_____ 2

N075 January 1986 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League British troops out now! o o 's relan eal!

~ Not Orange against Green " but class against class! ;,

~o sooner had a beaming Margaret Thatcher and Garrett FitzGerald emerged from signing their vaunted 'Anglo-Irish accord' than American president Ronald Reagan signalled his congratulations. Reagan instantly called the British and Irjsh ambassadors into the White

I~ouse to wax rhetorical about tbis ! promise of pe2ce and a new dawn for the troubled communi­ ties of Northern Ireland' ((;/iarcJj an. 26

~T,'!\.. "Cl:1b<-·r ~q85). Within weeks of the 'new dawIl', Orange l'e­ actionaries were leading 100.000 outraged Loyalist marchers through the streets of Belfast, prominent Sinn Fein activists were beine hunted down and arrested in a major I crackdown ~nd several hundred more British troops from the crack Spearhead Battalion were being shipped in to carry out the imperial­ l~ ists' bloody 'promise of peace'. One minute into the New Year ehe IRA signalled its opinion on the Hillsborough agreement by ~ blowing away two RUC cops. In the meantime Republican prisoners launched an abortive hunger strike in protest at yet another of the Labour Herald Margaret Thatcher and Irish prime minister Garrett FitzGerald's celebrated Hillsborough accord means more British government's massive frame-up 'super­ imperialist terror and communalist fratricide for Northern Ireland. frass' trials. The British imperialists and their Green NATO's anti-Soviet arsenal. But short of a struggle for an Irish workers republic within Tory lackeys hope that this 'Made for NATO' genocidal bloodbath, no amount of capitalist a socialist federation of the British Isles! deal will serve to pacify the oppressed scheming can do away with the communalist No to the Thatcher/FitzGerald accord! Imperi­ Catholic minority in the North while recon­ Frankenstein created in the North by centuries list hands off Sinn Fein/IRA! British troops ciling the Protestant majority to some form of of British imperialism's 'divide and rule' out now! Not Orange against Gre'en, but class power-sharing, and pave the way to turning butchery. There can be only one equitable and against class! Ireland into a floating aircraft carrier for just solution to the troubles of Ireland: the continued on page 2

Mark Peters/Newsweek '~"r' BIUn South Africa: Black union federation launched are well aware that this 'super-federation' with 34 member unions covering the mines, harbours, For a Bolshevik Party! transport, metal industries and retail trade has ~~A~ 'P_~ the power to bring the South African economy to Singing freedom songs and wearing red T-shirts a standstill. Coming after almost 18 months of with the slogan, 'One country, one federation', continuous nationwide revolt, COSATU's birth ex­ 10,000 black South African workers rallied at pressed above all the desire of the black toilers King's Stadium in the port city of Durban on 1 to utterly smash apartheid. December to launch the Congress of South African But trade unionism, however militant, is not Trade Unions. In founding COSATU, with its ha1f­ enough to liberate the non-white masses of South million members, South Africa's overwhelmingly Africa or even to significantly ameliorate the black proletariat has created its strongest or­ hellish conditions in which they work and 'live'. ganisation in a century of struggle against hid­ Any serious class struggle against the white su­ Durban: COSATU president Elijah Barayi. eous superexploitation by apartheid capitalism. premacist bosses and their police state poses the delegates cheer formation of fargest" black From the Witwatersrand mining houses to the question of power. For the oppressed to emerge labour federation in South African history. City of London and Wall Street, the capitalists continued on page 10 smacks of the beginning of the end of the of th"e worRing class! "BUt theoII"ish people' 'ar~' Ireland ... Union, the undoing of partition. not a whole; they are bitterly divided into two (Continued from page 1) The backdrop to the Hillsborough agreement communi ties. The parti tion cannot simply be is the concern by American imperialism in wished away. As we r,oted in 'Theses on Ireland' , The Hillsborough agreement, unveiled in particular that Ireland's nominal neutrality 'Prior to the partition revolutionaries mid-November, involves significant shifts in and the continuing instability in the North is would have opposed partition,striving to posture (though not substance) by both the an obstacle to securing, particularly, the cement revolutionary unity in the struggle British and Irish governments. Dublin has harbours and facilities of the west coast of for independence from British imperialism. formally agreed that the reunification of Ireland for NATO's war plans against the however, with the partition, the accompany­ Ireland requires 'the consent of the majority' ing communal violence and demographic in the North, ie the Protestants, and thus re­ shifts, and the establishment of a bour­ cognised the 1921 partition. Thatcher in turn, geois republic in the south it was nec­ with bi-partisan support, has agreed to set up essary to oppose the forcible reunification an Anelo-Irish 'intergovernmental conference' of the six counties with the rest of in which Dublin will be given some say over Ireland. At the same time the present Northern Irish affairs, notably how best to statelet guarantees the political and suppress the IRA! For years now, British economic privileges of the Protestants.' governments have vacillated between a policy (Spartacist no 24, Autumn 1977) of military repression to crush the IRA and Northern Ireland is an instance of inter­ attempts at 'power-sharing' to try and under­ penetrated peoples: two communities with con­ mine Republican support in the Catholic com­ flicting national rights occupying the same munity and boost the 'moderate' (ie pro­ territory. The Orange statelet (or the call for imperialist) SDLP. One such attempt was the an independent Ulster) is necessarily oppres­ Sunningdale agreement of 1973, where a 'power­ sive to the Catholic minority, an extension of shariLg' assembly was set up, consisting of the Irish Catholic nation. On the other hand, the SDLP and some pliable Unionist politicians Marxists are not for reversing the terms of around Brian Faulkner. This scheme was oppression. We oppose every manifestation of smashed by the reactionary Orange general Workers Hammer the all-sided oppreSSion of the Irish Catholic strike of 1974. Dublin Trades Council banner at miners support rally: minority -- the discrimation in jobs and This time around British imperialism is united class struggle for workers revolution is the only social services, the army/police/paramilitary taking a more subtle approach. But the subtlety way forward. terror, the denial of its national rights. But is lost on the embittered Loyalist masses and the only consistently democratic solution in their reactionary leaders. Ulster MPs have Soviet Union. Moreover Britain, the US' this circumstance is a proletarian­ resigned en masse to force a sort of plebi­ staunchest anti-Soviet ally, has long been too revolutionary one. The key to breaking the sci te on the issue. At the monster Orange march decrepit to be able to afford the endless cycle of imperialist terror and communalist in December, Ian Paisley's Democratic Union­ infusions of money needed to maintain 'social fratricide in Northern Ireland is united class ist Party and the more 'respectable' Cfficial peace' in the North. So the current deal was struggle of the Catholic and Protestant Unionist Party of James Molyneaux, often brokered in Washington, including with pro­ workers against all their exploiters and op­ deeply divided in the past, stood shoulder to nises of financial aid. Indeed, one form of pressors -- British imperialism as well as shoulder. Amid a sea of placards demanding 'financial aid' is the money which Reagan's the Orange and Green bourgeoisies. The miners 'No surrender', Paisley ranted with Hitler­ so-called National Endowment for Democracy, a strike gave a taste of that desperately needed like ferocity a[ainst the 'Jezebel' Thatcher. CIA cond~it, has been pouring into the SDLP. class unity, as Catholic and Protestant In the eyes of the Loyalists, Hillsborough For what it's worth, Ireland's 'neutrality' workers alike rallied in class solidarity is pretty phoney. In 1949 the Irish Republic behind the British miners. refused to join NATO only because of the Ireland today provides potentially fertile question of partition. But it has pursued a ground for revolutionary class struggle. The Quote of the month deeply anti-Communist and pro-Western policy, North is increasingly immiserated in poverty; including membership in NATO's Common Market the South is a land of death and misery, where and military contingents in numerous United the average worker can scarcely afford to buy Stalinism and Nations 'peacekeeping' missions. a pint any longer. On top of that is perni­ Predictably Neil Kinnock's Labour Party has cious Paisleyite bigotry in the North and anti-Stalinism given enthusiastic backing to the Thatcher/ benighted anti-woman clericalism in the South. FitzGerald accord. Imperialist repression of A revolutionary Trotskyist party, forged in the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland has struggle against all variants of nationalism been bi-partisan policy from the start. Indeed and prO-imperialist economism and in intran­ it was a Labour government which sent British sigent QPposition to British imperialist dom­ troops in in the first place. Yet when thir­ ination, could galvanise the oppressed masses teen Campaign Group MPs voted against the across communal lines and on both sides of the Trotsky and Lenin accord, the Labour-cretinist fake left went Irish Sea. What is needed is a programme which into paroxysms of praise, exemplified by seeks to combat the oppression of the Irish The following statement was wri·;:ten JJy Socialist Action's salute to 'Labour's inter­ Catholic minority in the North as part of the American Trotskyist leader James P Cannon at nationalist 13'. We say: Keep Ireland out of revolutionary transitional programme which the start of Cold War I and the McCarthyite NATO! Down with NATO's anti-Soviet war drive! transcends the capitalist framework of witchhunt, in response to appeals by sundry Defend the Soviet Union! economism and democratic reformism: For an end bourgeois-liberal and social-democratic anti­ The IRA/Sinn Fein, with its petty~ to discrimination in housing, education and Communists for 'anti-Stalinist unity'. bourgeois nationalist perspective of press­ employment! For jobs for all! For anti­ We Trotskyists, as everybody knows, are uring the Green bourgeoisie and the British sectarian workers militias to combat Orange also against Stalinism and have fought it un­ imperialists into realising a 'united Ireland', and Green terror and imperialist rampage! For ceasingly and consistently for a very long has no answer other than to appeal to the SDLP the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of time. But we have no place in the present for a Nationalist united front. And the the British army! Down with the Prevention of 'all-inclusive' united front against American Republican-tailing British fake left echoes Terrorism Act! No forcible reunification -­ Stalinism. The reason for this is that we are this futile perspective, seeking to square the For an Irish workers republic within a anticapitalist. Consequently, we can find no circle by denying that the Ulster Protestants socialist federation of the British Isles! No point of agreement with the campaign conducted ure anything more than English settler-colons. to the Hillsborough accord, NATO's deal for by the political representatives of American Typically, the centrist Workers Power Ireland! No imperialist 'solutions'!. capitalism in Washington, with the support of (December 1985/January 1986) declaims that, its agents in the labor movement and its 'On the face of it, the unionist reaction is lackeys in the literary and academic world. We hard to understand' and concludes with the CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: fight Stalinism from a different standpoint. customary nationalist appeal for 'Self­ BIRMINGHAM ...... (021) 236 9774 We fight Stalinism not because it is Determination for the Irish p'eople as a Whole'. LONDON ...... (01) 278 2232 another name for communism, but precisely be­ The article does not even raise the question SHEFFIELD ...... (0742) 587282 cause of its betrayal of communism and of the interests of the workers in the class struggle. Our exposition of the question is made from a communist point of view, and our appeal is directed not to the exploiters of labor and their various reactionary agencies WORKERSIlAMMER~ of oppression and deception, but to the workers, who have a vital interest in the struggle against the capitalist exploiters as Sub drive results r------~, well as against perfidious Stalinism. James P Cannon, 'American Stalinism and o 10 issues of Workers Hammer for £2 Anti-Stalinism' (April-May 1947) Q 10 issues of Workers Hammer plus 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightlyofthe Spartacist League/US~ £6 Quota Points Percentage WORKERSllAMMER ~ (all above subs include Spartacist, organ of the London 130 140.5 108% international Spartacist tendency) Monthly newspaper of the Spartaclst League, British section of the international Spartaclst tendency Birmingham 60 62.5 104% 04 issues of Women & Revolution for £1 .50 EDITORIAL BOARD: Len Michelson (editor), Jon Branche, Sheffield 60 70 116% Alec Gilchrist, John Masters, Eibhlin McDonald, Fred Purdy, Name ...... Ellen Rawlings At large 18 Phone ...... CIRCULATION MANAGER Patricia Matthews Address ...... Published monthly, except in January and August. by Total 250 291 116% Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE ...... Subscriptions: 10 issues for £2.00, overseas airmail £5.00 Make payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint L ______PO Box 185, London We1 H 8JE J Printed by Slough Newspaper Printers Ltd (TU). ISSN 0267 -8721.

