No 124 July/August 1991 30p Newspaper of the Spartacist League

No vote to Kilfoyle, Mahmood!

! Labourites fall l ~ out in Liverpool ing against him is the Militant tendency suppOrter Defend the trade unions! Lesley Mahmood, who identifies herself variously as I the candidate of the Broad Left, as well as the Walton "real Labour" candidate. In this contest, we The Walton, Liverp<>Ol by-election held to fill the do not advocate even the most savagely critical seat left by the death of Labour MP Eric Heffer suppOrt to Mahmood. Workers Hammer will take place on 4 July. The vile Kinnockite Peter A qualitative and decisive reason for our Uverpool, 19 June: trade unionists protest Labour Kilfoyle is the official Labour candidate and stand- continued on page 10 Council cuts and sackings.

I • 00 ·en o a

The article below first appeared in Workers Vanguard no 528 (7 June), news­ paper of the Spartacist League/US. As we go to press, Congress (I) ''won'' the elections on 20 June, securing fewer than half of the 543 seats contested in the Lok Sabha (India's lower house of parlia­ ment). On 21 June, the 70-year-old Con­ gress (I) non-contestant "consensus man" PV Narasimha Rao, propped up by indi­ cations of suppOrt from the main bour­ geois opposition parties and the left, was sworn in as India's ninth Prime Minister, the first from the South. Even with mass­ ive pOlice and paramilitary forces deployed, the elections had to be stag­ gered over three days to allow for con­ centration of forces. Elections in the blood-drenched Punjab were promptly "pOstpOned" until September; no vote is slated for Kashmir. The fascistic Hindu­ chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party of LK Advani increased its number of seats to nearly 120.

Late on the evening of 21 May at an election rally in the town of Sriperumbu­ dur in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, a young woman exploded a bomb, killing herself and 16 others. The terror bombing brought the death toll in India's' tenth national election to some 400 above: UPI, Mehta/Contact,lridepeiiderit people, the bloodiest election campaign Rajiv Gandhi's funeral pyre. Leading figures of "democratic" India have met violent death. Above, left to right: continued on page 4 Jawaharlal Nehru with Mohandas Gandhi; Nehru's daughter Indira; her son, Rajiv. Letter to Caribbean Times AI Sharpton: FBI grass

We reprint below a letter submitted to paign against and physical annihilation of ton backed Reaganite Senator Alphonse 502, 18 May 1990). the Caribbean Times dated 171une 1991. the leaders of the Black Panther Party D'Amato-who described blacks living on In order to police the inner cities, the and other black nationalists. In 1988, as a housing estates as "animals"-for re-elec­ American ruling class has employed a To the Editor, result of a New York Newsday expose, tion. Sharpton is also an enthusiast for the layer of black elected officials (BEOs) to Caribbean Times (7 and 14 May 1991) Sharpton admitted that he began inform­ US government's "war on drugs" -the oversee the grinding poverty and misery has devoted considerable favourable ing for the FBI in 1983, after allegedly storm-trooper police operations against the of the ghettos. Sharpton poses as some coverage to Al Sharpton, including his being videotaped during a cocaine deal ghetto populations and elementary civil sort of alternative to these ''black faces in participation in the Thamesmead demon­ with an undercover narc. He let the FBI liberties. And the FBI may well not have high places", as a "tell it like it is" street stration protesting the racist murder of tap his phone, wore a concealed micro­ been the only US government agency leader opposed to the bought-and-paid for Rolan Adams and the activities of the phone at times and accompanied "wired" Sharpton did his dirty work for. Investiga­ BEOs. He came to Britain where a similar fascist British National Party. As militant undercover cops to meetings with people tive journalist Warren Hinckle reported: vacuum of leadership exists (and where the advocates of racial equality and black the FBI was trying to entrap. Sharpton "His past background, according to intel­ BBC were doing a story on him). liberation and as participants in the fmked on two New York black politi­ ligence sources, is that of a CIA contract Certainly the Labour Party, right and Thamesmead mobilisations, we in the cians-Congressman Major Owens and agent, who was involved in destabilizing "left" has starkly demonstrated its nature Spartacist League know how false and state assemblyman Al Vann-when the dangerous are portrayals of Sharpton as Reagan "Justice" Department was inves­ some kind of "new civil rights leader" or tigating "vote tampering". At the time a modern-day Malcolm X. Indeed, if the Sharpton was working for Owens' cam­ heroic Malcolm X were alive today, he paign opponent, Roy Innis. Innis was wouldn't touch the likes of Sharpton with particularly notorious as a recruiter for a bargepole. We think your readers the CIA and South African-backed deserve some facts. UNITA terrorists in Angola. Al Sharpton is a cynical, self-aggrandi­ In 1986 Sharpton tried to whip up a Thamesmead, sing hustler and an admitted fmk for the pogromist backlash against Arab shop­ 27 April: American FBI, the agency responsible for keepers in Harlem (for supposedly selling self-confessed the COINTELPRO "disruption" cam- drug paraphernalia). That same year, Sharp- FBI informer AI Sharpton represents no road to black On the betrayals liberation. of the Labour "lefts" Following the betrayal of the 1926 Gen­ eral Strike and the collapse of the Anglo­ Russian Committee, Trotsky re-emphasised his warning against the perfidy of the Labour "lefts" of the day. The Communist Party had in its propaganda during this period continually reinforced the "leftist" credentials ofA Purcell. Today while stand- TROTSKY ing as the "real" Labour Party in Liverpool LENIN where the J(jnnockite right openly prepare to smash the trade unions, the Militant/Broad Left continues to organise for the victory of the Labour Party in the general election - ie to put /(jnnock into No 10 Downing Street. the Manley regime in Jamaica" (San through support to the imperialist war Francisco Examiner, 6 March 1988). aims in the Gulf, with the "lefts" working What was the significance of 'stabilization' in relation to British economy and politics, The very existence of a layer of black overtime to witch hunt and set up for especially in the years 1926-1927? Did it signify the development of the productive demagogues, outright reactionaries and state repression those who advocated a forces? The improvement of the economic situation? Better hopes for the future? Not fmks posing as "militants" reflects the defeat for the US/British imperialists. at all. The whole so-called stabilization of British capitalism is maintained only upon the profound crisis of black leadership in Not only official race terror-ie, the conservative forces of the old labour organizations with all their currents and shadings America. Sharpton is joined in a league round up, detention and deportation of in the face of the weakness and irresoluteness of the British Communist Party. On the of hustlers by the likes of Louis Farra­ many Arab people-but the escalation of field of the economic and social relations of Britain, the revolution has already fully khan-a grotesque anti-Semite who said murderous thuggery on the streets was matured. The question stands purely politically. The basic props of the stabilization are Malcolm X was ''worthy of death" as well the organic consequence of the mass the heads of the Labour Party and the trade unions which, in Britain, constitute a single as Brooklyn's Sonny Carson, who leads murder in the Gulf supported by all unit but which operate through a division of labour. crowds against Korean shop owners. As major parties. In power, the racist Labour Given such a condition of the working masses as was revealed by the General Strike, Dhoruba Moore, a former Black Panther Party has presided over reactionary anti­ the highest post in the mechanism of capitalist stabilization is no longer occupied by freed after 17 years in prison on a CO­ immigrant legislation, the Prevention of MacDonald and Thomas, but by Pugh, Purcell, Cook and Co. They do the work and INTELPRO frame-up, said: "If someone Terrorism Act and sent the Special Patrol Thomas adds the finishing touches. Without Purcell, Thomas would be left hanging in told me in 1969 that an informer with Group thugs into Southall to protect the mid-air and along with Thomas also Baldwin. The chief brake upon the British processed hair could be considered a National Front and slaughter anti-fascist revolution is the false, diplomatic masquerade 'Leftism' of Purcell which fmternizes leader in the African-American commun­ ftghter Blair Peach. sometimes in rotation, sometimes simultaneously with churchmen and Bolsheviks and ity, I would have told them they were While we opposed those right-wing which is always ready not only for retreats but also for betrayal. crazy. So when I stepped out and found tabloids and Tories who called for a -Leon Trotsky, "Strategy and tactics in the imperialist epoch", 28 June 1928 things of that nature, I realized how Home Office ban on Sharpton's visit, we desperate things have become in the know he did not come here to struggle black community" (Worlcer.r Vanguard no continued on page 9

WORKERSIIAMMER Order yours now! For • federation of workers rep-ublics in the British Islesl ~ Spartaclst League/US For • Socialist United States of Europel Marxist Bulletin no 5 Newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the Intematlonal Communist League (Fourth Intemationallst). "What Strategy for Black Uberation? EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (Editor), Jon Branche, Alec Gilchrist, Bbhlin Trotskyism YS. Black Nationalism" McDonald, Alan Mason, Len Michelson, Bien Rawlings, Michael Riu, David Strachan PRODUCTION MANAGER: Michael Riu CIRCULATION MANAGER: Antoine Vernes Price: £1.75 Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU Order from/make cheques payable to: Subscriptions: £3.00 for 1 year, overseas airmail £6.00. Spartacist Publications OpInions ItXpI'.aed In signed articles or leiters do not necessarily ~ the editorial viewpoint PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Printed by Slough N8\wp&pen Ud(TU). ISSN 0267-8721

