No 47 February 1983 20p BRITAIN • Northern Ireland •

- I

Northern Ireland 1983 presents a grim picture. British imperialist terror stalks the streets, as the Royal Ulster Constabulary carries out a '?hoot Or! s~Z~-t:' ~1,~~cl?-: 1?~·.~~Qi:~n ??:Q~ !H~t P('-::~l~] ;.c~n a-c·t~ \"! sts. The Catholic ghettos are hellholes of despair and oppression; the Protestant working-class areas scarcely better off. Against a backdrop of social deprivation, 25 per cent official unemployment and army/police re­ ",~~«.;d pression, the interpenetrated Catholic and Protestant communities are Top: British troops terrorise Belfast. Bottom: Droppin well after INlA bombing. locked into sectarian antagonisms which only seem to harden by the month. The conflicting claims of the Irish Catholic and Ulster Protestant peoples, two distinct communities sharing and contesting the same terri­ tory, cannot be democratically resolved within the framework of capital­ ipm. Every day the British army remains, it simply exacerbates the op­ pression of the Catholic masses and deepens the communal divisions. It is Troops out now - an elementary duty for proletarian revolutionists to demand their im­ mediate, unconditional withdrawal. But the Republican programme of forcible reunification of the Thirty Two Counties would simply reverse the current terms of oppression between Protestant and Catholic. There can be no solution to social oppression and the conflicting national/ smash the RUC/UOR! communal ciaims in Northern Ireland other than through the perspective of proletarian revolution, forging class unity between Catholic and Protestant workers in struggle against the common enemy. The gelignite bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army in a crowded pub in Ballykelly early last December, which killed six Prot­ Not Green against Orange estant civilians and eleven British soldiers, served only to deepen the sectarian hatred. From the standpoint of the proletarian class struggle, the Ballykelly bombing was an indefensible crime, an act of indiscrimi­ nate genocidal terrorism. continued on page 4 but class against class!

standby, but they aren't trained in running War anti-working class austerity and into fuel­ British water facilities. Any attempt to use ling the bourgeoisie's chauvinist crusade by the armed forces to break this strike must be blaming workers overseas for unemployment. Victory to the met with the full resistance of the trade Immediately the water workers walked out, union movement. the employers upped their offer to 7.3 per But the real reason Downing Street feels cent over 16 months. But sentiment to stay out confident that 'this is a fight we are going for the full claim remains firm among the water workers! to win' is the record of treachery by the strikers, and was only hardened by Employment The first national water workers strike be­ leadership of the labour movement. The labour Secretary Norman Tebbi t' s clumsy tirade against gan on 24 January when 20,000 manual workers movement has been on the defensive, as the the 'undemocratic' strike vote. One Doncaster walked off their jobs over a 15 per cent wage Tories rain down blow after blow upon workers union official reported, 'Far from there being claim. After months of fruitless haggling with and minorities. It can be turned around. But any weakening, people were more determined the National Water Council, which intransi­ that will require mili tant tactics and a strat­ than ever to see this out.' If the determi­ gently refused to budge beyond the govern­ egy which can break the dead hand of the nation is matched by a programme to win, and ment's four per cent wage limit for the public Labour/TUC bureaucracy. Despite widespread not the scenario of a 'gentlemanly strike' (as sector, trade union leaders were finally forced militancy at the base the ASLEF strike was the Sunday Times put it) mapped out by the to call their men out. The bourgeoisie's anti­ stabbed in the back, the health workers dis­ trade union leaders thus far, this strike can strike propaganda mill immediately went into pute was restricted to diversionary 'days of move forward to a rapid victory. That means high gear, retailing endless stories about action' and ineffectual rolling strikes with shutting it down hard, now! hardship and inconvenience, daily featuring no attempt to bring out the broader sectors of The leadership of the Scottish water statistics about the number of households industry, and the potentially powerful miners workers, who have yet to join the strike, are forced to boil water, the number of infants were discouraged from striking by a left-talking now threatening to bring Scotland out. Now is scalded, ad nauseum. leadership which made no attempt to mobilise the time to do it. Thatcher has denounced the Even before the strike began, the govern­ them for serious strike action. Instead the strikers and called for a return to the Vic­ ment was mooting threats of calling out the bureaucrats counsel the workers to channel torian age of the 'puritan work ethic'. Well, army to maintain water services. The Ministry their energies and hatred for the Tories into why not return Downing Street to the days of of Defence reportedly has 15,000 troops on electing a Labour government committed to Cold continued on page 10 in reply and a background article are published in the 28 January issue of fvorkers Vanguard.) The letter's weird ramblings were buttressed by 'evidence' of Spartacist 'infiltration of WSL's witchhunt manual, labor unions' and '''Gestapo-like'' tactics' taken Last summer the Workers Socialist League (WSL) trial proceedings were a response to MAC's ex­ from, among others, the International Workers of Alan Thornett published a 64-page bulletin posure of the CWA bureaucrats' colluding with Party (IWP -- local followers of Argentine laughably purporting to be a 'Spartacist Truth the telephone company to cover up impending re­ pseudo-Trotskyist adventurer Nahuel Moreno) Kit'. An upcoming issue of Spartacist Britain dundancies, but frDm the beginning Imerzel & Co and the WSL. The 14 January MAC leaflet noted will feature an extensive reply to this tired tried to obscure this issue, hoping to try that the letter quoted (or misquoted) various recitation of anti-Spartacist slander and de­ Ikegami for her well-known political support for SL/US documents in Bri tish spelling, and added: fence of/cover-up for the WSL's own politics of the Spartacist League/US (SL/US). 'That's because these quotes are pulled from craven Labour loyalism and Stalinophobia. (These For years the CWA bureaucrats nationally and a pamphlet, introduced at the Ikegami trial, are the people who call themselves 'Bennites', in SF have been out to get MAC, the only organ­ entitled Spartacist Truth Kit published by a and who said workers should enforce Reagan's ised opposition in the union, for its consistent British group called the Workers Socialist anti-Soviet pipeline boycott when even Thatcher exposure of their pro-company and pro-CIA be­ League, a group that labels itself ... are refused to do so!) But the real purpose of the trayals and its fight to mobilise the membership you ready? ... Trotskyist! What Jim [Imerzel] 'Truth Kit' comes in its conclusion: in strike action. And it's not just the doesn't tell you is that the claim of this 'As proven slanderers, scabs, provocateurs bureaucrats: four years a80 the Secret Ser- peculiar and dishonest pamphlet is that and poseurs; as wanton revisionists and vice invaded a CWA convention to seize a ~~C Spartacists are hopeless sectarians, people chauvinists; as the hyenas of the left whose delegate as she prepared to speak out against a who "on principle" abstain from any attempt main task is to latch onto and destroy rival proposed speech by then-US president Carter. to gain influence in the labor movement.' left-wing organisations, the Spartacists When more than 1000 local members (more than In his attempt to witchhunt Ikegami and MAC, should be exposed, hounded and driven out of 20 per cent of the total) signed a MAC-initiated Imerzel has dug up a sorry World War II-vintage each and every working class arena where they petition demanding the recall of the local American Stalinist pamphlet, accepted the pro­ show their heads. The information in this executive officers, an increasingly desperate ferred help of the IWP political thugs -- and pamphlet will, hopefully, assist those Imerzel and his friends sent a McCarthyite smear read into the trial record the quote from the Trotskyists who undertake such a task.' letter around to the 9410 membership, claiming WSL's 'Truth Kit' cited at the beginning of the And that's just what it's being used for now-­ that 'MAC is an affiliate of the Spartacist article. To our knowledge, since the witchhunt not by 'Trotskyists', mind yOU, but by the League (SL), an international Trotskyist­ against Ikegami and MAC by the CIA-loving bu­ deeply anti-communist Cold War bureaucrats of communist political sect' (their emphasis). Ac­ reaucrats began, not one of these pseudo­ the Communications Workers of America (ClVA) cording to this bizarre and clinically paranoid Trotskyist tendencies, including the WSL and its trade union in San Francisco. CWA Local 9410 epistle, 'the Spartacist League/MAC' plans an tiny American co-thinkers the Revolutionary officials have introduced the WSL's witchhunt 'illegal strike ... as a step towards the de­ Workers League, has backed away from this vile manual alongside material from other fake left­ struction of our Local Union', and: and dangerous frame-up. ists (and even the Moscow Trials!) as 'evidence' ' ... if you believe as we do that citizens in Fortunately the members of CWA Local 9410 in a kangaroo court trial aimed at purging a a "free" society must be permitted to hold know Ikegami and her work (which is a far cry militant local Executive Board member. different political views without fear of co­ from Alan Thornett's scabbing and pimping for The leadership of the CW~ (representing erCion, intimidation and physical reprisals, Labour in Britain). They feel differently and American telephone workers) has always been then YOU had better "get involved" before we hope that they will treat these errand boys composed of notorious Cold Warriors and is known it's too late. As only four (4) Executive of the pro-capitalist officials with the con­ for its ties to CIA 'labour' fronts like the Officers in only one (1) of nine-hundred tempt they so richly deserve. And to the author American Institute for Free ~abor Development. (900) CWA Local Unions, we are unable to of the WSL's slimy 'Truth Kit', some advice. You Last July Local 9410 officials led by president withstand alone the very sUbstantial "might" may not be much of a writer (and certainly no Jim Imerzel initiated a purge trial against of the International Spartacist League with 'Trotskyist'), but for a job that suits your Kathy Ikegami, a leader of the class-struggle its several newspapers and other resources.' talents, why not apply to Frank Chapple? We're opposition Militant Action Caucus (MAC). The (The complete letter, as well as MAC's leaflet sure Jim Imerzel will provide a good reference .• ktrer------­ under five minutes. Now the RCPer told us to leave the room. RCP troublemaker no 1 (RCPTMl) made himself present. He repeated what their So much for Rep's 'Inti-racism' comrade s~id about us laa¥ing the room and said, 'That happened three thousand miles away, anyway Dear Comrades, Then the meeting began with a presentation by the blacks in America are much better off than Given the Revolutionary Communist Party's an Asian who was a victim of a recent fire­ the ones in Bri tain' . I shouted, 'You are telling [RCP] claim to 'fight' racism and its policy of bombing by some fascists in Liverpool, then an me that the blacks are better off in America excluding the communists of the Spartacist Asian representative from WAR got up and made with the KKK'. Then RCP troublemaker no 2 (RCPTM League from its public meetings, I thought our the most awful presentation I ever heard. He 2) told me to shut up and get out. I refused to readers would be interested in a report of the began with the reasons why the 'blacks' (any­ leave. When one of our comrades raised workers RCP's public meeting on racism in Britain held body not white and British) were enticed over democracy RCPTM2 said 'the SL have got none'. I on December 7 in Liverpool. here by various Labour and Tory governments who was given a last public warning and threatened Because of the RCP's policy of excluding went from India to the West Indies promoting with physical expulsion. As I began to argue communists, four of our comrades entered the Britain. Now they are no longer needed for cheap about the threat of violence, RCPTM2 took my room and sat separately from each other. Then I labour so they have passed numerous immigration/ bag and threw it out of the room. I guessed looked at the lit table. There I saw back is­ nationality acts directed at the 'blacks' to that I was going to follow my bag very soon. I sues of the Next Step and various books and have them thrown out of Britain or throw young told him you want to use violence because you pamphlets of and by Trotsky. When I returned to 'blacks' on the capitalists' scrap-heap. He said cannot address me politically. No sooner had I my seat, a black RCPer came up to me and asked that 'we would have to create a conditiop where said that than RCPTMI and 2 ousted me from my 'How did you hear of the meeting?' I replied, racism and fascism would be unacceptable to us'. seat and I was heading for the door. Two SL 'I originally came from Toxteth, moved down to This anti-racist meeting ended with the senti­ comrades entered the room and prevented them Birmingham, came up for the meeting.' So he be­ ment: if you want to change the decaying capi­ throwing me out of the room and most probably gan to talk about how the RCP deals with racism talist system without the working class, join the stopping me from ending up down the bottom of and fascism and WAR [Workers Against Racism] RCP. Now the floor was opened up for a round of the steps. They closed down their meeting. So cropped up in the discussion. I painted out that discussion. Their chairman was very willing to much for the RCP's position on racism. the likes of Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill while let me speak first. (I guess because I'm black) sponsoring WAR are at the same time pushing pro­ So I got down to business. I started off that I Comradely, tectionism which has a racis t backlash, di vides was in the YCL and left it because they could Norris B up the workin~ class internationally and leads not and would not want to fight racism and fas­ Spartacist Britain replies: And it's not just up to trade wars, then shooting wars. Naturally cism but relied on state bans; they also took the RCP's policy on racism that is bankrupt. On he had nothing to say in reply. part in the work of the ANL. I pointed out that 26 January they excluded SLers from a Sheffield the pseudo-confrontationist strategy the ANL had University public meeting on Derry's Bloody then and the RCP has now is to substitute them­ Sunday -- while welcoming campus Tory club mem­ selves for the working class. Well, in t~e eyes bers to attend and debate! So much for 'anti­ of the RCP the working class are 'racists'. I imperialism' on Ireland .... pointed out trade union/minority integrated de­ fence guards based on the unions are the way to CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: run these creeps off the streets as the SL/US BIRMINGHAM ------(021) 643 5914 did in Washington. Changing from the Washington LIVERPOOL ------(051) 708 6886 Price: 65p mobilisation, I said where does the RCP stand in LONDON ------(01) 278 2232 SHEFFIELD ------(0742) 737067 inc p&p Poland? In their 'Black December' pamphlet the RCP sides with the KPN/fascists in Poland. (At this time their black RCPer had his head in his hands.) When I added, in Afghanistan the RCP SPARtaClST team up with anti-communist Islamic reaction­ aries dropping the woman question, their chair BRITAIN told me to wind up. I had a brief pause and con­ Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the tinued. I told them that they have the same po­ international Spartacist tendency. sition on the Russian Question as the Labour EDITORIAL BOARD: Len Michelson leditorl, Sheila Hayward Iproduction manager), Faye Koch, John Masters, David Strachan Party 'lefts'. I then sat down. One of our contacts then got up and rammed CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jeff Pascoe the anti-Klan demo down their throats in her Published monthly, except in January and September, by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WCl H 8JE. intervention. She was told to wind up and we Subscriptions: 10 issues for £2.00; overseas airmail £5.00. Make payable/post to Spartacist Publications, were threatened with physical ~xpulsion. Another Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd ITUl. PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE SL comrade, Alison, protested that the guy from Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily WAR had just over an hour and our supporter had express the editorial viewpoint. _ 11P ..

