Labour in Lockstep with Thatcher's War Moves

. Newspaper of the Spartaclst League US, British oil pirates out of the Persian Gulf! Break the blockade of Iraq!

From within "the belly of the beast": the following article was first published by WOlken Vanguard no 509, 7 September. WOlken Vanguard is the paper of the Spartacist League/US, American section of the International Communist League.

What's going on in the Middle East right now is a bald attempt by the United States to seize control of the world's oil supplies. Having lost its economic pre dominance, Washington is now trying to reassert its role as imperialist global policeman through brute military force. That's what George Bush means when he talks about a "new world order", echoing Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. But in fact, the American invasion is setting the stage for a new world war. _t c~'c' _- "~'_h~ -"'; ",~,_ ",,/, The consequences of Bush's war moves Independent . Dennis Brack are incalculable. Perhaps a quarter of a Thatcher orders troops (left) to Gulf in support of Bush's war mobilisation. Is this the face of World War III? million US troops are in or heading for the Persian Gulf region right now. Ships world safe for democracy". Certainly not fig leaf of UN sanctions as a green light weapons". And the concentration of are being taken out of mothballs, and coming from the people who recently for a massive US military operation less American firepower could blow the whole tens of thousands of reservists are being slaughtered thousands of civilians to than 700 miles from the Soviet border. A region sky high. The workers of the world called up from civilian life. It's a war install a puppet regime in Panama. Bush deadly noose is tightening around the have a big stake in defending Iraq against mobilisation on a scale not seen since the says it's about defending "our way of USSR. We call on the Soviet Union to this imperialist onslaught. Break the height of the Vietnam War. Now they're life". What be means is a war to make rescind its arms embargo against Iraq. Yankee blockade! . talking of launching an air war in a mat the world safe for the feudalism ohhe oil The trip wires for World War III are War, as Lenin said, is the mother of ter of weeks, and Bush is to meet Soviet sheiks and the profiteering of Big Oil. pulling taut in the volatile Near East. revolution. The imperialist invasion will leader Gorbachev in a hastily called sum After proclaiming victory in the Cold French president Mitterrand declares, set the Middle East aflame as the Arab mit in Helsinki next weekend. War, US imperialism is now seeking to ''We have entered into the logic of war." masses surge into the streets in angry The bipartisan US crusade against dictate terms to its imperialist riv~. The deranged Zionist rulers in Jerusalem protests that could topple the kings, former US ally Saddam Hussein is hardly Meanwhile as Gorbachev prates about are itching for a pre-emptive strike ag sheiks and colonels throughout the re- about resisting aggression or "making the "collective security", Bush has used the ainst Baghdad with "non-conventional continued on page 8 Labour in lockstep with Thatcher's war moves As the American imperialists mobi Neil Kinnock, Denis Healey et al sup Falklands/Malvinas war, Thatcher sent the Labour officialdom as well as the lise for war in order to seize control of ported Thatcher outright. Kinnock several hundred young sailors aboard Tory government. the world's oil supplies, Margaret demanded nothing less than the de the Argentine cruiser Belgrano to an icy From the mass carnage of the First Thatcher's government has moved to struction of Iraq's chemical weapons grave out of sheer bloodlust. Now the World War through to the sending of jom forces with the US invaders in the and chemical weapons manufactwjng war drums are beating in the Gulf and British troops into Northern Ireland, Gulf. The two-day parliamentary de capacity. Labour "left" Tony aenn Thatcher, with the social patriotic Lab Labour has loyally served the imperia bate in the House of Commons was a supports UN sanctions against Iraq and our Party in tow, is itching to join Bush list warmakers. The Labour traitors display of hi-partisan unity: when and if appealed for "Britain to take no action in the attack on Baghdad. Some hard have manned the front lines of Thatch the US decides to launch an attack outside the UN Security Council's reso class struggle can stop the butcher of er's union-busting: from knifing' the against Iraq, the stage is set for deploy lutions", a minor tactical difference the Belgrano in her tracks! heroic miners strike in 1984-85 to its ment of British forces far beyond the over how best to mobilise public opin Thatcher's government is hated by commitment to enforce the entire several thousand already sent to the ion for imperialist aggression. broad sections of the population "at gamut of anti-strike, anti-worker legis region. Remember it was a Labour govern home". Sending thousands of working lation. In order to unleash the social Workers in Britain and around the ment which sent troops to Korea to class youth off to fight a war so that the power of the organised workers move world have a big stake in defending join the US in the "UN's" counter US can grab Middle East oil could add ment it is necessary to break with the Iraq against the imperialist onslaught. revolutionary war against the Korean fuel to seething discontent. Already, lAbour traitors and forge a revolution Sanctions and embargoes are the pre workers and peasants. As our US com strategically placed North Sea oil work ary internationalist party. . lude to war: break the blockade! There rades wrote in the article printed above: ers are engaged in struggle against the Despite the warmongering of the would be particular justice in the Brit "Bush has used the figleaf of UN sanc oil bosses who extract their profit with bosses and their press and the social ish workers aiding the defeat of their tions as a green light for a massive US bloody disregard for human life. But patriotic treachery of the Labour mis 'own" bourgeoisie in the Gulf. It was military operation less than 700 miles the last thing the Labour misleaders leaders, there is little enthusiasm the British imperialists who carved up from the Soviet border. A deadly noose and trade union bureaucrats want is among the working people of these the Middle East and imposed the pre is tightening around the USSR. We call social struggle against the capitalists at isles for Thatcher's ambitions in the sent artificial boundaries, whose "divide on the Soviet Union to rescind its arms home or their dirty wars abroad. Just as impending war. Even the returned and conquer" schemes are responsible embargo against Iraq." anti-poll tax protesters in the hundreds British nationals and family members of for the last 40 years of bloodletting in When Reagan terror-bombed Libya, of thousands have been denounced by hostages in Iraq have suggested that the region. Thatcher participated as fully as Brit Kinnock & Co as "violent", anti-war she should "shut up". Many may be ,The Labour traitors, right and ain's standing as a second-rate im mobilisations and political strike action aware of the fact, too, that Britain "left", have rallied to the call for war. perialist power would allow. During the by the trade unions would be up against continued on page 8 What's needed are union safety commit tees with the power to stop production on US, Britain out of the Gulf! the spot. Smash racial discrimination against Filipino and other immigrant workers: equal pay for equal work, full citizenship rights for foreign workers! The OILe leaders designed their logo after that of Polish Solidarno~c, Mar garet Thatcher's favourite "union". In their efforts to restore capitalism, today Oil workers - shut down theSolidarno~cgovernmentimposes30~ blockade of Iraq, threatening war. When cuts in living standards and mass layoffs Bush, Thatcher, BP and Shell talk about and attacks abortion rights. When Arthur "opposing aggression", who do they think Scargill in 1983 said that Solidarno~ was they're kidding? The only "freedom" anti-socialist, he was viciously red-baited production now! they're interested in is the freedom to by the TUC tops. During the miners exploit working people for profit, which strike all the Solidamo~c-lovers-the Kin We print below the Spartocist leaflet of capitalist exploitation where the lives of they carry on with a bloody disregard for nocks, Willises and Chapples-were at 11 August, thousands of which were dis workers are sacrificed for private prof human life, whether in the North Sea or the forefront of scabherding and sabotag tributed in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dundee it--on the order of £2m per hour. In the Persian Gulf. But Iraq is not Panama. ing that heroic struggle. The witchhunt to striking oil workers. dustrial murder has been the order of the or Grenada, and the imperialists could be today against Scargill and the NUM, with day, from Piper Alpha to the 1986 crash heading for a fiasco like Lebanon or the press whipping up hysteria about In the biggest wave of class struggle in of a Chinook helicopter. Over 500 people Suez. And as BushfThatcher's oil grab "Russian gold", reflects the fear of the the 25-year history of the North Sea oil in have been killed in rig disasters, while 27 threatens recession conditions, the oil bosses and their Labour lackeys of a dustry, workers are challenging the union helicopters have hit the waters of the magnates feather their own nests by revival of class militancy. Those in the hating, profit -bloated bosses. Despite the North Sea since 1968, resulting in 116 jacking up prices. And then the capitalist unions who peddle anti-communism and attempts of the companies to intimidate deaths. The week before the rust 24- politicians appeal to oil workers to stay anti-Sovietism inevitably betray struggles strikers by sacking over 1political party of the guish between contract workers and oth socialist order. workers' vanguard .... ers. The "protection" offered by the He once wrote: "It is not the party that makes the program (the idea); it is the government's Health and Safety Executive For a federation of workers republics in program that makes the party" .... Trotsky, a disciple of Marx, believed with Marx, that hasn't saved the lives of Channel Tunne~ the British Isles! "an idea, when it permeates the mass, becomes a material force." Believing that, For a Socialist United States of Europe! Comrade Trotsky never doubted that his work would live after him. Believing that, he building, BR and transport workers. could proclaim on his death bed his confidence in the future victory of the Fourth International which embodies his ideas.... The betrayers of the revolution knew that the revolution lived in him, the tradition, PR()~lr lllEllS RESEAR( II SERIES ') the hope. All the resources of a powerful state, set in motion by the hatred and revenge of Stalin, were directed to the assassination of a single man, without resources and with JUST OUT! only a handful of close followers .... . Comrade Trotsky not only struggled for a new social order based on human solirlarity Prometheus Research Series 3 is a as a future goal; he lived every day of his life according to its higher add nobler memorial to Richard S Fraser standards. They wouldn't let him be a citizen of any country. But, in truth, he was much (1913-1988), who pioneered the In Memoriam more than that. He was already, in his mind and in his conduct, a citizen of the Trotskyist understanding of black Richard S. Fraser Communist future of humanity. oppression in the United States.

-James P Cannon, "To the Memory of the Old Man" (28 August 1940) After joining the Trotskyist move Aa ApprlciatiDB aDd Selection ment in 1934, Fraser was an or af His Wark ganiser and union activist for close to 30 years and a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee for 25 years. During WORKERSIIAMMER internal debates in the SWP in the For • federation of workers republics in the British Islesl ~ 1950s he developed and fought for For • Socialist UnHed States of Europel the programmatic perspective of l", ",.," ,",,' ,", "", ",,,""" Revolutionary Integration, while Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the International the majority, with George Breit- Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). man as its spokesman, tailed the liberal pacifist/Democratic Party leadership of EDITORIAl BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (Editor), Jon Branche, Alec Gilchrist, Eibhlin the civil rights movement and soon capitulated to black nationalism. The bulletin McDonald, Alan Muon, Len MichelllOO, Ellen Rawlings, Michael Riaz, David Strachan contains material reflecting the entire span of Fraser's political life, including his PRODUCTION MANAGER: Michael Riaz seminal 1953 lectures, "The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution". CIRCULATION MANAGER: Suzan Groves Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Order from/make cheques payable to: Subscriptions: £2.00 for 1 year, overseas airmail £5.00. Spartaclst Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Opiniofw'~ In aIgned .r1IcIee or IeIIenI do not necessarily expr_ the editorial viewpoint £3.50 + 75p postage Printed by Slough NewspepeB l.td(TU). ISSN 0267-8721

2 WORKERS HAMMER Commandos of St John Street on Eastern Europ~ Fight counterrevolution? Leninist says leave that to the Spartacists