2 WORKERS HAMMER Anti-Scargill witch hunters elp-Dsed CIA/GCHQ dirty tricks targeted NUM

The chickens continue to come home 'I" to roost in the vile witch hunt against Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers. On 22 May the Guardian printed an expose confirming that British and American intelligence agencies were directly involved in an internationally orchestrated union-busting campaign against the NUM. It also provided further refutation of the wholesale lies employed by a massive "get Scargill" operation launched anew last summer. Channel Four's "Dispatches" programme, aired on the evening of 22 May, similarly exposed the lies and the methods of the anti-Scar­ gill witch hunt, not least those of Robert Maxwell's Daily Mi"or and Central TV's Cook Report-which served as central mouthpieces for the sinister frame-up. As the Guardian's article "Security Battle of Orgreave, 1984: striking miners faced services 'broke rules to spy on NUM'" armies of Thatcher's boot boys (left); NUM detailed: leader Scargill under arrest (right). Today, "Western intelligence agencies bourgeoisie and Labour lackeys still seek breached the security of banking to bury legacy of strike and to crucify Scargill. transactions throughout Europe to track Soviet funds destined for the National Union of Mineworkers dur­ Security Agency], which works closely calling Polish Solidarn~"anti-SociaIist".) proceeded with the tour. This it kept to ing and after its 1984-5 strike, intelli­ with the CIA, had 'cracked' Soviet inter­ gence sources have alleged." Back in the USSR, according to the itself, but when Butchenko appeared with national banking networks and was able Guardian, the Kremlin 4ecided not to the UDM's Roy Lynk Workers Power Its investigation, in cooperation with to keep track of transactions with the send the funds directly to the NUM but was forced to issue a number of public West. "Dispatches", "also revealed that the "The agency traced the deposit as soon rather to an international solidarity fund statements. Even in these contradictory Kremlin itself took the decision to divert as it was made, tipping off British intelli­ in order "to avoid a diplomatic rift be­ and self-serving disclaimers, Workers its 'Moscow gold' from the NUM to an gence that Soviet money was being tween Mrs Thatcher and the then rising Power implied that there was a basis for international miners' trust fund to avoid funnelled to the NUM. Around the star Mr Gorbachev if the payment was the smears against Scargill, even advising damaging its relations with the British same time, allegations of 'Moscow gold' discovered by the courts or British intelli­ the Kuzbass Workers' Union "should you government", thus rubbishing one of the being sent to aid the miners began to gence". wish to pursue the matter of the money central contentions of the smear cam­ appear in British newspapers." Nearly a year ago, Maxwell kicked off sent by Soviet miners to the NUM during paign that Scargill had pocketed or other­ Coinciding with the 1984 "Moscow the anti-Scargill campaign revisited with their strike, to do so exclusively via the wise manipulated the Soviet donations. gold" Fleet Street campaign was Mikhail allegations of personal corruption against NUM itself'. We are not surprised, In late 1984 when the government was Gorbachev's visit to London where he Scargill and Peter Heathfield, which col­ either, that the recent issue of Worker.y out to starve the striking miners and their was duly warned by Thatcher against lapsed completely even in the inquiry Power says not one word about the recent families into submission and sequestrate Soviet assistance to the miners and duly generally hostile to Scargill by Gavin exposes of dirty tricks in the witch the NUM's assets, "a Soviet bank tried to acquiesced. (A year earlier, Fleet Street Lightman QC. There were also rehashes hunt-including the gratifying fact that lodge $1 million in an account controlled and the Labourite right wing had picked of the "Libyan connection" in the press Yuri Butchenko has subsequent to his by the miners' union at the Swiss bank up on a similar anti-communist witch and the charge of "irregularities" around trip to Britain been expelled from his EBC (Schweiz) AG in Zurich". The hunt against Scargill, instigated by Gerry the Soviet monies. The latter were key to trade-union organisation for "misappro­ account continues: Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party, the campaign and bolstered by a virtual priation of equipment". "It is alleged that the NSA [National lambasting the NUM leader for correctly horde of "independent" Soviet trade In stark contrast to this grovelling unionists brought over to Britain to lend before the anti-Communist witch hunters, credence to the spurious charges. comrades from the International Commu­ Among these Russian ''workers'' were nist League (ICL--of which the Spartacist one Sergei Massalovich who complained League is the British section) intervened to the Serious Fraud Office and sparked in the Soviet miners congress in Donetsk off an investigation against the NUM last autumn. While trade-union bureau­ based on the Soviet monies and one Yuri crats from the US and the UDM slimed Butchenko who appeared with arch-scab about trying to get the miners to con­ UDM head Roy Lynk in a press confer­ demn Arthur ScargiIl, we told the truth ence designed to further the witch hunt. about the witch hunt, circulating our Both are connected with the Russian article in defence of the NUM leader. In fascist NTS-an outfit with documented a recent interview with a Soviet miner links to Western intelligence. The fact present at that congress, the SL/US that Butchenko's tour had been organised newspaper Worker.y Vanguard (no 528, 7 not by the UDM or NTS but grotesquely June) asked about the fact that the im­ by avowed "socialists" lent an air of perialists' lackeys were stymied in this authenticity to Butchenko's charges. Reg­ attempt; the miner answered: ular readers of Worker.y Hammer will be aware that in the course of defending "At the beginning it was presented Scargill against the sinister ruling-class/ that Scargill grabbed, concealed our Ramsay MacKinnock witch hunt we took one and a half million pounds ster­ out Workers Power and their ex-bloc ling that the Soviet miners had col­ lected for the striking English miners partners in CSWEB (Campaign for Soli­ as a symbol of sOlidarity.... Only darity with Workers in the Eastern Bloc) after discussions and contacts with -Socialist Organiser-for their revolting different comrades, in particular with Workers sponsorship of Yuri Butchenko. Workers the American comrades from the Miners strike mobilised broad support from British and international working Power knew full well that Butchenko was 'Spartacist League-Internationalists,' class. Women's Support Group march in London 10 August 1984. connected with the fascistic NTS when it continued on page 9

JULY/AUGUST 1991 3 "other backward castes"-in contrast to India •.• high castes like Brahmans and "forward" (Continued from page 1) farmer castes like the Rajputs, and to "untouchables" like the Harijans who are in the country's history. But this killing outside and beneath the caste structure­ sent shock waves throughout India and the Mandai Report called for reserving the rest of the world. For among the 27 per cent of federal government jobs mangle of dismembered bodies lying near for them. the speaker's platform was that 0: Rajiv In line with an earlier 1950 provision, Gandhi, former prime minister, head of another 22.5 per cent of government jobs the Congress (I) party and scion of the were already reserved for the lowest dynasty which ruled India for all but 7 of "scheduled castes" (untouchables) and its 44 years since gaining independence "scheduled tribes" (so called because the from Britain. constitution specifIcally schedules them And, at least for the foreseeable for protection). In fact these "job reserva­ future, Rajiv Gandhi's bloody end also tions" are effectively meaningless in un­ means the end of that dynasty, founded dermining pervasive caste oppression. To by India's first prime minister lawaharlal this day, fewer than five per cent of the Nehru. Gandhi met his end much in the elite Indian Administrative Services are manner of many another Congress leader. from the scheduled castes and tribes, Nehru's mentor and head of the bour­ Dieter Ludwig while 70 per cent are high caste. Un­ geois independence movement, Mohandas Hindu fascists of the paramilitary Shiva Sena target Muslim minority in terror touchables often fill their quota in the Gandhi (no relation) was shot by a Hindu attacks. lowliest work traditionally associated with ultra-nationalist in 1948. Only two years "Whoever killed Rajiv Gandhi yesterday rection. The states of Punjab,Kashmir their status-like cleaning or rubbish after Nehru died in office of a stroke in struck at democracy itself." Erstwhile and Assam are under martial law aimed collection-whether or not they have a 1964, his daughter Indira assumed the pseudo-Trotskyist Tariq Ali joined in the at suppressing regional insurgencies. Even college degree. Indeed, some 600,000 parliamentary throne. When she was bourgeois breast-beating, lamenting "the with 1.5 million police and paramilitary untouchable families eke out an existence assassinated by Sikh members of her tragedy of the Nehru-Gandhi family" and forces deployed, the elections had to be solely by cleaning latrines. As one student bodyguard in 1984, in revenge for her moaning: "In one foul blow the country's staggered over three days to allow for pointed out: brutal massacre of rebellious Sikhs at the leading secular politician has been elimin­ concentration of forces to defend the "I belong to the backward caste. I have Golden Temple in Amritsar, it was her ated from the race. Who will now rescue balloting, with two further dates set aside been lOOking for a job in vain for the son Rajiv who took over as head of Con­ India from the prophets of hate?" for Punjab and Assam and no vote slated last five years. What good is job reser­ vation to me? Who will give me a job? gress and India. Its "secular" and even "socialist" pre- for Kashmir. "Booth-capturing" by gangs We all know that only the children of of rival party thugs, who shoot their way the rich and powerful will get jobs, into polling places in order to stuff the reservation or no reservations." ballot boxes, alone claimed the lives of -The HllIdu (15 September 1990) dozens during the fust day of balloting on Yet in a country with over 50 million 20 May. unemployed, where even a menial posi­ Meanwhile, a sinister rise in anti-Mus­ tion in the railways or post office may be lim communalism has been registered the difference between relative comfort with the dramatic growth of the Hindu­ and utter destitution, this is an explosive chauvinist Bharatiya lanata Party (BJP). question. In 1989, there were more than The spectre looms of a slaughter to 450,000 applicants for some 4500 jobs in match that of the Partition of India in the Union Public Service Commission. 1947. Commenting on the assassination, Moreover, even the slightest tampering the Tunes of India wrote: "At no time with the caste system is viewed with since it won freedom has India been as alarm by the high castes who continue to polarised along antagonistic lines as it is dominate Indian society in all aspects. today. Caste has been pitted against caste Though the last census enllI11erating and religion against religion with relent­ caste status was taken 60 years ago, caste less fury." At no time has the need been prejudice and oppression remain a pow­ clearer for a socia1ist revolution in India erful and pernicious force, reinforced by that sweeps away all the encrusted back­ popular culture and television epics like wardness and hideous oppression that are the Mahabharata. While the British colo­ bound up with capitalist rule. nialists hypocritically condemned caste discrimination, they cultivated and re­ Caste hatreds explode cruited the higher castes to their adminis­ Following the elections of November trative and military apparatus and then 1989, Gandhi's Congress (I) was replaced tried to build up the lower castes as a by a National Front government led by counter-weight to nationalist agitation, V P Singh's lanata Dal and supported much as they used Muslim-Hindu com­ from the outside by both the rightist BJP munalism, to divide and rule. Capitalism and the two main Stalinist parties, the and urbanisation have impacted on old Rajiv Gandhi's assassination highlights tensions notwithstanding, Congress ruled Communist Party of India and CPI caste practices and adjusted the status the deep crisis of capitalist India. The over India's prison house of peoples with (Marxist). The immediate backdrop to and power of some castes, but the divi­ imperialists are worried at the prospect of an iron fist. Nehru presided over the gris­ the present crisis stems from Singh's sion between rich and poor, powerful and an already turbulent India being pushed ly communa1ist slaughter of the 1947 Par­ decision last August to implement affirm­ powerless, still broadly parallels that further down the road to chaos. Even tition which created Muslim Pakistan. ative action measures for the country's between high and low caste. Indicative of before the killing, the Economist (4 May) Indira Gandhi calculatingly played the lower castes based on a report issued ten the depth of the problem is that some see wrote: Hindu-chauvinist card; her massacre of years earlier. Designating more than 3700 progress in the fact that urban upper "The future of India looks more threat­ the Sikhs was characteristic of her long of the country's castes and subcastes as caste families now keep separate plates ened than for many years. In recent and bloody reign. And despite his "Mr months its government has been all but Clean" image, Rajiv followed firmly,in his paralysed by political squabbling. The mother's footsteps, right from the start. country is divided by violence over As thousands of Sikhs were being hunted caste, religion and demands for regional down and lynched following his mother's autonomy. Economic growth is slowing, assassination, Gandhi encouraged the and poverty on a scale that defies the imagination seems beyond all remedy." bloodbath, intoning: ''When a great tree falls, the earth shakes." Several years Though no longer the hegemonic party it later, he sent Indian "peacekeeping" was in Nehru's day, Congress remained forces to Sri Lanka who, under the guise the main party of a fragmented all-India of protecting the country's Tamil minority bourgeoisie, with pretensions of repre­ from a Sinhalese chauvinist bloodbath, senting all caste, religious, national and waged a war of annihilation against the ethnic groupings. And, as an editorial in separatist guerrilla Tamil Tigers. the Independent (22 May) wrote, "Con­ Today the Tigers, who are also sus­ gress (I) was the Gandhi family." (The pected of blowing away hawkish Sri "I" stands for Indira, to distinguish it Lankan defence chief Ranjan Wijeratne from the rump party of Congress bosses two months ago, are considered prime who fell afoul of her in a power fight.) suspects in Gandhi's assassination. In re­ For decades, the imperialist press has tribution, the Congress party in Tamil hailed India as the "world's most popu­ Nadu is demanding the deportation of lous democracy" and upheld it as the 200,000 Lankan Tamil refugees. But such AP model of a "democratic" alternative to is the squalid morass of Indian bourgeois Muslim refugees in New Delhi after British-engineered 1947 Partition of social revolution in the Third World. The politics that the assassin could have come India. As many as a million people were killed, many millions more driven New 'Yorlc Tunes (22 May) editoria1ised, from virtually any ethnic or political di- from their homes in bloody communalist strife.