2 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Freedom through submission? The British Raj and the Gandhi myth Film review 'Gandhi' Directed by R Attenborough

By Caroline Carne 'Columbia Pictures presents A World Event. It took one remarkable man to defeat an Empire and free a nation of 350 million people. His goal was freedom. His strategy was peace. His weapon I was his humanity.' Now the story can be told. A story to warm every bourgeois liberal heart from Britain to India; a story dedicated to imper­ Submitting to ialist butcher Lord Mountbatten, approved by Empire, \942: Indian despot Indira Gandhi, and blessed by every apologist for imperialism in the India Gandhi jokes with 'Mahatma' Gandhi left behind. Stafford Cripps, Richard Attenborough's film 'Gandhi' paints Labour's Colonial a picture of British imperialism as essentially Secretary in benign. True, mistakes were made, like the 1919 .( imperialist War massacre of Indian civil rights demonstrators at Cabinet. Amritsar. But these were aberrations, not pol­ icy. The film presents Indian independence as the idea of one saintly and principled individu­ ual who inspired the Indian people to eschew outcasts. from the Rawlatt Bills granting 'emergency revolutionary revolt in favour of passive re­ And in Britain, the bourgeoisie's hatred and powers' against 'conspiracy and political out­ sistance aimed at winning the hearts and minds contempt for the oppressed masses of the 'Old rage' to the aerial machine-gunning of re­ of English men of reason. After the British Empire' has not lessened with the loss of its bellious tribes to the anti-Communist Cawnpore withdrew, these ideals were drowned in blood by colonies. The Asian and black minorities im­ and Meerut conspiracy trials. And British atroc­ the barbaric masses. ported as cheap labour in the 1950s are victims ities continued through World War II. In 1943 The' Ram Rajya' (' God's Kingdom') which Gandhi of daily harassment by the cops, racist and Churchill ordered all ships carrying food to and his Indian Congress Party allies promised fascist attacks on the streets and draconian India to be stopped in the cause of his Mediter­ would follow the departure of the British, did immigration laws. The machinery of repression ranean campaign, and between one-and-a-half and not bring freedom and equality for the Indian perfected and refined in the 'Jewel .of the three-and-a-half million Bengalis died of masses. After the genocidal imperialist Empire' is now used to enforce poverty and fear starvation. partition into India and Pakistan, the daily at home. Writing in 1922, Leon Trotsky captured misery of the toiling masses, minorities and the oh-so-civilised racist attitudes of British Saint Gandhi women continues. Strikes and demonstrations are b~urgeois society, in particular its labour The prettifying of British imperialism in viciously suppressed, child labour is ex­ movement misleaders: 'Gandhi' also serves to canonise Gandhi as a ploited, starvation still claims thOUS9~ds, 'They have been and always will be the sain~ lifted above the conflict of class forces. communal rioting devastates Jmdii'il, Kashmir and slaves of public opinion~ They are Gandhi feared the violence of the oppressed Ass am. Women who cannot afford their dowries are thoroughly imbued with the anti-democratic burned alive and the Untouchables remain exploiter, planter and parasite views on above the violence of the oppressors; he was races which are distinguished by the perfectly prepared to conciliate the latter to colour of their skins, by the fact prevent the former. The film's early section, that they do not read Shakespeare, or set in South Africa, shows how he led a campaign wear stiff collars.' (Writings on for the repeal of the South African pass laws .. Britain vol 3) which led to an interview and an agreement in General Smuts' office. It does not show that the The truth about Amritsar agreement left the laws on the statute book, or that Gandhi told his followers (to their just Attenborough's film whitewashes the outrage) that he would now be first in line to British Raj in many ways. (Not one rac­ volunteer his fingerprints for registration. Nor ist word passes the lips of a British of­ does it show that he called off a second strug­ ficer in India -- such epithets are re­ gle in 1913 when it coincided with a white served for South Africans encountered miners' strike on the Rand, leaving the govern­ during Gandhi's early years.) But the ment free to crush both movements. most striking cover-up is over the Back in India Gandhi presented himself to the Amritsar massacre, the one significant faction-ridden Congress elite in 1919 as the British atrocity which is actually de­ perfect instrument to contain the already power­ picted, indeed as the climax of the ful movement against imperialism (inspired by first half of the film. the Russian Revolution and the bo~rgeois­ The British have always been anxious nationalist movement of Ataturk in Turkey). to present the massacre of at least 379 From the very beginning of his satyagraha unarmed men, women and children and the ('peaceful resistance') campaigns he claimed wounding of another 1500 as the aberra­ that 'truth' could only be followed by 're­ tion of the local commanding officer fraining from violence to property'. With his General Dyer and his Gurkha mercen­ 'personal sincerity' and wearing of the peasants' aries. 'Gandhi' retails the same lie. khaddar (homespun), Ga~dhi's peaceful resistance Following the massacre the British Com­ was the knot which tied the naivete and self­ flission is seen earnestly enquiring of denying blindness of a peasantry he led in the Dyer whether he really ordered his men first stages of their struggle to the treacher­ to shoot at the heart of the crowd, ous manoeuvres of the Indian bourgeoisie. As 'whether a little girl could appeal for Indian Communist leader M N Roy explained in help against your fire?' Later they are 1922: shown assuring Gandhi and Pandit Nehru 'Nonviolence, resignation, perfect love and that it was 'all the evil deeds of one the release from the pain of living -- this individual. In reality, Dyer's actions is the substance of Indian philosophy handed were condoned by his superior officers. down through the ages by a powerful caste of The fi 1m makes no mention of the Bri tish kings, priests and phi~osophers who found it campaign to reinstate Dyer as the hero good to keep the people in subjection. Mr who forestalled another Indian Mutiny. Gandhi is nothing but the heir of this long The House of Lords passed a motion in line of ghostly ancestors -- he is the per­ his support and the readers of the fect product of heredity and environment.' Morning Post subscribed a £25,000 tes­ (India in Transition) timonial in his defence. Dyer confirmed The film shows Gandhi, Nehru and other Con­ the he 'would do the same thing again', gress leaders meeting, seemingly on the morrow and upon his death was given a state of the Amritsar massacre, to plan their first funeral. passive resistance campaign. In reality, Gandhi Nor was Amritsar the last of the What 'Gandhi' doesn't show: (top) British soldiers forced languished for an entire year in Amritsar, pro­ crimes and atrocities perpetrated by Indians to crawl along the street where British missionary was posing that the Montagu Reforms (to extend the the British. The nascent proletariat attacked in Amritsar; (bottom) General Dyer, who ordered the franchise) be accepted with thanks. When the and rising anti-imperialist movement satyagraha was finally launched, it soon moved Amritsar massacre, was given a state funeral for his services after World War I was subjected to one to Empire. beyond Congress control. By 1922 the movement act of brutal repression' after another: continued on page 10