The Leninist (3 August) contains a after hesitating, threw its weight behind polemic on the British left and Eastern the demonstration. The Treptow action Europe devoted in part to the Spartacist was rabidly denounced by the West Ger League. Virtually all of our reformist and man bourgeoisie and its social democratic centrist opponents are fond of painting us lackeys who saw in the anti-Nazi pro as "pro-Stalinist" because of our un testers a hard core who could resist Ans wavering defence of the gains of the chluss. The SED-PDS completely col October Revolution against imperialist lapsed in the ensuing campaign of vilifica attack and internal counterrevolution. The tion and stepped-up attempts to stampede eclectic Stalinoids of Leninist take a dif the DDR into West Germany. ferent, although no less dishonest, line of Even Leninist would be hard put to argument. denounce the Treptow anti-Nazi protest Leninist resorts to a false amalgam ~ as part and parcel of "counterrevolution", between our own programme and that of "Disappeared" so it simply doesn't mention it. This mi by Leninist: Stalinophobic, Solidarnosc-loving outfits nuscule and nationally isolated sect does, such as the Slaughterite WRP and Work Treptow Park, however, absurdly resort to "small-bait ers Power. After quoting the latter in East Berlin, 3 ing" the ICL. It denounces us for putting various stages of capitulation to capitalist January: our "meagre person power and financial restorationist forces in Eastern Europe, Spartacist resources into East Germany". The Spar Leninist launches its salvo against our initiated takist Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands work in East Germany: "It does not like 250,OOO-strong (SpAO) was the only party to stand in the to admit it now, but the Spartacist League united-front DDR's March elections unequivocally was, a while back, prattling on about the protest against opposed to reunification under capitalism. political revolution. They got just as hot fascist Leninist can only sneer that our can and sweaty as the rest." Leninist intro desecration of didates got "somewhat less than the East duccs its polemical material with a de Soviet war German equivalent of the Monster Rav nunciation of those fake-leftists who memorial. ing Loony Party". supported Solidarnosc. It "neglects" to One real problem for Leninist is that it note that we stood on the opposite side was the Trotskyists of the ICL who fought of the barricades from the social demo down the line to defend the DDR while crats and fake-Trotskyists over Poland. the former Stalinist ruling party abjectly We also staunchly refuted Leninist's TKP (and suicidally) surrendered. The elec allies' pipedream of "reforming" a wing toral victory for unification and subse of the Polish Stalinist bureaucracy (ie, the November/December 1989), and prompt youth in the DDR raised slogans such as quent currency union which marked the Katowice Group) whose gross betrayals, ly booked their plane flights over there." "Russia was the spark-Germany will be destruction of the DDR workers state bureaucratic mismanagement and anti (Leninist presumably was poring over its the flame" (taken from the KPD in the represent a major defeat for the interna Semitism had pushed much of the Polish gameplan for the storming of the CPGB's '20s) and dissident SED members in the tional proletariat. It is one that can be proletariat into the arms of Walesa & Co. London offices and its six-hour "occu tens of thousands called for "No sellout laid squarely at the door of Stalin-the We supported the military suppression of pation" ·of same.) of the DDR", for "real plans" and "re father of "socialism in one country" SolidarnosC' counterrevolutionary bid for The stakes for the world working class turn to Lenin". If Leninist wants to idioti which meant popular frontism everywhere power while underlining: "In Poland it is were high in the historic German events cally maintain that what was going on else, ie, politically subordinating the the Stalinists themselves, through decades and by no means predetermined. We here was "counterrevolution" then it workers movement to social democracy of capitUlation to capitalist forces, who noted: "a little bit of political revolution should have called for the crushing by the and the bourgeoisie. Stalin's heir Gor have produced the counterrevolutionary is a chancy thing. At bottom, either the then-DDR regime of the earliest demon bachev gave the green light for unification crisis." workers take political power or capitalist strations. But Leninist did not raise such as part of his virtually limitless appease Leninist implies that Poland in 1981 counterrevolution takes the ascendancy" a call at any point-including in October ment of imperialism. and East Germany in late 1989 were (WH no 111, November/December 1989). when Honnecker unsuccessfully proposed At bottom, the Leninist polemic is equivalent situations and moreover that The International Communist League that the army open fire on demonstrators another version of the old Stalinist lie "uniquely" the Leninist resisted the flood mobilised to intervene in East Germany in Leipzig. that Trotskyism "scabs" on the October tide of fake-left tailing of counterrevolu with the Trotskyist programme: for de On 3 January, a quarter of a million Revolution. But with Gorbachev, the tionary forces. Leninist goes after our fence of the DDR, against capitalist re people rallied in Treptow Park in East SED-PDS et al manifestly playing the detcrmined intervention in the DDR: unification, for a red Germany of workers Berlin against the fascist desecration of role of the gravediggers of revolution, it is " 'The developments in the DDR pose councils. the Soviet war memorial and in defence hardly surprising that militants from the point blank proletarian political revolu In early November, massive demon of the DDR. That massive mobilisation Stalinist milieu are seriously investigating tion', they told us (Workers Hammer, strations of pro-socialist workers and was initiated by the Spartacists; the SED, continued on page 11 ------If Workers Hammer subs-cr--i-Pt-io-IH h'l§lll---

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SEPTEMBER 1990 3 Labour traitors front for ruling class conSlliracy Defeat sinister frame-up of Scargill The article printed below first ap-· tightening the legal straitjacket Thatcher The charges of financial irregularity For his refusal to sacrifice the miners peared in Woricer.s Vanguard no 508, 10 has sought to impose on the trade unions are a smokescreen for what the bourgeoi and their families on the altar of the AuguSt. As we go to press, the vile witch since she came to office a decade ago. sie and its minions really have against this bosses' laws, Scargill has earned the hunt against Arthur Scargill and Peter The forces arrayed in the latest attack Stalinoid left-social-democratic trade . undying emnity of the capitalist rulers and Heathfield has taken a new turn. On 7 on the NUM include egophiJe Robert union leader. They cannot forgive or the cringing Kinnock Labourites who September charges against Scargill, Maxwell and his pro-Labour Daily MUTOr forget his trade-union militancy. Max knifed the strike. At the recent NUM Heathfield and the NUM were brought rag, the scab Union of Democratic well's story conveniently broke as the conference, Scargill received a standing by the government's "Trade Union Cert Miners (UDM), certain Labour Members press was denouncing anti-poll tax pro ovation when he spoke, declaring: "I ification Officer". Alleging failure to keep of Parliament, Trades Union Congress testers as "lawbreakers" and ''violent'' . apologise to no one for the role I played and submit proper accounts, the charges (TUe) leader Norman Willis, a Russian the same slanders hurled at striking min during the period which has been tanta stem from the measures taken to defend fascist outfit with links to Western intel ers five years ago. Widely despised for mount to a state of war against every the NUM against sequestration and re ligence operations in the Soviet Union enforcing Thatcher'S tax, Kinnock and his thing that this union stands for". ceivership during the 1984-85 miners and a host of other scum. Multi Labour cronies are remembered by mili What particularly burns the NUM's strike. The unending series of slanders, millionaire Maxwell kicked off the cam tant miners for their vicious strikebreak enemies is that the miners not only re court actions and Labour/TUC attacks paign with utterly false allegations that ing role as "Thatcher's poodles". mained defiant to the end-even in defeat on Scargill and the NUM are an attempt Scargill and NUM executive member Maxwell fumes that Scargill "tried to -but that their stand inspired an out to bury the militant legacy of that strike. pouring of international working-class This union-busting attack must be defeated! solidarity. The present campaign against Scargill centres on the fact that he took Throughout the coalfields the miners measures to keep funds sent to the min have opposed the witchhunt and demand ers during the strike out of Thatcher's ed an end to the NUM executive's own dirty hands. Of course the accounts were dragging of Scargill and Heathfield into kept secret; Thatcher had her snoops the bosses' courts. Scargill has· issued a running allover Europe trying to uncover detailed response to the Lightman Inquiry and seize NUM funds. Many of them regarding, among other things, monies were also kept secret from the union received from the USSR, the IMO ac executive; it "leaked like a colander", counts, the spurious Cook Report and recalled Scargill. Daily Mirror accounts about Libyan mon ey. In a recent interview published in the NUM members remember well that it Guardian (31 August) Scargill dealt with was massive fmancial support from work Lightman's real charge: "He says that we ers and minorities in Britain, and from should not have collected money unless supporters around the world, that kept we were prepared to hand it over to the their families alive for a year. Soviet trade receiver and that we're guilty of defying unionists mobilised massively for this the law. We're guilty and proud of it." union which refused to go along with The British bourgeoisie, Labour right Reagan/Thatcher's anti-Soviet war drive wing and the unsavoury cabal serving -they sent shipments of food and organ them have not thus far succeeded in ised free holidays for strikers' children in crucifying Scargill on a cross of "Russian NUM president Arthur Scargill arrested after "Battle of Orgreave" during the Soviet Union. The pro-Communist gold". But the latest legal action against 1984-85 miners strike. Ruling class and their Labour/TUC lapdogs cannot French CGT union federation regularly the NUM shows they have not given up. forgive Scargill for trade-union militancy. delivered food parcels to the miners. Smash the witchhunt! Hands off the From South Africa, impoverished black NUM! Peter Heathfield pocketed monies meant, bring down an elected constitutional gov mineworkers sent whatever they could to for the aid of striking miners received ernment of the country" -in other words, help their class brothers and sisters in from Libya and the Soviet Union. he led the most serious class conflict Britain. LONDON-National Union of Mine When the lies of personal corruption Britain had seen in decades. As class war In the United States, the rabidly anti workers (NUM) president Arthur Scargill collapsed, a new line of attack was raged in the coalfields, Thatcher ordered Communist AFL-CIO tops refused to is the target of a massive smear cam dredged up with charges that Scargill had out thousands of cops, turning entire sec send a penny to support the British paign by the British bourgeoisie. From secretly manipulated Soviet donations that tions of the country into virtual occupied miners. In the face of the "AFL-CIA" the time of the bitter, hard-fought 1984- ended up in the accounts of the Paris territories. When naked terror failed, the official line of hostile unconcern for an 85 miners strike, Tory prime minister based International Miners Organisation government sent out an army of "seques embattled union led by a "red", the Parti Margaret Thatcher has been waging a (IMO), of which he is also president. And trators" to steal every penny of NUM san Defense Committee, a class-struggle, vengeful, vindictive campaign to bring when they were unable to substanti.lte funds, every piece of union property they non-sectarian legal and social defence down this militant union and its presi that, the Sunday Times (5 August) re could lay their hands on. Assets were organisation associated with the Spar dent. In this she has been ably assisted by hashed the "Libyan connection" with the seized and frozen; the union was put into tacist League/US, collected $24,000 in her "loyal opposition" in Neil Kinnock's bogus headline, "Gadaffi: How I handed receivership. The government was out to cluding donations and collections from Labour Party. The witchhunt also aims at over the Libyan cash to Arthur Scargill", starve the miners into submission. over 70 local unions for the families of striking miners. As a 12 July statement by the Partisan Defence Committe.e in. Britain said: "The threatened police investigation into the NUM is a continuation of the savage vendetta of the Thatcher government to destroy the jobs, livelihoods and trade union rights of the miners. During the ...... _._ _-----, ...... ,,-, .. "" heroic year-long struggle of the miners in ---y .. ,.,,- 1984-85, workers around the world rallied ~---no., __, ...... _ to their cause with acts of strike solidarity ?7;~~=S and donations of material assistance. The NUM rightly took measures to keep these funds out of the clutches of the union busting government. Hands off the Na tional Union of Mineworkers'" !ilJ~~£:-a::~ Crucifying Scargill on a cross t;c: ....rthian DeIeD8e of "Russian gold" . £onunIttee- ...... ,_ .. Having failed to destroy the NUM, the AID TO STRIKING...... BRInSH '.... MINERS' ,_ FAMILIES bourgeoisie want to crucify it on a cross .. 1...... • ...... 0.... ., ...... __ ...... ,...... · of "Russian gold". The same bourgeois ...... _., _ ...... "...... -...... ",-...... ""' ...... ,....~ ...... w .. ~ press which supported Thatcher's every ...... " ---~,...... ~I ...... ,I ..... -----.-...... ,..PDC ...... ,_-...... move to starve the miners now wax elo ----- ...... -.... ------... PIC ...... - quent on the "hardship" endured by the -- ~~ .-.., ... strikers while denouncing Scargill's "au International support helped militant miners to survive during bitter 'I _':'..-.:::..-:.=.:..::...-:r.:.::'.::::;".:..-=.=.:m..• I tocratic" methods. Soviet assistance, year-long strike. US Partisan Defense Committee raised $24,000 to aid I..... iiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii _____ iiiiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiiii_ .. gratefully accepted, helped the strikers embattled mIners' families. continued on page 11