4 WORKERS HAMMER for their untouchable employees instead to agrarian revolution in the r.ountryside of throwing scraps from a safe distance. lies through the seizure of power by the Nowhere is the degradation inherent in proletariat in the cities. Only then will it this hierarchy of power and poverty more be possible to nationalise the land and apparent than in the treatment of women. expropriate large landlords and capitalist Untouchable and tribal women are rou­ farmers. And the call for land to the poor tinely subjected to rape, while upper caste peasants and a programme of govern­ women are disinherited and secluded in ment loans and provision for modem the name of caste purity. The caste­ farming equipment can win the peasants related dowry system has led to a shock­ and agricultural workers to the side of ing decline in the ratio of women to men the proletariat. (now 929 to 1(00). This disparity is The key is forging a Trotskyist party to fuelled by infanticide of female babies, lead the Indian working masses to power. deliberate maltreatment of young girls by The thoroughly reformist Stalinist CPI their parents and murder of young brides and CPI(M) are both mass parties, hold­ by the families of husbands greedy for ing governmental power in several states. more or a second dowry-the fate of 690 They have gained a certain amount of women in the capital of New Delhi alone authority for steering clear of the manip­ last year. "Bride burnings ... are escalating ulative communalism which marks all the exponentially in a modern, urban India, bourgeois parties. Sikh CPI militants in where a new wave of consumerism has /., the Punjab, for example, risked their lives spawned a greedy, growing middle class" AP to defend their Hindu neighbours against (Los Angeles Times, 29 April). Communist Party election rally in Nepal. Stalinist mass parties in Indian pogroms by Sikh fundamentalists. And One recent incident of caste/sex viol­ subcontinent tie workers to reactionary bourgeois order. the CPI(M) has been able to retain con­ ence shocked the country. When the 16- trol over Calcutta and West Bengal for 13 year-old daughter of a Jat landowner in 88 five years later to now being a serious opening India up to even greater imper­ years, largely because of its ability thus the town of Mehrana near Delhi eloped contender to form the next government. ialist exploitation, this mouthpiece for the far to avert communal clashes. Even in with her 18-year-old outcaste Jatav lover, Much of its explosive support has come furmer colonial masters insists, "The the neighbouring Himalayan kingdom of with the help of his Jatav friend, the from the growing middle class spawned changes India needs are not far short of Nepal, the Communists recently scored higher caste Jat families in the town by Gandhi's economic "liberalisation" in a revolution." resounding successes in the first election captured the three youth and subjected the 198Os, who live in terror at the pros­ A revolution is precisely what India in 30 years. them to an inquisition. When the couple pect of sinking back into utter destitution. needs, not the untrammelled imperialist But both the CPI and CPI(M) are refused to renounce their relationship, While advocating Thatcherite economic exploitation envisaged by the Economist, wedded to the politics of coalitionism, the two young men were tortured for policies and a pro-American tilt, the BJP but thorough-going proletarian socialist tying the proletariat to the wheels of one hour~aten with clubs and burned with offers them a scapegoat for the degrada­ revolution. The small but strategic Indian or another bourgeois party in the name torches in their mouths and genitals while tion and misery of Indian capitalist proletariat, which has historically demon- of democracy, and both uphold capitalist hung upside down. Then the Jat-domi­ society in the more than 110 million nated town council "sentenced" all three Muslims and other minorities of the to be hanged-4>y their own parents. country, who are denounced as "ungrate­ When the young men's fathers balked, ful guests". they too were clubbed until they finally The BJP's parent organisation is the acquiesced. fascistic RSS (it was an RSS supporter who assassinated Mohandas Gandhi). Communal terror escalates While BJP leader L K Advani-who is Far from being the "social revolution" also a long-time member of the RSS­ presents the party's parliamentarist face, Indian troops depicted by the Western press, Singh's In Jaffna, "job reservation" proposal was purely and his agitators mobilise anti-Muslim po­ gromists on the streets. "Moslems are Sri Lanka, cynically aimed at cutting into the lower­ 1987. caste "vote banks" of the other bourgeois like a lemon dropped into cream. They turn it sour," rants one. "What do we do Rajiv parties. But in response to Singh's an­ Gandhi nouncement, violent high-caste anti-reser­ with the lemon? We cut it up, squeeze out the pips and throw them away." sought to vation protests erupted across north suppress India, spearheaded by students, scores of And while Hindu/Muslim com­ munalism ominously escalates, threat­ separatist whom immolated themselves. Though Tamil Tigers. none of the other parties dared to openly ening to engulf the subcontinent in another India-Pakistan war, as India To­ repudiate the scheme for fear of alienat­ day (15 October 1990) put it, "Punjab ing potential voters, Singh's opponents­ burns, Kashmir burns." The war against including a split from his own party­ the Punjabi Sikhs continues relentlessly, strated militancy and organisation, is the India's "unity" against "secessionists". seized on the uproar to move on him. On while the Muslims of Kashmir have been only social force capable of dragging the The CPI(M)-Ied government of West 7 November, Singh resigned and a minor­ subjected to a "scorched-earth policy" of country out of the quagmire of conflicting Bengal is aggressively encouraging capi­ ity government headed by a split -off led "terror and violence". "Kashmir is now nationalist and communalist antagonisms. talist businessmen, including the chief by Chandra Shekhar governed precarious­ beyond solution," shrugs one Indian The working class has a direct and im­ minister's son. India more than perhaps ly with Congress (I) support. mediate interest in combating communal­ any other country on the face of the earth The BJP in particular responded to political analyst in a New York Times Magazine (19 May) article by Barbara ism. Frequently drawn from local and is proof positive of Trotsky's theory of this attempt to divide its base by launch­ migrant minorities, it is often particularly permanent revolution, an object lesson in ing an ugly Hindu-communalist campaign Crossette. And in February, 26,(}()() were arrested during a general strike in Tamil the working class that is the main target the futility of seeking to fulfil the tasks of of anti-Muslim provocations. Screaming of communalist terror. the democratic revolution in a backward "Break the mosque!" and "Hail the Lord Nadu protesting against the imposition of direct rule by New Delhi. Likewise, drawing behind it the agrar­ country under capitalism. There has been Ramal" in late October BJP-Ied mobs capitalist development: the "Green Revol­ stormed a 400-year-old Muslim mosque ian masses, the proletariat is the only For a Trotskyist party In Indial force capable of rooting out the deeply ution" of applying science to agriculture in Ayodhya ~hich Hindu fundamentalists virtually eliminated India's import of claim is located on the birthplace of the Forty-four years after independence, • embedded structure of caste and sexual oppression. Even the most elementary grain; the country has built up large-scale Hindu god Ram. Anti-Muslim terror and the vast majority of the country's 850 heavy industry. Yet this is combined with Muslim reprisals escalated throughout the million people live in ghastly poverty, demands against caste discrimination­ like an end to all discrimination in jobs truly horrendous social conditions, the region, leaving over 2000 dead in a mat­ dispossessed and effectively disenfran­ bride burning, caste oppression, national ter of weeks. The scenes evoked the chised, as flagrantly corrupt politicians, and social facilities, decent housing for the poor and safe water and sewage sys­ subjugation, hunger and grinding poverty horror of partition. In Hyderabad alone, capitalists and landlords amass their on a mind-boggling scale-the list is 130 people were slaughtered, including 30 wealth and determine election outcomes tems-require sweeping away the capital­ ist system. And integral to the perpetu­ endless. children stabbed or axed and burned with naked brute force. For the Sikhs, As we wrote seven years ago, after the alive. In Aligarh, the site of an old Mus­ Muslims and hundreds of millions of ation of the caste system is the land question. The post-independence land Golden Temple massacre (Spartacist lim academy, Hindu thugs provocatively lower-caste and "outcaste" Hindus as Britain no 60, August 1984): marched through Muslim areas and three well as women of all ethnic and caste reforms and the so-called "Green Revo­ Muslim men were dragged from a train lution" of agrarian development have "If India is not to be wracked by another backgrounds, India's "secular democracy" convulsion of communalist slaughter in passing through the station and butch­ has meant only uninterrupted and unen­ benefited a layer of capitalist farmers, including some of the "backward" farmer the interests of imperialism, what is ered. A 2O,OOO-strong paramilitary force durable oppression. And neighbouring needed is a mass proletarian party rally­ drafted in to stop the communalist terror Pakistan is no less a prison house for its castes. But half of rural households own no land, while five per cent own well over ing behind the banner of Permanent instead began disintegrating in the face of minority peoples. Already ruled as an Revolution the myriad minorities, the a third of the cultivable land. Rural in­ the Hindu mobs. By the beginning of Islamic theocracy, Pakistan's rulers are agrarian masses and the multitudinous November, some 40 cities had been now attempting to shove through an even debtedness is endemic, bonded labour victims of caste and sex oppression .... placed under curfew. stricter, fundamentalist "Shari'a Law". widespread and growing. "The problems of South Asia are int­ The BJP's mixture of rabid anti-Mus­ With all the gin-and-tonic arrogance Even the MandaI Report linked land errelated and will not be solved separ­ ately. Only the working class can guar­ lim communalism and mythological Hin­ that comes so easily to it, the Economist reform to the question of countering antee the right of self-determination to du fundamentalism, exemplified by the (4 May) sneers that India's misery "is entrenched caste privilege, but none of the oppressed nations from the Baluchis title of its 1991 manifesto "Towards Ram largely India's own doing" and "not the the bourgeois parties dare draw that in Pakistan to the Tamils in Lanka, the Rajya" (the iuIe of Ram), has catapulted fault of former colonial masters or connection. As the Bolshevik Revolution liberation of women from bondage and it from two seats in parliament in 1984 to wicked western capitalists". Calling for of 1917 in Russia demonstrated, the road backwardness, and land to the tiller." •