FEBRUARY 1983 3 Regiment' (Workers Power). But. far from being an ialism, not justifiable as the "violence of extention of the barracks, either literally or the oppressed" and are no more "progressive" Ireland ... metaphorically, this Catholic-owned town-centre or defensible than similar acts by Protest­ pub was also 'the 'drinking haunt of' and 'known ant paramilitary groups.' (Continued from page 1) t~ be regularly used by' many Protestant and Not Green against Orange but class against 'The British bourgeoisie seized on Ballykelly Catholic civilians, including on the night in to fuel its chauvinist crusade at home against question. class! the Irish, racial minorities, socialists -- any­ The fact that more soldiers than civilians A revolutionary programme for Ireland must one not true-blue British and proud of it. Within died in the blast is not decisive in assessing start from the understanding that British impe­ 48 hours these imperialist guardians of democ­ this attack. The death tolls could easily have rialism has, and can have no progressive role to racy issued a Prevention of Terrorism Act edict been reversed, or higher in general. And anyway play. Its troops must be immediately and uncon­ ditionally removed. The working class and both barring three Sinn Fein leaders recently elected the INLA ~penly claims that the civilian victims to the Northern Ireland Assembly from entering communi ties must be guarded not only against the the mainland 'United Kingdom'. Fleet Street terror of the imperialist army and the RUC but churned out reams of invective against 'mindless against the sectarian rampages of the Orange Irish terrorists', echoed in Parliament by Labour gangs and the communal violence of the Republi­ and Tory alike. Terror?! Since November alone cans like Ballykelly. Thus we fight for the for­ the RUC has shot dead at least seven people, mation of integrated, anti-sectarian workers mil­ strafing their cars and bodies with gunfire like itias to combat sectarian terror, Orange and a 1930s gangster film. So blatant has the ram­ Green, as well as imperialist rampage. page been that even the venerable imperialist But communal/national antagonisms will not Times published a worried editorial. simply disappear on the morrow of a British We shed no tears for the eleven soldiers withdrawal. Northern Ireland, like the Near East killed in the Droppin Well pub. But far from be­ or Cyprus, contains distinct national or commu­ ing a blow for Irish freedom, as both the INLA nal populations with conflicting national inter­ and various of its 'left' cheerleaders claimed, es~s. While the Protestant population are at the Ballykelly bombing was an act of sectarian present privileged oppressors in relation to the murder -- of a piece with Irish Republican Army CatholiCS, a mere reversal of the terms of op­ pression would manifestly not be a democratic ~ombings like the Abercorn Cafe in 1972 and La Mon house in 1978. Marxists defend against solution. More immediately, fear of such an out­ come drives Protestant working people into the the capitalist state the perpetrators of such arms of imperialism and Orange reaction. acts as the killing of British soldi~rs at Warrenpoint, the assassinations of Airey Neave The only r,oad to forging the necessary class unity between Protestant and Catholic prolet­ and Earl Mountb~tten, and the IRA's recent kill­ ing of county court judge William Doyle, a arians is through a programme which attacks the op­ senior representative of the Six Counties ju­ ression of the Catholic masses at the expense diciary with a reputation for severe sentencing. not of their Protestant class brothers, but of Even attacks on such targets which unfortunately the capitalists. Today both the Sinn Fein Repub­ injure or kill civilians, like the bombing of licans and the Paisleyite Loyalists garner the Aldershot officers' mess in 1972, remain working-class support in their respective com­ defensible. muni ties through exploiting fears of still deeper But even such defensible Republican terrorism economic devastation. What will break down the alike to class struggle. is in no sense part of our revolutionary-prolet­ communal barriers is joint class struggle arian strategy. Marxists reject the strategy of deserved to die. According to its statement, against a ruling class out to crush and terrorism. Petty-bourgeois terrorism, Trotsky they were 'fraternising with members of the se­ emiserate the workers of both communities. The pOinted out, lowers the consciousness and ac­ curity'forces' and thus 'collaborating' with the massive unemployment and economic misery could, tivism of the masses, turning their hopes to British army and 'helping to maintain the now under a revolutionary leadership which does not some great avenger or emancipator who will defunct Mason-Prior policy of the Ulsterisation seek to redivide an ever-smaller pie, provide eventually release them from the chains of op­ of our people' . the spark for joint class struggle. Against en­ pression. More specifically, behind the terror­ At bottom, these are arguments for national­ trenched Orange privilege we advance a series of ism of the Irish Republican movement lies a ist genocide. Until last December Ballykelly, a transitional demands which transcend the con­ thoroughly counterposed programme of Irish Cath­ town of 600 people (two-thirds Protestant and straints of capitalism, including a sliding olic national unity against not only British one-third Catholic) some 17 miles from Derry, scale of wages and hours and an end to discrimi­ imperialism but the Northern Ireland Protestant had been comparatively untouched by the sectar­ nation in housing and employment, in order to cut through die fear that more jobs for Cath­ community as well. And this leads straight to ian strife which ravages Northern Ireland. It olics mean fewer for Protestants. atrocities like Ballykelly. possessed one of the few integrated primary But revolutionary working-class unity cannot The short history of the INLA and its politi­ schools in the entire Six Counties. The INLA's be forged simply around economic demands. We of cal wing the Irish Republican Socialist Party bombing was directed as much at destroying this course oppose the necessarily seCtarian Six (IRSP) is a living refutation of the lie that si tuation (in their words, 'the Ulsterisation of County Northern Ireland statelet. But to the call Republicanism is not counterposed to a programme our [ie' Catholic] people') as at killing sold­ for the forcible reunification of Ireland, in­ of proletarian socialism. When the IRSP emerged iers of the imperialist army. In this they rival cluding in its seemingly more left-wing version from a split in the Official IRA in 1974-75, in Menachem Begin who also once claimed to be of a 'united socialist Ireland' or '32-county rhetoriC (and perhaps even in the subjective im­ fighting imperialism. In the 1940s Begin's Zion­ workers republic',.we counterpose the call for pulse of many of its founding members) it went ist Irgun, another nationalist-terrorist group an Irish workers republic in a socialist federa­ further to the left within the framework of Re­ which fought British imperialism, often chose as tion of the British Isles. This slogan both em­ publicanism than most past Irish nationalist its targets workplaces (like the Haifa oil refi­ phasises the iron link between class struggle on groups. It claimed James Connolly as its histori­ nery and docks) which had miljtant traditioris of the two islands -- reinforced by the number of cal mentor and vowed to combine the traditions Joint Arab-Jewish class struggle. Irish or Irish-descended workers in Britain -­ of Republicanism and socialism. But, like oil Further, the INLA openly contends that anyone and leaves open the question of the future place and water, the two do not mix. (especi ally Protes tan ts) who 'fraternises' wi th a of the Protestants in such a socialist Within a few years of its foundation the IRSP soldier, or even happens to be in the same pub as federation. had settled back into the Republican mainstream. one, is thereby a legitimate target for mass as­ If anything it presently exceeds the Provisional sassination. By their logic, anyone who practises Fake left: Tailing Green nationalism, or advocates any form of cross-communal contact, IRA in militarist sectarianism. Is it any acci­ bowing to imperialism dent that the spectacular Ballykelly atrocity who does not acquiesce to their nationalist came so hard on the heels of the Provisional schema, not to mention any backward or reaction­ The response of opportunist British leftists Sinn Fein's turn towards electoral tactics, with ary-minded Protestant worker, deserves to be kil­ to Ballykelly demonstrates their utter failure its attendant internal debate? The IRSP merely led. Proletarian revolutionists fighting for to provide a revolutionary-proletarian perspec­ underlines its Catholic-sectarian character when class unity would be foremost on their hit-list. tive. The Communist Party and Militant tendency it calls on voters in the Irish Republic to sup­ This is straight reactionary communalism, in es­ predictably denounced Ballykelly but as part of port Fianna Fa'il, the main bourgeois ruling party sence every bit the equal of Protestant terror their utterly craven pro-imperialist position of the clerical Southern state (itself beset by gangs like the Ulster Defen~e Association and Ul­ on Ireland. These reformists condemn out of hand deep economic misery and social oppression). And ster Volunteer Force. The fact that many Republi­ all terrorist actions and refuse to defend the the INLA's claim to attack only 'military tar­ can sectarian atrocities are carried out in perpetrators of attacks on the British army and gets' (in contrast to the IRA's 'economic war­ ostensible retaliation for UDA/UVF anti-Catholic the likes of Mountbatten and Neave against the fare') is meaningless given its claim that pubs attacks does not justify them one iota. like the Droppin Well are such military targets. In our 'Theses on Ireland' (Spartacist no 24, Having come full circle within the Republican Autumn 1977), we outlined the Leninist stance to­ tradition, and with the Provisionals lncreas­ wards terrorism in Ireland: The struggle ingly engaged in empty 'socialist' rhetoric of '15. In military conflicts between Irish na­ of the their own, INLA spokesmen now openly project an tionalist organisations and the British army/ Trotskyist left eventual merger with at least part of the IRA. state authorities we defend the actions of the former since this is still a struggle of an Opposition oppressed nationality against imperialism, ... against 8allykelly: A sectarian crime 'Outside this military struggle with British Stalinist betrayal In a 10 January 1983 statement the INLA jus­ imperialism and its direct agents, in the con­ tified the Ballykelly bombing and threatened flict between the lrish Catholic and Protest­ more: our soldiers will not hesitate to ant communities and their respective Price: 45p carry out such actions again' (quoted in Guard­ organisations, the national/communal aspect ian, 11 January). It warned publicans not to transcends any formal left/right differences. serve army or RUe men lest their premises too Such violence is frequently directed against become targets for attack. The various Republi­ symbols of non-sectarianism (for exaruple, can-tailing British leftists, trying to concoct pubs where both Catholic and Protestant work­ excuses for the INLA, claimed that the pub was ers socialise) and is an obstacle to any form just a sort o~ army social centre. It was, they of integrated class struggle. Terrorist acts wrote, 'known,to be regularly used by the Brit­ directed against the Protestant community by Make payable/post to: ish army of occupation' (Revolutionary Communist organisations of the oppressed Irish Catholic Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, london We1 H 8JE Group) and 'the drinking haunt of the Cheshire communi ty are in n'o way a blow against imper~

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN bourgeois state. Militant in particular claims have championed these Labour lefts now try to the workers' leadership after the defeat of the that the road to socialism in Ireland lies prettify these alternative schemes to maintain 1916 Easter Rebellion and the execution of Con­ through uniting Catholic and Protestant workers capitalist 'law and order'. nolly and other socialists. Three years later in day-to-day trade union economic struggle and The former International Marxist Group (now the defeat of the Belfast engineering strike and building a Labour Party like that in Britain. renamed Socialist League -- an apt name change, the purging of 10,000 Catholic and 3000 militant Such a perspective is a dead-end anywhere -- but since this was the name of the 1930s organisa­ Protestant workers from the industry struck a in Northern Ireland it means a direct capitula­ tion led by Sir Stafford Cripps, front-man for body blow against the militant sections of the tion to British imperialism and Orange privi­ British divide and rule in India) used to chant proletariat of industrial Ulster and tightened lege, as Militant (and the CP) make clear 'All the way with the IRA'. Now while continuing the grip of communalism and nationalism in both through their disgraceful opposition to the call to pay rhetorical tribute to the Republicans communities. for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of they echo the Benn/Livingstone calls to 'end the Even since the imperialist partition of British troops. violence', a Labourite version of the pro­ 1920-21 ushered in, as Connolly predicted, a Other smaller left groups greeted Ballykelly imperialist Ulster women's peace campaign. In­ 'carnival of reaction', there have been signif­ with cheers for its supposed 'anti-imperialism'. side the Labour Committee on Ireland, the jaded icant opportunities for forging revolutionary Accepting, even championing, the deepening of ex-IMG and others repudiate the elementary call class unity. In the early 1930s, Catholic and the existing Catholic/Protestant divisions, for 'Troops out now' in favour of a studiously Protestant outdoor relief workers united in a groups like the RCG claim that any criticism of vague 'commitment to withdrawal' by a future major strike wave (many were under the influence the Republican movement is necessarily 'chauvin­ Labour-administered imperialist government. of the nascent Irish Communist party, the Revol­ ist', while Workers Power limits itself to calls Meanwhile Workers Power as usual reserves its utionary Workers Groups). When groups of Prot­ for mobilising what they call 'nationalist work­ 'anti-imperialist' tough-talk on Ballykelly for estant workers tried to join United Irishmen ers'. Counterposing Green nationalism to capitu­ its little-read monthly, while its industrial commemoration parades with banners reading lation to British imperialism is not Leninism. newsletter ('For BL Castle Bromwich and Long­ 'Break the connection with Capitalism', the IRA And in fact the two are not mutually exclusive. bridge plants', 6 January) confines itself to a ordered them thrown off the demonstrations. Today a host of left-wing organisations find mealy-mouthed imperialism-is-responsible-for­ Thirty-five years later, when the 1969-70 themselves simultaneously apologising for Green the-violence line, including support for Living­ Derry civil rights movement exploded in the nationalism and cosying up to 'liberal' British stone's 'firm stand' in inviting Sinn Fein rep­ Catholic ghettos against entrenched Orange priv­ imperialism via the left wing of the Labour resentatives to London. ilege, it initially gathered some support among Party. Protestants. But in the absence of a proletar­ While mass demonstrations swept the world Opportunities for class unity ian-revolutionary leadership, the movement was against British imperialism's intransigence to­ and Republic sabotage quickly shifted back onto a Catholic v Protest­ wards Bobby Sands and his comrades in the H Both the cheerleaders of Ballykelly and the ant axis, as tit-for-tat murders began on both Block Republican hunger strikes two years ago, open 'left' apologists for British imperialism sides and the Republicans asserted their nation­ the dead hand of Labourism on the bulk of the who denounce even defensible acts of terror alist leadership. British left was manifested in the comparatively agree that Republicanism represents the histor­ few, pitifully small protest pickets and demon­ ically legitimate leadership and ideology of the strations. And to a man they dropped campaigning Irish Catholic masses. In contrast proletarian Towards the socialist revolution for the elementary 'Troops out now' slogan -­ revolutionists understand that the present com­ Until the revolutionary programme of Trotsky­ with the excuse that the IRA, itself appealing munal barriers between Protestant and Catholic ism takes hold among the working masses of the to liberal 'humanitarian' sentiment among a wing workers are not immutable, that there have been North and South, both Catholic and Protestant, of the British bourgeoisie, was opposed to it. many, albeit often transient, opportunities for the blood-drenched legacy of imperialist oppres­ In contrast the Spartacist League continued to revolutionary working-class unity against impe­ sion and communal sectarianism will continue to champion as a central demand in the hunger rialism and both the Orange and Green bourgeoi­ haunt Ireland. It is to the tradition of mili­ strike solidarity protests, the immediate, uncon­ sies -- but that in the absence of a proletarian tant class struggle of the Irish proletariat ditional withdrawal of the British army of vanguard those opportunities were inevitably that today's revolutionists must look, forging terror. sabotaged by the sectarians on both sides. Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard parties on both Today the Tony Benn/Ken Livingstone wing of In the early years of the century, as great sides of the partition, on both sides of the the Labour Party talks vaguely about a 'British proletarian class battles rocked Belfast and Irish Sea. The Spartacist League says: Troops withdrawal' from Ireland as a way for imperial­ Dublin, groups like Sinn Fein were small and is­ out now! Smash the RUC/Ulster Defence Regiment! ism to cut its losses and salvage a few more olated, in the shadow of and openly against the Down with the Prevention of Terrorism Act! Not quid for social services at home. (A wing of the revol,utionary working-class movement led by Green against Orange but class against class! Liberal Party takes a similar position.) Benn Connolly and Jim Larkin. Sinn Fein denounced Against all variants of dead-end nationalism and proposes to replace the British army with an im­ strikes and socialism as 'En~lish diseases' (as decrepit social democracy, we counterpose the perialist police operation by the United abortion is described in the South today). Their programme of revolutionary internationalism. Nations, along the lines of Korea, the Congo and hold strengthened only with the defeat of the Forward to an Irish section of the rehorn Fourth the Middle East. And the various fake lefts who 1913 Dublin general strike and the beheading of International!. A proletarian perspective for Ireland

We reprint below excerpts from 'Theses on Ireland', adopted by the International Executive Committee of the international Spartacist tend­ ency and published in Spartacist no 24 (autumn 1977). The complete theses are available from Spartacist Publications at 45p including P&p.

