Newspaper of the Spartacist League Irish state rams through anti-working class Maastricht treaty DUBLIN - Much to the relief of unprecedented joint statement". (The Major, Kohl, Mitterrand and Reynolds, Electricity Supply Board workers who Ireland did not go the way of Denmark. were sold out under the class-collabor­ The Maastricht Treaty on European Free abortion on demand! ationist PESP will remember the last union was somewhat rehabilitated by such joint statement when the sam'e the 69 per cent "yes" vote in the low article in the Independent ([London), 18 ployment is the real price tag. Mean­ four parties called for ending the strike turn-out Irish referendum on 18 June. May) put it: "The government's pitch while the rural areas tended in the vast in April 1991.) The usual horse-trading The result was secured by a massive for a 'yes' vote is little short of electoral majority to vote in favour of the treaty transpired on the trickiest domestic campaign waged by the government bribery, with persistent emphasis on the despite the hysterical campaigning of questions. Thus, Labour got a specific with the active support of the treacher­ IR£6bn Dublin expects to garner ... if the arch-reactionary SPUC and Family commitment from each of the party ous Labour and ICfU tops. Although the treaty is passed". Solidarity elements for a no vote to leaders to declare that there would be the socially explosive abortion battle Significantly, the largest vote against "save the unborn". a further referendum in the autumn on - along with the question of the Maastricht came from the working-class The four main parties in the Dail­ the right to travel and information on Republic's sham "neutrality" - districts of Dublin. The government's Fianna Fail, the Progressive Democrats, abortion but to be sure Fianna Fail threatened to give Reynolds & Co a promises of EC prosperity didn't cut Fine Gael and Labour - blocked to refused to agree that the protocol of hard ride, in the end the promise of any ice here, with many worried that ram the treaty through, issuing what the the Maastricht Treaty which enshrines German gold proved overriding. As an increased austerity and further unem- Sunday Tribune termed an "almost continued on page 10 Black workers: mobilise and fight for power! South Africa: rage over apartheid massacre JUNE 22 - The grassy plain at the edge of the black township of Boipatong was turned into a killing field. In the Sesotho language, "boipatong" means "place to hide". But on Saturday, 20 June, there was nowhere to hide from the police and army sharpshooters. When President F W De Klerk arrived, hundreds of angry blacks prevented him from getting out of his armoured BMW. Holding the head of the apartheid state responsible for the bloody massacre three days earlier of more than 50 black residents, the angry crowd chased him .away, chanting "De Klerk go to hell!" Ninety minutes later a police hippo (armoured personnel car­ rier) roared up, disgorging heavily armed cops who suddenly began firing without warning. A dozen blacks fell in the first salvo, more were shot down as the blood­ bath continued. The slaughter at Boipatong was a deliberate provocation designed to dis­ credit the African National Congress (ANC), which had called a nationwide campaign of strikes and demonstrations to speed up negotiations for "power sharing". But instead of producing head­ lines about "black-on-black violence", the Apartheid terror In "post-apartheld" South Africa: black youths carrying wounded comrades In Boipatong, recalls images Inkatha impis (squads) brought in by the of 1976 Soweto rebellion. authorities may have set off the South African powder keg. Nelson Mandela's near Cape Town. Now the whole country, cratic South Africa) talks could be sunk vote, while the economic devastation and ANC leadership may appear to De Klerk this land drenched in the blood of black before they ever begin. Emboldened by misery of millions consigned to black to have an unlimited willingness to submit people, could blow. its victory in the 17 March "whites only" townships and squatter camps has sharply to insult, degradation and provocation. So much for the "neo-apartheid" of referendum, the government took a hard increased. The racist sociopaths at the However, the impoverished masses in the the "New South Africa" - which looks line against its ANC collaborators. More core of state power, from the SADF squalid townships have a much shorter more and more like the old. Already De than two years after the release of Nelson (South African Defence Force) to the fuse. Already in April, the apartheid baas Klerk has threatened to reinstate the Mandela and "legalisation" of the under­ shadowy DMI (Directorate of Military (boss) was run out of the coloured state of emergency, and the third round ground ANC and SACP (South African Intelligence), are