JULY/AUGUST 1991 5 Connolly's legacy

We print below the second and con­ in Belfast between 1911 and 1914. socialism in Britain through an Enabling cluding part of an edited version of the Part II takes up the many differences Act in the British Parliament. 1bat is 14 March presentation given in Dublin by between our analysis and programme and the policy of the left-wing social demo­ comrade Tom Crean of the Dublin Spar­ those of our opponents on the left. The crats, going back to the 19305 ..•. tacist Youth Group. Part I was published discussion period at the Dublin meeting "And I teU you one newspaper where in Worlcer.r Hammer no 123 (May/June was in fact dominated by a debate you will certainly never read about Brit­ 1991). An accompanying piece entitled between Emmett Farrell of the Militant ish troops out of Ireland, that is the "In honour of the 1916 Easter Rising" tendency and the DSYG. Militant is newspaper of the British Militant. In addressed the importance for Marxists of known for its loyalty to Labourism in fact, if there is a responsibility it is for election of Mary Robinson as the Irish this anti-imperialist rebellion in which British revolutionaries above all to fight President. He says there are basically Ireland as well as in Britain, combined (the way he put it) two souls of Irish Connolly made the last political interven­ with a tepid economism which it claims against the presence of British troops in the North.... socialism, one of which is the Republi­ tion of his life. has something to do with Trotskyism. To can tradition and the other the social Part I, which contained the bulk of the understand Militant's position on Ireland, "For example the Irish Militant called at democratic standpoint which capitulates main presentation, described Connolly's it is important to remember that it was one point to defend Iraq in the recent to British imperialism and Unionism in work up to 1914 and his attempt to the Labour Party which sent the troops to war, whereas the British Militant would the North. And in fact one of the muo;t important things about Mary Robinson's election (which the Militant hails as J ".f.) some kind of famous advance and form­ ~ WE SERYE ing a critical turning point apparently), is •~' her pro-imperialism. The fact that she wants to see the continuation of the British role in the North, that she is very strongly pro-NATO. lbat represents the real sort of politics of Irish social demo­ cracy which is a capitulation to British imperialism and to Unionism .... " Farrell retorted that: "In 1971 we did change our position in terms of our public material addressed .. to a particular area of the working class .... In 1970 and 1971 and 1972, when we first published the paper as a regular monthly paper, on our masthead • we had 'for a united socialist Ireland' .... That was a time when you could get an echo for that even in Protestant work­ ing-class areas, when you had ten thou­ sand people approaching the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA to become members after the killings in Derry and after internment.... Three years later, in 1975, there was mass killings in the North on a daily basis of catholics by Protestants and of Protes­ National Library of Ireland tants by catholics and the idea that you James Connolly with a contingent of the Irish Citizen Army marshal in front of the headquarters of the Transport and would get into East Belfast where there General Workers Union in Dublin. The Citizen Army emerged out of the great strike/lockout of 1913. were Protestant thugs from the UDA at the entrances to all the parts of East address Irish history from a Marxist Northern Ireland in 1969. Militant calls never have said that, because of course Belfast with clubs and masks on and sell standpoint, particularly in Labour in Irish for a trade-union militia in the North as the British Militant was up against one the paper saying that you were for a History. Connolly was eventually led to a precondition for the withdrawal of the of the governments that was highly socialist united Ireland was just a joke, supportive of that war, was actually equate the fight for national indepen­ British troops. While its position is some­ you just wouldn't do it, you wouldn't get prosecuting that war. So it is a lot easier in and that remains the case in parts of dence with the fight for socialism. As a times confused with our call for to say that here than it is to say it in East Belfast today. And the comrades result, Connolly-while fighting tooth and programmatically-based anti-sectarian London .... would say you must preserve your pro­ nail against the bourgeois nationalists of workers militias to combat Orange and gramme. Of course you must preserve John Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Green terror and imperialist rampage, "The point I want to finish on is that your programme .... On the other hand, Party-also made various political conces­ Militant fails the acid test of demanding there is a guy in Britain called Sean the [Spartacistj comrades will want sions to the Fenian Republican tradition the immediate, unconditional withdrawal Matgamna who is a leader of a group to ... have in their paper a headline say­ in the belief that consistent Republican­ called Socialist Organiser. And he had ing 'troops out' and say that the Militant ofBritish troops from Northem Ireland. To made this observation at the time of the ism 'would lead to socialism. Connolly was take just one example: in a recent editor­ should be held in contempt because we don't have it." trying to grapple with the national ques­ ial (Militant, 24 May) and accompanying tion in the context of the Second Interna­ article on the Brooke talks, they not only Clearly, Militant's "change of position" tional which was characterised in the don't raise the call for "troops out" but was motivated by an opportunist adapta­ main by rotten, pro-imperialist chauvin­ don't even mention the presence of the tion. But we must also point out that the ism (as ronfrrmed in August 1914). He British occupying forces! • call for a "united socialist Ireland" can be was unaware of Lenin's debates with Militant's Farrell tried to argue on the a lefter-sounding version of the national­ Ro;;a Luxembl.d'g on the question of self­ basis that we were small and "sectarian". ist programme for the forcible unification determination; executed after the 1916 Militant "is sold in both East Belfast and of Ireland, ignoring at best the question Rising, Connolly did not live to see the West Belfast, something which I think is of the Protestants. Our demand for an Com intern deal with these issues. unlikely to be the fate of the Worlcer.r Irish workers republic as part of a social­ For us, as for Lenin, Marxism and Hammer'. But, back to programme, a ist federation of the British Isles leaves nationalism are fundamentally counter­ DSYG comrade responded: open the question of where the Protes­ posed. As we wrote in Theses on Ireland "Militant as an organisation failed to tants fall. It is counterposed to the Mili­ (Spllltacist no 24): raise the demand on virtually every tant's (now defunct) call and to its re­ "Thus, while revolutionists struggle occasion for the British troops to leave placement, "For a Socialist Federation of against all forms of national oppression, immediately and unconditionally .... Ireland and Britain". With their old slo­ they are also opposed to aU forms of Another example of Militant's 'anti­ gan Militant leaned towards Green na­ nationalist ideology. It is a revision of imperialism' was their call during the tionalism; their current slogan walks both 1982 Falklands War for a democratic Leninism to claim that the 'nationalism southern and northern sides of the street, of the oppressed' is progressive and can socialist Labour Government to pursue the same war with a socialist face .... " leaving the door open to the Unionist be supported by communist interna­ notion of an indivisible "United King­ tionalists. " Another Spartacist spokesman from the dom" (particularly given the failure to Whatever weaknesses there were in Con­ SL/B explained: call for British troops out of the North). nolly's theoretical understanding of the "When we are talking about building a Unlike our call for a "federation of national question, his unquestionable revolutionary party and a revolutionary no credit workers republics in the British Isles", it strength was his determined, lifelong movement, then we are not talking Lessons of Lenin's Bolshevik Party suggests both islands are fIxed national battle for the interests of the working about building a party like the British which led the October Revolution key entities, without internal and unresolved class. In Part I, we dealt with his attempts Militant tendency which has said ex­ to forging revolutionary vanguard in national questions which must be to unite Protestant and Catholic workers plicitly ever since 1975 that you can get Ireland. addressed by revolutionaries. (The need