3. As Leninists we are opposed to all forms of national oppression and privilege and stand for the equality of nations. Writing in 1913 Lenin succinctly set forth as follows the fundamental principles underlying the revolutionary social­ democratic position on the national question: 'As democrats, we are irreconcilably hostile to any, however slight, oppression of any nationality and to any privileges for any nationality. As democrats, we demand the right of nations to self-determination in the political sense of that term ... ie, the right to secede. We demand unconditional July 1981: Spartacist protection of the rights of every national contingent demands minority. We demand broad self-government and 'Troops out now!' at autonomy for regions, which must be demar­ hunger strike solidarity cated, among other terms of reference, in demonstration. respect of nationality too. '(Draft Programme of the 4th Congress of Social Democrats of the Latvian Area', Collected Works, vol 19) Thus, the right to self-determination means simply the right to establish a separate state, the right to secede. We reject the notion that it means 'freedom from all outside interference notes: general considerations apply, namely our oppo­ and control' or entails economic independence. 'The several demands of democracy, including sition to all forms of national oppression and In the general sense the right to self­ self-determination, are not an absolute, but privilege, but in such circumstances the exer­ determination is unconditional, independent of only a small part of the general-democratic cise of self-determination by one or the other the state that emerges or its leadership. (now:general-socialist) world movement. In people in the form of the establishment of However, for Leninists this right is not an individual concrete cases, the part may con­ their own bourgeois state can only be brought absolute demand, a cate~orical imperative, to be tradict the whole; if so, it must be re­ about by the denial of that right to the other. implemented at all times and everywhere there is jected.' [emphasis in ori~inalJ ('The Dis­ Under capitalism this would simply be a formula a nation. It is only one of a range of cussion on Self-Determination Summed Up', for reversing the terms of oppression, for bourgeois-democratic demands; it is a part, sub­ Collected Works, vol 22) forcible population transfers and expulsions and ordinate to the whole, of the overall program­ In particular, in the case of interpenetrated ultimately genocide. It is a 'solution' repeat­ matic system. When, the particular demand for peoples sharing a common territory, we oppose edly demonstrated in history, for example in the national self-determination contradicts more the exercise of self-determination by one nation cases of IndiajPakistan, Israel/Palestine and crucial demands or the general needs of the where this flatly conflicts with the same right Cyprus. class struggle, we oppose its exercise. As Lenin for another nation. In this situation the same continued on page 8

FEBRUARY 1983 5 enounce • rots Ism

Mandel has been fuming as the SWP tears the Trotskyist business -- first in political up the ex-International Marxist Group fact and then as an empty label -- for upwards (IMG -- newly-dubbed the 'Socialist of fifty years. League'); meanwhile the Mandelites are enjoying tweakinft Barnes' tail by Permanent Revolution: 'Sectarian backing Camejo and monkeying around and ultra-left' with the SWP minorities. Now Barnes ex- __.--~, plicitly writes the USec off in declar­ Barnes' explicit attack on Trotskyism was ing that SO per cent of the world's foreshadowed by a recent series of articles by 'Trotskyists' are hopeless sectarians. Barnesite hack Doug Jenness denouncing Trotsky's In truth 'Trotskyism' a la Mandel these analysis of the 1917 Russian October Revolution, , days is defined by a hard drive towards as well as some provocative symbolic acts. For liquidation into the mass social-demo­ example, the list of revolutionaries in the , cratic parties of West Europe, exemp­ youth convention brochure was: Marx, Engels, lified by the IMG's brazen appeal to Lenin -- no Trotsky. Or take Barnes' description the wretched reformist tradition of the (SWP Internal Bulletin no 1 in 1982, September 1930s Labour lefts in its name change. 1982) of upcoming titles in Farrell Dobbs' It will not be news to regular Series on 'Revolutionary Continuity': according readers of the Spartacist tendency to Barnes, Part III covering the years through Failing reformist party seeks Havana/Managua/Grenada press that the reformist SWP is not 1959 is to be titled 'The Trotskyist Years', franchise; Sandinista Daniel Ortega, New Jewel Movement's Trotskyist. But for any party the ex­ while the next volume will be 'The Transition Maurice Bishop, Fidel Castro: call Jack Barnes (top). plicit renunciation of longstanding Years' . 'isms' is a significant event and an Transition to what, you may well ask. Barnes' unusual one. Organisations whose lip­ modest proposal is for a 'common world Marxist n New Year's eve, at a US Socialist Workers service to Marxist tradition has long since been movement' compriSing the SWP and the Central Party (SWP) public meeting in Chicago, SWP emptied of content nonetheless shy away from American 'revolutionary' forces. The radical­ Ohead Jack Barnes finally declared outright outright renunciation of their claims to 'conti­ nationalist Nicaraguan Sandinistas temporise what has been the reality for two decades: the nui ty' . Take the furore of the last several years with the 'patriotiC' bourgeoisie and seek to SWP is not the Trotskyist party in the United inside various West European CPs over the ex­ placate the Pentagon by refusing to provide arms States. Barnes announced that 'SO per cent of plicit dropping of the 'di~tatorship of the pro­ to the Salvadoran insurgents. The Salvadoran those on a world scale who call themselves Trot­ letariat'. In real political line, displayed a leaders' perspective is a negotiated 'political skyists '" are hopeless, irreformable sec­ thousand ways, the craven reformist CPs have had solution' which would rob the plebeian masses tarians'. His two-and-a-half hour speech, de­ for decades ut terly nothing to do with the Lenin­ of the victory they are fighting and dying for. livered as the highlight of the annual convention ist programme of proletarian class power. Yet the The Cuban leaders alibi their support to 'prog­ of the SWP's youth group, centred on a barrage repudiation of 'd of the p' by the Spanish CP, for ressive' military juntas from Peru to Brazil of attacks on the Trotskyist theory of perma­ example, was still a real political event, brought with the argument that Latin America is not nent revolution: 'The permanent revolution, if on by the heighte~ing of Cold War tensions which 'ready for socialism'. TQ._be sure, American im­ these things are true, is not a correct general­ made pro-Moscow parties, no matter how slavishly perialist-warmongering has the Central American isation, or an adequate one, or one that doesn't reformist and SOCial-patriotic in fact, unac­ left ideologues talking out of both sides of open up more problems than it solves .... ' By ceptable participants in capitalist 'coalition' their mouths; along comes the SWP, selectively 'these things', Barnes referred to his idea of a governments. Even an organisation on a vastly quoting like mad, and voila, new 'revolution­ 'fusion' with the 'revolutionaries' of the Nic­ smaller scale, like the SWP, ordinarily pos­ aries of action' are revealed. araguan Sandistas, the Grenadan New Jewel Move­ sesses a considerable stake in its historic Beginning with extensive paraphrases from the ment, the Salvadoran and Cuban Communist Parties 'labels', particularly since the SWP has been in recent works of one Schafik Jorge Handal, gen­ (CPs). 'We are not Trotskyists ... ' Barnes re­ eral secretary of the Salvadoran CP, Barnes' vealed. Truer words have never passed his lips. New Year's eve speech went through the familiar Until about twenty years ago, the SWP was the anti-Trotskyist recitation of the early Trot­ revolutionary party in the US, embodying the sky's errors as a left Menshevik in opposition revolutionary heritage of founding American to Bolshevism, for the purpose of dismiSSing Trotskyist James P Cannon. More than that, it Trotsky the Leninist revolutionary. Then he represented the continuity of the most signifi­ castigated the theory of permanent revolution cant section of Trotsky's Fourth International, as flawed in 1905, wrong in 1917 and flatly most directly shaped by Trotsky's living guid­ 'ultra-left' in China in 1928. Indeed Barnes ance and collaboration. The SWP's qualitative went so far as to delicately accuse Trotsky of break from the revolutionary programme of Trot­ lying about Lenin's agreement with permanent skyism, centrally through its capitulation to revolution after April 1917: 'This is the only Castroism in the period 1961-63, paved the way thing I can remember Trotsky ever writing which for the 'reunification' in the 'United Secret­ I believe is factually false.' ariat'(USec) with the revisionist current of For authentic Trotskyists, the revolutionary Pab1o~sm which had destroyed the Fourth Inter­ struggles in Central America present a crucial national a decade earlier. Today the revolution­ opportunity to win subjective revolutionaries ary continuity of Trotskyism is represented by in the region to the perspective of working­ the international Spartacist tendency, which class independence from all wings of the bour­ traces its or~gins to the struggle of the Rev­ geoisie, the only road to victory. Our strategy olutionary Tendency (RT) against the SWP's re­ is the construction of Leninist vanguard parties visionist course. to lead the proletariat, at the head of the poor The SWP of today is a thoroughly reformist, peasant masses, to the seizure of power (this is increasingly eccentric and rapidly shrinking the core of the theory of 'permanent revol­ political formation. Its ambitions to become ution'). For Barnes & Co, this is precisely the America's preeminent reformist party have run time to formally denounce permanent revolution, smack up against something called the Demo­ smear Trotsky and relegate the struggles of the cratic Socialists of America, an organisation Fourth International explicitly to the 'old several times its size, with more consistent days' before Castro. reformist politics and the inside track on what reformists really aspire to: influence among the The Revolutionary Tendency pro-DemocratiC Party union officials who run the American labour movement. Of late the Barnes It was the Revolutionary Tendency which clique has ravaged the party with a wave of fought against the SWP's capitulation to Castro­ bureaucratic purges, removing from any even cer­ ism. In the Cuba dispute, the RT fought to up­ emonial standing within the party the remaining hold the SWP's revolutionary heritage against old-timers whose dusty memories of the once­ Pabloist centrism, which -- despairing of the reyolutionary, pre-Barnes SWP are deemed a working class -- seeks substitute 'vanguards' threat to Barnes' absolute bureaucratic strangle­ among whatever seems to be in motion. The RT hold, and striking out even at longtime also vigorously opposed the SWP's capitulation Barnesite hack Peter Camejo. And right now there on the black question, which cast the SWP as a are two distinct substantial right-wing min- 'white party' which could play no role in the orities looking for a way out of Barnestown. liberation of black people except as a patron­ Internationally, too, the almost constant us SWP oppositionist Nat Weinstein with 'captive ising, passive cheerleader for black formations. state of war·which has defined the twenty years nations' anti-communists (top), IMG leadersl)ip The RT proposed that the SWP involve itself in the of SWP/USec fraternal relations is again at (below): all united for counterrevolutionary mass civil rights actions, fighting to provide fever pitch. The USec leadership around Ernest Solidarnosc. a socialist alternative to the leadership of the