consciously fomenting (mixed-race) township of Mitchell's Plain of CODESA (Conference for a Demo- Communist Party), blacks still cannot continued on page 4 --------------------kffer- Further exchange with RIL on the Russian Question Revolutionary Internationalist League Just to leave no doubt on the RIL "tum them against both wings of the the August events we wrote: 'in an British section of the International position of this aspect page 27 of Revol­ bureaucracy". This is answering Yeltsin's armed struggle pitting outright restor­ Trotskyist Committee utionary Internationalist 11 sets out the counterrevolutionary strike call. ationists against recalcitrant elements of position: ''The responsibility for Trotsky­ We in the International Communist the bureaucracy, defence of the collec­ 21 February 1992 ists was to oppose the call; in workplaces League called on Moscow workers to tivised economy would have been placed on the agenda whatever the Sta­ where there was a vote for strike action mobilise to crush the Yeltsinite forces. linists' intentions. Trotskyists would on the basis of Yeltsin's call we should The RIL was prepared to join with those have entered a military bloc with "the To the Editor have voted against, simultaneously putting counterrevolutionary forces. This is a Workers Hammer Thermidorian section ofthe bureaucracy forward our own proposals for action fundamental difference between our two against open attack by capitalist counter­ based on an independent programme, in­ organisations. Downing's own letter of revolution", as Trotsky postulated in Dear Comrade, cluding a fight to build strike action on December 1991 makes clear that RIL in the 1938 Transitional Programme. This Without wishing to re-open the debate that basis. Where strikes did take place in fact w.ould welcome workers answering was precisely our policy towards on the Soviet Union with you I must pro­ response to Yeltsin's call we would have Yeltsin's strike call and thus "make their Jaruzelski in 1981.' " test at the caption to the photograph participated, but attempted to turn them own demands and set their own agenda". which says "RIL says workers should The RIL - faced with a situation in against both wings of the bureaucracy." (Obviously if the strikes didn't take place Poland where the bureaucracy did not have 'answered' strike call by Russian I trust that makes our position clear. - which in fact they did not - it would chauvinist/imperialist stooge Boris Yelt­ simply collapse but took measures against Comradely, be hard for RIL or anyone else to partici­ Solidarnosc counterrevolution - chose to sin during August counter-coup." We said Gerry Downing for the RIL pate in them.) no such thing. The letter says that you be on the barricades with the clerical As we wrote in Worlrers Hammer no reactionaries and capitalist restorationists abhor the idea that "workers, answering 127 (January/February 1992): Yeltsin's strike call to 'defend democracy' WH replies: The cited quotation from in Walesa's camp, who (at the time) had might then make their own demands and Revolutionary Internationalist makes it "Calling for workers to sweep away a mass working-class base. In the USSR set their own agenda once they had felt clear that for the RIL "where strikes did Yeltin's barricades would have meant a last August, Yeltsin had no such base, the . their own strength and the weakness of take place in response to Yeltsin's call we military bloc with any of the coup "perestroika coup" committee committed forces that moved to crush the counter­ both sections of the bureaucracy." would have participated", attempting to political suicide and RIL was thus able to revolutionary rabble. This is the sticking straddle the fence. Its Third Campist point with the centrist RIL which, be­ methodology is not in question, nor the holden to social democratic 'anti-Stalin­ ism', can't stomach being in a bloc with side it would have taken had sections of Stalinists even in defence of a workers the Soviet proletariat answered Yeltsin's Leon Trotsky on state. Thus, they seek to distance them­ strike call. This continues to be the nub the royal family selves equally from the coup and Yelt­ of our debate with RIL on the Russian sin. Against RIL's Third Campism in question to which Downing refers.• The question of the monarchy is not "trivial", as much of the fake left claims; it is the linchpin for archaic values, servility, hierarchy and acceptance of the established order. Even now, as the institution of the British monarchy has become an object of open public ridicule, it finds its staunchest TROTSKY defenders among the arch-tl'rJiton of the LENIN Stop Hitler-lover Labour Party. The 11UJIJI1JT:hy, House of Lords and established churches are integral props to the maintenance of capitalist class rule in Britain; they will be swept away by proletarian revolution.