lacks efy aparthei elections

As South Africa's whites trekked to the polls on 6 September to· vote for the racist candidate of their choice, the coun­ try's oppressed and disenfranchised black majority registered its vote-and its power-in the factories and streets. Mines, mills, shops and schools were shut down and buses, trains and taxis idled as some two to three million black work­ ers-far more than the number of whites voting-staged a massive two-day stay­ away strike to protest the apartheid elec­ tions. The Independent (7 September) reported: ''With 90 per cent of urban workers estimated to be on strike, Cape Town, like Johannesburg and Durban, was as deserted as on a Sunday, eloquent­ ly demonstrating the degree to which the country's economy depends on non-white labour .... " Once again, the black prole­ tariat has shown it has the power, stand­ ing at the head of all the oppressed, to bring down apartheid capitalism. The general strike capped a six-week . t. "defiance campaign" against the apar­ AI' {WIde Woftd theid elections. Organised by the Mass 15 September-Ten thousand at Johannesburg police headquarters protest state terror against blacks in racist elections. Democratic Movement (MOM), which includes the now-banned United Demo­ and riot police charged into groups of killed in the apartheid butchers' bloody segregated sham parliamentary chambers, cratic Front and the Congress of South schoolchildren peacefully demonstrating, crackdown. the anti-apartheid MDM implicitly called African Trade Unions (COSATV), this whipping them with heavy leather sjam­ Black anger has been fuelled by a on whites to vote for the Democratic was the first sustained and most wide­ boles. In the days leading up to the elec­ flood of ·executions and death sentences Party. The DP was recently formed out spread wave of anti-apartheid protest tions, police stormed a cathedral to sup­ meted out by the white-supremacist reg­ of a merger of two smaller parties with since the brutal suppression of the town­ press an anti-apartheid rally and arrest ime in recent months, many on the basis the Progressive Federal Party, voice of ship rebellions of 1984-85. TheMDM liberal anti-apartheid leaders Desmond of the Hitlerite "common purpose doc­ the giant mining conglomerate Anglo protests directly defied the "state of em­ Tutu and Allan Boesak. Cops invaded the trine" under which anyone present at the American Corporation. ergency" imposed three years ago and a offices of COSATV and the home of its sCene of killings of police agents and frenzy of murderous repression called out general secretary, Jay Naidoo, arresting informers is deemed guilty of murder. In "Peace" wHh the apartheid by National Party president FW de Klerk. eleven trade unionists. On 30 August, late May, the Upington 14 were con­ regime And on election day there were protests over 200 women were arrested while on demned to death for being part of a large The election was seen as a referendum in at least 20 cities. their way to present a petition to the crowd which killed a black policeman in among whites on de Klerk's five-year Armoured cars terrorised the town­ British consulate in Cape Town. On. 1985. Two weeks later, four blacks were "action plan", which claims to offer re­ ships, cops chased down demonstrators, election day alone, 29 demonstrators were hanged in Pretoria, including the first form of the apartheid system while firmly woman to be executed in two years. maintaining white control. De Klerk took Twelve others from the Ciskei bantustan over as acting president in August after ("tribal homeland") were sentenced to fmally forcing PW Botha, the long-time hang for a 1987 "necklacing" (executing head of the apartheid state, to resign. informers and other apartheid collab­ Botha provoked a storm of outrage from orators by placing burning tyres around ultrarightists when he had tea with jailed their necks). Now, in the Delmas III trial, African National Congress leader Nelson 12 Pretoria anti-apartheid activists charg­ Mandela on 5 July, the first time a gov­ ed with being "ANC terrorists" face ernment official openly met with a rep­ possible death sentences. resentative of the banned organisation. The outcome of the election reflected Then the Weekly Mail revealed that for­ increasing polarisation within the white eign minister Pik Botha and other leading minority, as the National Party emerged National Party officials had been meeting with its narrowest majority in 41 years. with Mandela regularly for almost three The "Nats" lost ground on both flanks, years. Immediately after taking over from though the ultrarightist Conservative Botha, de Klerk flew off to discuss the Party gained less than expected while the ANC's new "peace plan" with Zambian "liberal" Democratic Party increased its president Kenneth Kaunda as a show of vote substantially. While successfully his "moderate" credentials. Man, of South Africa's black trade unionists see need to smash appealing to Indians and "coloureds" (of For years, the ANC has sought to apartheid system of capitalist exploitation. mixed race) to boycott elections for their continued on page 10 12 OCTOBER 1989