6 SPARTACIST BRITAIN preachers and aspiring bourgeois politicians. additional member. The But the SWP was in full flight from Trotsky­ SWP retaliated as best it ism and the RT had to be got rid of. The problem could by contemptuously was that the SWP, thanks to its Trotskyist past, spitting on Camejo's con­ had no organisational provision for purging a tention that as a leading disciplined minority. So after bureaucratically member of the 'Fourth expelling our comrades in 1963, the SWP set International' he should about making it all 'legal' after the fact by be permitted to attend propounding new rules codified in a resolution SWP functions like the adopted at the 1965 convention. Its essential annual Oberlin meeting syllogism goes like this: (1) factions are per­ (which last year was mitted in the SWP, (2) factionalists are dis­ changed from a convention loyal people, (3) disloyal people are expelled. to an 'educational'). This device has since been applied widely by Meanwhile the SWP's cog­ other USec groups, particularly against Trotsky­ nate and erstwhile sat­ ist oppositionists. ellite in Australia, The massive $8 September 1982 SWP internal chasing after a more bulletin which documents the recent purges and left-wing social demo­ expulsions quotes the 1965 organisation resolu­ cratic milieu has tion no less than 14 times. In his report to· the broken ranks with its August 1982 plenum, SWP leader Larry Siegle former patrons (eg the says: 'A myth exists that the 1965 resolution Australians still defend was written to be specifically applied to dis­ the Soviet intervention loyal minorities, following the experience with to aid the 'Afghan re­ the Robertsoni tes [RT] and Wohlforthi tes. 'What volution' long after the is a myth is the apparent assumption of the Barnesites condemned it) . present minorityites that they are somehow im­ .~ . Last month the Austral­ mune from the bureaucratic norms established in 5000 protesters stopped the KKK in Washington, 27 November 1982. ians provocatively in­ 1965 and used on subsequent left critics when­ US SWP was nowhere to be seen, instead calls for free speech for fascists. vited Camejo out for a ever any could be found. Certainly the funniest speaking tour (which was line in the bulletin is Peter Camejo's incredu­ revolutionary Cubans and the sellout Russians aborted when the reactionary Australian govern­ lous cry of outrage: 'They're treating me like agree about everything. Poland is a case in ment barred him entry into the country). a Spart!' point -- Castro and the Kremlin display com­ Politically, things have heated up a lot plete accord in condemning Solidarnosc for do­ Poland and C.uba throughout the USec, with the most significant ing the work of the CIA. So it's Castro v Lech divergence being the Lebanon question. The SWP's By any standard of organisational success, Wales a -- a dilemma for the SWP. The minorities 1982 Oberlin educational was marked by extreme the SWP seems to be going down the tubes, and want to choose Walesa, while Barnes sticks his ,uncritical enthusing over the nationalist not slowly. That the SWP is. really pretty un­ head in the sand. Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO): concerned about the plummetting circulation of The SWP leadership has also done battle with '''Yassir Arafat, chairman of the PLO, is dis­ its insipid, overpriced Militant is itself an the Mandelites over this question, manifested in playing capacities that any working-class indexation of social-democratic organisational a series of heated exchanges in Intercontinental fighter must recognize and identify with," conceptions. For a Leninist organisation, the Press last year as well as in the letters column [Malik] Mi ah continued. "... He is also circulation of one's 'colle~tive organiser' in of Socialist Challenge, the latter provoked by placing the PLO in the strongest possible struggle is a crucial measure of an organisa­ the sizeable pro-SWP grouping led by Brian position for the next phase of the struggle".' tion's effectiveness. But if Barnes seems happy Grogan in the ex-IMG. With Poland closer to home (Militant, 3 September 1982) as the machine-boss leader of an eccentric and and the mass social-democratic parties attract­ The shameless SWP sees no reason to modulate its shrinking political formation, some among the ive resting places for the erstwhile coffee­ position now that the 'strongest possible posi­ previously faithful seem to dimly perceive the house guerrillaists of the European USec, the tion' is shown to entail the Israeli/Phalangist intimations of irrelevance. Mandelites naturally opted for Solidarnosc as massacre of 1800 Palestinians after the PLO had their main chance. For at least five years now, the Militant been disarmed and dispersed by the imperialist has published extensively from Castro's Usec: No more cease-fire 'peace-keepers' . speeches; none of this provoked much reaction But the USec in its 10 October statement on from the present crop of SWP critics. But in the The 'reunification' of 1963 was accomplished Lebanon (International Viewpoint, 1 November past couple of years a vigorous discussion has on the basis of a centrist convergence which was 1982) characterised the situation as a 'military raged in the SWP over Cuba. Why? Both of the for the SWP a transient period in its plunge to­ defeat' and stated that 'The 1982 war and the present minorities share a gut impulse to get warq!j.... reformism; soon,_ the ,.I:J:Se_<;, );lad becqme an~,C" battle of Beirut register a rac!ical. yyo,lution into the anti-Soviet mainstream of social democ­ inherently unstable rotten bloc between Mandel's in the relationship of forces in - f-'!.voul'" "of -- racy, baulking at characteristic Barnesite ec­ European centrist impressionists and the hard­ imperialism in the region.' The statement is centricities like the infatuation with Castro ened reformist SWP. The bloc underwent periods classically centrist in its born-yesterday (and Khomeini). They could feel in their bones of sharp factional struggle, most notably during quality, lecturing the PLO on the need to base that no softness on Stalinist-ruled workers the early 1970s when the question of Portugal itself on the class oppression of the Arab masses by their own bourgeoisies and on 'inter­ nationalism'; as if the USec had not been among the biggest cheerleaders for PLO nationalism right up until the defeat in Lebanon. The statement, which scandalously refused to demand imperialist troops out, is nonetheless miles away from the 'Palestinian victory' line of the SWP. But the USec of today is miles away from what it was a decade ago. The rightward motion sig­ nalled by the capitulation to a series of pop­ ular fronts became a headlong rush under the impact of Cold War. The 'new mass vanguard' cirea 1983 is the Vatican-led, CIA-backed counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarnosc. In France the LCR has become the loyal tail of the Cold War Socialist Mitterrand government -­ opposing strikes against Mitterrand's anti­ Left: Brian ('god is great') Grogan, Ernest (,Trotskyism is just a label') Mandel, Tariq ('love the Labour working class austerity, calling on the govern­ Party') Ali. Can they keep meeting like this? Right: Axed Barnes hatchetman Peter ('t~ey're treating ment to keep its pledge of only (!) six months' me like a Spart') Camejo. conscription into the imperialist army, lauding the social democrats' 'principled' stand in states like Cuba (the bourgeoisie's new term is and the USec's continuing vicarious attachment favour of Solidarnosc. In Sweden the once left­ 'Soviet surrogates') would be permitted among to the 'guerrilla road' strained relations to wing KAF (Communis t Workers League)' changed its the true devotees of 'free trade unionism' in the breaking pOint. 'label' to the more sedate Socialist Party, Poland. One, a West Coast-based group around In the middle run, developments favoured the arguing that 'Communist' had been discredited Nat Weinstein, seemed animated by a desire to be consistently reformist SWP which increased its (doubtless in the social-democratic circles the left alone to practise reformism in one's pri­ weight in the USec as the leftism of the Euro­ KAF travelled in). vate 'arena', be it the unions or whatever. The peans fell into disarray. The 'guerrilla road' And in Britain, the once helmet-garbed other, led by poor old SWP veteran George didn't produce any more easy victories in 'street fighters' of the IMG now make their main Breitman, argued with particular urgency that Latin America, the heady memories of barricades priority 'securing a Labour victory' in the next the S~~ should go all out behind Polish Solidar­ in the streets of Paris faded, the Mandelites election. For this task, the name Socialist nosc, manifestly the best opening in years for started to tail social democracy in earnest. The League (lifted from Sir Stafford Cripps' left 'anti-Stalinist socialists' seeking unity with SWP rammed the 'turn to industry" down the Euro­ Labourites in the 1930s) is much better suited the servile Cold Warriors who run the American peans' throats and things seemed to calm down than anything smacking of Marxism or interna­ unions. For his part Weinstein made the bour­ for a while. tionalism. Frustrated in its project of fusion geois papers by participating in a 'captive Not any longer. In January 1982 the USec with the anti-Soviet left social-democratic nations '-style pro-Solidarnosc demonstration entered the Camejo affair with a posture of Cliffites, the then IMG leapt straight onto the alongside outright anti-Communist reactionaries. studied ignorance after the SWP leadership had bandwagon for Tony Benn. In recent months, they They urged the SWP to back away from its 20- announced Camejo's mysteriOUS 'resignation'. At have been extending unity feelers, not unre­ year infatuation with Castro, dredging up ortho­ a USec meeting on 10 January the Mandelites ciprocated, to the Labour-entrist Workers dox sounding arguments to give themselves a left turned down the SWP's demand that Camejo, one of Socialist League of Alan Thornett and Sean cover. The SWP pretends to discern in the for­ the SWP's fraternal representatives on the Matgamna who, as Socialist Challenge (7 January) eign policies of the Castro regime a 'revolu­ International Executive Committee (IEC), be re­ put it, have 'broadly the same approach' -- ie tionary' and ~internationalist' content, while placed by another SWPer. At the end of May, the Labour loyalism and Stalinophobia. Indeed the castigating the USSR's bureaucrats as Stalin­ IEC agreed to let the SWP replace Camejo, then only significant differences between the IMG ist sellouts. The only problem is that the turned around and co-opted him onto the IEC as continued on page 8

FEBRUARY 1983 7 oppression as a means toward the unity of the ion, the accompanying communal violence working class, not as the fulfillment of the and demographic shifts, and the establishment of SWP ... 'manifest destiny' or 'heritage' of a nation, us a bourgeois republic in the south {t was necess­ nor as support for 'progressive' nations or (C::JIltin~ed from page 7) ary to oppose the forcible reunification of the nationalism. We support the right of self­ six counties with the rest of Ireland. At the same and WSL over the past year have centred on or­ determination and national liberation struggles time the present statelet guarantees the politi­ ganisational wrangles in the revanchist Polish in o~der to remove the national question from cal and economic privileges of the Protestants. Solidarity Campaign and more recently the Labour the historic agenda, not to create another such We oppose the Orange state and the demand for an Committee on Palestine. question. Within the framework of capitalism independent Ulster 'as forms of determination for In the Benni te-inspired novel by Chris ~lullin, there can be no purely democratic solution (for the Protestants which necessarily maintain the A Very British Coup, a mythical IMG is sent to example through universal suffrage) to the oppression of the Irish Catholic population of concentration camps in 1988 for 'terrorism'. The national question in cases of interpenetrated Ulster, an extension of the Irish Catholic na­ DIG didn't even make it to 1983. While the right­ peoples. tion. Since they are the local bodies of the ward-moving 'children of 68' seek to huddle The same general considerations apply not British repressive state apparatus and the together in a broad regroupment under the Cold only to 'fully formed' nations, but also to training ground for the present Protestant para­ War umbrella of Labourism, the Spartacist League/ nationali t~es and peoples which may still be military groups and a future reactionary Prot­ Britain has been forged in large part through a something less than fully consolidated nations, estant army, we demand: Smash the Royal Ulster series of revolutionary regroupments with signi­ for example the Eritreans in their struggle Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Defence ficant left splits from both the ex-IMG (Commu­ aganist Amharic domination or the Biafrans at Regiment (UDR) .... nist Faction) and its putative WSL bloc partners the time of the Nigerian civil war. Indeed, not 7 .... Though not yet a nation, the Protestants (Trotskyist Faction, Leninist Faction). infrequently the historical formation of nations are certainly not a part of the Irish nation and Yet again, that qUintessential impressionist is tested and completed in the process of are distinct from the Scottish and English Tariq Ali proved to be a weathervane for the struggles for self-determination. Our opposition nations. Presently their separate existence is IMG: first the pro-Cliffite push, then the to the exercise of self-determination by an defined in large part as against the Irish 'Soviet troops out of Afghanistan' line, now the interpenetrated people would also apply where Catholic nation and at the ideological level is deep plunge into the Labour Party; In the two one or more of the groupings, though not a expressed in religious terms. With their own years since the IMG bureaucratically purged the historically compacted nation, has sufficient SOCial and cultural fabric (epitomised in the Communist Faction, which fought to counterpose relative size and cultural level that the exer­ Orange Order) and history of opposition to the the Trotskyist programme to the IMG's deepening cise of self-determination could only mean a Irish nationalist cause, they have therefore capitulation to Bennism and anti-Sovietism, the new form or reversal of the terms of oppression. acted as the 'loyalist' allies of British im­ main differences to surface within the peren­ 4. Concretely, in Ireland the question of Irish perialism. At the same time, in this century the nially faction-ridden organisation have centred national self-determination was not fully re­ allegiance has been more a means than an end, over whether to go the whole hog on the 'turn to solved by the establishment of the Republic of demonstrated, for example, by the willingness industry', as the pro-SWP Groganites have de­ Eire. But to demand 'Irish self-determination' of Sir Edmund Carson to seek German aid if manded, or throw everybody into the CLPs. So now today represents a denial of the Leninist pos­ British imperialism would not fulfill the Ulster the DIG has embraced the 'label' of Stafford ition on the national question. It is incumbent Protestants' demands and by the 1974 Ulster Cripps and the policies of th~ 1945 (Attlee!) on revolutionists to face up to exactly what the Workers Strike. Labour government. Even the 'turn' is couched in call for 'self-determination of the Irish people In all likelihood, a definite resolution of the language of the Cold War; 'building reform as a whole' means. the exact character of the Ulster Protestant currents within the unions to introduce the type Obviously the call is not one for the simul­ community will be reached with the withdrawal of principles of workers democracy espoused by taneous self-determination of both communities, of the British army and will depend on the cir­ the militants of Solidarnosc' (Socialist an impossibility for interpenetrated peoples cumstances surrounding this. The particular Challenge, 7 January). Daily.prayer meetings, under capitalism. In another sense the demand conditions will pose point-blank their future anybody? is about as meaningful as calling for 'self­ and the 'solution' to the Irish question. The There has not been much visible evidence of determiniation for the Lebanese people as a solution posed by A J P Taylor is but one poss­ leftism in the IMG of late, but now even the il­ whole' in the middle of last year's communal ibility: lusion of SWP 'orthodoxy' a la Joe Hansen which bloodletting. In the case of Ireland such a de­ 'The question is whether the Irish national­ once appealed to opponents of Mandel's opportun­ mand utterly fails to come to terms with the ist majority is strong enough to expel the ism has been burst. Given the factional hos­ question of the Protestant community of Ulster, Protestants. If they are, that is the best way tilies in the USec, we can expect some erudite comprising 60 percent of the statelet's and 25 out.' (quoted in the Guardian, 13 Apri 1 1976) reams from Mandel in defence of 'Trotskyism' percent of the whole island's population. Such a against the SWP. In 1976 Mandel, envisioning a demand is a call for the formation of a unitary At the same time the social organisation, manoeuvre with the social-democratic PSU group state of the whole island, including the forc­ weaponry, military expertise and alliances of in France, declared: ible unification of the whole island by the the Protestants, make a 'Zionist' solution en­ 'What difference do labels make? If in the Irish bourgeois state irresproctive of the wishes tirely conceivable. On the other hand, if the pol i tical arena we encountered poli tical.forces or-the Protestant community. It is a call for withdrawal of the British army was in the con­ which agreed with our strategic and tactical the Irish Catholics to self-determine at the text of massive class mobilisations, oppor­ orientation and which were repulsed only by expense of the Protestants. It is a call for the tunities would undoubtedly arise for a class the historical reference and the name we would simple reversal fo the terms of oppression, an determination of the question .... get rid of it in 24 hours.' implicit call for inter-communal slaughter, 11. We reject the argument that Protestant What difference do labels make? Trotsky once re- forced population transfers and ultimately geno­ workers are so reactionary that only force will plied simply to this question, 'In politics, the cide as the way forward to the Irish revolution. convince them and that the precondition for "name" is the banner' (fvritings, 1935-36). 5. The present six-county enclave in Northern winning them is the destruction of the Orange For those who have long since forsaken the Ireland is a 'sectarian, Orange statelet', the statelet. The understanding that the current Trotskyist programme, the 'label' is a meaning- product of an imperialist partition. Prior to partition is inherently oppressive is perverted less vestige. The international Spartacist tend- the partition revolutionaries would have op­ into a conception of a 'two-stage' revolution in ency, was born as the Revolutionary Tendency of posed partition, striving to cement revolution­ which the socialist tasks can only follow the the SV,P, expelled in 1963 for defending the auth- ary unity in the struggle for independence from completion of Irish national unity on the whole entic revolutionary programme of Trotskyism. British imperialism. However, with the partit- island. Sometimes linked to this is the claim This is our label, and we wear it proudly, con­ fident of its future decisive victory through international proletarian revolution. ~SPARTACISt LEAGUE' VIDEO SHOWINGS- , . Adapted from Workers Vanguard nos 320 and 321,31 December 1982 and 14 January 1983 Labour/black mobilisation shakes Washington DC Perspective ••• (Continued from page 5) In general, our support for the right to self-determination is negative: intransigent 'WE STOPPED opposition to every manifestation of national