6 WORKERS HAMMER and the struggle for a revolutionary party l "i ~ for the abolition of the monarchy is neat­ continuous underestimation of Loyalism ly avoided, too.) And this leaves out but at the same time if you are thinking completely the question of the democratic back to that period it was very hard to right of self-determination for Scotland see that this was going to be the inevi­ and Wales. We by contrast advocate table outcome. It was very easy to think these national rights, though not currently that Home Rule was an inevitability. their exercise. We make it clear that In the entire chapter that the IWG victorious workers revolution will in no devoted to Connolly's work and to Con­ way be committed to the current state nolly's understanding of the Protestants boundaries that contain or divide the they do not at any point mention the nations and peoples of this archipelago. actual attempts that were made between From the Militant's failure to raise the 1911 and 1914 to bring Catholic and elementary demand for unconditional Protestant workers together, some of withdrawal of the British troops from them partially successful. Nor do they Northern Ireland, to its social chauvinism mention 1907, nor do they mention the over the Falklands war to its abject fail­ 1919 engineering strike. So basically what ure to work for the defeat of US/British they criticise Connolly for doing is having imperialism in the Gulf War, this Labour­ some sort of utopian perspective that he ite tendency overtly capitulates to the could possibly expect to really unite the British imperialists and their Labour working class at this point against the lackeys. bosses. We print below the fmal part of While one would not want to under­ Crean's presentation and his summary estimate the dangers, our point of view is following the discussion period and that in fact even in these small struggles, debate and believe that this material will and in fact in some of the larger ones, prove educational for those who seek, as while economic struggles by themselves 4. Connolly did, revolutionary answers to are not going to lead in some linear t~~ ~, A~ the miserable, decaying capitalism of fashion to socialism, at the same time the ~ ITGWU these islands. intervention of a revolutionary party no Dublin, 31 August 1913: police baton charge strikers in O'Connell Street. matter how small has potential to gain the kind of cadre that can lead a revol­ Now I want tp raise some points that ution at a later point. So for us these and therefore there is no need particular­ North that can lay the basis for building are made by our political opponents, struggles are enormously important and ly to raise slogans or to put forward the a Bolshevik party. And that is the only because there have been a couple of these points of unity are of enormous perspective of fighting imperialism as it way out. books published in the last year, purport­ importance and the necessity is to inter­ exists in Northern Ireland. There are various bad solutions and ing to deal with Connolly from a Marxist vene into them. For the IWG this is You either have capitulation to Green the current status quo is certainly rotten standpoint. The first was by the Irish basically dismissed. nationalism in some form or another or. to the core. The only way out is by build­ Workers Group and the second was by In this country in the wake of partition capitulation to Orangeism. Now that of ing that kind of a Bolshevik party. And in Kieran Allen of the SWM. These books you have two analyses on the left. The course goes from the Militant all the way saying these things what we are looking do contribute to our understanding of first analysis which is held by a number to even more egregious forms such as the to are the traditions of Lenin's Comintern Connolly and a number of things have of groups is that there is one nation and Workers Party or the British and Irish which put forward an internationalist Communist Organisation. Our pro­ perspective and which unlike the Second gramme sees Northern Ireland as a clas­ International did not see the national sic situation of interpenetrated peoples. question simply in chauvinist terms. In As I laid it out here we think that Con­ fact in large part the Second International nolly was absolutely right to fight against even had pro-imperialist politics and this partition as it was being posed, as it was became clearly expressed in 1914 when being posed first of all within the working the German social democracy, the class. For partition to be actually carried French, the British· Labour Party all through it first of all meant that the supported their own bourgeoisie in the working class had to be split asunder. war. So in counterposition to this the Catholic and leftist workers had to be Third International was built for interna­ driven out of the shipyards in 1912 and tionalism. It was built in support ot the out of the engineering plants in 1919. It right of the oppressed nations to self­ required a bloody partition of the work­ determination. And it was built in the ing class rust of all. So of course it was understanding that only through building absolutely correct to fight against that. revolutionary parties could the working There is no just resolution to the na­ class move forward. tional question under capitalism. The I concentrated a good deal on the forcible reunification of Ireland which as North in describing Connolly's work there you probably saw in the leaflet, we stand but before W orId War I there was also opposed to, under the hegemony of the an enormous struggle in Dublin and that Irish Catholic nation could simply mean was in 1913 when 25,000 workers were the reversal of the terms of oppression. locked out by William Martin Murphy And in fact if history teaches anything and the bosses of Dublin. Connolly and probably that is what it would mean, the Larkin in that struggle spent more of Bodenstown, 1934: contingent from Belfast's Protestant Shankill Road reversal of the terms of oppression. So their time in Britain seeking solidarity march on Wolfe Tone Commemoration. Anti-capitalist struggle can we say clearly that the British troops strikes by British workers of which there transcend sectarian divide. should get out. We say no to forcible were actually a fair number. In fact there reunification and we say what's needed is was so much pressure from the rank and been raised in these books which are the solution is simply the removal of the a federation of workers republics in the me in Britain that the Trade Union Con­ certainly useful and helpful for Marxists. external factor, that is the British troops British Isles. We also call for an anti­ gress officialdom felt compelled to call a At the. same time particularly over this in Northern Ireland and that will then sectarian and programmatically-based special conference which was simply their question of partition and Connolly's work lead to a peaceful and just resolution or workers militia to combat Orange and way of putting a safety valve on the thing. in the North, I would take real issue with maybe a bloody but just resolution. The Green terror and imperialist rampage in So it was notable that £150,000 was raised what the Irish Workers Group has to say. other point of view which is put forward the North. This is a perspective which in Britain, a pretty enormous sum at the They criticise Connolly for underestimat­ for example by Militant is that the class doesn't underestimate the difficulties but time, in solidarity with Dublin workers. ing Orange ism. On the one hand it is must come together on economic issues sees the way forward as the intervention This was a conjuncture which posed in certainly true that Connolly, in the same and that will lead to the national question even of a small number of revolutionaries a way that the British miners strike of way as Irish nationalists in general, had a disappearing relatively of its own accord into the actual points of class unity in the continued on page 8

JULY/AUGUST 1991 7 Connolly •.• ~ "g (Continued from page 7) a year before also had; which posed the possibility again of united class action throughout these islands. Connolly and Larkin certainly had the right perspective which was to bring British workers out in Belfast: Harland & solidarity. Wolff shipyard, World War I broke out not long after early 1900s. 1919 the defeat of the workers in Dublin in shipyard and early 1914 in spite of enormous heroism. engineering strike Connolly's initial response to war was not united Protestant very different in many ways from Lenin's and Catholic or Liebknecht's. He said, talking about workers; in 1920 the measures that were necessary ip Catholics and Ireland by the labour movement: socialists from "Starting thus, Ireland may yet set the both communities torch to a European conflagration that were driven out will not bum out until the last throne by Unionist-led and the last capitalist bond and deben­ violence. ture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord." -Irish Worker 8 August 1914, Collected Works, Vol 1, pl96 Not a bad way of putting it. A year later general secretary of the Irish Transport wasn't answered, a question about what ditions [i.e., capitalist, civilised, economi­ in the context of his increasing bitterness and General Workers Union and Con­ was the actual form that bourgeois na­ cally progressive conditions, as distin­ at the spectacle of Irish workers being nolly did fairly stalwart work in bringing tionalism took in Connolly's time and I guished from medieval, pre-capitalist, sent out by Redmond, by the Irish Parlia­ that union back into fmancial solvency in think also the corollary to that was if etc.]; it is the form in which the state can mentary Party to die in Europe for the that period. Certainly it was his perspec­ there was such a thing as bourgeois na­ best fulfill its tasks" (VI Lenin, "The cause of the Empire, he said, (now he is tive that that union should see itself tionalism how could Connolly be for Right of Nations to Self-Determination", through to another day. What he didn't back in Belfast at this point and referring nationalism? Essentially what you are p9). So for Lenin and Kautsky the advo­ have was Lenin's understanding that war to a man who is known as Wee Joe Dev­ talking about is the Irish Parliamentary cacy by socialists of the use of the right lin, the leader of the Parliamentary Party is the mother of revolution. As Lenin said Party and Connolly's view didn't deny the of self-determination as opposed to the in Belfast): "The present writer cannot it, not knowing Connolly's politics and existence of an Irish bourgeoisie, but he right in general in any particular situation ride up the Falls Road in his own motor what Connolly was about, the tragedy of said that their nationalism was false. That was conditional on whether this would If car, the penny tram has to do him. But the Irish was that they went too soon. was his own way of addressing it. And advance the development of the forces of thank God there are no fresh-made we were there we would have argued with that class is beholden to England com­ production and the class struggle. Solving graves in Flanders or the Dardanelles Connolly about the perspective that he pletely and thoroughly and therefore the national question in any particular built by the mangled corpses of men was taking and fought against it. But we would never seek independence in any situation clears an obstacle on the path of whom he coaxed or bullied into leaving would certainly agree with Lenin in de­ fundamental way. forging a class-conscious proletariat. As their homes and families" (Worken Re­ fending the Easter Rising and defending Now, I think Connolly was at his best Lenin put it: "While recognising equality public 28 August 1915, Collected Worics, all the rebellions that came subsequently when he spoke in 1897 of what an inde­ and equal rights to a national state, it Vol I, p365). against the colonial and imperialist rulers. pendent capitalist Ireland might look like. [the proletariat] values above all and He said: "If you remove the English army places foremost the alliance of the prolet­ There was a shift in Connolly's posi­ So on that note I will conclude. Our tomorrow and hoist the green flag over arians of all nations, and assesses any tion from the internationalist position I perspective is internationalist and we Dublin Castle, unless you set about the national demand, any national separation, quoted. The context of this has to be think that James Connolly and his life organisation of the Socialist Republic, from the angle of the workers' class strug­ understood because on the one hand you work was basically that of a fJghter for your efforts would be in vain. England gle" (VI Lenin, "The Right of Nations to had the defeat of the strike in 1913-14 in the international working class. In spite of would still rule you. She would rule you Lenin Dublin, the defeat of the working class. all the flaws and all the problems, we Self-Determination", p23). So for through her capitalists, through her land­ the proletariat while fighting resolutely Then you had the collapse of the Second think that his work is really the starting lords, through her financiers" (Shan Van International in front of the war, the point for revolutionaries in this country for the right of small nations against Vocht January 1897, Collected Worics, Vol imperialism must not in any way cham­ 1, p307). And in another passage in Soc­ pion nationalism. Lenin's position is in ialism Made Easy he says: fact a consistent extension of Marx's "After Ireland is free, says the patriot dictum that the workers have no country. who won't touch Socialism, we will pro­ That's our starting point. The starting tect all classes, and if you won't pay point of the Militant tendency as an your rent you will be evicted same as international which is based in Britain now. But the evicting party, under the -and the point that Emmett did not command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the bother to respond to-is that it very ex­ Crown, and the warrant turning you out plicitly sees socialism as being brought by on the roadside will be stamped with the an Enabling Clause in a peaceful trans­ arms of the Irish Republic. formation of society; it is a tendency "Now isn't that worth fighting for? which has basically made its peace with "And when you cannot find employ­ the British Labour Party. Kinnock's party ment, and giving up the struggle of life in turn clearly expresses the interest, as in despair, enter the Poorhouse, the has been self-evident in the most recent band of the nearest regiment of the period, of one wing of British imperial­ Irish army will escort you to the Poorhouse door to the tune of 'St ism, and went along gladly and enthusi­ Patrick's Day'. astically with the slaughter of the Iraqi "Oh, it will be nice to live in those days! masses. Our position is rather different " 'With the Green Flag floating o'er us' and our tendency has stood out in the and an ever-increasing army of unem­ last 25 years of its existence against the ployed workers walking about under the popular front, for the defence of the Green Flag, wishing they had something gains of the October Revolution, against to eat. Same as now. all counterrevolutionary movements, as "Whoop it up for liberty!" (Socialism today perhaps most clearly exemplified by Dublin's O'Connell St: leader of ITGWU James Larkin (in disguise) arrested Made Easy, p32) on Bloody Sunday, 31 August 1913. Sajudis in the Soviet Union, though I I think he managed to capture a lot of dare say that the various wings of the support of all these parties for their own but not the sole starting point by any what has happened, what the reality of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union share in ruling class. So Connolly suddenly felt means. It is the politics of Lenin and life in the so-called Irish Republic is common their complete preparation to himself quite isolated, and in that isola­ Trotsky, the politics of the early Commu­ today. betray the working class to the imperial­ tion he turned away or began to turn nist International and the Fourth Interna­ So our perspective in relation to the ists as they have done numerous times in away from an internationalist perspective. tional which really provides the way for­ national question is not to ignore it, is the recent past. Which isn't to say that he had adopted a ward in the current context. So far from, not to say that in Ireland it's going to be We are not pretending that we are in nationalist perspective in any defmitive as many groups do, seeking to use Con­ easily resolved, nor is it to say that there fact a group of a hundred people with a way. Nevertheless this nationalist bent nolly to justify one form or another of is any just resolution under capitalism. sizable contingent in the working class obviously came to inform his thinking opportunism or capitulation in this We take our starting point from Lenin movement. We are a group of students, leading up to the Easter Rising. I would society, we look to the most advanced and he was very clear in stating that the but we seek to become more than that. also point out though that while in itself conceptions of modem scientific socialism right of self-determination means nothing We seek, on the basis of a programme with the signing of the Proclamation you as the way forward for workers revol­ except the right of existence as a separate which opposes nationalism clearly and op­ had the dipping of the red banner in ution. Thank you. state. He actually quotes Kautsky who in poses imperialism, to gain the cadre to front of the green, that at the very end of his earlier days was capable of saying very build a revolutionary party which can see his life he was not simply the commander Summary intelligent things. "The national state is the day when Connolly's vision of a social­ of the Irish Citizens Army but also the I'll come back to the question that the form most suited to present-day con- ist federation can actually be achieved.•