2 WORKERS HAMMER 'AFL -CIA', French fascists, British strikebreakers The Cold War connection LiberatIon PARI8 .,- Recently the cover was blown on the Democrats, USA. These CIA 'socialists', who latest American programme of Cold War 'dirty acted as red-hunting hatchet men in the AFL tricks'. Under the headline, 'Reaean's secret and CIO unions during the McCarthy period, funds in France~, the Paris daily Liberation today link the neaganites with anti-Communist (27 November) revealed that -- in the last Polish Solidarnosc and West European right­ year alone -- the United States government has winE social-democratic unions. The money is funnelled more than $1.4 million to anti­ channelled through the AFL-CIO's 'Free Trade Communist outfits in France (who also happen Union Institute', and brokered by none other to be opponents of the Socialist Party govern­ than the sinister Irving Brown, described in ment of President Francois Mitterrand). The Philip Agee's authoritative CIA Diary (1975) French were dismayed: aren't we supposed to ~e as the 'principal CIA aeent for control of the allies? Washinfton was nonplussed: it's International Confederation of Free Trade all part of the anti-Soviet war drive. Unions' . Chauvinists in this most chauvinist of imperialist countries are incensed that France UNI: the 'anti-May 1968' was included on a list of 'non-democratic' countries including Chile, Paraguay, the The National Interuniversity Union was Philippines and Poland; and that the French formed by the Gaullist SAC in 1968 to combat right win~ turns out to be financed with 'the Marxist offensive in the universities'. Am€rican dollars. But the incident also UNI is affiliated to the World Anti-Communist starkly reveals that in the name of 'fostering Leaeue, that grisly cabal• of fascist mur- democracy', Cold War II has broueht back all derers, Asian tinpot dictators and Latin the old crap from the days of the McCarthyite American death squads. During the 1983-84 'War on Communism'. Today it's the crusade demonstrations over private schools, they against what Ronald Reaean calls the Soviet CIA 'labour' operative and roving AFl-CIO anti­ marched to the obscene racist chant of 'Throw Communist union-buster Irving Brown addresses French 'evil empire'. the Arabs into the Seine!' Last October UNI union. In Cold War I, American imperialism's campaigned against the visit of Soviet leader skuldug~ery went under the rubric of psycho­ Mikhail Gorbachev, demonstrating with the The same day as the LTF forum, Mitterrand logical and paramilitary operations. These National Front and 'captive nation' exiles, met in Paris with General Jaruzelski while 'psy-ops' included routine bribery, sabotaging pasting up more than a million 'Gorbachev­ anti-Communists -- from the 'socialist' CFDT strikes, union-busting with gang violence, and Gulag' stickers. and 'social-democratic' FO union federations much more. The euphemisms change -- murder, The modus operandi of these ultra-rightist to pseudo-Trotskyists like LCR honcho Alain formerly 'termination with extreme prejudice', shock troops was seen in a November 1984 in­ Krivine -- joined with representatives of is now called 'neutralisation' in the lexicon cident at Nanterre, the campus where the 1968 Solidarnosc in exile demonstrating against of the CIA's Nicaraguan 'contra' manual, student revolt was born. Seventy UNI members the Polish leader. Whe~ they accidentally Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare led by helmeted, armed National Front thugs crossed paths with a march by the CP-led CGT -- but the reality is the same. And it's not destroyed a poster display belonging to the labour federation, this anti-Communist cabal restricted to far-off Third World countries, Communist-led CGT union federation, beat up a began chanting 'CGT -- KGB' and 'Communists as the Liberation revelations prove. leftist militant and scrawled racist graffiti -- assassins'. JOining them was the actor Having been burned by previous exposures of on the walls. At Nanterre, our comrades of the Yves Montand, a former Stalinist fellow CIA spy operations, the Reaganites have turned Ligue Trotskyste de France (LTF), known for traveller who has eone over to support for the to using overt/covert conduits. So just as the the principled position of 'no platform for murderous Nicaraguan contras. Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries are now the fascists', have been in the forefront of financed with 'humanitarian aid', they have the fight against the UNI. In October the LTF FO: four decades on the CIA payroll set up a 'National Endowment for Democracy' issued a leaflet calling for mass action to (NED) to bankroll anti-Communists around the stop these thugs from imposing a reign of Stung by the scandal that they were funding globe. Naturally, these are sensitive matters, racist terror; the UNI responded with an anti­ a notorious fascist-linked group in France, and the revelation that right-wing opponents communist hate sheet in the purest Black the National Endowment for Democracy 'sus­ of the Socialist Party government of President Hundred tradition. pended' funds to UNI. But links to fascists, Francois Mitterrand are on the take from On 4 December, at a forum at Nanterre on such as protection and later CIA importation Washington was a bombshell in Paris. 'DemocraCIA and Fa$cism', LTF spokesman of Nazi butchers like Klaus Barbie, has been The investigative reporters from Liberation William Cazenave explained how the FO union the stock-in-trade of anti-Soviet Cold revealed that the American government and UNI protofascists got together at the Warriors since the beginning. No one knows foundation, created by Congress two years ago Yankee dollars trough: 'What ties it all to­ this better than Irving Brown, the 'foreign to 'foster democracy around the world', had gether is, 1) anti-Communism, and 2) Solidar­ minister' of the American labour bureaucracy provided $830,000 to the French social­ nosc.' For in France, support for the Polish who runs the federation's overseas operations democratic union Force Ouvriere (FO) , and 'union' favoured by Reaean, Thatcher, the in 83 countries. The AFL-CIO's international $575,000 to a little known anti-Communist pope, Frankfurt and Wall Street bankers, budget is $43 million; almost as much as their student federation, the National Interuni­ fascists, Mitterrand Socialists and social entire $45 million domestic expenses. And the versity Union (UNI). UNI is an Offshoot of democrats alike has been the lynchpin for the tab for these operations does not come from the Civic Action Service (SAC), the Gaullist formation of a 'union sacree' (holy alliance) union dues -- it's paid for almost exclusively private army dissolved by the Mitterrand around the anti-Soviet war drive. by the United States government. government in 1982. It also has links to Le Brown told Liberation of his ties to Force Pen's fascist Nktional Front. Ouvriere head Andre Bergeron going back to Of course, this expose is designed to help 1947 when these Cold War operatives engineered the besieged Mitterrand regime, in deep PEACE THROUGH NATO the FO split in an attempt to break the power Th, AlIi"" h" P''''n'd P""" Eo"p, '" 35 "eo" 1!" '" ''''''''''" or ,,,, "","'" trouble following the 'Greenpeace' affair in '''",d''''''h" " pn"", 'h"""o",) "n ('''do", h. 1/,,, pO'p"" 'h, ,\1/"",,, of the CGT. This CIA operation involved the m"",rym"",,,,,, ,"co",," "CO", d"""""A' 'h, ;,m, PCO'" ,,,,,,,, t,,,, ;',k,,', m'mb" ,,, b,,", """'"'' ,boo, '''co", "",," po'"''''d"",,, b,,",,""","n E,., ",,' which French secret agents in New Zealand blew ilnd We':.! use of Mafia thues and mass sackings of mili­ up a pacifist ship, killing one member of the tant unionists. A L'Humanite (17 January 1981) group. FO was the leadine- oJ:position union as article pointed out how Brown, in alliance with the government's economic ~rogramme of 'Key­ Bergeron and the 'socialist' Gaston Deferre, nesianism in one country' went down the tubes. broke the 1950 dock workers strike in And UNI was part of the mass marches for Marseille, sacking 900 Communist dock workers private schools that spearheaded right-wing who had struck (finally) against war materiel mobilisations during 1983-84. By embarrassing being sent for the French colonial war in W,itterrand's adversaries, Liberation was Indochina. obviously looking to do a favour for Asked by Liberation why the Reaganites the government. At the same time they were would finance FO, Brown replied, 'Because the doing a public service. CGT apparatus is still there and it can de­ Created in 1933, the National Endowment stroy France.' In fact, the Stalinist mis­ J"hn\/fIrro;on for Democracy was granted $18 million by the J..Ord{11wt J~m"" f"mffllry leaders of the CGT were part of and supported JohnWl'n &on 1'11111"1\,0.1 Krnnrth ("lInI1ll;n", US Congress for 1984-85. Almost half of its John ~/knh\. Bam R~:un<""li!)ll! the Mitterrand popular front government, Prlrr AI/i.\On II.rnnefhfll~ n"rr:'>/J!OII" Plif.rRobIn.\On Jl!!1IIM Baflr11lIJ) Ru~" /(obin'Ull European budget has been poured into France. PaIne/( Birnie Tm, IJuffl including by sabotaging strikes (eg the Talbot (,rrry ~;a'I"ood "il/hunoSi,.,. .An'hiba/d Hirt Hf'("torSmilh ol/Jrhael Rl,d( lam ~:I/i, Other recipients include the Portuguese UGT Rflindon fl'neIon SbrilaSmilh car workers). They reluctantly left their KJIJ~Bo"r JllhnnllOd JohnSpe-liar "Killi~m B1"Jtnk/,,) PtltrSt~~Jt social-democratic splinter union, and the .\ndll:lro.. n J"hnf"t>Ie.l ministerial seats only when they risked re­ PliU/('Il/a.l'htor /'nidSloddart ''''n''"lohlllll~rs R""'rt';arland Palnrk TItTtJI Basque ELSA-STV union. The Guardian friUlk (Oh.,pm.,n Killiam "J)nan volt by their working-class base fed up with J'lInk(hapPie IIU Gf'(>rl"r Ulo.tairf;raham (9 December) reports that $10,000 in NED funds \nthon.l(hrio,t'phrr Brn Gr&halll :~ the government's anti-labour austerity '''Il" ""'~krr\ went to the actors union Equity; $129,000 to K,I/ialn \\ hallr~ policies. Soviet Labour Review, put out by NTS, a *************************** As for underwriting UN!, Brown aggressively * 00* notorious fascist/CIA publishing outlet; and :: LABOl'R COMI\fI17EE FOR :: , responded, 'Why not? UNI is a democratic $49,000 to 'Labour Committee for Trans­ :: TR.4..'I"SATLA.'1'IC lXDERSTAND/,'.G. :: union .... There's all sorts in UNI, but in * . . * atlantic Understanding', the grouping of CIA * 37 CHARLES STREET, LO,\Do,\ "IX S,lD " American unions you have the A:afia (laughs)... . Labourites around Denis Healey, Roy Hattersley ***************************" " The democratic forces which fight against .. . etc. -.- Gorbachev and the Gulag must be supported.' The head of the NED is one Carl Gershman, CIA's friends in British labour movement push NATO's Left-wing unions, he said coyly, have 'other former vice chairman of Albert Shanker's Social anti-Soviet war drive in Guardian advert, 4 April 1984. continued 011 page 11