4 WORKERS HAMMER Workers Power caught with Russian fascists, Thatcher's scabs

The Union of Democratic Miners "a class line has to be drawn between the (UDM) is a scab "union" created to labour movement and Yuri Butchenko." destroy the National Union of Mine Two weeks earlier, when Butchenko had workers (NUM). The National Toilers insisted that CSWEB condone his meet Alliance (NTS) is a Russian fascist outfit ing with the UDM and take on the NTS with links to one or another imperialist as co-organiser of the tour, WP's edito agency going back to Hitler's Nazis in the rial board issued a lame statement (dated 1930s. Workers Power is a self-styled 27 June) deploring his decision "to end Trotskyist group in Britain. What's the his commitments to our tour" after connection? Plenty sordid. Workers Fascist-connected CSWEB rejected "the conditions laid Power has been caught out lending their "Russian worker" down for collaboration by Yuri". Even services to a sordid cabal of the UDM, Yuri Butchenko, then, "Yuri" was invited "to reply to our NTS and other sinister forces aimed at sponsored by criticisms in the next issue of this paper", breaking the NUM and its president Workers Power. while Scargill's "allegiance to the 'offi Arthur Scargill. cial' stooge unions" in the USSR was Along with Socialist Organiser, its blamed for "opening the door to Lynk" estranged bloc partners in the Campaign and the scab UDM. for Solidarity with Workers in the East Not only does it have trouble keeping ern Bloc (CSWEB), Workers Power its constituencies apart, WP can't even organised the tour in Britain of one Yuri keep its "facts" straight. A piece in the Butchenko, "executive member of the August issue of Workers Power, quaintly Siberian-based Kuzbass Union of Work titled "Problems of solidarity", claims that et unions. It even lent credence to the ing after the Labour/TUC left of which ers". For "nine very successful days", as "it was not until Butchenko arrived in WP puts it, these "leftists" provided witchhunters' charges by appealing to Scargill is part. So they split from them: "should you wish to pursue the CSWEB following Butchenko's bomb Britain that we were told he had been Butchenko with an entree into numerous formally invited here by Miller." But workers movement meetings, knowing full matter of the money sent by Soviet min shell appearance on behalf of the anti ers to the NUM during their strike, to do Scargill rat pack. Workers Power con WP's 11 July "Statement on Yuri Bu well tha't he was at the very least inti tchenko and CSWEB" reports that it was mately connected with the fascist NTS, so exclusively via the NUM itself." demned a Socialist Organiser /CSWEB Addressing the British unions, which statement for "suggesting that he [But through a telephone conversation with through its British representative George Butchenko in May, well before his arriv Miller. the Solidarity Campaign had inveigled chenko] is somehow an unwitting dupe of into meeting with Butchenko, Workers Lynk and the media" (presumably WP al, that "we learnt that Miller had been Then on 5 July, Butchenko appeared the person to sign the official invitation at a press conference in London along Power had not a hint of criticism of Scar had cornered the "unwitting dupe" mar gill, pleading: "Yuri Butchenko has be ket that week). WP loftily declared, "We papers for Butchenko to come." side UDM honcho Roy Lynk to lend his It all reads like one of those "I was a voice to outlandish claims that Scargill trayed your solidarity and goodwill. We cannot be party, in any way, to its deci apologise unreservedly. for being the sion to excuse Butchenko's treachery." Commie dupe" confessions from the had salted away up to £10 million of McCarthy era, and with about as much donations made by Soviet miners to unwitting agency for this person to trade This canting hypocrisy came after on your internationalism (and ours too)." Workers Power itself had devoted con sincerity. So how unwitting an agency was the 1984-85 British miners strike. This Workers Power? Butchenko told them was just what union-hating prime minister WP was confronted with an unforeseen siderable efforts to coddling Butchenko. conflict between competing opportunist Only when he publicly joined the anti enough, as WP makes clear with breath Thatcher and her lieutenants in the La taking cynicism in the same statement: bour right wing needed: a Russian work interests-on the one hand their Stalino Scargill witchhunt and hit the headlines er, legitimised by speaking before trade phobic appetites, on the other their tail. with his press conference did WP decide continued on page 10 union audiences, taking their side against the most militant union in Britain. But chenko's claims were picked up and broadcast far and wide by the bosses' media. .workers power Butchenko's surfacing as one of the key players in the anti-Scargill witchhunt forced Workers Power to issue a string of th.t I,n~' ho •• bo.-n ..t.obh,I •• d bo denials, non-denials and conflicting dis :;;:~<;:'~:';~r~:':; :~~'\~'I~~ f",cehapurpoo.lnl.h.ha,k !:'"ound lhe ('lA, wo.lt,ne ,~.o"~,, claimers, which in sum only confIrmed Ih, h,~h.,t 1... 1. of tI" \'~ t,,,d. un",n, 'AfU(,]U) .f< f"o,''''~ th" their criminal complicity in this affair. WP tried to pass itself off as a pathetically confirmed that such an autumn naive group simply out to make "solida tour could take place. In May we rity" with the "independent workers' rp.ceived a telephone call from movement of the USSR and Eastern Butchenko infonning us that four Europe" and tragically rmding itself im miners would be coming over in plicated in the smear campaign against June. We therefore agreed to bring Scargill. The fact is that these Stalino forward the proposed tour and set phobic, rightward-moving centrists have about organising it. of the blatantly and directly aided the bourgeoi On the telephone Butehenko sie, its UDM tool and the Labour/TUC was not until agreed with the outline of the tour right wing in their attempt to crucify Butchenko arrived in Britain that Scargill and break the miners union. we were told he had been formally schedule. At this point there was invited here by Miller. Up to that no question of a joint toUT with t.he Confessions of an point we thought he had been sent NTS, although we learnt that anti-communist "dupe"? by the union-which we ourselves Miller had been the person to sign had invited-and paid for by it. In an attempt to squirm out of its Subsequently we learnt, from an the official invitation papers for responsibility for setting up Scargill, interview City Limits did with Butchenko to come. At the last Workers Power issued three separate Butchenko, that Miller had paid minute we discovered that only statements dated 11 July, directed at its for his flight over. various constituencies. None of these have Only after Butchenko's arrival been published in its paper, and we can see why. Addressing the Kuzbass union, WP Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. August 1990 Workers Power newspaper (left) denies called on them to "renounce all links with what Workers Power statement (right) had already confessed on 11 July 1990. the UDM" while attacking the NUM leadership for its ties to the official Sovi-

SEPTEMBER 1990 5 For the right of Tamil Eelam! Sri Lanka: state terror, communalist bloodbath On 11 June the fragile truce between proach and that the ethnic issue would be the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan resolved through peaceful dialogue" government disintegrated. In concerted (Voice of Tigers, March 1990). attacks the Tigers overran more than 20 Negotiations dragged on. Instead of police stations and laid siege to a series turning over police functions in the of army bases. Backed by heavy artillery North-Eastern Province to the LTIE as and aerial bombardment, the Sri Lankan the Tiger leadership wanted, the govern armed forces have renewed their attempts ment began reinforcing its security forces. to drown the struggles of the oppressed Sinhala colonisation of contested areas Tamil minority in blood. "Ee1am War II" continued. In May the government began accelerates the disintegration and frag talking again with the Tigers' deadly rivals mentation of the island's society, engulf of the EPRLF. Deputy Defence Minister ing large areas in communal slaughter. and hardliner Ranjan Wijeratne, together The unitary state system of Sri Lanka' with SLFP opposition leader Anura Ban is a direct result of British colonial rule, daranaike, stated that the Tigers must lay Since independence the pressure towarru down their arms as a precondition for one unitary national entity, one language, holding new elections in the North-East one religion, has been remorseless an(, ern Province. bloody. Capitalist politicians have vied The Tigers survived two years against Shyam Tekwani photos with one another in their communalist 50,000 IPKF forces, and are now bigger appeals. The government language policy Lan and better equipped. So are the Sri Police roadblock, Colombo 1989 of "Sinhala only" targeted Tamils and the kan forces. But the claims made that the (left); UNP President R Prema English-speaking Burghers. In July 1983 Sri Lankan security forces have liberated dasa (above); Tamil murdered government-instigated anti-Tamil pog the Eastern Province and "broken the by army, 1981 (below). roms surpassed previous communal out might of the Liberation Tigers" (The bursts and marked the de facto partition Sunday Observer, Colombo, 24 June) are of the island. The United National Party hollow. LTIE patrols can be en (UNP) government's attempts to suppress countered only a few miles from Trin the national liberation struggle for Tamil comalee and other towns. Even during Eelam was checked by the Indian in the Indian intervention the Tigers' supply tervention in 1987. Three months after the lines to south India were never closed off. so-called Peace Accord of July 1987, the Around 250 soldiers and police are holed "Indian Peace-Keeping Force" (IPKF) up in the old Dutch fort in Jaffna town. was engaged in a war to destroy the Lib Much prestige hangs on relieving this eration Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTIE). siege, but the government offensive to Mutual opposition to the presence of break the siege has been stymied by the the IPKF induced a truce of convenience Tigers. between the LTIE and the new govern Vows Deputy Defence Minister Ran ment of R Premadasa (who replaced JR jan Wijeratne: "We will not capture the Jayawardene as president after the 19 LTIE, but destroy them. We will show December 1988 elections). The IPKF no mercy" (Sunday Tunes, ColombO', 12 ,;:;? ~ /'c withdrew its last detachments in March, August). The UNP government and ~it ( leaving a situation that inexorably headed alist press have tried to portray the cur ,~ . towards the renewed bloodbath. The once rent fighting as against the Tigers but not 'v, fertile possibilities of internationalist the Tamil people, as different from the revolutionary mobilisations, cutting across "shameful communal violence directed communal and national divisions, have against the Tamil community in 1983" / been suppressed as the working masses (The Island, 8 July). But government no credit are battered and terrorised along com hardliners have had no compunction munallines and within the different com about rousing "Save the motherland" Tigers marked a further descent into all ernment's campaign. munities. hysteria. sided communal bloodletting. The government also wants to recon Tamils constitute about 20 per cent of Thousands of years of religious and quer the overwhelmingly Tamil Jaffna peninsula. Proposals have been raised to the population of Sri Lanka. The Tamils cultural memory, and the Sinhalese majo Eastern Province: communalist erect huge refugee/concentration camps of the north and east have a right of na rity's fear of being a minority in the con cauldron near Vavuniya and on the island of Man tional self-determination and we defend text of 60 million Tamils in south India, In 1938 the Sinhalese population of the nar to which "all innocent Tamil people" their right to establish an independent have been evoked to whip up communal Eastern Province was about five per cent. should move while the government tries state of Tamil Eelam. We demand the xenophobia. The Sunday Island's colum Following independence, concerted colon to bomb and starve Jaffna into submis withdrawal of the Sri Lankan army and nist Kautilya describes the situation: isation of Sinhalese has raised it to about police from the Tamil areas. But in the sion. Meanwhile the sizable Tamil popu "First, it is more massacre and bloodbath 25 per cent (with 42 per cent Tamil and eastern regions of the island the Tamils than fierce battles between armed com lation of Colombo lives in fear of a re most of the rest Muslim). The colonisa peat of the 1983 pogroms. Hundreds of are heavily interpenetrated with the ma batants. Second, the civilian death toll is tion schemes have concentrated on the jority Sinhalese and mainly Tamil-speak mounting .... not, kindly observe, 'caught Tamil youth have been detained with Vali Oya and the Colombo-Habarana scores reportedly killed and tortured. ing Muslims. Under capitalism what in the crossfire' but the deliberate targets Trincomalee road, wedges to split up the territory would constitute Ee1am is bound of war" (The Island, 19 August). The Tamil regions. The strategic naval har Increasingly the Tamil-speaking Mus to be decided through communal blood government forces' operations have been bour of Trincomalee lies at the heart of lims have asserted their special interests letting. More so since the main Tamil accompanied by indiscriminate bombing the area: and separate identity, under the impact of group, the LTIE have come to mirror and strafing, death-squad "disappear government "divide and rule" policies and the worst aspects of Sinhala com ances" of Tamil youth and men and the "If the region retains the great tactical the Hindu chauvinism of Tamil :lational qlunaIism, butchering Sinhala and Muslim value to the seas that wash it, it can be ism. One Muslim described the situation unleashing of murderous Sinhalese home said that he who controls Trincomalee villagers. guard mobs. can control the Indian Ocean. 1ben before the arrival of the Indian army: During the short-lived truce, the Tigers The government admits that half a certainly, by the same logic, it can be proclaimed that the Sri Lankan govern million people have been uprooted, from asserted that he who controls Trincoma "The situation is such here in the east ment had recognised them "as the sole their homes, the Tamils fleeing north lee controls Sri Lanka as well-in stra that whatever you say you'll offend the security forces or you'll offend the boys. and authentic representatives of the wards and the Sinhalese south and west. tegic terms at least" (Daily News, 20 June 1988). We're caught in the middle. We've Tamil speaking people" and touted Pre Many people face starvation. There is a alwayS lived with the Tami~ we're madasa as a democrat who had "assured vicious cycle of revenge and reprisal. In The communalist bloodbath that will at Tamil-speaking, but in the past most the L1TE leaders that the government August the massacres at two Muslim least drive the Tamils from large areas of Muslims were fervent supporters of the has totally given up the militaristic ap- mosques near Batticaloa attributed to the the eastern region is integral to the gov- government. NOIlV, with the eastern