theSWP THEKLANI' Hard lim~ USA ~Ba n, .'... Come to these video showings to see and hear about the Washington victory and the strategy to I fight racist and fascist attacks. Further showings to be announced; if you would like to organ­ Whither Ute SWP? ise one in your area, contact the: Barnes Denounces Spartacist League, PO Box 185, London WCIH 8JE, or ring the following numbers: Trotskyism Birmingham (021) 643 5914, Liverpool (051) 708 6886, London (01) 2782232, Sheffield (0742) 737067 Sheffield: London: -7.0upm, Monday 21 February -1.00pm, Tuesday 15 February \ Games Room, .:...~"~.; :3-3 :.~:::~::£ Video Room, Students Union, ------~----~. Liverpool: Polytechnic of North London, S.heffield Uni versi ty, Western Bank -12.30pm, Wednesday 2 March Ladbroke House site, -7.30pm, Wednesday 16 February Music Room, Old Student Union Highbury Grove N5 Lwft'Otl ~~¥' ~~~ f~~~ University of Liverpool, Brungreave Vestry Hall -7.00pm, Wednesday 23 February Workers Vanguard nos 320 and 321, Burngreave Road S3 Brownlow Hill Gresham Centre 31 December 1982 and 14 January 1983 -7.30pm, Thursday 3 March Birmingham: 7 Gresham Road SW9 Price: 35p each, 50p inc p&p for both Stanley House, (nearest tube: Brixton) -1.15pm, Friday 18 February Upper Parliament Street L8 -1.00pm, Thursday 24 February Lecture Theatre, Make payable/post to: Room 151, Middlesex Poly Handsworth Technical College, Spartacrst Publications, PO Box 185, Enfield site, Golds Hill Road, Handsworth London We1 H 8JE Queensway, Enfield

8 SPARTACIST BRITAIN that it is 'naive' to expect the Protestant and not only does not diminish .but, on the Republic, to suggest that somehow these matters Catholic workers to unite on 'economic' issues, contrary, aggravates the friction among the are not important, is to imply that Irish since it is these that divide them. By analogy, nationalities. The democ~atic republics nationalism and capitalism are in s~me way 'pro­ no working class could ever transcend its sec­ oppose themselves to the proletariat and at­ gressive' and (unlike all other nationalists tional interests. Economism is the political tempt to convert the class war into a and capitalists) will not promote racial, expression of the failure of the working class national one. They become rapidly impregnated sexual and communal divisions in the working in the absence of a revolutionary leadership to with nationalistic exclusiveness, and easily class, in particular will not discriminate and reject bourgeois ideology and place its revo­ adapt themselves to the practices of the persecute non-members of their national lutionary class interests above particular, previous dominating nations, which fermented grouping. sectional or apparent needs or desires. The discord among the nationalities, and organ­ 13. Ire,land, like other situations of inter­ above argument is based on the central premise ised pogroms, with the assistance of the penetrated peoples as in the Middle East and of economism -- that the working class cannot government apparatus, to combat the Cyprus, is a striking confirmation of the transcend its immediate sectional interests and dictatorship of the proletariat .... ' Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution. The identify with all oppressed and the future of The present Irish bourgeois republic is a inevitable conclusion is that while revol­ humanity. Such 'anti-economism' is in fact a clerical reactionary state in which the Roman utionists must oppose all aspects of national denial of the pertinence of the Transitional Catholic Church enjoys considerable real and oppression, they, must also recognise that the Programme in the service of the nationalism latent powers. An essential aspect of this is conflicting claims of interpenetrated peoples of the oppressed. not the current level of religious persecution can only be equitably resolved in the frame­ 12. The Protestants feel legitimately threatened or discrimination (though the current repressive work of a workers state. We struggle for an by the proposal for a united (bourgeois) Ireland, measures directed mostly against the IRA are an Irish workers republic as part of a socialist that is, their forcible absorption into an en­ indication of the Irish bourgeoisie's inten­ federation of the British Isles. While the es­ larged version of the reactionary clericalist sions), but the relationship of Roman Catholic­ tablishment of a united workers state of the state of Eire. The communalism/nationalism of ism to Irish nationalism, especially as it helps whole island may be preferable, the above demand the Protestants has a defensive character and is to define the divisions between the two is algebraic, leaving open the question of where not the chauvinism of a great power. A united communities. the Protestants fall. This recognises that the bourgeois Ireland would not provide a democratic Leninism and nationalism are fundamentally nature of the Protestant community has not yet solution for their claims and we must therefore counterposed poli tical .viewpoin ts. Thus, while been determined in history. As such, it is reject such a solution. Such a state would revolutionists struggle against all forms of counterposed to calls for a 'united;~orkers necessarily be sectarian, and the Protestants national oppression, they are also opposed to republic' or for a 'united socialist Ireland' will not voluntarily enter such a union. all forms of nationalist ideology. It is a re­ (where this demand is not simply an expression The difficulties of such a solution are in­ vision of Leninism to claim that the 'national­ for left/nationalist or Stalinist two-stage dicated in the earlier experience of the Bol­ ism of the oppressed' is progressive and can be theories). Placing the demand in the context of sheviks. At the Second Congress of ' the Communist supported by communist internationalists. In one a socialist federation has the additional International in 1920 the Ukrainian delegate of his major works on the national question advantage of highlighting the essential re­ Merejin observed in an amendment to the 'Thesis Lenin stressed: lationship of the proletarian revolution in the on the National and Colonial Questions': 'Marxism cannot be reconciled with national­ whole area and the virtual impossibility of the 'The attempt made to settle the relationship ism, be it even of the "most just", "purest", resolution of the Irish question on a working­ between the nations of the majority and the most refined and civilised brand. In place class basis outside this framework. This, and minority nationalities in territories 01 of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances the strong representation of Irish workers in the mixed population (Ukraine, Poland, White internationalism .... ' ('Critical Remarks on the working class in Britain, points to the Russia), has shown that the transfer of the the National Question', Collected Works, demand for a British Isles-wide trade-union power of government from the hands of the big vol 20) federation as a method of promoting joint capitalists to the groups of petty bour­ To attempt to dismiss the above-mentioned fea­ struggle and cutting across the divisions in the geoisie constituting the democratic republics tures of Irish nationalism and the Irish working class in Ireland ....•

workers seeking to fight racism and fascism and the capitalist system that breeds them. The 'anti-racist' poseurs of the Revolutionary Com­ munist Party dismissed the Washington demon­ Minorities, workers stration with the comment, 'that was 3000 miles away'. One member of the Workers Power group in Sheffield simply dismissed the demonstration as a 'riot' -- the line o~ Reagan, the bourgeois press and other well-known friends of raCial weleDine anti-Klan victory minorities! No such petty-bourgeois scepticism was encountered among the workers we sold to. The chant 'We stopped the Klan' echoed In London two comrades sold 50 items in one As one black worker in Sheffield said, 'I know through Washington DC on November 27 when the afternoon at Middlesex Poly. We regularly sold who the Klan are; this is a victory.' Spartacist League/US-initiated Labor/Black ~.10- 30-40 papers during Saturday afternoon Brixton Washington showed concretely how to stop the bilization brought out more than 5000 pro­ market sales: altogether, between these and tube fascists -- through mass labour movement/ testors, overwhelmingly black with many trade and estate sales we sold nearly 250 items in minority mobilisations. And it showed that the unionists, to chase the fascist Ku Klux Klan out Brixton. One young black woman who had bought a programme and organisational capacities of a of Reagan's capital city. In the Cold War copy of Women and Revolution in the market one communist vanguard are vital necessities for climate of America today the working class and week came up to our salesmen the next week to workers and the oppre~sed. Through our recent especially blacks and other minorities are front say how much she had enjoyed it, particularly sales push the Spartacist League has broadened line targets for the attacks of a bankrupt capi­ the review of American Communist Party member the audience for our politics. Now we are fol­ talist system. And workers and minorities in Angela Davis' book Women, Race and Class. We lowing it up with a national video showing and Britain face the same stark reality, exacerbated also sold well to black workers at Ford Dagenham; speaking tour about the anti-Klan demon­ by the chauvinist furore over the Falklands. To CP supporters in the unions there have been mis­ strations. Among our new readers will be many make the Washington victory and the communist leading minority and other workers for years. who take the idea of building a multi-racial programme which made it possible known to new Indeed the CP preaches reliance on the cops and vanguard party in this country seriously -- they readers, especially from the black and Asian government to stop the fascists, pushes know their lives depend on it. We say get our communities, we focussed a December/January nationalist import controls and tells minorities press regularly, take out subscriptions to sales push of Spartacist Britain and Workers to look to the Labour Party of Roy ('I support Spartacist Britain, Workers Vanguard and Women Vanguard in heavily minority areas as well as at immigration controls') Hatters1ey to solve their and Revolution. And join us in the fight to factories and colleges with large concentrations problems. build the Spartacist League, nucleus of the com­ of minority workers and students. In five weeks It's not just Labour and the CP who mislead munist: vanguard party in Britain!. we got out over 4000 copies of the special WV supplement on the protest. In Liverpool we distributed supplements and papers in pubs, and on the streets and housing estates in Toxteth. Five Asian shopkeepers on Granby Street took supplements to distribute to their customers. The Carribean Centre had to re­ stock the supplement after a short time because the first batch went so fast. In Bradford two £2 for 10 issues plus Spartacist comrades sold more than 45 papers on one street (international Spartacist tendency sale. Eight black youths pooled their pennies journal) to buy the paper and several people volunteered Women & Revolution: £1.50 for 4 issues addresses of pubs and clubs where we should go to sell more. Sheffield comrades reported that £6.00 for 10 issues of Spartacist one out of every three black households in door­ Britain PLUS 24 issues of Workers to-door sales in Burngreave bought the paper. Vanguard (Marxist fortnightly of One ste,el worker took several copies to sell the Spartacist League/US) PLUS inside his plant; a Liverpool building worker Spartacist did the same when we sold outside his union meeting. Name In Birmingham comrades had already sold 74 papers in four regular Friday morning sales at Address the Longbridge and Rover Solihull BL plants. Heavy door-to-door sales in Handsworth included Postcode ______70 papers sold in one afternoon. Spartacist sup­ porters spoke about the anti-Klan mobilisation in English and Punjabi at a local Sikh temple, Make payable/post to: collecting more than £28 in donations towards Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1H 8JE the cost of the demonstration.