JANUARY 1986 3 No US war base at Trincomalee! Defend the Tamils! Bloody communal terror in Sri Lanka The bloody suppression of the Tamil in 1948, the Europeans were ousted. Within two fruitless cycle of negotiations, truces and minority of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) by the racial­ years the Burghers were squeezed out. Then the renewed massacres. A flimsy 'cessation of ist mobs and troops of the right-wing govern­ policy of 'Sinhala only' was introduced to go hostilities' was established on 18 June. ment of JR Jayewardene feeds the spiralling after the Ceylon Tamils (the Indian Tamils in Throughout the first phase of the negotiations horror of communalist slaughter on this Indian the hill country plantations having no rights the Sri Lankan government stonewalled, of­ Ocean island. The victims are innocent civ­ in any case). Now they're going after the fering nothing but the phoney district council ilivans among both the mainly Hindu Tamils Muslims, Christians and all other ethnically/ proposals earlier put forward as a sop at the and the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Trying religiously 'impure', in the name of this Round Table Conference last year. Phase II of to escape bloody government-instigated po­ petty-bourgeois socialism/nationalism. the talks lasted barely six days and was grams of July 1983, when hundreds of Tamils The 'socialism' of the populist Sri Lanka terminated on 19 August after the Sri Lankan were burned or hacked to death, hundreds of Freedom Party (SLFP) was corruption and nepot­ army massacred hundreds of Tamil civilians in thousands of Tamils fled to the Northern ism, assigning incompetent Bandaranaike Vavuniya and Trincomalee. The only meaningful and Eastern provinces. The result was the de nephews to collect the taxes and administer the 'ceasefire' proposal would be the immediate facto partition of the island. The government "0 has accelerated this brutal forced population C transfer by resettling Sinhalese colonists !2'"' .c into formerly Tamil areas, notably around >-" ';; Trincomalee. c The strategic naval port of Trincomalee has ~ ;;;'" emerged at the cen tre of the bloody conflict E between Tamils fighting for their liberation ~ and their oppressors, the government of Jaye­ wardene's United National Party (UNP). Recent reports in the Indian press describe air force bombing raids over Tamil areas of Trincomalee, helicopter strafing of nearby villages and temples, and naval gunboats strafing coastal villages (The Hindu, 13 November). Some 80,000 have fled their homes into squalid refugee camps. The battle for Trincomalee is not just a Vehicles entering Colombo searched matter of national justice vs oppression. at police Sri Lanka is separated from India only by the checkpoint. 30-mile-wide Palk Strait. Possession of Trincomalee gave Britain the edge over its rivals in the conquest of India and thus Britain's leading imperial position in the 19th century. Now, US imperialism wants Trincomalee as a key link in the military chain that runs from Simonstown, near Cape Town, South Africa through Diego Garcia in the withdrawal of the army and police from Tamil Economist tea estates. Even Jayewardene's right-wing UNP talks socialism, although his version is more areas, the release of all Tamil political Reaganite. Lately he has been trying to reverse prisoners and the repeal of the Prevention of Areas to be 'Sinhala only', since dicovering that Sinhala Terrorism Act. irrigated by Mahaweli is not a world language in which one can scheme sign contracts for cheap textiles with Frank­ Jayewardene's military build-up furt bankers. He also feels the weight of tens of millions of Tamils across the straits Meanwhile Sri Lanka has been reorganising, in Tamil Nadu, and the knowledge that New re-equipping and expanding its forces, pur­ Dehli could annex the island in a simple chasing fast patrol boats, attack helicopters mopping-up operation. So JR's murderous re­ and transport planes. Despite official de­ pression of the Tamil people in Lanka is com­ nials, anyone riding a bus down Galle Road bined with genuflection toward Rajiv Gandhi's can see new counterinsurgency aircraft, India. Italian SIAI-Marchettis, training at the Rat­ malana airport outside Colombo. Besides the Israeli advisers and 'former' Special Air Ser­ Communal terror and 'negotiations' vice commandos from Britain, Rhodesian pilots After the massacre by armed Tamils of some and other mercenaries have been hired to han­ 150 Sinhalese civilians at the Buddhist holy dle the new equipment, for which South Africa SRI city Anuradhapura in May, the Indian govern­ is reportedly a prime source. With National LANKA ment exerted pressure to get negotiations Security minister Lalith Athulathmudali talk­ between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil ing of the need for a 100,000-man armed groups. While denying responsibility for this forces, the UNP government rammed legislation ~~ Tamil. indefensible act of .indiscriminate terrorism, through parliament in one day on 10 October % of population the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) empowering the conscription of anyone over 18 justified it as a reprisal and a demonstration years of age. This draconian act will also • Over 50% of the ability to strike in the Sinhala heart­ serve to legitimise the UNP goon squads/priv­ ~ Over 20% land. Immediately a mood of dismay and des­ ate armies that are in the forefront of the pair at the widening cost of the war did pre­ anti-Tamil communalist killings. o Miles 80 I , vail in wide layers of the Sinhalese. This For many Tamils the 'ceasefire' simply gave Jayewardene, always under pressure from never existed. Only on the Jaffna Peninsula Indian Ocean to the CIA spy post in Alice Sinhala hardliners, the opportunity to accept was it reasonably effective -- because the Springs, Australia and the US war bases in the negotiations. But in the longer run the mas­ army has been beaten back and forced to stay Philippines. It's all part of imperialism's sacre fueled Sinhala xenophobia, and crucially in its few large camps. Fresh atrocities in crusade against the Soviet Union and social it gave Indian premier, Rajiv Gandhi, the the Mannar district drove new waves of refu­ revolution around the globe. In a display of pretext to crack down on the exile Tamil gees to India. The mid-August army massacres military backing for Jayewardene, the US air­ groups and compel them to attend negotiations sealed the fate of the Thimpu talks. Said one craft carrier Kitty Hawk and three other in Thimpu, capital of the Himalayan princi­ Tamil negotiator: 'With two l!lassacres in two ships scheduled a four-day visit to Colombo in pality of Bhutan. days, if we resume the talks, our cadres will November. The negotiations between the Jayewardene put a bullet in our back' (Frontline 7-20 Since World. War II, the 'salami tactics' of regime and the Tamil organisations -- which September). The Tamil Eroups claimed that Sinhalese nationalism have meant intensifying run the gamut from the bourgeois parliamentar­ more than 800 Tamils were killed during the communal polarisation in Ceylon. Under British ist Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) to the 'ceasefire' . colonialism, the civil service was run by the People's Liberation Organisation of Thamil­ But it is around Trincomalee that·the main 'Burghers' (·descendants of intermarriages with eelam (PLOTE) and four other guerilla groups battle has been taking place. 'Home Guards', Portuguese, Dutch and British colonialists), based in southern India and grouped under the mobs of lumpen criminal elements armed by the with the Tamils in between, and the Sinhalese umbrella of the Eelam National Liberation government and led by UNP politicians, have hardly represented at all. With independence Front (ENLF) -- have so far produced only a rampaEed through the town, looting. burning,