6 WORKERS HAMMER province banging in the baIanc:e and the destroyed any opposition in the Tamil vernment's suppression of the Tamil protest hartal in the north and east, they Muslims tottering OIl the brink. we're areas, and struck against rivals in Colom liberation struggle. Slightly to their left, have no answer to the plight of the plan being courted, then terrorized equally by bo and Madras. Most of these groups like the NSSP, led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara, tation workers. The best they Can say is the Tamils and the Sinbalese. Look at that "If the Tamils working on tea and Nilaveli [a village north of Trincomalee). the EPRLF, TELO, ENDLF and PLOTE wallows in this popular front milieu, It's a stronghold of the TIgers, but it has are tainted by their quisling role during sharing platforms with the SLFP and rubber estates in Sri Lanka want to settle a large Muslim population. The young the IPKF days. The EPRLF North East dealing with the discredited EPRLF and in the North-East Province, our organisa Muslim men come to Trincomalee for provincial government and its Citizen TELO. Vasudeva has raised protests tion is ready to help them" (Tamil Inter provisions, chilies, and rice. They usually Volunteer Force/Tamil National Army about killings of Tamil civilians and about national, 9 June). Under capitalism the come by bit)'c1e, and are stopped over disintegrated completely when the Indians those in the south. But Vasudeva states: establishment of Eelam and the partition and over at Army checkpoints. The left, but not before the EPRLF assisted "What I recommend is that people of of the island would evoke the same slau Army accuses them of taking food for ghter as occurred with the division of the Tamil TIgers. Then, when they finally the Indians in hunting and killing Tiger the South should unite to demand go reach Nilaveli, having been humiliated by supporters. Lately supporters of these vernment's resignation. All the people in India in 1947. And the plantation workers groups have been helping the Sri Lankan the North and East should close ranks would be among the foremost victims of the Army at every checkpoint on the and oust the LTrE. . . . The Tamils road, the boys find them and say, army identify and "disappear" Tiger such a communalist bloodletting. could liberate only if the LTrE is de 'You've gone to town. Have you gone to sym pathisers. stroyed. No Tamil should lend a hand to The island of Sri Lanka is a microcosm give the security forces information on the LTrE. In fact, they should fight of the whole Indian subcontinent, the us?' " (New Yorker, 21 March 1988) Death-squad rule in south against it" (Sunday Times, Colombo, 24 agonies of its working masses thrown into No doubt Sinhalese communalists will The president Premadasa and defence June). greater relief by the fact of its separate move against the Muslims (there is a boss Ranjan Wijeratne have vowed that This is nothing but a back-handed way of existence as a state. Most graphically significant layer of Muslim traders and they will eliminate the LTIE as they did supporting the Sri Lankan armed forces' Ceylon has seen the failure of working small businessmen outside the inter the JVP. The JVP originated as a left bloody attempt to suppress the Tamil class parties which commanded strong penetrated districts of the east) in their oriented group of radicalised Sinhala struggle. support to lead the working class and its turn. The anti-Muslim riots of 1915 were youth in the sixties. In 1971 it was brutally The present communal horror of Sri allies, the poor peasants and national the first major outbreak of communal suppressed by the SLFP popular front Lanka is very much a product of the minorities away from the communalist riots, a harbinger of the successive de government, with more than 20,000 killed. ectrayals of the reformist and Stalinist horrors that capitalism breeds.,Now rela structive outbursts-against the Malayalis In the 1980s it emphatically consolidated leaderships of the working class. By con tions between the island's communities in the thirties and then the Sinhalese around Sinhala communalism. After the trast our international tendency, together have been deeply poisoned. To unlock a communalist "salami tactics" against December 1987 Indo-Lankan Accord the with its supporters on the island, laid situation such as that in Sri Lanka re minorities in the post-independence JVP rode a semi-insurrectionary move down as hallmarks of a revolutionary quires a broader international perspec period. ment, demanding "Drive out the violent internationalist stance opposition to Sin tive. There was a time when Sri Lanka, Presently, however, the immediate army of apes". In the words of the Lanka hala chauvinist popular frontism and with its strong working class movement government/Muslim alliance sharply Guardian (15 November 1988), "A creep defence of the rights and struggles of the and with the possibility of the Tamils intersects the international situation. Sri ing 'insurgency' with hardly a shot fired oppressed Tamil minority. playing a bridging role to India, might Lanka's economy is heavily linked to the had Colombo encircled, reducing the Historically a revolutionary working well have been the catalyst for proletarian Middle East: tea sales (Iraq takes 20 per administration to an all-too visible condi class strategy on the island of Ceylon revolutionary struggle throughout the cent of all tea exported); foreign ex tion of helplessness." Terroristic assas- ought to have centred on the mainly low- region. The Ceylonese Bolshevik-Lenin- change earnings from migrant workers (90,000 in Kuwait alone); and petroleum. Aside from those received from China, , 0 100 the government has had trouble acquiring MILES arms and has tried to forge closer links to the Middle Eastern states. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the PLO have all reportedly -offered assistance. But Sri Lanka lives in the shadow of India. The Indian intervention of 1987 was an assertion of overlordship. The National Front coalition of VP Singh withdrew the troops and has pulled back from certain of the more assertive "re gional superpower" postures of the Gandhis. As well the government is un stable and beset with internal divisions and its own preoccupation with seces sionist movements in the Punjab and Kashmir and the related tension with Pakistan. Still the Indian government has been signalling its "deep concern" over civilian casualties and pointedly refused to assist the Sri Lankan navy trying to stop Sri lankan army patrol Jaffna town, 1981: now Tigers lay siege to Jaffna Fort garrison. Tiger supply boats from, and the flow of refugees into, Tamil Nadu. The issue of sination killed hundreds, including well caste Tamil tea plantation workers. Like ists in exile in India during World War II Eelam is bound up in the seething byzan guarded cabinet ministers. As well the the Free Trade Zone textile workers and played a role beyond their su£ in bringing tine mess of intrigue and manipulation of JVP targeted the SLFP and supporters of the migrants in the Middle East many are a Trotskyist revolutionary perspective to Indian bourgeois politics and the relations left and working-class organisations. women. In the service of Sinhala chauv the struggles that convulsed India in that of a weak central government with its ally Hundreds of transport workers were inist parliamentary class collaboration the period. What is required is the construc the state DMK government in Madras. killed to enforce JVP hartals (shut down reformist parties have ignored them. tion of Bolshevik workers parties, true The DMK government must play to of all economic, communication and Likewise from the standpoint of petty tribunes of the people, forged in struggle Tamil communalism to stay in power and educational activity). bourgeois Eelam nationalism, their plight against chauvinist class collaboration, has turned a blind eye to Tiger activity in Then following a failed ultimatum to and power have been ignored. In a provo fighting for the rights of national mino and from Tamil Nadu. Heavy civilian soldiers to desert or have their families cative speech at a May Day rally of plan rities, for the liberation of women and casualties in the Jaffna peninsula, com killed, pro-government death squads and tation workers Wijeratne declared that against pernicious caste oppression. Such munal violence in Colombo and the re the security forces were unleashed against 100,000 "Indian passport holders" and parties will be committed to inter fugee influx (tens of thousands have the JVP. Thirty thousand, quite possibly their offspring would be deported as soon nationalist struggle for proletarian revolu already made the dangerous trip across a lot more, were killed. The death squads as the Talaimannar ferry was running tion throughout the Indian subcontinent. the Pill Straits) and Sri Lanka's efforts also went after other opponents of the again. The plantation workers struck in We demand the right of Tamil Eelam! to get allies and supplies from Muslim government. The killings--with the now protest and over the arrest of two of their For federated workers republics of Eel am countries, especially if a Pakistan link is familiar sight of "necklaced", disfIgured leaders. and Lanka, part of the socialist federation seen, could all bring the Indians back in. burnt bodies at the roadsides-continue. While the LTIE organised a successful of South Asia.- A key element of the LTTE's nation And the conditions of grinding poverty, alist strategy is to win Indian bourgeois unemployment and oppression which approval. The IPKFs role demonstrated bred the JVP remain. The cost of living LONDON SPARTACIST~LEAGUE PUBLIC MEETING the accuracy of our warnings against has spiralled, and now the Middle East having faith in the Indian capitalists. crisis and an expanded defence budget Tiger leader Kittu now refers to the war threaten more misery. If this state can do Benn's UN sanctions: figleaf for imperialist aggression with the IPKF as "a bad dream that is what it has done to Sinhala youth, then over" (Tamil Times, 15 July). And an the Tamils can expect and now face other Tiger spokesman, Balasingham as worse. Labour in lockstep with serts that the LTTE would "not get in Thatcher's war moves volved in secessionist struggles in India" "Left" betrayals paved way and that "We don't want to solicit sup The "left" and working class parties 7.30pm, Wednesday, 19 September 1990 port from any forces that [are] hostile to provide no answer to the desperate mas India," explicitly repudiating the legiti ses, Sinhala and Tamil. The Communist Yorkshire Grey; corner of Theobalds Road and Grays Inn Road mate national struggles of the Sikhs in Party and the once Trotskyist LSSP Nearest tubes: Hoi born , Chancery Lane Punjab and the Kashmiris (The Hindu search endlessly for a new class-col International Edition, 9 June). laborationist alliance with the bourgeois For more information: phone 071-485 1396 Meanwhile, the Tigers have ruthlessly chauvinist SLFP, while backing the gov- SEPTEMBER 1990 7 Department ignoramus Margaret Tut "binary" nerve gas. American warships been won through a blockade, as was Iraq ••. weiler harps on "Iraqi aggression". Yeah, in the region surely carry atomic weap tried against the Southern Confederacy like when Saddam Hussein went into (Continued from page 1) ons, and we are morally certain the and Germany. And as Hussein himself Grenada? Iraq's takeover of Kuwait is no Pentagon is already updating operational pointed out, no war has ever been won gion. And in the US, we have a big op historical aberration: all states are built plans to nuke Baghdod. through air power. So they're gearing up on acts of aggression. What about Wil for "the big one". Right now they're in a portunity to stick it to this vicious, dan "New World Order" gerous ruling class which first and fore liam the Conqueror? And Iraq's Hussein phase of "phoney war", letting UN sec most exploits the American working had more justification than most when he When Hitler took power in 1933 pro retary general P~rez de Cu~llar show that people and minorities. pointed out in a 10 August speech that claiming a "New Order", he proclaimed shuttle diplomacy is worthless. It will take Bush has jumped into a quagmire with "the colonialists, to ensure their petro it would last a thousand years. In taking another few weeks for the US to get the both feet. The Arabian sands could well leum interests... set up those disfigured up the same rhetoric, Bush is desperately full complement of forces in place. And be quicksand for US rulers. Remember petroleum states". trying to revive the "American Century" then inexorable preSsure will mount to what happened to Carter's Delta Force in The statelet of Kuwait was an imperi which, as we have put it, was buried in "use it or lose it". Iran and the Marines in Beirut. In the alist legacy created by drawing artificial the jungles of Vietnam. Hitler's "New The current "crisis" was not entirely name of the American young men and "Lines in the Sand", as Glenn Frankel Order" lasted 12 years; Bush's could blow unplanned: the Army Corps of Engineers women who will come back in coffins, in wrote in the Washington Post (31 Au up in his face in a matter of weeks. has spent $17 billion over the years for the name of millions of Arabs facing the gust). The former Ottoman Empire was This is no longer 1945, when America military infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, imperialist war machine, we call for sharp carved up between the English and was undisputed master of the capitalist including "hardened airfields where fuel class struggle to bring down the bloody French in the secret Sykes-Picot agree world. German imperialism is forming a ing, maintenance and ordnance loading minded American capitalists. ment of 1916. Part of Basra province until London recognised it as a protectorate in A war for Big 011 1899, Kuwait was separated off after World War I in order to deny Iraq access It all started when Iraq's Hussein sent to the sea, which was War Office policy his army into the emirate of Kuwait on 2 to "limit its influence in the gulf and keep August in a grab for the oil fields and to it dependent on Britain". fulfll Iraq's historic claim to a port on the "We, the British, cobbled Iraq togeth Gulf. Previously the US had supported er," admitted British diplomat Sir Anth~ Iraq in the squalid eight-year Iran-Iraq ny Parsons. The boundary with Kuwait