8 WORKERS HAMMER CIA/GCHQ ... (Continued from page 3) who explained the real, genuine sub­ stance of Arthur Scargill's activity to Miners us, and the substance of the activity conference in of the trade union [the UDMj that Donetsk (October was attacking Scargill ... did we un­ 1990) where ICl derstand that that union was a scab union." representatives countered Finally, in addition to the Western imperialist­ intelligence agencies, Russian fascists and orchestrated the scab UDM, the Labour Party and campaign against ruc leadership had every interest in ScargiJI; eagerly assisting the anti-Scargill oper­ NTS/UDM tool ation. Just as they knifed the heroic Yuri Butchenko miners strike, so the traitors Kinnock, (right). Willis et al want to bury the memory of that class battle and preferably Scargill Spartacist Socialist Organiser personally under a mountain of character assassination and lurid smears. (As we pointed out in our previous article, des­ Labour Party's role in the affair, especial­ going to press, Scargill and Heathfteld that 39 former striking miners had been pite the "Red Arthur" view of Scargill by ly the actions of NUM MPs Kim Howells were still being hounded by a SheffIeld paid £425,000 compensation and costs by his enemies in the Labour Party, he in and Kevin Barron, were cut out by the magistrates' court in a case being brought South Yorkshire police after proceedings fact has never broken from Labourism Channel Four lawyers" (Socialist Outlook, by the trade union Certillcation OffIcer charging the cops with assault, wrongful and loyally supported Kinnock in the last 8 June). For our part we are committed (go1ernment-appointed watch-dog on arrest, malicious prosecution and- false general election.) Ken Loach, who di­ to fIght to break the working class from union affairs) over "improper" accounts imprisonment at the Battle of Orgreave. rected the "Dispatches" programme, was the stranglehold of the vile pro-capitalist kept in 1989; this case too collapsed on But the bourgeoisie and their running himself critical that this had been played Labour leadership and build an authentic 19 June after the prosecution offered no dogs have not given up yet. Hands off down: "a lot of things said about the Leninist vanguard party. As we were evidence. And on 20 June news broke Arthur Scargill! Hands off the NUM! •

The misnamed Militant tendency was party that acts as an uncompromising class and the oppressed whose aim is to BNP ... out selling their so-called Panther paper, tribune of all the oppressed. Massive crush the fascists is a crucial task on the (Continued from page 12) a cynical attempt to dupe unsuspecting mobilisations of the organised working road to victorious workers revolution!. people into believing it is something other "The ANL succeeded in mobilising than a publication of lily-livered Labour­ hundreds of thousands, at two big ites dedicated to Kinnock's election to No carnivals, and in sizeable counter dem­ 10 Downing Street. Not to be out-done, onstrations wherever the fascists the opportunist Workers Power group marched." (!) distributed an inept fake-agitationalleaf­ After the ANL days were over, the SWP let which refused to criticise the leader­ adopted an explicit line for ignoring the ship for appealing to the cops to ban the. fascists. Its August 1984 Discussion Bull­ fascists. After the fact, when it was obvi­ etin told the SWP membership: "We are ous that militants were angry at the Na­ not saying 'ignore the nazis, and they will tional Black Caucus, Wo'*er.r Power (June necessarily, go away'. We are saying, at 1991) mildly rebuked the leadership and present, 'organise specifically against the "the existing limits of the campaign". At nazis and we'll build their organisation'. the same time its coverage prettilled the The practical conclusions are few, but im­ outcome, mendacioUsly claiming that "the portant. If the nazis start paper sales we fascists' plans were substantially disrup­ should not pay them any special atten­ ted". Furthermore, Workers Power's call tion. If they attack a SW sale, make a for "black self-defence" translates into tactical retreat and start again the follow­ leaving the struggle against the racist ing week." thugs in the hands of community Battle of Cable Street, london 4 October 1936: workers mobilisation The Spartacist contingent marching in misleaders while eschewing the necessary constructs barricades, confronts cops protecting Mosley's fascists. the 25 May demonstration raised, among struggle within the workers movement to others, the slogan: "Major, Kinnock, mobilise the power of the trade unions in different name, same game, fIght for a alliance with the oppressed to smash the thousands of black and white workers and workers government", a sentiment well fascist threat. (Of course Workers Power Sharpton ..• youth in trade-union-centred demonstra­ received by militant anti-fascists, if not is also calling for a vote to the Labour (Continued from page 2) tions to stop the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan the fake-lefts already gearing up for a Party in the coming elections, so as to from race-hate provocations in Detroit, Labour victory in the next general elec­ "test" and "expose" the arch-scab, racist, for the liberation of the black and Asian San Francisco, Philadelphia and tion. We also called for workers defence anti-immigrant swine and warmonger working people. His own vile record of Washington D.C. Such a strategy here guards to smash the BNP, warning Neil Kinnock.) collaboration with the racist state in the today would soon put an end to the BNP against appeals to the state. "The Red The fIght against fascist terror and the US in fact mirrors the treachery of the thugs marauding in Thamesmead: a show Army smashed Nazi rule, defend the struggle for proletarian revolution are of force from the heavily integrated Soviet Union!" was among our placards integrally linked. Against those like the Labourites here. His phoney "black sep­ aratist" rhetoric is likewise a strategy workers of London Underground, for and chants, recalling that over 20 million SWP and Militant who have made their based on despair. In the face of resurgent instance, could send these rat packs scur­ Soviet people died defending the gains of peace with the Labour lackeys of decay­ fascist and racist terror, it is necessary to rying into their holes. We fIght for the the October Revolution against Hitlerite ing British capitalism, we seek to forge a fIght to mobilise· the social power of the perspective of integrated class struggle on fascism. racially integrated revolutionary party, a organised working class in alliance with the road to the only real solution: social­ minority communities to sweep the likes ist revolution. The likes of FBI fmk AI "'0 J9 SUMMERTgg, of the BNP off the streets! Appeals to the Sharpton are obstacles to this road, cyni­ courts, cops and councils who oversee cal parasites on the just outrage of the Just out! WODlenan.. ~ this rotting racist system are suicidal. oppressed. ReVOlution Our comrades in the Spartacist Keith Douglas JOU"'.lorrh8Women'SCommlaemnOrrll&sparT.~J"lLeagu .. ~___ ~ League/US have successfully mobilised for the Spartacist League Women and Revolution London Spartac;st ~ League public forum No 39 Lessons of the American Summer 1991 Civil Rights movement 75p Finish the Civil War! Black liberation through socialist revolution! Subscription - 3 issues £1.50 7.30pm, Tuesday 23 July 1991 Old White Horse, 261 Brixton Rd Make cheques payable/post to: corner Loughborough Rd Spartacist Publications, Nearest tube: Brixton PO Box 1041, London NW53EU For more information: phone 071-485 1396