4 WORKERS HAMMER f' I. Ii; • , I j * , I 4 killing with ~he tacit and"often ~vert 'support capitalist class has always been wedded to the official of the Lanka-Soviet friendship so- of the police and armed forces. Even elements world imperialist system, but the possibility ciety and father of a PLOTE leader. of the government now fear these private ar­ of new alignments has set the subcontinent vi­ In the camps in Tamil Nadu, money is ex­ mies. Tens of thousands of Tamils have fled brating. Rajiv's modernisation drive is bound torted from refugees by some groups, while Trincomalee town, while in a reciprocal pro­ to stimulate the centrifugal forces that others have got themselves tangled in drug cess Sinhalese villaeers have been driven from always threaten the fragile unity of India. trafficking. Recently 30. armed youth looted areas controlled by the Tamil groups. The gov­ The fact that the Indian government's repu­ the most famous Hindu temple in Jaffna. From ernment controls the town, but euerrilla tation is now linked to a negotiated settle­ protesting against the negotiations and for groups hold a wide belt to the north along the ment in Sri Lanka poses new threats to the the release of political prisoners, Jaffna coast and an area on the south of Kottiyar cause of liberation of the Tamils. Immediately demonstrators now demand the return of goods Bay. Between the end of the Thimpu talks and the Indian government demanded further con­ looted from their temple, even asking the the institution of a second ceasefire on 10 cessions by the Sri Lankan government. A new hated police to help. The Jayewardene regime October, several large-scale government oper­ proposal by the JR regime allows for pro­ will and no doubt is seeking to exploit these ations were mounted, little more than reprisal vincial councils with perhaps some powers over sordid, degenerative aspects of the situation, raids in force, without fundamentally altering the crucial areas of land and police. The which carry the seeds of vicious caste con­ the military balance. Northern and Eastern provinces are to be flict. And with the negotiations, the out­ The Jayewardene regime has instituted a treated as entirely separate units. This is a line of a traitorous sellout deal can be seen, conscious policy of forced population trans­ with the TULF/PLOTE policing Jaffna, while fers to drive the Tamils out of economically India seals its coast and the army goes after viable areas. A government plan envisages col­ the ENLF and Tamils in the Vanni and the East­ onising 200,000 Sinhalese settlers into areas ern Province. brought under irrigation by the cassive Maha­ weli project, areas which were formerly main­ ly Tamil. Tamils, once a majority in Trinco­ Murderous logic of nationalism malee district, have now been reduced to a In the last year Tamil nationalist forces minority by Sinhalese colonisation combined have undertaken an ocinous shift iL t::.ctics. with systematic state terror. Some 200,000 Whereas previously they prided thermolves in Tamils fled to the Northern and Eastern prov­ scrupulously avoiding Sinhalese civilian tar­ inces after the July 1983 massacres, and gets and struck only at the occupyin[ military another 150,000 fled abroad, mostly to Tamil and police forces, there are now rel'eated in­ Radu in south India. cidents of senseless massacre of iLllocent This massive displacement of the Tamil Sinhalese villagers, fishermen, WOT:'(.'[, and population from the South posed a dramatically children. The petty-bourgeois nationalist changed reality. As we wrote (vlorkers Hammer Tamil organisations have come to mirror the no 70, June 1985): worst Sinhala chauvinism of the traCitioEal 'The international Spartacist tendency has ..Ceylonese left part ies wi th tllei r own r.urder­ consistently upheld the Tamils' right of ous logic of racialism and nationaliSlt commu­ national self-determination .... Before July nalism. Marxist revolutionists, who base 1983, however, we arf,ued against the exer­ Rajiv Gandhi with Sri lankan war minister themselves on the morality of international­ cise of that right, in favour of united Athulathmudali. ist class struggle, abhor racialism in all working-class strugele to redress Tamil op­ its forms and find deeply repugnant the ter­ pression in the context of the struggle for long way from recognisinG the right of Tamil ror methods of gangsterism employed by those socialist revolution within the existing self-determination and their legitimate right who fight in the name of social justice. unitary island state. But with the events of Tamil Eelam. As long as the army, with its The increasing indiscriminate communalist of July 1983 the historic social balance notoriously ill-disciplined and communally response among the Tamil fighters fuels shifted .... motivated ranks, occupies the Tamil areas and Sinhala chauvinism. Jayewardene's own dicta­ 'The massive murderous repression of the the 'Home Guards' are not disbanded no cease­ torial appetites are nurtured by mounting Jaffna Tamil people and the escalating out­ fire is likely to hold. communalist hysteria among the Sinhalese. And bursts of government-instieated violence While many Tamil militants have been dis­ his principal opposition within the Lankan against the Tamils ... has brought to the mayed, angered and disillusioned by India's bourgeoisie, Mrs Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka forefront the struggle for Eelam. There­ role, their leaders continue to curry favour Freedom Party, has formed a 'National Front' fore, a socialist perspective of a struggle with the Indian ruling class. The bourgeois with the powerful Buddhist religious hierarchy for a Ceylon workers state is expressed now parliamentarist TULF together with the PLOTE and the petty-bourgeois communalist MEP. The in the slogan of federated workers repub­ group have continued to cooperate closely with UNP narrowly won a recent by-election where lics of Eelam and Lanka. At the same time the Rajiv Gandhi government and watched smugly the SLFP campaigned over the 'plight' of we recognise -- as the Tamil nationalists, as the Indian authorities cracked down on the [Sinhalese] refugees' and 'A vote for the UNP who place their hopes on pressure or inter­ other groups. PLOTE has been rewarded for its is a vote for concessions to the Tamils.' vention from capitalist India, do not -­ subservience by being the only group allowed Of course, for the SLFP this appeal to that the only real hope for the Tamil min­ to freely maintain its camps in India. One of Sinhala chauvinism comes naturally; the party ority to wrest anything from the Lankan re­ the deportees, SC Chandrahasan, oiled the way first reached prominence with the racist gime proceeds through the spreading to the for his return with appropriate genuflections: 'Sinhala Only' campaign which denied language south of resistance to the rapacious 'We will support all efforts by Rajiv Gandhi rights to the Tamils in the mid-50s. This did government .... ' to settle the ethnic problem. India is our not, however, deter the reformist Communist only hope.' The ENLF as a whole called Rajiv Party and Lanka Samasamaja Party (LSSP -­ 'a well-wisher' . often falsely described as 'Trotskyist') No faith in capitalist India! But the Indian bourgeoisie, both in New from joining the SLFP in a popular front In recent months the Tamil liberation Delhi and its Tamil regional counterpart in government, and hailing Mrs B's bloody mass­ fighters have received a sharp lesson in the Madras, are the enemies of liberation. The acre of the 1971 uprising of Sinhala youth real content of the Indian government's treatment of India's own national and ethnic led by the JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna -­ 'friendship' with the cause of Tamil Eelam. minorities, exemplified by the brutal massacre People's Liberation Front). The Rajiv Gandhi government cracked down on the of the Sikhs, bodes ill for those who place The JVP, for its part, has moved from its activities of the armed struggle groups in India, forcing them to close their camps. They then were froemarched to the Thimpu talks, where ENLF deleeates were prevented from meet­ ing outsiders or making phone calls. India de­ clared that a settlement would be based on 'the framework of a united Sri Lanka'. Angered at the effrontery of the Tamils in walking out at Thimpu and at their not responding suf­ ficiently dutifully to Rajiv's beck and call, the Indian government unceremoniously deported three top Tamil leaders on 23 August. But the Gandhi regime miscalculated the depth of popular support for the Tamil cause in Tamil Nadu. With opposition poli­ ticians eager to seize the opportunity, with­ Tamil victims of state terror in Batticaloa (left); Tamil in 48 hours there were massive demonstrations homes torched during July 1983 pogroms (right). and work stoppages. Demonstrators carried placards saying 'Down with Rajiv Gandhi!' their confidence in Gandhi's concern for the earlier eclectic leftism to virulent Sinhala Gandhi's ally, the Tamil Nadu chief minister rights of the oppressed Tamils of Lanka. With chauvinism. One Prins Gunasekera, known as a MG Ramachandran, was compelled to call a one good cause, JR's war minister Athulathmudali front man for the JVP, has joined the National day holiday/fast to control the upsurge. says, 'As far as India is concerned, there is Front. The government's continuing ban on the Quickly two of the deportations were a lot of faith and trust now' (India Today, JVP reflects above all its fear of popular un­ rest. Recently, they have begun arresting rescinded. 30 September). Ever since Indira Gandhi was assassinated There is growing fragmentation, disorien­ Sinhalese supporters of a dissident JVP group by avenging Sikhs, there has been speculation tation and despair among the Tamil militants. claimed to be cooperating with the Tamil of a rapprochement between India and US im­ The TULF and PLOTE have happily gone along fighters. perialism, and indeed that a pro-imperialist with the negotiating process. Within PLOTE The 'New' SaQasamaja Party (RSSP), a negotiated settlement of the war in Lanka internal dissidence has been ruthlessly warmed-over 'left' version of the LSSP with might be the first act of this reconciliation. squashed, with kidnappings and murders. In the ties to the misnamed Militant tendency in the The Nehru/Gandhi dynasty's 'anti-imperialist' ENLF, the so-called 'Marxist-Leninists' of British Labour Party, meanwhile denounces the credentials have rested on India's diplomatic EROS and the EPRLF have been more willing to JVP for 'ultra-leftism' (!) and tries to ob­ alliance with the Soviet Union and its anti­ toe the line of Gandhi's negotiations. Com­ scure the chauvinist character of the National American P9sture. Now with Rajiv playing foot­ bativity among the guerrillas has been direct­ Front, describing it only as a 'front among a sie with US imperialisT,] and pushing capi talist ed into more communalist killings and inter­ section of the SLFP, Sinhala petty bourgeois modernisation, many Indian leftists and Tamil necine fighting. On 3 September elements in radicals and the pro-JVP elements', no doubt militants are speculating that India has 'gone or around the ENLF murdered two TULF ex­ hoping to leave an opening through which to over to imperialism'. Of course the Indian members of parliament, one a supposed leftist, continued on page 9

JANUARY 1986 5 upon which our tendency stands. Following the 19 November Liverpool meeting, one older WRPer told us, 'Oh yes, we have to discuss your positions, we can't ignore 1966. '

Pabloist method, anti-Soviet conclusions The WRP and the Not surprisingly, the most persistent issue in dispute has been the Russian question. Our . support to the Red Army intervention in Afghanistan and our opposition to Polish Solidarnosc as an agency for capitalist res­ toration have been the focus of much question­ ing and discussion by WRP members. At an 11 Russian question December Nottingham meeting, speaker Cliff Slaughter devoted most of a 45-minute summary to our Poland position. So did National Organ­ Since the dramatic split in the Workers American papers) run a parallel series by iser Simon Pirani, speaking in Edinburgh on 19 Revolutionary Party (WRP) last October, the American Workers League secretary David North, December, in defence of WRP positions on two wings have gone in markedly different di­ now evidently in control of the 'International Poland and Afghanistan. rections. The Healy/Redgrave-led WRP has Committee' (IC). Meanwhile reports abound that In meeting after meeting, WRP spokesmen become a dwindling cult minus the cult figure. the IC has 'suspended' the WRP. have steadfastly defended their support to The anti-Healy wing led by Mike Banda and With the hideous bureaucratism of the Solidarnosc and the way it was used against Cliff Slaughter has been thrust face-to-face Healy/Banda machine swept away, the WRP is Arthur Scargill and the NUM at Blackpool TUC with a painful reexamination of the political today a political Pandora's Box displaying a in 1983. Slaughter and Pirani both argued that and organisational practices which led to the range of confused tendencies from lumpenist the attack in News Line on Scargill's anti­ Healyite abomination. youth vanguardism to reformist workerism. But Solidarnosc position aided in the fight Its moorings cut loose by the break with a recent series of WRP public meetings also against Stalinist influence in the TUC and Healy, the organisation is visibly and reflects a widespread openness to serious dis­ NUM. In fact (as we documented in our Sept­ deeply unstable. Banda himself has disap­ cussion and political clarification. The ember 1984 article, 'Hate Thatcher/MacGregor! peared, reportedly back to Sri Lanka. News Spartacist League (SL) has intervened in these Hate the WRP! '), it only served to aid the Line rapidly shifted from daily to twice­ meetings to bring to the fore fundamental pro­ 'new realists' and Fleet Street witchhunters weekly, and then changed its name to Workers grammatic aspects of the revolutionary in their fight against Scargill and the NUM, Press (title of the first Healyite daily Trotskyism once professed by the WRP's pre­ helping to isolate that key union on the eve paper) after a hail of lawsuits from Vanessa decessor, the Socialist Labour League (SLL). of Thatcher's onslaught. Nor could it be Redgrave's ever busy solicitors forced it to 'Healyism Implodes', a special 64-page otherwise, since Solidarnosc itself was a tool cede its logo to the other wing. Politically, edition of Spartacist devoted to the WRP's of imperialist reaction. Far from seeking to the organisation appears to be caught up in a 'buried history' and our tendency's bu­ stop the Polish bureaucracy's scabbing, the vague and murky split dynamic. The party and reaucratic expulsion from the 1966 London IC Solidarnosc leadership welcomed a delegation youth leaderships seem to be in an ongoing conference, has sold briskly at these meetings, of Notts scabs and praised Thatcher as a state of political warfare. While the party as has the 1961 SLL international resolution 'wise and brave woman'. That the Stalinists press runs a series on dialectics by 'World Prospect for Socialism', a defining are eminently capable of strikebreaking is Slaughter, the youth (and the Australian and reaffirmation of anti-revisionist TrotskyisQ nothing new. But in this instance, the bu- UIIiJ, If· :'1ilili

Poland 1981 v Hungary 1956: While Solidarnosc led historically socialist Polish proletariat into arms of Vatican and CIA, Hungarian workers made clear their determination to defend socialism in struggle against Stalinist I.JUreaucracy. Hungarian insurgent leader Col Pal Maleter (inset) said: 'We don't mean to go back to capitalism. We want socialism in Hungary.' Spart .. cist speaks to WRP meeti~g 'There is a Trotskyist alternative' We reprint below, in slightly edited form, SLL. We \Vere expelled from the 1966 London to one wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the remarks by a Spartacist floor speaker at International Conference and we were never China against the other one; the beating up of a 19 November Liverpool WRP public meeting. really reconciled to that. And we said at the a Canadian socialist, Ernie Tate, which took time that Healy should be ousted from the in­ place in 1966 -- it was a very dangerous situ­ I'm not speaking as an outsider to this ternational Trotskyist movement because he was ation, he could have been killed at that oppor­ meeting, though I'm not a member of the not making at that point any kind of positive tunity. Taking to ,court socialist newspapers, WRP. I belong to the international Spartacist contribution to the revolutionary movement by which took place at the time around the beat­ tendency and this document ['World Prospect breaking ul' what was in 1966 a very important ing of this corrade. And then what has been for Socialism'] that I suppose you comrades opportunity of moving toward reforging the taking place is something which is foin". be­ remember or know, is a founding document of Pourth International which had been destroyed yond that, and that was when there was an el­ our tendency. by Pabloism. ement not only of political subordination to It's the bond that we had with the Inter­ Now, in subsequent years, what has been national liberation movements, but actual national Committee and the Socialist Labour taking place, and what is in fact one of the material subordination [to bourgeois national­