FEBRUARY 1983 9 and a factual clarification about the reaction of Lancashire millworkers to Gandhi's visit to Gandhi ... Britain in the early 1930s. The millworkers (Continued from page 3) suffered high unemployment, caused in part by the collapse of the Indian market for British had intersected peasant revolts against taxation cloth due to the Indian nationalists' insistence to take on revolutionary dimensions. After on 'homespun'; nonetheless, in the CPGB re­ bloody clashes with the police in Chauri Chaudra, viewer's words, 'the sullen crowds were com­ Gandhi beheaded the struggle by fasting until pletely won over by G;ndhi's forceful the 'violence' had stopped. explanation of the terrible conditions in 'He stopped a revolution' India'. Today' s CPGB spits in the faces of these internationalist millworkers with its campaigns At this point in the film, historical truth for import controls -- directed against, among surfaces. The British arrive to arrest Gandhi other things, imported clothing from Asia: as he finishes his fast. As he totters out to greet them (he admitted that he enjoyed impris­ For permanent revolution in India! onment) Nehru runs ahead protesting: 'But you 1941 saw the formation of the Bolshevik­ can't arrest him: He just stopped a revolution:' Leninists of India, the first Trotskyist move­ Trotsky paraphrased Nehru's predicament: '''We ment in the country, thanks centrally to the will prove to you", say the national bourgeoisie work of Ceylonese Trotskyists who opposed the to the gentlemen on the Thames, "that we are in­ war and were forced to flee from British im­ dispensable for you, that without us you will perialist repression in Lanka: It is to the tra­ not calm the masses. But for this we will pre­ Udham Singh, founder of the Indian Workers dition of these comrades that revolutionists in seht you with our own bill.'" Gandhi, unlike Association in Britain. Executed for killing O'Dwyer, India must look today. Attenborough's film Nehru, was aware that imprisonment would be the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab who condoned cannot completely ignore the real driving force most effective way to refurbish his anti­ 1919 Amritsar massacre. for Indian independence and social and economic imperialist credentials with the masses. emancipation: the workers and peasants. Some of Gandhi followed up his betrayal of 1922 by could only be achieved through the mobilisation the scenes which concentrate on the real heroes being the main spokesman for collaboration with of the proletariat at the head of the peasant of the struggle are deeply moving. Today only the British in the 1930s and successfully led a masses for socialist revolution. As Trotsky the building of an Indian Trotskyist vanguard purge .of the left in Congress in 1938. Not sur­ commented: ' ... all those social peculiari ties party rooted in the proletariat and mobilisi~g prisingly, his political career is not docu­ which made possible and unavoidable the October the peasant masses, and steeled in the fight for mented in the film, beyond his leadership of the revolution are present in India in a still the programme of permanent revolution can show Salt March (the non-payment of taxes on salt was sharper form .... So far there is only one con­ the road to liberation .• the only measpre of passive resistance which did dition missing: a Bolshevik party' (Writings on frighten the British -- this was aborted by Bri tain vol 3). Gandhi, too) and his suspicion of Jinnah, leader CPGB: cheerleaders for Churchill of the Muslim League. Smash anti-Tamil Jinnah is c~st as the villain, awaiting his But the Communist Party of India (CPI), which moment to plunge India into genocidal warfare. might have provided this leadership, squandered In fact, although Hindu and Muslim workers had the revolutionary opportunities in conformity terror in Sri Lanka! fought the British together during the first with the programme of Stalin's bureaucratised satyagraha, Gandhi's orthodox Hindu nationalism Communist Internat.ional after 1924, tacking and 'Smash Anti-Tamil Terror! Free Kuttimani had sharpened the communal' divisions already veering through 'Third Period' sectarianism and and Jeganathan Now!' chanted a hundred demon­ promoted by the British 'divide and rule' subsequent popular-frontist capitulation to the strators in Frankfurt, West Germany, in Decem­ policy. (This hadinsti tuted a system of separ­ national bourgeoisie. When the USSR was invaded ber. They were protesting the latest wave of ate communal elections based on religion and in 1941 Stalin magically transformed the war of repression against the Tamil minority in Sri given the Muslims special privileged represen­ British and French imperialism into a 'people's Lanka and demanding freedom for two young TalTlil tation.) In 1934 Jinnah had proposed a coalition war against fascism'. Following Stalin's al­ activists framed up as 'terrorists', forced to with Congress which was summarily rejected with liance with the imperialist Allies in 1941, the sign confessions under police torture and sen­ the demand that the Muslim League should cease CPI, under pressure from Congress, continued to tenced to death. Scores of Tamil militants to function as a separate group, effectively call for Indian independence while defending the have been arrested and 'disappeared' at the suppressing the Muslims' democratic rights in Soviet Union against German imperialism. Stalin hands of the bloody Sinhala-chauvinist regime the provinces where they formed a majori ty. By quickly instructed the leadership of the British of .JR Jayewardene under the draconian Preven­ tion of Terrorism Act and a permanent state of 1938 the ~uslim leaders were discussing a seoar­ CP to 'correct' the Indians' dangerous devi­ ate federation for Indian Muslims. The rival~y ation. CPGB leader Harry Pollit accordingly err,.('rgent..-:y. between the Hindu and 'Muslim bourgeoisies for wrote to the CPI that: . The 19 December protest, organised by Tamil economic and political power was brought to a 'We deplore that the Congress resolution exile groups, was joined by a contingent of the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands (TLD), head by the intervention of the British early in should even contemplate the adoption of civil German section of the international Spartacist the Second ~G~ld War. disobedience in the event of its proposals In order to win Indian support for the war being rejected. Such a course would be tendency (iSt). TLD placards demanded 'Immedi­ ate Release of Kuttimani, Jeganathan and Other Sir Stafford Cripps, Labour representative in suicidal to the cause of Indian independence Victims of Anti-Tamil Terror!', 'For the Right Churchill's National Government, proposed 'full and in the present situation it could only of Tamil Self-Determination!', 'For a Sinhala/ dominion status' to the Indian Union and the play into the hands of the Axis powers.' Tamil Workers and Peasants Government!', 'Tamil Muslim provinces independently, after the war. (cited in Robert Black, Stalinism in Britain) Workers Key to Indian/Lankan Revolution! ' Although this was initially rejected by Congres~ In other words, don't do anything to oppose Other TLD slogans included 'Political Asylum the idea took hold, dominating Indian politics British colonial rule, at least for the duration for Tamils! Stop the Deportations!' 'US Im­ throughout the war, and led directly to the of the war. perialism: Hands Off Trincomalee, Dieg~Garcia! partition of 1946. The final scene~ of Atten­ The CPI was soon won over, and the British Defend USSR/Vietnam!' and 'Workers -- Sinhala/ borough's film depict the mass population government rewarded the party for its loyal Tamil, Men/Women: Build the Bolshevik Party!' transfers and inter-communal carnage which support by legalising it so that it could win For the statement of the Spartacist League/ followed, and Gandhi's impotent fasting in an adherents among the Indian masses in opposition Lanka denouncing the Jayawardene plebiscite of attempt to stop it. Finally the '~ahatma' is to Congress, whose leaders had been imprisoned December 1982 to consolidate a dictatorial assassinated by a Hindu fanatic's bullet; he for refusing to drop the demand for dominion strong-man regime (translated from Sinhala­ swears 'my god, my god'. and the screen goes status. This was the one point at which Gandhi language Lanka Spartacist no 5/Tamil-language black. The 'new India' of continued desperate could truthfully be said to be to the left of Illangai Spartacist no 2 November 1982) read poverty and oppression is born. the Communists. And even after the war the CPGB the 28 January issue of vanguard: The truth is that the national bourgeoisie consistently and scandalously refused to demand ~orkers for whom Gandhi played a vital role in simul­ Indian independence, calling instead for 'demo­ taneously mobilising and controlling the masses, cracy [to] be extended to the colonies' (' How was incapab~e of ending exploitation and op­ to win the peace'). Water workers ... pression. Tied by a thousand threads to imperi­ The present-day CPGB's. review of 'Gandhi' (Continued from page 1) alism and landlords, they were unwilling and un­ (Morning Star, 3 December 1982) is infused with the pre-Victorian water system. Instead of carry­ able to lepd the struggle of the workers and this legacy of Stalinist betrayal. The review ing out 'emergency' repairs and waiting for the peasants to full victory over imperialism. endorses the film's glorification of the accumulation of unrepaired faults to take its The Indian bourgeoisie had appeared too late 'Mahatma' and whitewash of British imperialism toll, the skilled workers who operate the valves on the scene to carry out a bourgeois-democratic (Mountbatten is pOlitely described as 'renowned should be brought out now and the whole system revolution. In the imperialist epoch the tasks worldwide'). It gives not the slightest inti­ brought to a halt through mass picketing. Any of this revolution -- above all the domination mation of the CPGB and CPI's roles in helping to attempt by the union leaders to submit to bind­ of imperialism, liquidation of the semi-feudal betray the Indian revolution. Its only criti­ ing arbitration must be rejected out of hand as land system, clearing away the Indian Native cisms of the film are an aside about Gandhi 'not a sure sellout. All out now! states, ending the chattel slavery of women consulting his wife' about his vow of chastity, While CBI head Terence Beckett tries to play

----.-----~-¥" ~~-.-- .~-----~------.--~------.. off worker against worker with tirades about the _l..iF~~. ,£, strike forcing employers to close down factories L . s-· """""""- .... · and slash jobs, the trade union misleaders echo, •..... rise to overcome years of real wage No3 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 1982 cuts, coupled to worksharing on full pay. What is needed today is a class-struggle strategy Order from: which relies not on parliamentary lobbies and Spartacist Publications 45p Spartacist League/Lanka 10Rs 'neutral' arbitration but on the industrial PO Box 185 33 Canal Row muscle of the organised working class. Turn London WC1H 8JE Colombo 01, Sri L-anka around the Tory offensive! Victory to the water workers!.

10 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Healey calls for B:ritish CIA

After the failure of British intelligence to prevent the Communist consolidation of Labour Party protesting about Healey's state­ in the Falklands war, Denis Healey reportedly power. And he had numerous connections with ment and demanding the setting up of an enquiry moaned that 'Britain badly needed something groups such as the Institute for Strategic into Labour movemen t. bodies financed by the CIA similar to America's Central Intelligence Studies, Bilderberg group etc whose activities or its front organisations' (Militant, 7 Jan­ Agency' (Guardian, 5 January). If 'the Firm' were financed with covert CIA funds. uary). As if enquiries would solve anything! (MI6), whose bloodstained history rivals that In reaction to Healey's call, Labour's Militant wants to sanitise the Labour Party, of the CIA, doesn't measure up these days to house-trained fake-Trotskyist Militant tend­ to make it a very British reformist party. their CIA 'cousins', it is primarily because ency recommended that 'Resolutions should pour Denis Healey and his wing of NATO/IMF-lovers of Britain's steep decline as a world power. into the National Executive Committee of the represent the policies and practices of Labour Indeed, with almost every week bringing to governments since the Second World War, faith­ light new scandals about 'Russian spies' and ful partners of US imperialism. We demand that files wandering out of GCHQ in Cheltenham, the the CIA/NATO-lovers be driven out of the British 'intelligence' services do seem to be Labour Party. For this reason, the Spartacist in a shambles. Those of us who want to destroy League argued that Tony Benn be given critical the decaying capitalist system can take some support against Healey two years ago in the satisfaction from this. deputy leadership election: Not so Denis Healey. As deputy leader of 'in order to exacerbate and follow through the Labour Party, which claims to give leader­ the split begun with the formation of the ship to the working class, he wants to perfect SDP, driving out the blatantly pro-imperi­ British capitalism's own terror forces. Not alist CIA-connected right wing and place only this -- he wants them modelled on the Benn in a position where his left-reformist CIA, whose grisly assassinations of leftists politics could be more effectLvely exposed and sinister infiltration of the labour move­ and combatted' (Spartacist Britain, April ment internationally have made its name syn­ 1982) . onymous with counterrevolution. As a terror­ But Labour can betray without the CIA con­ ist arm of the most powerful imperialist nection! Labour governments have time and time country, the CIA is notorious for its murder again used their 'security' forces to protect squads' attempts to overthrow the deformed the interests of British imperialism, just workers state of Cuba, notably the (failed) like social democrats have always done allover Bay of Pigs invasion. the world. In Australia the Labour Party in Healey of course knows all about this -­ office actually set up the internal security only too well! As head of the Labour Party's force ASIO, the equivalent of MI5. These capi­ 'International Department' after World War II talist terror agencies and their despicable he helped the CIA rebuild the Second (Social­ deeds will only be eliminated with the over­ ist) International on Cold War anti-Communism. throw of the capitalist system -- and that re­ He helped Rpli t the Italian Socialists in 1948. quires a Trotskyist party to split Labour's He worked closely with the most pro-imperialist working class base from the reformist leaders East European social democrats in an attempt and lead a socialist revolution.