war, supplying satellite intelligence and contested by Saddam Hussein was dictat- I tanker escorts, even overlooking the ed in 1922 by British high commissioner Iraqis' Exocet missile attack on the USS Sir Percy Cox. And indeed, the British Stark. But now suddenly the Iraqi strong drew the frontiers and designated rulers man was sitting on 20 per cent of the throughout the region, installing loyal world's oil reserves. Overnight Saddam tribal leaders as monarchs as TE Law Hussein was transformed into a new rence did with Ibn Saud. And the French "Hitler" by the servile US media. War carved up their Syrian mandate territory propaganda against "insane Hussein" to create the artificial state of Lebanon escalated violent anti-Arab racism at as a pro-Western Christian-dominated home. enclave in the Levant. The last 40 years Bush vowed the seizure of Kuwait ''will of bloodletting in the Middle East go not stand", and after strong-arming the back to this cynical imperialist carve-up. feudalistic Saudi monarchy, US troops Another Washington battle cry is Sad started pouring into that desert country. dam Hussein's refusal to let Westerners UPI Kuwait's considerable assets abroad were leave Iraq, turning them into hostages. Saigon 1975: end of the "American Century". frozen, a trade embargo was placed on Why, he even sent some to Iraqi military Iraq, and four US aircraft carrier battle bases and dams which would be obvious Fourth Reich by taking over East Ger are done well underground" and runways groups were mobilised to enforce a block targets of US air strikes. What savagery! many and establishing the domination of were specifically designed for large US ade (labelled "interdiction" to disguise War is indeed a savage business in which the D-mark in Eastern Europe on the transport planes (Navy Tunes, Z7 Aug the fact that this is a blatmt act of war). enemy aliens are often subjected to re road to economic hegemony throughout ust). And "Operation Desert Shield" The stated goal was to defend the house pression. And the citizens of any country Europe. Japan is forming a new "co could be implemented so quickly because of Saud and restore Sheik Jabbar al participating, in the blockade of Iraq prosperity sphere" in East Asia having al the Joint Chiefs of Staff simply presented Ahmad al Sabah to the Kuwaiti throne. certainly qualify as enemy aliens. As ready become the US' main creditor. The BUsh with a modified version of "Plan 90- Bush & ,Co just cut the ground out Hussein pointed out, in World War II, in "dollar zone" is being challenged by the 1002" for a massive air- and sealift of US from under naive liberals and pacifISts an act of racism utterly without military yen and D-mark. forces to the Gulf. who thought they would collect a "peace justification, the US threw hundreds of Today the American imperialists talk It's clear that US forces are being dividend" in the "post-Cold War" world. thousands ofJapanese Americans, many of protecting the oil "life line". In the moved into the Persian Gulf to stay. Instead of cuts in the "defence" budget, of them US citizens, into concentration 1800s, British interest in Mesopotamia Heretofore, the Saudis have been reluc supplemental appropriations are being camps. (present-day Iraq) was based on defend tant to grant the Pentagon base rights. rushed through and virtually every mili- And then there is the matter of ing the "life line" to India. This was also But in the last weeks, American combat • tary boondoggle that was under the bud Iraq's poison gas, "the poor man's atom the rationale for grabbing Suez, and once aircraft have been stationed in all the get axe has been resuscitated. The entire bomb". Having for years turned a blind they had Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Gulf states of the Arabian peninsula. De massive mobilisation is being accom eye to Hussein's vicious use of nerve Sudan, that paved the way for the Cecil fense Secretary Cheney makes no bones plished without even a pro forma Con gas and mustard gas against Iranian Rhodes "Cape to Cairo" types. While about it: the US military commitment is gressional debate, much less lip service troops and thousands of Kurds iDside Britannia ruled the waves and grabbed "long term", and "we do not know how to the War Powers Act as the Democrats Iraq, now Washington objects. Forget the lion's share of Africa, the Germans long we will have to stay". With this in snap to attention whenever Bush waves that the US has a vast chemical war dreamed of a Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad. vasion the US has taken a big step towards the flag. fare arsenal, and that Bush has fought When these two imperial ambitions clash a strategic objective: a military stranglehold To justify the American invasion, State Congress to continue production of ed, the result was World War I. on the Middle East. But now they may US rulers want to regain the position have to pay the price in blood. of imperialist top cop by seizing the oil, While the Democrats march in lock which they can then dole out to their step with Bush, however, elements in the and waged war on the peoples of. the economically more dynamic rivals. Signif Republican right wing (such as Patrick Labour world. icantly, Washington's Japanese and Ger Buchanan) have doubts about the US' Exemplifying the syphilitic chain which man "allies" have hung back from milit military capacity to bring this off. These ,lockstep ••• binds the left to Labour, Benn's camp ary commitments in the Persian Gulf "Fortress America" types want to con centrate on dismantling the ex-Soviet (Continued from page 1) followers in the Morning Star have gone adventure, no doubt hoping to maintain so low as to denounce the call for US friendly connections in the Arab world. bloc. Attacking Bush, Buchanan asks: "If turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's withdrawal, blathering that "UN control As the world's chief bursars, they would we walked out of tiny Lebanon after 250 use of chemical weapons against the is key demand". The Socialist OTganiser like to have the US act as mercenaries to dead, are Americans ready to bear the Kurdish people in Iraq. When the Iraqi Labour entrists and Leninist Stalinoids guard "their" oil supplies. burden of pacifying Iraq and Iran, with regime was slaughtering Communist Party demand the withdrawal of Iraq from But if the junk-bond-bloated Yankee 70 million people." members and engaged in the squalid Kuwait, echoing the imperialist propagan rulers are short on productive capacity To keep their profits flowing, they're border war with Iran, Hussein was the da. The centrists of Workers Power these days, they're trying to make up for prepared to spill the blood of millions of recipient of Western arms eagerly sup -while calling for Iraq's victory against it with brute military force. In the first impoverished Arabs and thousands of plied. imperialism-shed crocodile tears for place, the US mobilisation is far more black and working-class American youth Now, under the transparent pretext of Kuwait's violated "self-determination". than necessary to "defend" Saudi Arabia: in uniform. The Vietnam War brought avenging "poor little Kuwait" and "de We in the Spartacist League, British the Pentagon has moved in "ground and down two American presidents. Bush & fending" Saudi Arabia, the US is set to section of the International Communist helicopter forces expressly geared to Co will soon enough find out that the grab the oil supplies and establish a mili League, say: US, Britain out of the Gulf! offensive operations", just the mix that Vietnam syndrome is still alive. tary stranglehold in the Middle East Break the blockade! For hard class strug computer wargame analysis indicates for Washington's British junior partners gle against the warmakers and strike an air/land attack on Iraq, notes the au Middle East cauldron along with their Labour lackeys howl that breakers! Down with the Labour trai thoritative Aviation Week (Z7 August). If during the Vietnam War, protesters Hussein is a "new Hitler". What mur tors-right and "left"! Build a Bofshevik But a war with Iraq's battle-hardened sang "One, two, three, what are we fight derous hypOcrisy! The British and US party! The enemy is at'homc--for prole army of nearly a million men with over ing for?" that question will be repeated imperialists have in their turn invaded, tarian revolution to smash British im 5000 tanks will not be a walkover like more loudly today when this war can't be annexed, colonised, brutally suppressed perialism from within!- Panama or Grenada. N"o war has ever justified as part of the crusade against