League when this document was first written in elements which is inevitably worrying all of ist regimes] I which meant, as has been raised 1961. And it was printed in the Labour Rcvi~w. you comrades, is that the SLL and then the ViRP in the press, that for instance the Iraqi com­ This is a very fine document which was the re­ has been increasingly adopting positions which munists were killed. That was done for ... how sult of the development of the SLL coming out were at variance with the Trotskyist programme many, thirty pieces of silver? And that's very of a very important split that took place in as codified among other things in this docu­ bad. It's not something which one looks at the Communist Party after 1956, Hungary and ment. In terms of the so-called Arab revol~ with pleasure. It's terrible. the crisis of Stalinism. ution, in terms of these attitudes towards the We don't really know. we cannot know what We tried at the time to have actually a revolutionnry national liberation movement; happened really in terms of w~at Gerry Healy -joint cor.1rJon international 'mt)vement with t~e lover Stalinism and the su!)port tl~at was given did to women comrades, or ~hatever ~e know 6 WORKERS HAMMER reaucracy's scabbing was facilitated by the nationalist anti-Communism Solidarnosc peddled within the Polish proletariat, which acted to 'Proud to be a Healyite' suppress class-consciousness. Slaughter's line of defence in Nottingham was that the ~~P had supported Solidarnosc, not its reactionary leaders. In thrust this is the same defence made by every WRP spokes­ man (and every fake-left supporter of Soli­ Who is David North? darnosc): namely, that the leadership and programme didn't count, what counted was that For many people in the Banda/Slaughter­ 'Security and the Fourth International' Solidarnosc was a mass movement of workers led Workers Revolutionary Party who deeply is a monstrous multi-year campaign centred against Stalinism. But what sort of mass move­ (and quite legitimately) mistrust the on the despicable slander of Joseph Hansen ment was it? What were its aims? Is any mass entire old leadership, American Workers of the reformist American SWP as an 'ac­ opposition to Stalinism necessarily pro­ League head David North has something of a complice' in Stalin's murder of Trotsky, but gressive? reputation of a stalwart fighter against reaching out further and further until just As Trotsky pointed out, 'mass actions' are Healyism. After all, North probably never about everyone was supposed to be implicated of diverse kinds: 'there are the pilgrimages beat them up, probably didn't throw their as a spy for the capitalist and Stalinist to Lourdes, the Nazi plebiscites, the reform­ daughter down the stairs and probably didn't secret police (for a full treatment, see ist polls, the patriotic demonstrations, the attend the CC meeting which criminally 'Healyism Implodes', Spartacist no 36-37, strikes under the leadership of traitors and, ratified the monstrous murder of 21 Iraqi Winter 1985-86). It echoes the discredited finally, the revolutionary struggles doomed to Communists by the Ba'ath regime. for his Stalinist lie that Trotsky was killed by his defea t because of cent ris t 1 eadership' (Wr i t­ part, North lays claim to the mantle of 'own people'. From the claim that Hansen had ings 1934-35). To determine the character of a having started the fight to oust Healy, a part in setting up Trotsky's assassination movement as distinct from its leadership and with his abstract 1982 critique of Healy's by the GPU it's a series of short steps from aims is the essence of Pabloist objectivism/ 'dialec·t ical' gobbledygook. And, he got CIA­ Hansen to Cannon to Trotsky. It takes only one liquidationism. It was the same methodology baited by Healy. So who is David North? piece of evidence to dispose of this ridicu­ employed by a host of fake Trotskyists in lous charge: Hansen wrote his supposed FBI justifying support to the clerical-reactionary spymasters during the post-assassination in~ Khomeiniite movement in Iran. Applied to vestigation telling them that correspondence Poland, this methodology had thoroughly anti­ be sent to SWP party headquarters!- Communist conclusions. For Trotskyists, the A few years ago, North's WL brought suit in an American court against the SWP -­ central question is that of leadership and shades of Vanessa Redgrave! -- for having programme, a pcsition once ably defended by expelled Healyite provocateur Alan Gelfand. Slaughter himself in his excellent article, And last spring, the WL's Bulletin carried 'What is revolutionary leadership?': two articles with North's by-line in which 'What is needed above all is a strongly he wrote of the completion of 'the evolution disciplined leadership able to develop the of the Spartacist group towards fascism'. theory of Imperialism, the Permanent Rev­ Who is supposed to believe such outland­ olution, the relation between the Workers' ishly grotesque rubbish? Certainly not the il­ States and the world revolution, and to es­ literate or ignorant, they're probably too tablish its leadership of the working smart for that -- only those who long for a class. Unless this crisis of leadership is new He~ly. The purpose of these vile slanders solved, there will be no "natural" growth is to build a wall around members to keep them towards Socialism .... ' (Labour Review, from reading and thinking and discussing poli­ October/November 1960, emphasis in original) Spartacist tendency protested the Healyite libel of tics. And to this cause, David North has de­ Poland 1981 v Hungary 1956 honest revisionist Joseph Hansen as GPU/FBI agent. voted his whole political career. North can't Was Solidarnosc a movement towards political even claim to be 'born again'; he remains unre­ revolution -- the ouster of the bureaucracy on David North was Gerry Healy's handpicked generate in his defence,of the 'security' the basis of defence of the workers state? Let man for the biggest CIA-baiting operation of set-up, even though he almost fell victim to us see what Solidarnosc called for at its them all. Indeed he rose to the top by show­ it, and even denounces any talk of dis­ first national congress in September 1981 (see ing his capacity to CIA-bait former WL head cussion with 'revisionists'. So how many Labour Review, January 1982): Tim Wohlforth, who got dumped in 1974 after millions do you have to take from despotiC 'It is necessary to do away with the prin­ more than ten years as Healy's loyal Ameri­ regimes to become a revisionist? And who is ciple which allows the planning insti­ can accomplice and hatchetman. Here's North's a CIA agent -- North? Gelfand? Jack Barnes? tution to manage enterprises. ' version: As for North's credentials as an intran­ it is necessary to introduce the prin­ , . .. the immediate events that directly sigent fighter, the introduction in the ciple of self-financing, consisting in the precipitated the split with Wohlforth led Bulletin to his anti-Healy documents whines enterprise covering all its expenses from inexorably to the monumental political that he 'was compelled to withdraw the its own profits (or possibly bank struggle of Security and the Fourth criticisms, without an answer being given, credits). ' International .... The extraordinary in­ under threat that there would be an immedi­ 'The term "state enterprise" will be re­ tervention of the late Joseph Hansen, ate breaking off of fraternal relations'. served only for those enterprises which long-time SWP leader, in defense of Perhaps in a party where nobody ever chal­ will function in the sphere of so-called Wohlforth's flagrant violation of the lenged the 'founder leader' this sounds a basic services (such as the railways, post Workers League's security -- his failure logical and rational course of action, but office etc.).' to report the family connections of his it does not say much for the principled com­ ' ... private enterprises, both national personal companion, Nancy Fields, to munist firmness, not. to mention the moral and foreign-owned ... would be given equal leading CIA personnel -- raised under new backbone, of North. Then again, it was rights in our economy.' historical conditions all the unresolved David North who said (in a 23 January 1984 Collectivised property, central planning, questions surrounding the assassination letter to Mike Banda reprinted in the 5 state monopoly over foreign trade and invest­ of Leon Trotsky in August 1940.' (1984 November 1985 Bulletin), 'every member of ment -- the fundamental bases of the workers Foreword, Trotskyism versus Revisionism, the Workers League is proud to be known as a continued on page 8 vol 7) "Healyite'" !.

what Gerry Healy did to politics, and that's veil. And on the other side we have these Iraqi, it doesn't matter, has determined pol­ 'very very bad. horrible, reactionary, Muslim crusaders sup­ itical positions which go against the funda­ And you've gone a certain way away from de­ ported by the CIA. mentals of Trotskyism. fending the Soviet Union in the course of And which side are you on, comrades? That's And that cannot be because that, you know, this degeneration that took place in this or­ a very crucial question. We stand on the side is something which cannot exist. What is the ganisation. For instance, what happened in of the ned Army in Afghanistan. This is a result then? How many ex-members of the WRP 1983 at the Blackpool conference of the TUC. fundamental position of Trotskyists that we are today in the right willg of the Labour Where in fact, whilst many organisations in defend the Soviet Union unconditionally. This Party, in the right wing of the labour move­ Britain took the side of the Spencer union in is a tradition which is in this document ment. Well that's something which is very Poland, Solidarnosc, what happened "was that ['World Prospect for Socialism']. This is a bad. Why is that? the News Line, under the signature of Mike founding document, it's a fundamental tool Well, because Gerry Healy, to some extent, Banda, general secretary of the WRP, actually for reforging the Fourth International which was seen as and understood as the representa­ set brother Scargill up for a terrible witch­ has been destroyed by Pabloist revisionism. tive of communism in Britain, for many workers. hunt that the bourgeOiS press lauded. And We stand on that fight. And now the gutter press is using all that be­ that was on the eve of the miners strike. So And we think that you, to some extent, cause they say: 'See, communism is bad. Go that was an actual tool given to the bour­ through the leadership of Gerry lIealy and the back to the Labour Party and the SDP. Don't be geoisie, to Thatcher, to MacGregor on the eve other leading members of the Central Committee for communism.' And there is an alternative, of the miners strike. of the WRP, have given up this struggle. And there is an alternative to that, to fight for And these are things that cannot just be this is a struggle which is fundamental. a revolutionary working-class party which will forgotten. And the question of Iran, Iraq. Wi thout that, what's going to happen? More split the Labour Party in this country and What that means is that what has happened is people are going to be burnt out by 'dialec­ forge a mass revolutionary Trotskyist organis­ that the wrrp has been illcreasinr;ly supportive tics' and 'security', smokescreens which have ation as a section subordinated to a demo­ of bourgeois-nationalist regimes which border been used, comrades, let me use this word, to cratic-centralist International, a reborn the Soviet Union. fuck you up. And that's not a nice thing to Fourth International. What about Afghanistan, where you have a have happened in the workers movement. Because And what I would like to conclude with, com­ war which goes into fundamental principles. what it means is that the energies, the de­ rades, is: you might find it useful to have a On one side we have a nationalist regime sires, the will to fight for revolution has look at what Lhe Spartacist tendency has been which stands for women's liberation, to some been perverted -- to the use of what? saying since the time it ftrst got in touch extent, because at least they want to give And that's something which has got to change with the SLL from the [years] '61 and '66 and women an education, they want to have women That is something which has got to be modi­ subse~~ently, and maybe you'll find that teachers, they want to take wosen out of the fied. Otherwise, the Libyan gold, or if it was use ful. Th ank you. [Appl ausiC J • <-, .. -