calling upon them to impose economic sanctions plosions two years ago. against South Africa, divest their stock in The same week that Roach died, ~,!etropoli tan Raids ... multinationals operating in South Africa, etc. police shot down Stephen Waldorf in a crowded (Continued from page 12) This campaign serves only to prettify American street. But the cops made the mis take of shooting and European imperialism, bolstering its claim and then pistol-whipping the wrong man in broad welcoming South African officials in Washington. to be more humane, more civilised than its daylight in front of many witnesses, especially Indeed, the morning after Pretoria's raid on Ma­ despised South African ally. since he happened to be English and white; so the seru, the South African state radio broadcast a The petty-bourgeois nationalists of the ANC, shooting led to an immediate uproar and police report about a 'joint commi tnIent' between despite the unquestioned courage of its mili­ apology. Pretoria and Washington for a 'Monroe doctrine tants, offer no effective strategy to defeat In response to the flagrant rise in naked cop for the region' which recognised South Africa's apartheid. Moreover, their model for post­ terror, various social democrats, notably left 'special responsibility' for maintaining 'stab­ apartheid South Africa should they come to GLC chairman Ken Livingstone, are pushing 'com­ ility' (New York Times, 10 December 1982). power is based on the anti-working-class middle­ muni ty control' as a way of cleaning up the cops' For the sake of 'free world' unity aimed at men for imperialism such as Mozambique's Samora act. Ernie Roberts, left Labour MP for Hackney restoring capitalism in the Soviet degenerated Machel and Zimbabwe's Robert ~Iugabe. If South North and Stoke Newington, commented on the workers state, Washington is backing up Africa's oppressed black masses are to achieve black outrage over Colin Roach: 'There is a com­ Pretoria. Hence the recent $1.2 billion IMF loan full victory over the white racist regime they plete breakdown of faith and credibility in the to South Africa. Not aCCidentally, the South must look elsewhere for leadership. A key task police.' The Labouri tes, with reformists like the African raid came only five days after Prime in South Africa is the construction of a Trot­ Communist Party and more recently a panoply of Minister Botha delivered a menacing warning to skyist vanguard party armed with a programme for fake-Trotskyist gro~ps in tow, are out to re­ Mozambique against accepting Cuban troops, which workers revolution through smashing apartheid. store this 'faith and credibility' in the racist are now stationed in Angola as a necessary pro­ South Africa, a regional imperialist power, is cops. They are particularly intent on returning tection against Squth African aggression. The the key bulwark of racist reaction in all of to the 'good old days' of the unarmed bobby. crosshairs of the Washington/Pretoria axis are sub-Saharan Africa. The millions-strong South Marxists demand that the kill-crazy police be aimed squarely on the black African nationalist African proletariat must be in the vanguard disarmed -- No guns for cops! But these thugs in regimes backed by the Soviet Union and its Cuban of socialist revolution for all of black Africa. blue have dished out vicious repression, par­ allies. Free Mogoerane, ~!osololi, Motaung, Tsotsobe, ticularly to blacks and Asians, even without Shabangu, Moise and all victims of apartheid guns for years. Black proletariat must be mobilised repression! Today they want increasing militarisation to The Koeberg nuclear power plant, target of Reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 320. 31 deal with the breakdown in 'law and order' the ANC raid, indirectly points to the Achilles December 1982 caused by capitalist decay and squalor -- and heel of the South African regime: the black pro­ 'community control' schemes can often provide a letariat which keeps the economic wheels going. good liberal cover for stepped-up repression. Of, the 4,000 people who had access to the high­ Cop terror ... For racial minorities and working-class mili­ security plant, security officials note, 2500 tants, the illusion that the racist armed guard­ were black migrant workers brought in from the (Continued from page 12) ians of the capitalist class can be brought into bantustans of Transkei and Ciskei. Last summer's ation. Indiscriminate stop-and-search, harass­ line through inquiries or tamed through 'demo­ strike wave of black miners, auto workers and ment, arrest and beatings at the hands of the cratic control' is suicidal. The only road for­ dock workers, led by the militant new black cops are daily facts of life for blacks and ward is the mobilisation of the labour movement trade unions, gave a hint of the tremendous pot­ Asians in this heavily minority-populated area. and oppressed minorities against racist and ential power of the black working class for rev­ For minorities everywhere, life in Thatcher's fascist attacks, and the building of a multi­ olutionary change. What is needed is a revol­ Britain today means never-ending dole queues, racial vanguard party to put the cops' capital­ utionary communist party ready to lead the racist immigration laws, apartheid-style race ist paymasters out of business through socialist struggle against apartheid and against capital­ checks in the social services. And with min­ revolution. Drop the charges against the Hackney ism itself -- for a socialist revolution. orities on the front line of the Cold War, both protesters!. But the programme of the nationalist ANC, the racist cops and the fascist thugs are attack­ closely allied to the South African Communist ing with increasing ferocity. Party (SACP), is not one of working-class rev­ Even as the Hackney community was expressing The revolutionary olution to abolish capitalism. Rather the ANC/ its outrage against police raCism, Metropolitan strategy for black SACP seek to pressure supposedly 'progressive' Police Commissioner and former head of the Royal liberation in the elements of the white South African ruling class Ulster Constabulary Kenneth Newman announced a United States such as diamond magnate Harry Oppenheimer. Last series of police 'reforms' centred on a 'neigh­ WHAT STRATEGY summer the American CP's Daily World (14 August bourhood drive on crime' -- a codeword for in­ Price: FOR BLACK UBERATION? 1982) noted approvingly Oppenheimer's call for creased cop terror in particular against £2.00 inc p&p Trotskvism 'cooperation between unions and management'! The London's racial minorities. Three months ago, B vs. lack Nationalism Stalinists' long, one-sided courtship of Newman's newly introduced Immediate' Response Make payable/post Oppenheimer has not, of course, prevented him Units, targetted for minority ghettos, staged a to: Spartacist and his colleagues from supporting the basic provocative show of police power in Brixton. Publications, PO laws maintaining the apartheid system, not least Newman's importation from Northern Ireland to Box 185, London the draconian Suppression of Communism Act. head up London's police force is symptomatic of the WClH 8JE The ANC/CP bloc likewise appeals to Oppen­ sharp rise in the cops' arsenal of repression, 1 heimer's counterparts in the US and West Europe, particularly since the wave of inner-city ex-

FEBRUARY 1983 11 BRITAIN out rican mur er rai s \ At 1 am on December 9 a hundred South Africar. territory. The tiny kingdom commandos crossed the border into Maseru, the regularly sends as much as capi tal city of the black client statelet of one quarter of its workforce Lesotho, and fanned out into five different sec- _across the border to work tions of town. They blasted their way into at in the Orange Free State, a least a dozen homes, and when it was over 42 South African province. The people were dead. General Constand Viljoen, Lesotho government pro- chief of the South African 'Defence Force', tested lamely that all of openly took responsibility for the massacre as the victims were refugees part of the campaign to destroy the African from South African op- National Congress (ANC). And with a Goebbels- ression. And the Sowetan, like flourish, Viljoen claimed that the seven the only black-oriented women and chi ldren who were murdered had been dai ly in South Africa, elab- caught in a 'crossfire'. orated that most of those But South African black militants didn't just murdered were student mili­ mourn: while 3500 people lep by ANC president tants from Soweto who had Oliver Tambo attended a seven-hour funeral for fled for their lives from 27 of the victims in Maseru, four bombs blew up apartheid repression. The at timed intervals over 12 hours at South details of the raid -- such Africa's Koeberg nuclear power station, under as the selective bombing of construction near Cape Town. The ANC said the a car owned by the wife of bombing was a salute to 'all our fallen heroes an ANC leader -- demon­ and imprisoned comrades', and the action cer­ strated that it was a con­ tainly represented an impressive penetration of sciously planned act of a high-security nuclear complex. mass terror. The Lesotho raid was part of Pretoria's at­ Indeed, if one is looking tempt to reverse the rising line of mass up­ for an international ter­ heaval of the past few months: bold AlIIC guer­ rorist conspiracy, the South rilla actions coinciding wi th a massive strike African government's ac­ wave led by black trade unions. The murder raid tivities of late certainly was the signal for an even more vicious fit the bill. In the past repression, and the nominally 'independent' few months alone, South Swaziland police took their cue by arresting African agents tried to about 100 people in dawn raids one week after overthrow the government the Maseru massacre. The escalating violence by of the Seychelles islands, the apartheid regime shows the bloody reality organised burglaries of behind Reagan's 'constructive engagement' policy anti-apartheid offices in Top: ANC militants vow vengeance at funeral for comrades massacred at toward South Africa, which has been ballyhooed London, and assassinated Maseru. Bottom: striking gold miners under police guard at Kloof mine. as an attempt to quietly encourage Prime Hinis­ opponents in several ter Botha's so-called 'reforms', such as the countries. (Last August, for instance, the well­ whi tewash official 'investigation'. And then proposal for token voting rights for the known journalist Ruth First, a leading ANCer and there are the official executions -- South country's three million 'coloureds' and Asians Communist, was murdered in Mozambique, an act Africa executed about 100 people in 1982 alone, (while continuing to exclude the country's 20 which the government there attributed to the· and six ANC fighters are now on death row. (The million blacks from parliament entirely). The South African'secret police.) Meanwhile, the prisoners are TheIle Mogoerane, Jerry Mosololi, 'anti-apartheid reforms' are in part a public­ South African army openly and regularly invades Marcus Motaung, Anthony Tsotsobe, Johannes relations fig leaf for the raCist, anti-Soviet Angolan territory, killing anybody it considers Shabangu and David Moise.) Washington/Pretoria axis. to be SWAPO sympathisers. In comparison, Lech Walesa's brief incarcer­ By diplomatic standards, Pretoria's raid on In South Africa itself, over 50 prisoners ation at a posh hunting lodge makes the Polish Lesotho was an act of war on an independent have officially died while under police cust­ regime look absolutely humane. But Reagan of state. But the Lesotho government is hardly in­ ody -- in the case of Dr Neil Aggett, a white course continues to cry about the fate of the dependent. In reality it is a glorified bantu­ organiser for a black union, a magistrate re­ counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc 'union' while stan, completely landlocked by South African cently once again exonerated the cops after a continued on page 11 Outrage against racist cop terror The black community of Hackney in East Then the cops refused to let him see Colin's London erupted in outrage last month following body, later claiming that on 'humanitarian the supposed suicide of a young black worker grounds' they didn't want that to be the in Stoke Newington police station. The sus­ father's last memory of his son. picious death-by-shotgun of 21-year-old Colin Blacks and Asians in Hackney and elsewhere Roach on 12 January triggered a wave of angry know what the 'humanitarianism' of the notori­ protest demonstrations demanding an indepen­ iously racist cops means: the baton, the boot dent inquiry. 'Police murder, cover-up -- we and the backroom bashing. Within a week of demand the truth', read the placards. Roach's death, police had arrested some fifty The cops deny they shot Roach, but they people for demonstrating their anger outside sure as hell act like they have something to Stoke Newington police station, charging into hide. According to police spokesmen, Roach the demonstrators and dragging them off after entered the foyer of the police station one vicious assaults. We demand all the charges be night, pulled out a sawn-off shotgun and shot dropped immediately! The rising outAage in the himself through the mouth. Even before they community was manifested in a march of 1000 told the Roach family, Scotland Yard's press people on 22 January, led by the Roach family. bureau put out a story that the youth had a One black cop had placards and taunts of history of mental illness. It was a lie; and 'trai tor' thrown at him by the angry protestors. Roach's father denied Colin had a shotgun. Roach's mysterious death and the cops' When the father was brought down to the police treatment of the Roach family were 'the straw station by ~ worried friend of the youth, he that broke the camel's back', said a spokes­ was subjected to interrogation for more than man for the Hackney Black People's Associ- anuary: demonstration of outrage against racist two hours before being told that his son was dead. continued on page 11 police in Hackney. ~~------... 12 FEBRUARY 1983