8 WORKERS HAMMER Communism. Who wants to die so that the Kuwaiti Emir can live a life of luxury in a state where only 70,000 men out of a population of over 2 million have the LeHer to the Kremlin right to vote for a "parliament" which is . dissolved as soon as it meets? Or for the feudal house of Saud which lords it over its one-family state where women· are de Rescind arms embargo of Iraq nied the right to drive, much less vote, and even princesses are beheaded for 9 August 1990 aimed at starving Iraq into submission however, great interest in the profits adultery. Saudi Arabia is the largest re pose a danger not only to that volatile sweated out of oil workers from the maining state where chattel slavery still Embassy of the Union of region but to the Soviet Union itself. Persian Gulf to the North Sea to the exists. Soviet Socialist' Republics, The deployment of American might in Gulf of Mexico: our interest is that this Already there have been incidents of Washington, D.C. and Paris the region has tightened the encircle wealth go to the working people of the "culture shock" as US troops come up USSR Mission to the United Nations ment of the Soviet Union by the utterly world. We say: U.S. Out of the Persian against the social straitjacket of Saudi hostile forces of imperialism. Gulf! We Trotskyists, who stand in mediaevalism. In one case, Saudi soldiers Dear Ambassadors: In pursuit of narrow diplomatic con defense of the Soviet workers state went crazy when a woman member of an The American imperialists have cerns, the Soviet government previ against world imperialism, demand that F-15 ground crew took her shirt off to seized upon a local disturbance in the ously signed a Treaty of Friendship the Soviet Union rescind its arms em work in her T-shirt in the 120 degree Persian Gulf to vastly extend United with Saddam Hussein, the butcher of bargo of Iraq and send their former heat. And take note that the Saudi dy States military might. In the face of this thousands of worker militants, Com allies in Baghdad the weapons they nasty was catapulted into power with the escalating imperialist provocation, the .monist Party members, and members need to deter Washington's oil grab. aid of the Wahabi sect. In Afghanistan, International Communist League of the Kurdish minority. Yet now when The Soviet government fought to the where they have been acting as merce (Fourth Internationalist) demands that Iraq is genuinely threatened by im end, successfully, to keep the oil fields nary mujahedin (holy warriors), these the Soviet government rescind immedi ~rialism the Soviet government has of Baku out of the hands of the imperi Islamic fanatics are notorious for raping ately its arms embargo against Iraq. supported United Nations sanctions alists. We should make vigorous efforts every "infidel" woman they come across. The U.S. provocation is a tripwire for against Iraq and seems willing to "co in the current situation. Those are the US' glorious "allies" in world war, posing a grave danger to all operate" with the White House war Fraternally, Bush's war for "freedom" and "our way humanity. mongers. This is a betrayal of the inter Helene Brosius of life". Iraq's Saddam Hussein, on the With unbridled hypocrisy and in the ests of the Soviet state and the Soviet International Secretary other hand, has won popular support name of "freedom," the U.S. is seek and world working people. throughout the area, justifying his take ing to assure its stranglehold over world The ICL(FI) believes the workers of cc: General of the Army B.V. Snetkov over of Kuwait as an effort to take back supplies of oil. The establishment of the world are opposed to a squalid war Commander in Chief, the oil wealth from the lavish-living American military bases in Saudi Arabia between the reactionary sheiks and Group of Soviet Forces in Germany sheiks. He is also now seen by the Pales for the first time and a naval embargo colonels over the oil fields. We have, Zossen-Wiinsdorf tinians as a champion of their cause against the Zionists who have deprived them of a homeland. Hussein is simulta neously trying to take on the mantle of invading the USSR in 1941, his heirs In fact, the Zionist rulers are about the Meanwhile, the US economy, which Nasser as the unifier of the Arab nation today can't understand why the imperial only ones who have to gain from a shoot was already in a recession, is being tipped against feudalism and imperialism, while ists don't play by the rules. ing war. It has not gone unnoticed in into depression by the rise in oil prices putting himself forward as the new scion The fate of humanity could be at stake. Jerusalem that if the US has permanent and the financial chaos of the war threat. of Muhammad in calling for a jihad to Vietnam and Korea were limited wars bases in the Near East, Washington will While Bush's Big Oil buddies were laugh defend the Islamic holy sites from the because of the threat of Russian power. not be dependent upon Israel as its re ing all the way to the bank as the price of Western infidels and their lackeys. This is what kept the US from invading gional' gendarmes. If the Israelis think the East Texas crude virtually doubled to $32 Of course, with his roots in the Ba'ath Cuba. Now the Soviet Union is out of it, flow of dollars may dry up they could just a barrel, other businessmen are not so "Socialist" party, Saddam Hussein was so the Americans don't recognise any decide to blow the region away. Israel sanguine. "The guns of August suddenly supposedly secular. In reality, he is the limits. The International Communist had been gearing up its population for a have darkened the economic skies," noted kind of thug and murderer who would the Wall Street Journal (14 August). As normally qualify as a US ally. He might stocks plunge and higher oil prices prod be compared to bloody Pakistani dictator uce inflation, corporations see their pro Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who helped fun fits evaporating, with the savings and loan nel CIA aid to Afghan counterrevolu industry already in crisis and commercial tionary bands (in return for a big rake banks in trouble as well. "This could off). Hussein actually was a US ally for readily be the worst recession since the years. When the Ba'ath party came to Depression of the 193Os," one senior power briefly in 1963, it may have been securities firm executive told the Journal. aided by the CIA, which reportedly sup , (Iii' American workers and minorities, plied lists of Communists to be killed. 'ifT/Xqr ' ' already ravaged by a decade of economic After the Ba'athists took over again in tAl/jill )AA "growth" in which the rich got a lot rich 1968, they jailed and killed thousands of er and everybody else got poorer, now CPers, particularly among Kurdish oil !,~ ;0,?iS;;, face outright depression and seeing their workers in the region of Kirkuk. sons and daughters sent off to die for the This did not stop the Kremlin Stalinists greater profits of Exxon and Texaco and from aiding Saddam, just as they gave , fr4%1o! George Bush's way of life. While the support to both Shah Pahlavi and then bourgeoisie gloats about the "death of Ayatollah Khomeini even as the Iranian /jJJt!t Communism", and the fmal triumph of rulers jailed Iranian Tudeh members. For capitalism, this latest imperialist, adven years, Moscow has been supplying advis 'fOt II " .', ture reveals how truly unstable the Amer ers and military hardware to Baghdad as 'fJS'I~." 'Iy/ ican capitalist colossus is. Washington is f ' part of its eff<;>rts to cultivate "Third L i, A... still haunted by its defeat almost tWo Workers Hammer World" nationalists. Now under Gorba London: Spartacist contingent on 1 September protest march against US decades ago at the hands of a relatively chev's "new thinking", which evidently and Britain in Gulf. small nation fighting for a social revolu consists of giving in to every imperialist tion. But a wounded imperialist beast is demand, and then throwing in some League (Fourth Internationalist) has war even before the latest crisis. Shamir more dangerous than ever. more, the Soviet Union has denounced denounced this betrayal and in a letter & Co are itching for a "pre-emptive" Working people in this country must Saddam Hussein's takeover of Kuwait, sent to several Soviet embassies demand strike against Iraq-a repeat of their 1981 stand on the side of Iraq against the endorsed UN trade sanctions, cut off ed "that the Soviet government rescind bombing raid on Baghdad's unfinished warmongers and union-busters in Wash arms shipments and eventually voted for immediately its arms embargo against nuclear plant, but this time on an apoca ington. And that means waging the class the resolution okaying the US war Iraq" (see box this page). lyptic scale with nuclear/chemical weap strngg/e at home. Even before the shoot blockade of Iraq. ons to destroy Iraq at one blow and For class struggle ing has begun, millions of American Recently it appears that the thick bu against the warmakers "solve" the "Palestinian problem". working people know that our enemies reaucratic skulls in the Kremlin are a "Israeli political and military leaders are not in the Near East but right here: wakening to the danger posed by US The media have made much of George are saying that time is not on the side of the greedy and vicious ruling class which imperialism's grab for hegemony in the Bush's "masterful" orchestration of a the United States in the Persian Gulf is willing to spill the blood of thousands Gulf, barely 700 miles from Soviet bor broad coalition that pits the world against crisis, and that it should act now," re to protect its profits and its "right" to ders. "There are no guarantees that the Saddam Hussein. So far the only Western ports the New Yorlc Times (21 August). lord it over us and over the impoverished United States will leave Saudi Arabia state leader to break ranks is Austria's But with an arsenal of some 200 nuclear masses throughout the world. The work after the crisis is over," moaned Deputy Waldheim. The policy planners in the warheads, as well as chemical weapons ers of this country have the power to stop Foreign Minister Aleksandr Belonogov, White House, State Department and and delivery systems, Israel might well try the system in its tracks and put an end while the chief of staff of the Warsaw Pentagon act like they're going to get it it on its own. But while the Zionist rulers once and for all to the imperialist war Pact, General of the Army Vladimir all on the cheap. But it's not an accident with their Masada complex gird for Ar machine. Down with Washington's new Lobov, complained that the US presence that most doomsday novels start with a mageddon, they could touch off revolu war-a defeat for "our" rulers is a victo had dramatically altered the strategic war crisis in the Middle East. And among tionary upsurges throughout the Arab ry for us. American workers' militancy balance (New Yorlc Times, 31 August). the prime players, who have been keeping East. And this might even break the against Bush and the "Republicrat" party Just as Stalin couldn't believe Hitler had their heads down so far in the Persian extreme chauvinist stranglehold over the of property will go a long way to making violated his "non-aggression" pact by Gulf crisis, are the Israelis. Hebrew-speaking workers. the world a kinder and gentler place. _ SEPTEMBER 1990 9 Scargill for his remark that Polish Soli sitional Programme; renouncing the heri na was nominally Soviet-defencist and Workers darnosc was anti-socialist. The WRP, tage of the Fourth International, it called Workers Power not, they entered a short having spent years pimping for Libya's for an undefmed "Revolutionary Com lived fusion with the cynical argument Power ... Qaddafi, the Iraqi Ba'athist regime and a munist International." Above all, Workers that defence of the Soviet Union was "a (Continued from page 5) host of other oil-rich Middle Eastern Power wanted to have nothing to do with tenth-rate question" (Matgamna). For despots, knew exactly what it was getting Spartacist "sectarianism". Their bottom mally, the tables have turned, with Work "Only after Butchenko's arrival did he into. Workers Power got more than they line was: if it moves (and it's big enough), ers Power now nominally defencist. But explain to us that he would be meeting bargained for or know how to handle-a tail it-whether it be Khomeini's Iran, WP still retains its deepgoing anti-Soviet Miller. When he did we sent someone rip-roaring scandal in the British left and Polish Solidarnosc or (above all) the ism and orientation to NATO social along to ensure that Miller did not try to disrupt the plans of the tour organised labour movement. Labour Party at home. democracy. So they end up "unwittingly" by CSWEB. At that point Miller ex In its rapid rightward motion, WP is Thus Workers Power dutifully echoed getting into bed with anti-Communist pressed no wish to participate in the beginning to take on ever more overtly Cold War social democracy (as well as witchhunters and fascist counterrevolu CSWEB tour and he and Butchenko the political cynicism associated with Reagan and Thatcher) in denouncing the tionaries. Only a Third Campist could agreed simply that once the tour was Healy. In explaining their break with Sean Soviet intervention into Afghanistan (only write, as WP did to the Kuzbass union, over they would, separately from Matgamna's Socialist Organiser over the to turn around and simultaneously de that "The UDM, as a bosses' organisa CSWEB, meet the TUC's international Butchenko affair, Workers Power at nounce the Soviet withdrawal when Gor tion, can be compared with your own department." tempts to take the "high ground", criticis bachev pulled the troops out). And for state run stooge unions." How is it, then, Cozy enough. The "socialists" of CSWEB ing the SO-inspired CSWEB statement years, Workers Power thought that Soli that one massively aided the miners strike would introduce Butchenko to the Brit for seeking "solidarity with the emerging darnosc was the cat's meow. They had no while the other tried to break it? The ish trade-union movement and then hand labour movements of Eastern Europe qualms joining "Solidarity with Solidarity" Soviet trade-union leaders did a damn him back over to the NTS and Miller for irrespective of their political ideas and demonstrations alongside fascistic scum sight more to aid the strike than the anti a little jaunt to the TUC "international affiliations". They even denounce Social like the Polish KPN, all the while admit Communist rue. department"-they might as well have ist Organiser for calling on Solidarnosc ting that SolidarnosC' programme aimed Workers Power is not and never was gone directly to the Foreign Office (which to take power in Poland last year, point for the restoration of capitalism. And they Trotskyist. Trotskyism means the strug Butchenko reportedly later did), or for ing out how "Solidarity is committed to a still call for a return to the "early days" gle for defence and extension of the gains that matter the US embassy in Grosvenor vicious austerity package and the intro of Solidarnosc, the days when it wasn't of the October Revolution of 1917. That's Square. duction of capitalism." quite so difficult to sell this c1erical-na- why we Spartacists stood with the Red And what is the NTS? In its letter to WP's falling-out with Matgamna has the Kuzbass union, Workers Power oh not an iota of principle to it. To this day so-delicately describes it as "an organisa they continue to insist: "Workers Power tion hostile to the real interests of the was correct to try and build the tour, and labour movement". But shortly before to try to get Butchenko to speak to as that, in a Solidarity Campaign statement many workers as possible." Indeed, they dissociating themselves from two other attack Tony Cliffs Socialist Workers NTS-connected Soviet workers who ad Party (SWP) for pulling out of the organ dressed the UDM conference in June, ising committee and keeping Butchenko Workers Power wrote rather less cir from "being able to meet a wider num cumspectly that the NTS "actively col ber of rank and file miners"-and thus laborated with and fought alongside the broadcast his counterrevolutionary filth Nazis". among even wider layers of the British Let us tell you a little more about the workers movement! NTS. This was the "main group used by WP's after-the-fact homilies about MI6 for operations inside the Soviet political principle ring somewhat hollow Union until the end of the 1960s", say given that their chosen bloc partners in Bloch and Fitzgerald in British Intelli the Solidarity Campaign, Matgamna and gence and CoveTt Action, adding, "The Cliff, are explicitly opposed to defence of NTS actively supported the Nazis before the Soviet Union. The whole purpose of and during the 1941 invasion of Russia." this "Eastern Bloc" campaign-the name itself could have been coined by the CIA John J Stephan in The Russian Fascists G Merillon/GAMMA (1978) notes that of the numerous fascis -was precisely to compete with the right wing on the terrain of anti-Communism. Solidarnosc welcomed anti-Soviet Cold Warrior Margaret Thatcher on her tic "solidarist" organisations which pro November 1988 visit to Gdansk. liferated in counterrevolutionary Russian WP says more than it intends when it emigre circles in the interwar years, "the concedes that after arguing "day in, day tionalist outfit because it was not yet im Army in Afghanistan when it fought Young Russia movement and the Nation out" about "the necessity of fighting the plementing pro-capitalist austerity against against CIA-fmanced feudalists. Why we al Toilers' Alliance (Natsionalno Trud restoration of capitalism": "With Yuri the Polish workers. opposed Solidarnosc from the moment it ovoi Soyuz-NTS) probably mobilized the Butchenko we lost those arguments-he Faced with the collapse of Stalinism in set out on a course of capitalist restora widest support." was courted and won by the right wing East Europe and imperialist cheering tion in the autumn of 1981. And in East Stephan explains how "Some solidar who offered him more money, equip over the supposed "death of Commu Germany, where Workers Power tailed ists responded favorably to 'radical' Nazis ment and publicity than we could." So the nism", these centrists veered sharply to behind counterrevolutionary Social De such as Gregor and Otto Strasser"-the big-time anti-Communists could outbid the right, giving backhanded support to mocracy, our comrades of the Spartakist leaders of the SA storm troops. After the "left-wingers" in courting a confirmed the capitalist reunification of Germany Workers Party of Germany fought con Hiller purged the SA leaders in the Night supporter of capitalis~-what a surprise! and appealing directly to British impe sistently and uniquely against capitalist of the Long Knives in 1934, life became rialism to back counterrevolution in Lith reunification and for a Germany of work somewhat harder for the NTS, which was The Russian question pOintblank uania. While claiming to be against the ers councils through proletarian political too Russian chauvinist to suit the German The Butchenko affair is no aberration restoration of capitalism in East Germa revolution in the East and socialist revo Nazis. Nonetheless, "individual NTS for Workers Power. As American Trot ny, Workers Power sided with counter lution in the West. members cooperated with Wehrmacht skyist James P Cannon wrote: "Who revolution at every crucial stage We have insisted that anti-Sovietism combat units, Rosenberg's Ostministe touches the Russian question, touches a demanding the withdrawal of Soviet abroad fuels strikebreaking at home. Now rium, and Kaminsky's Russian Nazi Party revolution." Those who cannot draw the troops, echoing the Social Democrats' lies Workers Power's repetitive crossing of during World War II." (The Ostmini class line in defence of the most colossal that the massive Treptow anti-fascist the class line on the Russian question has sterium administered the starvation and conquest the working class has yet mobilisation in January was the result of played itself out on their home terrain, in enslavement of Russia.) achieved, the collectivised economy estab a Stalinist trick, cheering the attacks of a scandal recalling the Healy-inspired In short, the NTS was a precursor to lished through the 1917 Russian Revolu skinhead gangs on Stasi headquarters as witchhunt of the NUM on the eve of the the contemporary Russian blackshirts of tion, will surely not be capable of finding the "very stuff of revolution". miners strike. Even some of the Labour Pamyat. These are the people Workers a class line in defence of trade unions. Then Workers Power gave its "uncon ite centrists of Workers Power may be Power was quite happy to meet and work The Cliffite SWP, which crosses the class ditional support" to the pro-capitalist shaken by the realisation that Stalino out "arrangements" with until Butchenko line in refusing to defend the Soviet Lithuanian Sajudis movement while con phobia has led them to front for the got on the airwaves. How did it feel sit Union, crossed the class line in scabbing ceding it contained "semi-fascist ele scummiest counterrevolutionary enemies ting down for a friendly chat with people on the miners strike. Workers Power, for ments". Hell, it's crawling with fascists. of the workers movement. Those who who "fought alongside the Nazis"? How its part, found itself in bed with Thatcher, WP joined Socialist Organiser in a picket don't want to end up like the cynical did Miller introduce himself to you-with Kinnock and the scabs who went on to of the Soviet consulate in London de wmbies left behind after Healy's WRP a stiff-arm salute, or did a simple hand form the UDM in its campaign for a manding, "Hands Off Baltic States." imploded had better think hard and long shake do? strikebreaking "ballot" at the time. Now Workers Power (May 1990) even demand about how their politics got them into this the logic of its Stalinophobia has blown ed that the Thatcher government "re disgrace. Tripping over the class line up in Workers Power's face. cognises Lithuania and supplies goods Reprinted from Worlcen Vangumrl Workers Power's fronting for Butchen Workers Power split from the Cliff requested by Lithuania without condi no 508, 10 August 1990. ko and his NTS (and UDM) friends outfit in the mid-1970s. At the time of the tions." And 10 and behold, the weekly Smlet intervention into Afghanistan, WP letter from Denis in Private Eye (8 June) recalls the dirty work of Gerry Healy's Contact the Spartacist League WRP as the fmgermen for the most right took a step to the left, breaking from the has No 10 considering "scrapping the wing agents of British capitalism within Cliffite line that the Soviet Union is entire Navy and selling it off to the Lithu Glasgow PO Box 150 the labour movement. The WRP in "state capitalist". But it never drew the anians." Glasgow G3 6DY stigated a vicious witchhunt against Scar hard programmatic conclusions. WP con And now: the Yuri Butchenko affair. 041-332 0788 gill and the NUM aimed at isolating the tinued to view the Stalinist bureaucracy as To borrow from WP's hypocritical attack London PO Box 1041 militant union on the eve of its bitter on Socialist Organiser, this "has revealed a purely counterrevolutionary force. Re London NW5 3EU yearlong strike. Then also the weapon of jecting the programme of Trotskyism, it the practical results of their degener 071-485 1396 choice w,as anti-Communism-roasting set out to "re-e1aborate" Trotsky's Tran- ation." Fifteen years ago, when Matgam-