JANUARY 1986 7 Running like a thread through the WRP's 'the 1920s·. Thatfs why the Spartacist tendency WRP ... position on the Russian question is the pre­ said: Hail Red Army! Extend the social gains of October to the Afghan peoples! Only those (Continued from page 7) mise that Stalinism is purely counterrevol­ utionary and that it is therefore permissible who sow illusions in Stalinism would expect state -- Solidarnosc planned to liquidate the~ to bloc with any opposition to the bu­ the bureaucracy to carry out such a social all. Not once in this document is the word reaucracy. Trotsky, in contrast, asserted the revolution in the manner of the Bolshevik­ socialism even given lip service. Before Soli­ 'dual' character of the bureaucracy, explain­ internationalist regime of Lenin and Trotsky. darnosc consolidated around this capitalist­ ing in the same article 'how and why the But today by far the greater betrayal would restorationist programme and its appeal for Stalinist apparatus could completely squander be for Soviet forces to abandon Afghanistan 'free elections' open to all bourgeois its meaning as the international revolutionary (as the WRP and others demand). That would parties, we recognised it to be a contra­ factor and yet preserve a part of its pro­ mean consigning Afghan women once again to the diciory movement, fuelled by just grievances gressive meaning as the gatekeeper of the benighted enslavement they have suffered. against the privileges and mismanagement of social conquests of the proletarian revol­ Particularly in this period of renewed the ruling stratum but dangerously influenced ution'. If this was demonstrably clear in Cold War, the Russian question is the funda­ by anti-Semitism, nationalism and clerical Poland, particularly with the December 1981 mental line of divide between Trotskyists and anti-Communism. At that congress, Solidarnosc crackdown, it was evidently so right from the all manner of liquidationists. Stalinophobia crossed the Rubicon, and the necessary posi­ start in Afghanistan. offers a well-travelled one-way ride into Neil tion for Trotskyists was, as we said, 'Stop Simon Pirani argued at the Edinburgh meet­ Kinnock's Labour Party. The bureaucratic ex­ Solidarnosc' counterrevolution!' ing that 'the basic question of the rights of pulsion of Alan Thornett from the WRP in 1974 Many WRP leaders have tried to equate national minorities' was posed by the Red has been much discussed at these meetings. But Poland 1981 with Hungary 1956. But this anal­ Army's intervention in Afghanistan. Even were WRP members should not make the mistake of ogy collapses at the first test. Compare the assuming that any enemy of Healy is their pro-capitalist programme of Solidarnosc with friend. Thornett's rightist trajectory eventu­ the founding declaration of the Central ally led him to scab on the 1979 engineering Vlorkers Council of Greater Budapest: strike on the road to total liquidation into 'We declare our unshaken loyalty to the Labourism. That his followers today consist principles of socialism. We regard the means of a tiny bedraggled band in Oxford is the re­ of production as collective property which sult of two definitive splits from Thornett's we are at all times ready to defend .... centrism towards the revolutionary Trotskyist We demand the abolition of the one- politics of the Spartacist League. party system and the recognition only of The Socialist Labour Group, affiliated to those parties which base themselves on Pierre Lambert's PCI in France, is even more socialism.' (quoted in Eyewitness in Hun­ deeply buried in the Labour Party. And their gary, edi t.ed by Bill Lomax) PCI brain trusters are so deeply embedded in Even so, recognising the possibility of a the Cold War social-democratic bureaucracy in counterrevolutionary turn of events in Hun­ France that their trade union full-timers have gary, a 3 May 1957 British Section conference for years been on the receiving end of CIA resolution warned: 'Even though the Soviet in­ contributions to the notorious Force Ouvriere! tervention in Hungary might have gravely com­ An SLG speaker at the London ~~P meeting lo­ plicated the straight issues, we remained in­ cated the roots of the Healyites' degeneration transigent in defence of the USSR from imperi­ in their 'retreat from the Labour Party in alism, despite the Soviet bureaucracy .... Had 1964'. In fact 1964 was the culmination of a imperialism seen fit to in·tervene during the principled struggle by the Healy group within Hungarian Revolution in defence of the Nagy gov­ the Labour Party Young Socialists, centrally ernment, we would have been for the victory of the around the Trotskyist position of uncon­ Red Army against the armies of intervention' Afghanistan: anti-Soviet reactionaries murder radical ditional military defence of the USSR. (Education for Socialists, February 1978). schoolteacher. Workers Power has focussed its inter­ In and of itself, the support of masses of ventions in WRP meetings on the 'myth' that workers for a movement against the Stalinist this the case, as in Poland 1939, it the 'International Committee embodies a prin­ bureaucracy does not make it progressive. In would have been necessary to take a class cipled revolutionary struggle against a de­ his 1933 article, 'Class Nature of the Soviet stand with the Red Army against its reaction­ generate liquidationist tendency called State', Trotsky projected the following ary feudalist enemies. But in fact, Pirani Pabloism' (Workers Power, December 1985/Jan­ scenario for Stalin's Russia: was simply echoing the imperialist and uary 1986). Pabloist liquidationism is no more 'The workers, having lost control over the social-democratic hue and cry which placed a a myth than WP's congenital tailing of every­ state and economy, may resort to mass premium on the 'democratic right' of CIA­ thing that moves -- from Khomeini to Soli­ strikes as weapons of self-defence. The financed Muslim reactionaries to butcher darnosc to the Bennite left -- in the hopes of discipline of the dictatorship would be little girls who discard the veil or learn to pressuring them to the left as a substitute Lruken. Under the onslaught of the workers read and write. for proletarian-revolutionary parties. That and because of the pressure of economic Rather, what was posed in Afghanistan was is Pabloism. Though flawed and belated, the difficulties, the trusts would be forced to defence of the Soviet Union and defence of 1953 fight against Pabloism is a necessary disrupt the planned beginnings and enter fundamental social reforms, centrally for cornerstone of any struggle against re­ into competition with one another. The dis­ women. Faced with the threat of a pro-Western visionism today. solution of the regime would naturally find regime being installed in a traditional client Confronted with a question mark over every its violent and chaotic echo in the village state on its southern flank, the bureaucracy aspect of their party's history, WRP sup­ and would inevitably be thrown over into moved in. But in fighting the feudalist porters face a difficult task. Careful re­ the army. The socialist state would col­ rabble, the Red Army is acting not only in de­ examination of the documentary record of the lapse, giving place to the capitalist re­ fence of Soviet military security but perforce struggle against Pabloism, of documents like gime or, more correctly, to capitalist as an agency for social progress. Indeed, in 'World Prospect for Socialism', of the docu­ chaos. ' this country where mullahs outnumber workers ments of the Spartacist tendency, in con­ Add heavy funding by the CIA, open subversion by ten-to-one, Sovietisation is the only con­ junction with the classics of Lenin and by the Catholic hierarchy and ... you have ceivable road to social revolution, as in Trotsky, will yield a wealth of revolutionary Solidarnosc' plan for power. Outer Mongolia and Soviet Central Asia in understanding. The decisive question is programme. The Spartacist League, which draws a hard line on Soviet defencism, has also been the tendency to draw a hard line against all forms of liquidationism, whether Labourite or Pabloite. As American Trotskyist leader James P Cannon noted, the Russian question is 'the SPAR1AC)51~ENGLISH EDITION WINTER 1985.86 ONE DOllAR '75~ PENCE question of a revolution'. There is an alter­ NUMBER".31 , native to ending up in the Labour Party, and that is fighting to construct a mass Trotsky­ Spartacist ist party. Forward to the world party of socialist revolution, a reforged Fourth BE All 'SM No. 36-37 International!. IMPLODES 75p _With­ 64-page Spartacist, Winter 1985-86 SPECIAL OFFER: Spartacist plus 'The World Order yours Documents and Interviews Prospect For Socialism', 1961 SLL International now on the Resolution, for £1.50p. WRP's Buried History Available at local bookshops or order direct from: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, LondonWC1H8JE. 65p inc p&p Make payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE

8 WORKERS HAMMER t 1961S LL on Russian question We reprint below extracts from the 1961 sponsibility for the defence of the USSR from have encouraged the open political campaigning SLL international resolution, 'The World imperialist attack is avoided, and the necess­ of elements like the Roman Catholic Church .... Prospect for Socialism', centring on the ity for constructing a Leninist party is de­ The greatest danger confronting the revol­ Russian question and liquidationism. nied. Formally embracing Marxism, such utionary movement is liquidationism, flowing Thus we see the USSR, China and Eastern tendencies in fact provide a Left cover for from a capitulation either to the strength of Europe as workers' states which have become the bourgeois theories of 'totalitarianism' imperialism or of the bureaucratic apparatuses deformed or degenerated. Their present form and the impossibility of working-class powe~; in the Labour movement, or both. Pabloism rep­ can only be temporary, and it is wrong to in­ in times of political crisis, such as the resents, even more clearly now than in 1953, terpret these temporary distorted forms as a Korean war, they provide support for the im­ this liquidationist tendency in the inter­ new or inevitable stage in the development of perialists. They are a direct agency through national Marxist movement. In Pablo ism the ad­ society. We stand for the defence of these which certain elements in the movement capitu­ vanced working class is no longer the vanguard states as of every conquest of the working late to petty-bourgeois democratic opinion at of history, the centre of all Marxist theory class; their return to the sphere of exploi­ a time when sharp class struggle arises and and strategy in the epoch of imperialism, but tation of imperialism would be a shattering the need for proletarian discipline and prin­ the plaything of 'world-historical factors', blow to the prospects of socialism, whereas cipled programme becomes vital. The discussion surveyed and assessed in abstract fashion .... their continued existence constitutes a perma­ of the character of the USSR ~rom the point of The idea that Marxists enter Social Demo­ nent challenge and threat of instability to view of abstract political criteria like cratic or Communist Parties in order to trans­ imperialism. But our defence of the USSR, 'democracy' and 'freedom' rather than from the form them into revolutionary parties must be Eastern Europe and China does not mean giving basis of production relations is clear evi­ rooted out. Marxist tactics towards these up the right of criticism. Revolutionaries dence of the class character of this tendency. parties have nothing in common with the poli­ have a duty to criticise ruthlessly the In theory as in practice they are a direct tics of the pressure group or ginger group .... counter-revolutionary role of the bureaucracy, line of transmission to Right-wing social The Labour bureaucracies -- where they have which in fact works against the defence of the democracy .... state power as well as where they batten on revolution. Both in the Soviet bloc and in the In Hungary and Poland, the risings of 1956 the working class in the imperialist countries class struggle allover the world, through the were unable to overthrow the rule of the bu­ -- will not be washed out of the movement by a influence of the Communist Parties, the bu­ reaucracy. Here too, a modification of the old spontaneous development or by broad propaganda reaucracy hampers the struggle for socialism. police rule has taken place. But in Hungary, groupings of a centrist type. The experience In calling for a political revolution to over­ leading workers and intpllectuals remain im­ of the British Labour Party between its 1960 throw the bureaucracy we are not supporting prisoned, and the workers' councils set up in and 1961 conferences has demonstrated this the 'liberation' propaganda of the imperial­ 1956 were ruthlessly suppressed. In Poland, once again. Anxious to preserve their power ists and their agents in the Labour movement. Gomulka's leadership tided the bureaucracy and priveleges, their own narrow interests We advocate such a revolution to preserve and over the storms arising from Poznan and conflict with those of the masses. Even when not to overturn the nationalized property re­ Warsaw in 1956. Since the Eighth Plenum of that forced to lead struggles, or when in order to lations, to ensure their protection from the year, however, the legislation on workers' defend these privileges, they are forced to restoration of capitalism .... councils and the suppression of dissident uphold working-class conquests, they do so Especially dangerous is the petty-bourfeois opinions have been used to stifle the initiat­ with their own methods. And these methods seek tendency which characterizes the Soviet Union ive of the youth ar.d the working class. Fol­ to avoid, at all costs, the mobilization of as a system of 'state capitalism'. Dy using lowing concessions to the Stalinist or Natolin the class power of the working masses .... the method of superficial comparisons, the group in 1958, with the return to office of The Fourth International as a world organ­ theories of 'state capitalism' claim that the many of the members of the repressive machine, isation founded by Trotsky in 1938 no longer Soviet bureaucracy, through its control of the there came a restriction of the worker's exists. It has been destroyed by Pabloite state apparatus, has become a new capitalist councils to advisory committees in the fac­ revisionism. The only sections which continue class and has destroyed all the gains of the tories. This reimposition of bureaucratic its theoretical tradition are those affili­ October Revolution. On this basis all re- power and the checks on working-class activity ated to the International Committee ....