JULY/AUGUST 1991 9 to assure the bourgeoisie that they will be Liverpool ••• even more reliable enforcers of capitalist austerity than Major's faction-riddled - .. t (Continued from page 1) Tory party. With the evident disarray of Major's Tory government-lacking the position of non-support is that, while self-confidence of the Iron Lady's brutal ~ ~IIJQ! claiming to oppose Kinnock's ''yes-man'' rule-the stranglehold of the Labour on issues such as cuts, redundancies and traitors and trade union bureaucrats has . IEnAT 'US/'IdISF the poll tax, the Broad Left and Militant been key to keeping the lid on social have made clear their advocacy of a struggle. In Liverpoo~ as elsewhere, many lWtnIAUSIf~rAJTACa Labour Party victory in the general elec­ are looking for a chance to give Kinnock tion, ie support for a Kinnock govern­ and his gang a resounding "fuck you". ment. This pledge has been made explicit While opposing Kinnock's witch hunt­ by Militant in its 7 June editorial "A ing purges against Militant and other socialist f1gbter must follow Heffer": "lefts", we do not give any political sup­ port to Militant's tame opposition con­ "But, while Mililant will support a socialist candidate in Walton, we will fined to Liverpool which simply seeks to not ease up for one minute in our pressure the Kinnock leadership. As the campaign to defeat the Tory enemy official Labour Party pushed the redun­ and get a majority Labour government dancies through, Militant/Broad Left elected at the earliest opportunity. blocked with the Liberal Democrats to "Indeed, with the Tories behind in the "win" the withdrawal of 94 out of 274 opinion polls and with the poll tax and compulsory redundancies among council NHS disasters hanging round their workers-ie, accepting the bulk of the necks, we demand that Labour mounts sackings. This is indicative of the tail­ a campaign to force an immediate general election." between-the-Iegs defeatism of the "left" Workers Hammer trade union and Labour bureaucrats, who London, 2 February: pollee sought to suppress slogans of Spartacist Thus, while claiming to challenge Kin­ have confmed themselves to pressure contingent on anti-war march. nock's puppet in Liverpoo~ the Mili­ tactics, overtime bans and strike action by tant/Broad Left have not broken in any marginal sections of the workforce. the use of bailiffs against rates debtors in Kinnock into government! To the extent 1984-85 by Liverpool Council, to the that it did participate in anti-war demos, threat to shop anti-poll tax demonstrators Militant offered itself up to the witch after the police riot in Trafalgar Square a hunting Labourite/CND crowd, as it did year ago. And Militant's "colour-blind­ in Glasgow, fmgering to the cops those ness" on the race question in Liv­ who called for a defeat of the US/British erpool-in heavily black Toxteth unem­ forces (see "Spartacists call for defence ployment ranges up to 80 per cent-is of Iraq, Militant/CND call the cops", also despicable. Thus, although non­ Worker.s Hammer, no 120, February whites make up eight per cent of the city 1991). This is of a piece with Militant's population, a 1986 Open Letter to the not-so-backhanded support to Thatcher Militant Tendency by the Labour Party and the Labour chauvinists during the The economic Black Section National Committee (The dirty Malvinas/Falklands war when it devastation of Racial Politics of Militant in Liverpool, demanded ''workers sanctions" against Uverpool: Liverpool Black Caucus) noted that there Argentina. unemployed men had never been a black city councillor Hatred towards the proletarian and pick through and less than one per cent of city heavily Irish Liverpool particularly fuels scrap metal, employees were black. the vindictiveness of the British bour­ stripping wire A revolutionary workers party must be geoisie. There is a large Irish Catholic and lead, to a tribune of the people, championing the population in Liverpool; up until the make a few victims of all forms of special oppression, 1920s the main opposition to the Conser­ pounds. while seeking to politicise and instil the vatives was the Irish Nationalists, who workers movement with the best tradi­ had a Liverpool MP. (After the partition tions of proletarian internationalism. The in 1921, the Irish went over in the main Mahmood campaign is consciously econ­ to the Labour Party.) The militancy of omist, ignoring these questions. The Irish workers has certainly impacted 00 Militant tendency very recently demon­ the history of the labour and trade unioo strated its virulent Labourite social chau­ movement in the city. Expressing the fashion from support to the puppeteer Defend the unions-for an all-out citywide vinism over the massive imperialist special hostility of the ruling class to the Kinnock. So much for their "independ­ strike! Council workers should be linking slaughter of the Gulf War. Even the Liverpool workers movement, the Guard­ ent" campaign-the tooth bites down on up in joint strike action with Ford Hale­ Labour-loyal Socialist Organiser, which ian (20 June), while revelling in the possi­ nothing. wood workers and other strategic sections criticises Militant from the right over the bility that Labour "could score a high­ Far from counterposing the need for a of the proletariat to f1gbt against the question of standing against official Lab­ profile victory over a stubborn tapeworm class-struggle workers party, Mahmood's redundancies, pay cuts and attacks on our candidates, correctly characterised of a foe" and a ''Winter of Dis­ leaflets, in Labour's red and yellow col­ working conditions. Militant: "It sat out the Gulf war on its content. .. with a happy ending" lamented ours, describe her as the "real Labour" The Militant tendency has been an backside" (Socialist Organiser, 17 May). that "none of that, alas, will be the end of candidate. This is of a piece with Mili­ organic part of the Labour Party in As the Anglo-American led "allies" the story. Liverpool itself will go on. It tant's insistence that it is seeking to Liverpool for decades, particularly in rained death and destruction on the Iraqi will continue to be the most Irish of return Labour to its "socialist roots" . Walton. It should be remembered that, people, no one more vociferously sup­ English cities, with a tradition of political Clearly they want to appear before the "At one point Walton chose [Militant ported the carnage than Neil Kinnock. bosses and tight-knit machines." voters as loyal Labourites. But the "real" leader] Ted Grant as its candidate to Militant's response was to demand a Liverpoo~ whose decline reflects that Labour Party they swear fealty to is the fight the 1959 election, but the NEC general election to put the warmongering of a sagging imperialist country which party of class betra~ from Labour's refused to accept him. Later Peter Taaffe support to the imperialist war in the Gulf [current editor of Militant] was a member to its scabherding on the heroic 1984-85 of Walton Young Socialists" (Militant, miners ·strike. Michael Crick). The Militant campaign The current by-election takes place in claims to follow in the "socialist" tradi­ WORKERSIIAMMER the context of the local Kilfoyle/Kinnock tions of the long-time Walton MP, Eric Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League Labourites' attempt to impose over 1000 Heffer. In fact, they have quite a bit in redundancies and threatened strike action common. Thus, Militant shares the Stalin­ against this by the unions. The Kilfoylites ophobia of Heffer, notorious for his rabid are in an open bloc with the Liberal support to counterrevolutionary Polish o 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer for £3 Democrats in attacking the trade unions. SolidarnoSl:-Thatcher's favourite "trade (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £6.00) Thus over half the city's workforce of bin union"-whose policies of capitalist resto­ o 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, men will be fired through the decision to ration are today ravaging the Polish Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £8.00 contract out rubbish collection to Onyx, a working class. All above subscriptions include Spartacist, organ of the International private firm which "wants its binmen to Mahmood also enthuses over the days Communist League (Fourth Intemationalist) work twice as hard for 15 per cent less when Derek Hatton & Co ran Liverpool pay" and will refuse union recognition to Council. At that time it struck a deal with o 3 issues of Women & Revolution for £1.50 its employees (Independent, 21 June). the Tory government in which rates were Name ______Grotesquely, "soft-left" Labour NEC put up by 17 per cent in the city in the member David Blunkett wrote to Envi­ middle of the Great Miners Strike of Address ______ronment Secretary Michael Heseltine, 1984-85 rather than countenance strike calling on the government to "accept your action by Liverpool workers. A year later Postcode Telephone ______responsibilities" to smash the Liverpool came the infamous "tactic" of distributing strikers (Guardian, 19 June). Clearly in 31,000 redundancy notices to city workers. Make cheque. payable/pos. to: Spartacl•• Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Liverpool, as in Lambeth and other Indeed, Militant's spinelessness before "trouble spots", the Kinnockites are eager the bourgeois state is well known, from