10 WORKERS HAMMER paign by right-wing unions "that have against Scargill. The surfacing of these from Zinoviev, then head of the Com Scargill ... always viewed the IMO as a Communist NTS-connected Russians was a central munist International, it "instructed" the component of the witchhunt against Scar British Communist Party to carry out (Continued from page 4) 'submarine' and which hope that the collapse of the Communist regimes in gill over accepting "Russian gold", scan work in the army. MacDonald not only eastern Europe will also lead to the col dalously aided by the Stalinophobic cen gave the forgery credibility but denounced survive-and the anti-Communists hate lapse of the r·o". trists of Workers Power and their Social it more vociferously than the Tories, that. Grotesquely, the NUM national execu ist Organiser bloc partners in the firing off a protest to the Soviet govern The outlandish character of the char tive committee served High Court writs "Campaign for Solidarity with Workers in ment against "direct interference from ges conjured up by Maxwell were cap on Scargill and Heathfield over the IMO the Eastern Bloc" (see accompanying outside in British domestic affairs". tured by the satirical Private Eye (16 funds. An injunction froze IMO accounts article on page 5). Scargill is being targeted for vilifica March) in a spoof Mirror "exclusive" by in Dublin, Vienna and Sheffield. The Given its keen "attention" to the NUM tion because in the eyes of the British "Max Robwell" headlined "Red Scargy's NUM executive's action was a spineless particularly during the strike (Scargill bourgeoisie and their Labour lieutenants N-BombArsenal": it "reveals" that at the capitulation to the witchhunters. Taking reportedly still sweeps his office daily for he embodies hard class struggle and is time of the strike Scargill was "secretly the embattled trade-union leaders listening bugs) and its well-documented seen to be pro-Soviet. As his support to amassing a huge stockpile of nuclear through the bosses' courts is a violation relations with the NTS, one can well Neil Kinnock in the last general election missiles ... targeted on 10 Downing Street of the elementary principle that the cap wonder how British intelligence fits into showed, Scargill's enemies are wrong and primed for immediate use". The italist state must be kept out of the work this anti-union operation. Maxwell's first about his political programme. To be spoof quotes "Scargill's chauffeur": "he ers movement, and a stab in the back of round of charges was backed up by for sure, his Stalinoid friendship towards the was ready to destroy all life on earth just the NUM membership. mer NUM official Roger Windsor, who Soviet bureaucracy makes him stand out in pursuit of a 6.5 per cent wage increase British miners learned the hard way was paid a handsome fee by Maxwell for from the general crop of virulently anti for the lads." whose interests the courts serve, as thou his services. Windsor, who was one of the Communist Labourites. But Scargill has The smear charges of personal corrup sands were dragged to jail during the key NUM officials to deal with Libya, never broken from Labourism-knuck tion were manufactured out of whole strike. No doubt reflecting revulsion in resigned his appointed position under ling under to the pro-capitalist Labour cloth; even an inquiry generally hostile to the membership over the court action, on suspicion of defrauding the NUM and is tops in the name of spurious "unity". It Scargill, by Gavin Lightman OC, spiked 26 July the executive backed off and its the object of police inquiry in South was this which kept the NUM leadership accusations that Scargill and Heathfield legal action was put on ice for three Yorkshire. from defying the Labour/TUC-right and had their hands in the till. As for the months. "left"-and turning widespread support, IMO funds, Scargill and International Now the police are looking for the "Ramsay MacKinnock" for the miners into joint strike action. Miners Organisation secretary general "right trigger" to snoop into the NUM's witchhunt Left to go it alone by the Labour/TU C Alain Simon have insisted that these affairs themselves. The same day that the This is hardly the first time in British tops, the NUM succumbed to defeat. The funds were received after the strike ended NUM executive's court action was sus history that "Russian gold" and anti Thatcher government vindictively pro and were meant for international aid to pended, it was reported that Scotland Sovietism have been used to go after the ceeded to shut down a swathe of coal miners and not specifically for the NUM. Yard's Serious Fraud Office had received workers movement, nor is it the frrst time mines in Scotland, England and Wales In fact, as the Financia/ Times (7 July) "two formal complaints". One of these that the slavishly pro-capitalist Labour reducing many mining villages to impov reports, the IMO recently contributed was made by a certain Sergei Massalo Party has been complicit. At the time of erished, devastated ghost towns. Today 200,000 francs to assist striking miners in vitch, one of a string of members of the the 1926 miners strike and the nine-day the NUM has plummeted from a pre Morocco. Russian fascist NTS that the UDM (and General Strike, the bourgeoisie raised an strike membership of over 200,000 to just When Scargill initiated the IMO in who knows which other agencies) have outcry over fmancial support by Soviet 50,000. A new, revolutionary leadership of September 1985 as an alternative to the been circulating through Britain. Mas workers to the British miners. the working class must be forged to pre miners federation of the pro-imperialist salovitch and Vorkuta miner Nikolai Tre Two years earlier there was the infa pare for the battles that lie ahead. What International Confederation of Free khin (who called on AFL-CIO head and mous "Zinoviev letter" affair. Aiming to is needed is an authentic Leninist van Trade Unions, he was subjected to a notorious Cold Warrior Lane Kirkland embarrass the frrst Labour government of guard party committed to the perspective stream of redbaiting by the bourgeois for aid) addressed the UDM conference Ramsay MacDonald and obstruct the of workers revolution and forged through press. An IMO spokesman, reported the in June. signing of a treaty with the Soviet Union, splitting Labour's working-class base away Financial Times (7 July), saw the attacks The NTS and UDM also produced one the Tory Daily Mai/ published a letter from its pro-capitalist misleaders. Hands on the IMO as part of an ongoing cam- Yuri Butchenko to aid the witchhunt forged by the Tories. Purporting to be off Arthur Scargill! Hands off the NUM! •