queathed an ugly legacy of class collaboration the diverse layers oppressed by capitalism and Sinhalese chauvinism; as partners in Mrs into a common revolutionary movement based on Sri Lanka ... B's popular front government their hands were the methods of class struggle and the power of (Continued from page 5) bloodied with the violent suppression of the the strategic proletarian sectors. Such a crawl into the popular front of Sinhala 1971 youth uprising. The petty-bourgeois Tamil Leninist vanguard must be based on a perspec­ racialism. nationalists, indifferent to the plight of the tive of proletarian internationalism. The fate plantation Tamils and scornful of the pros­ of the Lanka masses is inextricably linked to Class struggle v communalist slaughter pect of joint struggle with Sinhalese workers, that of the mighty Indian proletariat. Only pander to the Indian bourgeoisie. And the mur­ socialist revolution throughout the subconti­ The communalist frenzy is not the only derous cycle of communalist terror continues nent can hold forth promise for the future; pressure on the bonapartist Lankan [overnment. to deepen. only international revolution can forever end With tea prices now joining the slump in The only just solution demands the forging the rule of capital that breeds the bloody tourism, textile exports and migrant workers of a Leninist vanguard which can unite Tamil horror of communalism. remittances, the economy teeters downward. estate workers, Sinhalese textile workers, Reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 393, 13 December Recent new government austerity measures in­ Jaffna students and Muslim villagers -- all 1985. clude plans to close down all unprofitable (ie most) nationalised corporations. To pay for the ballooning military budget, which has in­ creased tenfold in eight years, the UNP regime is further squeezing the masses with increased Black family in Sheffield terrorised taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, train fares, and postal and telephone services. But the Lankan working class, Sinhala and Tamil alike, have shown a willingness to re­ Rac ist thugs set free sist. The larfely female Sinhala workforce 01 the textile plants around Colombo have de­ On 29 August seven white racist thugs and Maisie. The racists' solicitors ludi­ fended themselves with a wave of militant launched a potentially murderous attack crously claimed that Bob and Maisie provoked strikes over the last year. And the hideously against the family of a black couple, Bob the racists, threw things at them and that oppressed Tamil plantation workers of the up­ and Maisie Titus (see Workers Hammer no 74, Bob had a knife. This whilst their liome was land tea estates, denied even the limited November 1985, 'Defend the Titus Family! '). under attack from a gang armed with wooden citizenship rights of the Jaffna Tamils, have On 2 December these scum made their third staves, bricks and milk bottles. Bob left fought the regime. On 7 November, some 25,000 appearance in Sheffield magistrates court, the hearing in disgust before the verdict plantation workers struck to protest the ar­ the previous two hearings having been ad­ poi~ting out that he and Maisie were 're­ rest of four students by the police. The cru­ journed. The charge was 'criminal damage', duced to being spectators' at this revolt­ cial demand for full citizenship rights for the 'punishment' a pathetic £300 fine. The ing spectacle. the plantation Tamils has long been overlooked would-be racist murderers were then set free The bosses courts will find every way by the nationalist Tamil croups. to try again. Shortly after the hearing, as possible to set free racist thugs who appear At bottom, the Sinhala communalism which the Titus family we~e moving house, having before them. The 2 December picket of the the government itself instigates and seeks been driven out by the threat of a repeated court had a heavy presence from the Sheffield only to control is intended to prevent a popu­ attack, the thugs struck again daubing the Campaign Agains~ Racism carrying placards lar revolutionary upsurge and the class unity family's car with paint. Bob and Maisie in­ saying 'Police must recognise racist at­ of Sinhala and Tamil. Class struggle can halt tend to appeal against the court decision. tacks'. The Spartacist League were there the reactionary spiral of racialist slaughter. Any future hearing must be met with a big with a placard saying 'Defend the Titus But that requires a revolutionary party armed militant picket drawn from the Sheffield family -- For integrated trade union centred with the programme of Lenin and Trotsky, with labour movement and minority communities de­ defence guards!' the strategy of permanent revolution to over­ manding: Jail the racist thugs! Reliance on the courts and cops is a death throw capitalism. Our comrades of the Spartac­ The court hearing was a disgusting farce trap for black and Asian families. The ist League/Lanka have earned a reputation as in the worst traditions of British imperial social power of the labour movement must be the only consistent defenders of Tamil racist 'justice'. Forty picketers there to mobilised alongside the minority communities national rights among the Sinhalese; they have support the Titus family were excluded from to smash racist attacks. We can only regret won recognition as well for their militant the courtroom whilst the friends of the that a squad of black, white and Asian workers support for the struggles of Sinhalese women racists were invited to pack the hearing. were not at the Titus family home at the time textile strikers. The SL/L was born out of the Bob and Maisie were allowed in only after a of the attack .. The racist scum could have been only wing of the Ceylonese left which cour­ protest. In a hearing which lasted for two acquainted with the pavement and taught a ageously stood up against the popular front hours no witnesses were called. The only richly deserved lesson. The Sheffield labour betrayals that prepared the way for Jayewar­ people who gave 'evidence' were three sol­ movement must mobilise to defend the Titus dene's dictatorial regime. icitors, two for the racists, one for Bob family! The traditional leftist parties have be-

JANUARY 1986 9 opment raises crucial questions about the to cancel their holiday celebrations.' And South Africa ... direction of the whole union movement. three blacks were left dead, and others (Continued from page 1) The genen?l secretary of the NUM and the wounded, as a result of fighting over the leading figure at the founding of COSATU is holidays in a black township northeast of Cape victorious from the inevitable civil war, they the articulate, ambitious 33-year-old lawyer Town between the UDF and AZAPO. The danger of must be organised and led by a class-conscious Cyril Ramaphosa. After a spell in security degeneration into a disastrous race, tribal and factional war looms. vanguard infused with the understanding that police detention for his activities in the those who labour must rule. Black Consciousness Movement in the mid-70s, In the past year over a thousand blacks, Ramaphosa went on to serve on the board of many of them young children, have been killed A Bolshevik party in South Africa must be the Urban Foundation, a fund launched by the by the racist police state. But while blacks built in irreconcilable struggle against every Oppenheimer empire to promote a black middle bury their dead in the impoverished townships, kind of nationalism and popular frontism, class. When Anglo American decided -- after a white surburbanites a few miles away play counterposing the prograome of permanent rev­ series of bloody unofficial strikes in the cricket and host dinner parties. One can olution, for the emancipation and reconstruc­ mines -- to allow the growth of 'responsible' understand that desperate black rage may have tion of the oppressed nation under the unions with which it could bargain, Ramaphosa motivated whoever set off that bomb in the ex­ dictatorship of the proletariat. Now is the launched the NUM. clusive Durban beach resort. However, in­ time for internationalist revolutionaries -­ Harry Oppenheimer may have expected the NUM discriminate terrorism against the white popu­ black African, coloured (mixed-race), Indian to behave something like a company union, but lation is not only criminal and morally and white alike -- to undertake the construc­ the practically slave labour conditions in the indefensible, it will rebound against the tion of communist nuclei, in and oriented mining compounds have produced an explosive towards the workers movement, laying the basis black masses. The Amanzimtoti bombing plays situation. Class struggle in the Witwatersrand for a racially integrated Leninist workers into the hands of hardline white supremacists gold fields in recent years has been es­ party. who are prepared to kill, in truly Hitlerite pecially bloody and desperate even by South fashion, hundreds of thousands of blacks to African standards. The mine workers union has restore apartheid law and order. Black unions and petty-bourgeois nationalism been involved in countless job actions, many While Oliver Tambo and other ANC leaders of them attacked by police with tear gas, are talking with Gavin ReIly and his fellow During the early 1980s independent black sjamboks (whips) and shotguns. If Ramaphosa 'progressive' South African capitalists, they and coloured unions grew explosively and be­ has remained free while many other black are also calling upon the black masses to came the main organs of mass resistance to unionists have been jailed, this is not just 'make the townships ungovernable'. This is the apartheid. However, since the revolts erupted because he is the kind of 'moderate' Anglo policy of chaos. It can inconvenience the in the black townships in September 1984, the American can talk to, but also because he apartheid rulers for a time, but it will not potentially powerful organised black working leads a powerful union with a combative overthrow them. Nor is it intended to: the ANC class has been largely on the sidelines. membership. is pursuing the utopian and reactionary goal This is certainly not due to any lack of The Ramaphosa leadership has sabotaged that of 'power-sharing', seeking to pressure the courage and cornbativity on the part of the power and militancy. This was sharply revealed bosses into letting a layer of petty-bourgeois ranks and Grganisers. Nor is it simply because in the aborted miners strike last August­ black leaders share in the superexploitation of the labour movement's fragmentation, a September. Coming at a time of mass defiance of black labour. The very restless black weakness which the 'super-union' is intended against Botha's state of emergency and with masses in South Africa today are very far from to overcome. It is due to the absence of rev­ the international capital flight from South having an instrument -- a revolutionary olutionary leadership at the head of the Africa, a nationwide gold mine strike could workers party -- for taking power. workers movement. Union leaders have responded have been a most powerful blow against the to the greatest crisis of the apartheid state COSATU president Elijah Barayi put the auth­ apartheid regime. Other unions including the ority of COSATU behind the campaign for disin­ in a generation with a narrow economism, on strategic Metal Workers offered to strike in the one hand, and passive support to petty­ vestment, another aspect of the policy of solidarity. The whole world was watching the bourgeois nationalism on the other. chaos, trying to 'make the economy ungovern­ gold fields. But what happened? The formation of COSATU certainly able' by appealing to the imperialist mass First the NUM dragged out negotiations, strengthens the economic power of black murderers of Hiroshima and Vietnam to put the complying with every clause of apartheid workers, and for this reason is to be wel­ squeeze on their South African allies, to get legislation for a 'legal' strike, while thou­ comed by communists. But it also underscores them to clean up their act. Barayi was sands of miners were besieged in their hostels the danger that the black working class will faithful to the strategy that led to Sharpe­ and shipped off to the bantustans. Eventually, be used as cattle to haul the ideological cart ville when he justified disinvestment saying, Ramaphosa signed an agreement with all the of nationalism. The new federation is demon­ 'Let us all suffer together; that will force mining houses (including Anglo American) save strably closer to the liberal nationalist the Government to abolish apartheid' (Finan­ one, and struck only seven mines at the Afri can National Congress (ANC) than were the cial Times, 2 December). beginning of September. This was presented as main union groupings which came together to But the imperialists have already 'dis­ a smart move 'splitting the bosses'. Instead form COSATU. invested' billions of dollars, pounds and it was the union that was split. The cops and If the top leadership of COSATU appears deutschemarks from South Africa, and it has army prepared their forces as if for war, clearly in the ANC camp, those black unions not stayed the hand of the murderous apartheid naturally concentrating on the few mines ac­ which have remained outside the new federation police state butchers one whit. For Dotha tually struck. The courageous miners who represent the other main current of petty­ knows that the Wall Street, London and rrank­ walked out were ruthlessly crushed almost as bourgeois black nationalism, the Black Con­ furt bankers are waiting for the impOSition of the strike began. sciousness Movement which excludes whites, social peace, even if it is a 'peace' of the The effect of this betrayal goes far beyond holding that only blacks can organise blacks. graveyardS, and the billions will flow back the mines. As the gold strike loomed, the ANC The largest of these groupings is the Council seeking superprofits, the golden spoils of leadership had scheduled talks in Lusaka, of Unions of South Africa (CUSA), which has apartheid slavery. Zambia with a delegation of South African mag­ been rather tame in the workplace and is af­ The policy of chaos dangerously under­ nates headed by Gavin ReIly, Oppenheimer's filiated to the anti-Communist International estimates the potential repressive power of successor as chairman of Anglo American. Had Confederation of Free Trade Unions. the white rulers, who are now in considerable the NUM waged an all-out strike, this meeting, The second main Black Consciousness labour disarray and deeply politically divided. If held in mid-September, would have blown up in group is the Azanian Congress of Trade Unions, South Africa's rulers cannot govern the segre­ the participants' faces. One labour expert hit allied with the Azanian People's Organisation gated black townShips, they can still isolate the mark when he explained that Ramaphosa did (AZAPO), which avows a 'socialist' programme and destroy them. A South African Hitler -­ not callout the whole union because 'he did that equates the class line with the race and there are plenty of candidates for this not want to ruin his relationship with Anglo line. AZAPO opposes imperialist liberals like role -- could seal off the townships, blow up American' (New York Times, 6 September). Teddy Kennedy, whom the ANC cultivates, while the sewer lines, demolish the hospitals, cut The ANC has long looked to this preeminent identifying 'socialism' with Zimbabwe's tri­ off the electricity, food and water .,. and representative of the 'liberal' bourgeoisie to bally based, neocolonial despotism. wait. After about 18 months the resulting hun­ pressure the Pretoria regime. This is the The issue of racial exclusionism in South dreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dead suicidal strategy of the popular front. Anglo African trade unions is far more than a tac­ would secure 'social peace' in South Africa American, the biggest superexploiter of black tical question. It is in the proletariat's for a generation. migrant labour in South Africa, which installs interest that the union movement be open to If the racist rulers in Pretoria have not secret gas vents in the ~ine compounds to deal yet moved toward such a Hitlerite 'final solu­ all worker~' -- black, coloured, Indian and with strikers, is as much an enemy of the white. Only class organisation of the op­ tion', they are wantonly slaughtering black black oppressed as the most verkrampte (reac­ township dwellers. At a mass funeral in pressed and exploited can transcend the tribal tionrry) Afrikaner Nationalists. The aborted lI!amelodi for some of the latest victims, anti­ and ethnic divisions fostered by apartheid in gold mine strike demonstrates graphically how apartheid fighter Winnie Mandela, wife of the its policy of 'divide and rule'. Furthermore, trade-union economism and nationalism combine imprisoned ANC leader, defied Botha's banning dedicated anti-apartheid white South Africans to derail class struggle against apartheid. order and proclaimed: 'This is our country. In (like the martyred Neil Agrett) have played an the same way as you have had to bury our important role in building the black unions. Class war, not race war children today, so shall the blood of these Multiracialism in the South African labour heroes we buried today be avenged.' her cour­ movement points toward a genuinely multiracial The liberal nationalism the M.C espouses ageous words speak for all supporters of South Africa under a black centred workers has challenged, but cannot destroy the apart­ social justice. government. Indeed, if post-apartheid South heid regime. The heavily armed apartheid But how will the martyrs of apartheid ter­ Africa is to be anything but a Zimbabwe writ state still has the whip hand. More urgently large, there had better be a place for the than ever, events in South Africa show the ror be avenged? Certainly not by calls to make the townships ungovernable, and still less by white minority, wit~ its relatively high level deadly results of this impasse. talks with Oppenheimer/ReIly Co and appeals of cultural and technological skills, which On 23 December, five whites, including & to Wall Street to disinvest in South Africa. can be a valuable resource in the socialist three young children, were killed in a terror reconstruction of all Africa. But a multiracial bombing at the 'whites only' beach resort of It is the powerful and combative black prolet­ ariat, under the leadership of a Bolshevik South Africa can be built only on the basis of Amanzimtoti near Durban, provoking calls for party, which will be the gravedigger of apart­ a workers revolution, not classless appeals retaliation from the white population. On heid capitalism and the avenger of its crimes. for brotherly reconciliation. Christmas Day, 56 blacks died on the outskirts The National Union of Mineworkers with of Durban when 2000 Zulus brandishing spears, On that grave will arise a black-centred 150,000 members is the largest and most im­ clubs, knives, machetes and some Shotguns workers government, the only road to the portrult component of COSATU. The half million clashed with 300 Pondos, a Xhosa-speaking liberation of black Africa from the chains of neocolonial exploitation and imperialist deeply oppr~ssed migrant black gold miners people. stand at the heart of South Africa's economy. Also on Christmas Day, five blacks died in domination. The NUM is the first black union to really Soweto as youths calling for a 'black Christ­ Adapted from Workers Vanguard no 393, 13 December establish itself in ther.1ines, and its devel- mas' fought with migrant workers who refused 1985.