10 WORKERS HAMMER was once an industrial and trading centre, against Labour in a General Election in continues to represent a potential linkage safe Labour seats.... Dead-end sectarians for proletarian revolution throughout the who don't care about the result of a British Isles. The refusal of the Mahmood General Election won't be worried about campaign to address the question of this. Socialists who live in the real world Northern Ireland no doubt also reflects will be. Mahmood must not only be the desire not to "rock the boat" in a city defeated, but be decisively so." Our "real with a history of Catholic/Protestant world" SO notes that the "last big sectarianism. Capitulating to imperialism attempt to split a sizeable left wing from and its Labour lackeys, Militant in fact the Labour Party was in 1932, when the rejects the elementary demand for the Independent Labour Party broke away .... immediate and unconditional withdrawal Yet its breakaway was a fiasco" (Socialist of British troops from Northern Ireland Organiser, 17 May). In fact, the ILP split (see "Connolly's legacy and the struggle was quite different from the sterile for a revolutionary party", pp6-7). squabble over who is the "real" Labour Party in Liverpool. British left: "real" and actual At the time of the ILP split, Trotsky Labour loyalists noted that the social democracy was Among the reformist and centrist "everywhere experiencing an acute crisis. groups who have jumped on the Mili­ In a number of countries more or less tant/Broad Left bandwagon are the SWP important left wings have already separ­ and Workers Power. In an open letter to ated themselves from the Social Demo­ Walton REAL Labour the left entitled "It's time to take sides", cratic parties" ("The Left Socialist Org­ the SWP claims the by-election "can be anizations and Our Tasks", Writings, LESLEY MAHMOOD is the REAL Labour candidate democratically used in every locality to explain to 1932-33). These left splits reflected the selected by MCilton Labour Party members. workers the need for a socialist alterna­ radicalisation of a section of workers There are two Labour choices in this election: tive independent of Labour" (Socialist who, under the impact of the Depression People's Choice IThe other candidate i~ I Wo'*er, 15 June). But these impostors are and the alarming rise of fascism, began to LESLEY MAHMOOD I Kinnock's 'yes' man I no more "independent" of Labour than recognise the impotency of parliamentary She will continue the endorsed by party i reformism. Militant-the SWP line is to vote for a tradition of ERIC HEFFER officials in london. Labour government. Ditto for Workers Trotsky viewed political intervention in I LESLEYMAHMOOOwill A cand·dat-e Power, which in its "Walton by-election such centrist groupings as the ILP-seek­ campaign on socialist policies. I . I As a councillor she has said: who said: special" (18 June) titled simply "Support ing to polarise them along programmatic I Mahmood!" predictably asserts: "We say: lines-as an important opportunity to win It NO to the 1,000 compulsory ./ YES to the 1,000 compulsory I put Labour to the test of office and over revolutionary cadre, whose consoli­ redundancies. council redundancies. I X NO to using bailiffs against poll ./ YES to using bailiffs against poll I organise to fIght every attack Labour dation in turn would enable the vanguard tax non-payers. tax non-payers. 1 carries out on behalf of the bosses." to approach the broader masses who lC NO to rent increases. I ./ YES to rent increases. ! A number of Labour-loyal left outfits remained loyal to the Labour Party. As have opposed the Mahmood candidacy Trotsky wrote: "The ILP broke away Lesley Mahmood (above left) poses no real alternative to Kneel Kinnock from the right. The grovelling Gorba­ from the Labour Party. That was correct. (above right). Militant's so-called "independent" "real Labour Party" chevite Morning Star condemns the "deci­ H the ILP wanted to become the revol­ campaign calls to put this vile scabherder, race-hater, warmonger in power. sion to contest against the official candi­ utionary lever, it was impossible for the date.... There are no short-cuts to left handle of this lever to be left in the the Trotskyists argued for the building of mental conclusion-putting in office scab­ victory within the Labour Party and the hands of the thoroughly opportunist and a Fourth International based on the rev­ herder Kinnock. olutionary politics of the first four con­ We understand that as a bourgeois gresses of the Comintern. workers party, the Labour Party indeed At the time of the Italian invasion of rests on a vastly different social base than Ethiopia in 1935, the ILP was significantly the Tories whose fundamental policies to the left of both the Labour. Party they make no pretence of opposing today. leaders and the by-then popular-frontist Under other circumstances, as have CP. Its condemnation of League of existed in the past and will be the case in Nations sanctions against Italy went very the future, one can consider such tactics much against the grain of the reformists. as critical support. The contradiction The latter, reflecting the interests of between the working-class base and pro­ British imperialism, viewed Mussolini as capitalist tops means there will be splits an imperialist rival. When ILP leader in the Labour Party-however jagged and Maxton sought to ram through a resol­ uneven-that will pose genuine ution that the war was a "conflict programmatic differentiation from the between two rival dictators", thereby class-collaborationist policies of the refusing to take a side in defence of Labour bureaucrats on decisive questions. Ethiopia against Italy, he was initially Such breakaways from the Labour Party voted down. Here was a contradic­ are for Trotkyists a strategic necessity for tion-highlighting the centrist character of building a revolutionary party in Britain. the organisation-between the ILP's Under the impact of class battles to phraseology which attracted revolution­ come, we can_ expect as well differenti­ ary-minded workers-and the refusal of ation among the reformist and centrist . Evening The way they were: Derek Hatton, former Militant turned petty entrepreneur the ILP to break from reformism in left who eddy in the waters of the Labour creep with Tony Mulhearn (above right) awaits a "disciplinary" hearing practice. "left". Among Militant's membership outside Labour Party HQ five years ago. Witch-finder General Kinnock still Militant's Liverpool contest is anything many have become restless with the targets even tepid pink Militant tendency. but an ILP-style split. Nor do there seem decades-long entrism and liquidation to be other decisive criteria presently within the Labour Party. From the fresh labour movement as a whole" (7 June). bourgeois careerists. Complete and un­ operative in the by-election; for example, experience of the Gulf War to the long­ Socialist Outlook (22 June) claims that conditional political and organisational a referendum posing a decisive issue in standing Militant cretinist assertion that the "responsibility for there being two independence of a TfNolutionary party is the class struggle. But those such as an Enabling Act in Parliament will bring 'Labour' candidates in Walton lies entire­ the first prerequisite for its success" (Trot­ Socialist Organiser who in practice regard about "socialism", there are many ques­ ly with the Kinnock camp" and argues sky's Writin8f on Britain Vol 3, p94, em­ any break from the Labour Party as tions Militant members should be asking. that ''we do not regard it as a matter of phasis in original). "scabbing" on the "unity" of the workers As Leninists, we seek to assemble the principle to always support 'official' After its split with the Labour Party, movement simply doom the proletariat to cadre of a vanguard party through splits Labour candidates". But at the end of the Trotsky characterised the ILP as a left­ endless domination by the Labourite class and fusions within the workers movement day it argues that "we think this centrist party, consisting of a "number of traitors. Those such as the SWP and on the basis of revolutionary programme, candidacy [Mahmood] is a mistake" and factions and shadings that are indicative Workers Power, who indiscriminately tail which will bring leftists and militant that by "backing the Party against the of the different stages of evolution from the more "left" versions of Labourism, workers beyond gut hatred for the Ram­ Tories, we create better conditions to reformism to communism" (p87). In its are scarcely better. Indeed, in the current say MacKinnocks to the fIght for prolet­ take the fight for a socialist alternative public propaganda the ILP addressed instance all of them have the same funda- arian revolution. • into the official labour movement. ... " itself-albeit in a confused and contradic­ While obviously waffling on the issue, the tory fashion--to the need for workers logic of the argument of these British councils and for proletarian action against Spartacist League/Britain supporters of Ernest Mandel would be to imperialist war. The plane of the pol­ Glasgow PO Box 150 London PO Box 1041 call for a vote to Kilfoyle. emics in which Trotsky engaged the Glasgow G3 6DX London NW5 3EU Socialist Organiser opposes even more leaders of the ILP indicates that this was 041-3320788 071-485 1396 emphatically Militant's decision to run a very different organisation from the against Labour. Its 20 June issue contains economist "Broad Left" operation in Dublin Spartacist Youth Group a craven, brown-nosing bleat to: "Vote Liverpool. Thus, against the ILP's affili­ PO Box 2944 Labour in Walton!" "H Mahmood does ation to the programmatically shapeless Dublin 1 well, it will only encourage silly people London Bureau and its earlier attempt to 01-530921 elsewhere to run independent candidates create a lash-up with Stalin's Comintern,

JULY/AUGUST 1991 11 WORKERS

Thamesmead: BNP march under police protection Trade unions/minorities must crush fascists in the egg! .

On 25 May, some 120 supporters of ...... the fascist British National Party, in full regalia with Union Jack flags, paraded in Thamesmead. A counter-demonstration in Thamesmead by some 1500 black and white anti-racist protesters brought out many ready and willing to stop these race-hate scum in their tracks. But des­ pite the favourable relationship of forces, the anti-fascists were stymied by the police and the official leadership of the protest. They never got near the BNP. The BNP had called the race-hate "white power" march in Greenwich, south-east London, just hours after the murder of Orville Blair on 11 May, the second murder within three months of a young black man by white racists in Thamesmead. Like Rolan Adams, mur­ dered on 21 February, Orville Blair died of multiple stab wounds. Outraged by the ;"'''',0;; growing menace of fascist terror and the flagrant provocation by the BNP, anti­ racist protesters from throughout the city, including militant workers from several trade unions, turned out ready to put a stop to the BNP march. But the Spartacist contingent organisers of the demonstration, Green­ (above) at 25 May counter­ wich Action Committee Against Racist demo (right) against Attacks (GACARA), Rolan Adams Fam­ fascist BNP provocation in ily Campaign and the National Black Thamesmead calls for trade Caucus of the Labour Party, orchestrated union/minority mobilisations an empty "moral witness" marchathon. In to smash these murderous fact, a leaflet issued by the organisers racist scum. before the demonstration admonished participants not to "respond to fascists". union/minority mobilisations to crush the social reality of Thamesmead, noting: for the BNP HQ to be closed". For Demonstrators spent frustrating hours BNP! "There is no launderette in Thamesmead, Marxists, as opposed to the SWP, it is being led hither and yon, penned in at At one point demonstrators broke no bank, no cinema and no train sta­ elementary that no faith can be placed in various points by the police, watching the through police lines to get at a cornered tion. . .. There is one bus route, and it's the armed fist of capitalist rule--the bour­ "organisers" wrangle, without ever getting skinhead. But he turned out, despite half an hour and £1.20 return to Wool­ geois state. close to the BNP. appearances, not to be a BNPer but wich which is where Thamesmead's To crush the fascist scourge, it is nec­ There is a political reason for this: the reportedly a member of the Socialist 10,000 unemployed must go to sign on." essary to mobilise large, combative and programme of the organisers (echoed by Workers Party; his "socialist credentials" In 1988 a chip shop was opened: "There racially integrated defence guards, drawn their fake-left tails) has been from the were established only after he had suf- • are three tables inside. Nowhere else on from the ranks of the organised working outset one of appealing to the police in fered a few injuries. This might be a Thamesmead can a cup of tea be bought class. But this is not what the SWP is particular and the state in general to lesson for those leftists who sport the or a meal eaten." The town has a popula­ about. The SWP's Anti Nazi League in "protect" the black and minority popula­ fascistic skinhead look. The evening TV tion of 30,000. It is in such conditions that the seventies was built on the basis of a tion. Meanwhile, the cops have just pub­ news later that day showed a small num­ the scum of the BNP will spawn and it is class-collaborationist alliance with Labour lished a report admitting that, even for ber of marchers organised by Anti-Fascist urgently necessary to crush them in the Party politicians, bishops, rock musicians them, racist attacks in the Greenwich Action demonstrating within stone-throw­ egg. and football managers. While fascists area have reached "unacceptable" levels. ing distance of the BNP scum. If the For its part, in an article titled "Demo were rampaging through the streets of And the police are seeking further AFA had publicly agitated for an alterna­ forces Nazis out" the reformists of the the heavily Asian neighbourhood of Brick powers to be able to ban demonstrations tive route, a substantial number of dem­ Socialist Workers Party (SWP) hailed the Lane in 1978, the SWP organised tens of they deem a threat to "law and order" in onstrators would have gone with them. In march as a success because it "forced the thousands to sit it out at a rock concert the aftermath of the Thamesmead BNP the event, some six AFA protesters were police to keep the Nazi march out of the organised on the same day by the ANL march and counter-demo. It is not ram­ arrested: drop all charges against the housing estate" (Socialist Worker, 1 June). miles away in Brixton. Now the SWP paging fascists that the cops have in anti-racist protesters! The ban simply changed the BNP line of altempts to cover up the treacherous mind-,such "bans" can and will be used The Weekend Guardian (25-26 May) march; under police protection, the BNP record of the ANL with a pack of lies so against the anti-fascist demonstrations. ran a despicable article on Thamesmead carried out their deadly race-hate rally shameless it could even make a Cliffite Even though the BNP was protected on the day of the BNP march which tried to through different parts of Thamesmead. blush. The current issue of Socialist the day, the cops sense that further fascist explain away the racist murders of two The SWP's cretinism here is of a piece Worker Review (June 1991) tells us: provocations of this sort could be met by young black men and the BNP's provoca­ with its circulating a petition to "press­ "Seeking the widest possible unity and countermobilisations going over the heads tions as the result of "gangland" warfare ure" the police to act against the fascists. involvement, the ANL set out to do of the likes of the misleadership at the 25 among poverty-stricken Thamesmead Socialist Worlcer (23 March) announced: two things: to physically confront the May demo. And Thamesmead is but the youth and "outside agitation" by "extre­ "local socialists and anti-racists have Front whenever it tried to marCh, and tip of the iceberg. We say: not appeals to mists", right and left. The article did collected several hundred signatures to a to expose the true nature of its politics. the courts, oops, councils-but mass trade however provide a glimpse of the grim petition calling for the police to act and continued on page 9

12 JULY/AUGUST 1991