position, to the extent one can ascribe to split the ruling bureaucratic caste. In tional, based on the precepts and prac it a position on the DDR, is reminiscent stead, the PDS capitulated to the im tices of Lenin and Trotsky. That is the Leninist ••• of the defeatism of the Stalinised German perialist campaign for annexation and task for the ICL in this period of great (Continued from page 3) Communist Party which allowed Hitler to offered itself up as an essentially social danger for the homeland of October: the take power without a shot being frred democratic opposition within the counter rearmament of world communism. • Trotskyism as an alternative. Those who under the criminal slogan: "After Hitler, revolutionary Volkskammer. do will learn that Trotsky waged in Us!" It is true that in East Germany the £2.50/'5 transigent struggles against renegades In its August polemic, Leninist writes: social counterrevolution did not require me including those who masqueraded as \N'\I • ..;u 3 No l . "they [the Spartacists] once polemicised bloody civil war. Demoralised by the "Trotskyists"-who abandoned the de against us and our comrades from Tur capitUlation of its historic leadership, RE fence of the Soviet Union against im key because: 'In Living Socialism, Yuru imbued with false consciousness and 'IONARY perialism and counterrevolution. koglu has ... stated that 'the administrat illusions in D-mark "prosperity", the HISTORY Leninist, who once considered Stalinist ive stratum can gradually transform itself DDR proletariat did not resist the forces regimes like that in the DDR to be part into a capitalist class'. The idea that the' of capitalist restoration. Indeed, on 18 of the "world communist movement", has dictatorship of the proletariat. .. can be reformed back to capitalism without a March, a majority of the East German been confronted by ihe manifest bank bloody counterrevolution is a Kautskyist people voted for them. It remains to be VIETNAM ruptcy of these brittle, bureaucratic cas revision of the Marxist theory of the seen how "peaceful" the process of dis tes. It has reacted in a contradictory (and state. It plays in reverse the notion that mantling the social gains of the DDR, increasingly eccentric) fashion. A couple socialism can occur as an evolutionary, purging the considerable number of Workers' of years back it began borrowing formula not revolutionary, process.' "unreliable elements" and putting into Revolution tions historically associated with Trotsky "Interesting, therefore, that the July 13 place a police/military apparatus to de issue of Workers Vanguard, paper of the and ism. However, it has not fundamentally fend capitalist class rule will be. Since the ICL's commanding US section, admits National broken with Stalinist reformism----on the 'the destruction of the East German currency union took effect there has been one hand upholding Stalinist crimes such workers state'. Now, unless we missed it almost continuous strike action by sig Independence as the crushing of the incipient workers comrades, there was no 'civil war', no nificant sections of the East German political revolution in Hungary 1956 and 'bloody counterrevolution' involved." workers. on the other upholding, for a period, the The Stalinist bureaucracy's recourse to Leninist has picked up on the fact that

so-called "rights" of the Pamyat fascists economic autarky, bureaucratic comman events in East Germany did not cor THOSE WHO 00 NOT UANN FROM HlsrORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAr IT in the service of classless "pluralism" in dism, nationalism, appeasement of im respond to our insistence that bloody the USSR. Over Afghanistan, Leninist perialism and suppression of the indepen counterrevolution would be necessary to falsely looked to a wing of the petty-bour dent political life of the working class has return a workers state to capitalism. geois nationalist PDPA as the motor opened wide the door to capitalist res However, these commandos of 16 St John Order from: force of a non-existent proletarian revolu torationist forces. In the DDR, these Street evade the primary question: the Socialist Platform Ltd, tion, while later opposing Gorbachev's forces prevailed--certainly not via the task of communists to defeat capitalist SCM 7646, London WC1 N 3XX cowardly withdrawal of the Red Army. At transformation of the PDS door mats into counterrevolution, to defend and extend the same time, its sneering at our offer to a new bourgeois ruling class! It's ques the gains of October. The incontrovertible organise an international brigade to fight tionable whether the PDS still have keys fact is that the SpAD was the only group the CIA's mujahedin "holy warriors" (and to their own offices. Indeed, the CDU/ in East Germany to forthrightly oppose Sam Bornstein when that offer was declined, our pub SPD government is now engaged in a capitalist restoration, peaceful or other licity and fund-raising campaign for the witchhunting campaign aimed at crimi wise, and offer a programme of struggle. (1920-1990) civilian victims of J alalabad) revealed a na/ising former and present members of Members of the CPGB (The Leninist) Memorial meeting profoundly anti-internationalist impulse. the SED and PDS. may well experience intimations of ir Back in February, over events in East The former DDR administrative stra relevance as they pursue such world 3pm, Sunday 23 September ern Europe, Leninist announced "It's tum did not "transform itself" gradually historic tasks as exacting vengeance ag Conway Hall counterrevolution" and promised to or otherwise into a capitalist class. Nor, ainst the British Euros for selling off the Red Lion Square "come back strengthened tenfold when as in Hungary 1956, where 80 per cent of "family silver". For our part, we will reaction inevitably gives way to a new the CP went over to the insurgent work continue the fight to reforge the world London WC1 period of revolution". Leninist's own ers, did proletarian political revolution party of revolution, the Fourth Interna-

SEPTEMBER 1990 11 WORKERS London PDCraily demands: Abolish the death penalty!

"Save Mumia Abu-Jamal!" "Abolish us in the United States sitting on the the death penalty!" Rallies and picket· brink of death. I am honored to join you, protests from London to Berlin, Philadel in this noble fight." A personal acquain phia to Sydney, Paris to New York tance of Jamal's, Jessica Huntley repre brought out hundreds of trade unionists, senting the Bogle L 'Ouverture Publications socialists, students, death penalty abo told the rally: "I was so overwhehDed by litionists and civil rights activists to de the fact that here at last we are going to mand that the American black journalist have a campaign to save Mumia's life." and death row politiclil prisoner Mumia The London rally was also addressed Abu-Jamal must not die. The worldwide by Dave Doolan, a defendant from the campaign to save the life of Mumia Abu Trafalgar Square Defendants' Campaign Jamal was initiated by the Partisan De facing state repression because of his fense Committee in the US-a class participation in the massive anti-poll tax struggle legal and social defence organisa protest of 31 March. Spokesmen for the tion associated with the Spartacist City of London Anti-Apartheid group and League-and joined by fraternal defence for the Ramona Africa Support Group organisations initiated by the sections of addressed the rally. NUJ Deputy General the International Communist League Secretary Jacob Ecclestone's letter to (Fourth Internationalist). Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey was As part of the international campaign read: "On behalf of journalists through of protest, the Partisan Defence Commit out Great Britain and the Republic of tee rally held at Lambeth Town Hall in Ireland we beg you not to allow this Brixton on 6 July was addressed by trade Workers Hammer barbaric sentence to be carried out." union officials, black activists and jour Desmond Trotter, former death row prisoner and Caribbean political activist, Spartacist League spokesman Cheryl nalists, anti-poll tax activists facing state addressing London PDC rally, 6 July. .. Myall's address concluded the successful Brixton rally: . repression, anti-apartheid activists and last October's admission of my innocence editorial board of SeQIChlight South others. Over 85 people turned out to by the British Home Secretary would Africa, Paul Trewhela told the rally that: "It is the social power of the working express their support for the fight to stop have meant nothing. Nothing could be a "As the hanging capital of the world, class that is key to campaigns such as the execution of the former Black greater indictment of the barbaric death South Africa sees its own future in the this and it is the working class, acting as the tribune of all oppressed layers of Panther, outspoken MOVE supporter and penalty." electric chair in Huntingdon State peni former president of the Philadelphia society which has the social power to After addressing the rally Mikey Mas tentiary in Pennsylvania." Trewhela de overthrow the system which puts people chapter of the Association of Black Jour sive, managing editor of the Caribbean clared: like Mumia Abu-Jamal in death row. In nalists who now sits on death row in TImes-a newspaper which has sym America, in Britain, in South Africa Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. "If one were to join the coordinates last pathetically publicised the Jamal case-in week linking Abu-Jamal in the death capitalism breeds racism, fascism and Symbolising the fight against racist troduced another speaker. It was Des ceUs to Mandela in the White House, war. But to overthrow this system of state repression, Jamal's case defines the mond Trotter, a former death row politi what is revealed is the socia1 position of explOitation, of misery, you need an legal politics of the death penalty in the black people internationally on the internationa1ist party and you need a cal prisoner and Can"bbean political ac party which tel1s the truth." USA of the 1990s. Framed in 1982 on tivist. Desmond Trotter's execution on a threshold of the 21st century.... In the charges of killing a Philadelphia cop, frame-up murder conviction was halted murder of Jamal, the executioner state The working people of the British Isles seeks dispose Jamal has been in the cross-hairs of the in 1976 by a campaign of international to of the living criticism of will not make socialist revolution through itself. Yet the presence of Abu-Jamal on the agency of Her Majesty's Loyal Labour Philadelphia police for 21 years. They protest. It was particularly gratifying that death row is the confirmation of that wanted him silenced-preferably dead Desmond Trotter, who spent two years in criticism: the victim is the criticism of the opposition. "That's the first truth. Whe and haven't given up yet. solitary confinement at the behest of executioner. He is the point at which the ther led by Kinnock, whether led by Tony Jamal's case has evoked widespread Dominica's Premier and tinpot tyrant system publicly declares that it needs to Benn, the Labour Party has, is and always support from the victims and opponents Patrick John, added his support to the be superseded by another, that it has will be committed to capitalist rule." of capitalist state repression and terror. campaign and vowed: "I will do as much outlived itself, and that it, as a system, Comrade Myall explained that our Greetings were sent to the Brixton PDC requires sentence of death to be pro programme is to split the working-class as all I can for the brother." nounced upon itself so that society might rally by Paul Hill-one of the Guildford base of the Labour Party from. its pro The participation of locill officials of live and develop. 100 electric chair and capitalist misleaders. And internationally: Four finally released after years of false the trade union movement was a key the chair in the President's Oval Office imprisonment by the racist British state. component of the success of the London are constructed from the same social "What is desperately required are gen Paul Hill's statement in support of the rally. Underground workers and officials material." uine communist parties, parties which campaign to save Jamal's life read in defend the existing gains and which will ·were prominent on the platform. Finsbury Speaking for the Partisan Defence part: lead the working class to play its historic Park NUR Chairman Glenroy Watson Committee, Bob Cole drew applause role, to bring about the kind of rule "As an Irish person in Britain I know evoked conditions for workers in South from the audience when he said: "There ushered in by the 1917 October Bol only too well what racism means. Nearly Africa: "We have ourselves within the are many people in important places who shevik Revolution, to build an inter sixteen years ago 1 underwent a trial railway industry many colleagues who are to this day want to extend capital punish nationalist party in programme and in which was more concerned with where I on death row ... people whose only crimes ment-Margaret Thatcher, Nicholas composition. This is the only road to came from than what 1 had or had not were to be within the same union as the Ridley and many other powerful people sweeping away capitalist injustice for- done. As a result I spent the last fifteen ever." years of my life in top security prisons in union that was on strike". ASLEF Dis eagerly await the opportunity to bring this country for something that I had trict Council No 8 secretary John Robson, back the hangman to this country and to From the cells of Long Kesh to the nothing to do with. speaking in a personal capacity, recalled use it and you better believe that. We dungeons of Robben Island, the racist, "I am now free because peopte had the the history of international labour defence should not wait until they have succeeded capitalist machinery of death must and courage to stand up and scream injustice and urged: "Organise and mobilise so no in doing that before we start organising will be defeated by the organised and but 1 know that there are other innocent one has to mourn." NUR National Ex against it!" militant action of the working people and people in gaol to this day. 1 will always ecutive Committee member Dave Hatt, Mumia Abu-Jamal's own message was their allies. The demand to save the life scream injustice when this is brought to my intention. pledged to "do my utmost as an NEC played for the rally to a standing ovation. of Mumia Abu-Jamal has become the "I cannot forget that the jUdge at my member of the NUR to milke' sure the As Jamal wrote from death row: "Your rallying cry for the opponents of the trial said that he regretted that he could fight continues forward". international voice of protest becomes a barbaric death penalty and the system not sentence me to death. If he had then Speaking in a personal capacity for the sweet song of hope for the thousands of which enforces it throughout the world.•

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12 SEPTEMBER 1990