10 WORKERS HAMMER The Stalinists want to wish it away with union, Miners Federation members wore their Cold War ... their 'detente' pipe dreams. The fight against dues tokens as badges of honour to show their the Irving Browns thus falls to the authentic contempt for the Spencer union. It was by mo­ (Continued from page 3) Trotskyists, who uniquely stand for the bilising their own class forces not by re­ support'. The 'difference between democracy political independence of the working class lying on the bosses' courts -- that the Miners and dictatorship', Brown added, 'is that we and have fought the anti-Soviet war drive rederation took on and defeated the Spencerite do things openly, while no one can prove where down the line. scabs in the 1930's. For example, in South the money of the CGT comes from'. Reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 393, 13 December Wales in 1935 the union launched ~ series of Liberation replied, 'Not that open, since 1985. mass strikes, demanding the ouster of the in a confidential note addressed to the chair­ scab union. As we described it in ,yorkers Ham­ man of the Endowment, it's stated that the mer no 72, September 1985: finances in France must remain secret .... ' UOM ... 'Within a week six pits were on staydown Brown blew up, demanding to know how they got (Continued from page 12) strike and another 40,000 men were striking the letter, then abruptly cut off the inter­ The Fed view, threatening: 'What's your job, journal­ perspective undercuts effective defence of the ist or cop? ... If Liberation publishes this NUM, shown nowhere more clearly than in his story, the paper will be definitely reliance on the bosses' courts to defend the [black] listed. ' NUM's rights. One of the decisive lessons of While the revelations about American the strike was precisely that the courts, like ~ dollars financing the French right-wing the fovernment and police, are not neutral, opposition caused quite a commotion, it seems but are necessarily an arm of the bosses' • that not everybody on the left is opposed to state. Yet today the NUM leaders appeal to the such 'democraCIA'. The CGT and CP, no doubt same courts to defend their union against the CAR" DISTRICT. SJUIJ. fearing someone would accuse them of receiving NCB/scab offensive. After Thatcher rigs the --- - money from Moscow, declared that the expose ballots in favour of the UDM, her courts pre­ was an 'attempt to destabilise fighting union­ dictably rule in favour of the scabs and the NOTICE. ism' (Liberation, 28 November)! The Socialists NCB deducts dues money exclusively for the and various 'far left' groups are protesting UDM. It's a set-up for the bosses. Following .4 against the CIA money in France, but only in the UDM's squeaky 26-vote majority in a South France. They object to having been put on the Derbys ballot, the courts not only rejected a same list as 'undemocratic' countries like simple appeal by the NUM that detailed voting Poland. They can't fight the NED/CIA 'psy­ figures be made publi,c but even awarded ops', because they're for dollars going to £80,000 of NUM funds to the UDM gang. 10NSI CIP~SN; Polish Solidarnosc. They have lined up with The key to rearming the NUM is the struggle Against Non.Unionism their own bourgeoisie -- and with Reagan -- in for complete and unconditional independence of in the Carw Valley this crucial battlefield of the Cold War. the union from the capitalist state. The Has bee" inaugurated w,th the jOi"t sUPPort of the unc The pseudo-Trotskyist PCI of Pierre bosses are today using the 'dues check-off' as El{ecut,ve Co " of the S. W.II1.F.; the Gar,., District S.W.II1.F.; and the Gilrw Valley Joi"t Committee. Lambert has been silent on the Reagan dollars. a wean on to buttress the Spencerites. The NCB This is not so strange when you consider that, is using its power to collect union dues from The Campaign will prOceed until the as recently as 1980, several dozen of their workers' wages as a means of strangling the members were paid FO functionaries -­ union, for example granting the UDM exclusive SCourge of 1I0n.Unionism including Lambert himself -- and the number rights to all dues checked off in Notts. Abol­ has been COMPLETELY WIPED OUT has undoubtedly increased since then. For the ish the dues checkoff throughout the coal­ from the Valley. last 15 years at least, the Lambertists have fields! The NUM must collect its own dues! No regularly voted for Bergeron's report at FO government interference in the internal af­ LOok Out for Posters annOunCing Meetings and for EXPlanatory Literature. conventions -- giving political support for fairs of the union! this CIA tool. In 1983-84, the PCI pulled all The control of the bosses' state over dues DPfJRr THE HOOs£-ro."lIlS£ CANrASSERs their supporters out of the teachers union -­ collection was not simply a mistaken trade MJners' irA-as SpeCIally In lilted to Co.operate. unionist policy. It was in fact a direct re­ illltil then one of the only French unions which 11IotI) RICHARD bENNETTA II/lfl"! AJtll had not succumbed to a Cold War split -- and sult of the post-war Labourite lie that took them into Force Ouvriere, putting the fin­ 'socialism' would evolve through gradual capi­ ishing touches on Irving Brown's wrecking job. talist nationalisations. When the mines were Campaign against Spencer 'union' in South Wales, nationalised, the labour bureaucracy then 1929. While bosses imposed dues check-off for scab Lutte Ouvriere, another fake-Trotskyist union, MFG8 relied on direct dues collection. Dues outfit, acutally came out and defended FO's lyingly claimed that it was 'our industry' and tokens (above) were worn as badge of honour by decent American 'subsidy': 'What's being paid off is established the system where the Coal Board unionists. the 10 per cent anti-communism that there checked off the dues. This was part and parcel is in Fa .... It's not even sure that this of a whole series of class-collaborationist on the surface. Demonstrations supporting foundation wants something from FO in ex­ joint union-management committees, Plans for the men, often organised by their wives, change for its subsidy' (Lutte Ou vri ere , Coal and other agencies for tyinC the union to occurred throughout South Wales. Rai~waymen 30 November). Even the backward workers the state. From the postwar nationalisations refused to move scab labour ... ' appealed to by La know better than that: to Kinnock's disgusting condemnation of Class struggle was the way to bury the 'you don't get something for nothing', strikers' 'violence' throughout the miners' Spencerites! 'whoever pays the piper calls the tune', etc. l2-month strike, the reformists have sought to But simple trade union militancy is not Thus these workerists excuse the integration subordinate the workers movement to the capi­ sufficient to beat the scabs and bosses for and subordination of the unions to the talist state. gOOd. What is needed is a revolutionary lead­ imperialist state. Before the war dues were generally col­ e~ship in the unions, one firmly based on a The international Spartacist tendency, lected by union officials, as it should be. programme of class strurgle, independence from in contrast, has consistently opposed the Indeed in the struggle against the Spencer the capitalist state and defence of Soviet sinister machinations of the 'AFL-CIA'. In the Russia from imperialist revanchism. Such a US, the Spartacist League and its union Leadership can be forged only as part of the supporters have fought for two decades against Support victimised miners struggle to build a Leninist-Trotskyist party. CIA 'labour' fronts like the American In­ With a Trotskyist programme as the guide, the stitute for Free Labor Development. The We urge readers to contribute generously Labour Party can be split in sharp struggle, Militant Action Caucus in the telephone to the fund for sacked and jailed miners and its working-class base won to communism and workers union (CWA) exposed the AIFLD's their families to: Miners Solidarity Fund, its pro-capitalist misleaders flung out as the attempts to smash Communist unions in Chile, St James' House, Vicar Lane, Sheffield. scabhearders they are. Smash the Spencerite which paved the way for the bloody 1973 split! Defend the NUM!. Pinochet coup, and demanded that the CWA break all ties with this Trojan Horse of imperialist penetration. In France, the LTF denounced CIA funding of Mi t terrand' s cohorts Milquetoast Militants Witchhunted in the Portuguese Socialist Party, which ten years ago acted as the spearhead of reaction 'Scabs welcome, leftists out' -- that is 31,000 redundancy notices! rinally they against the 'revolution of the carnations'. Neil Kinnock's programme for the Labour souGht refUGe in high-interest Swiss bank The iSt took the lead in denouncing the Party. While Roy Lynk and Don Concannon re­ loans and used this to justify their humili­ millions of CIA dollars sent to finance Polish main a valued part of Labour's vaunted "ting climbdown in the face of Tory black­ Solidarnosc via the AFL-CIO and various West 'broad church', Kinnock is hell-bent on mail and the Labour leaders' threats. Mili­ European social-democratic unions (as well as purging supporters of the Militant tendency tant's perspective is not to 'fight for the Vatican bank). When this Polish yellow from the party, For months he sided openly socialism', but to pose a suitably 'respect­ 'union' came out for 'free trade unions' and with Thatcher as she tried to bankrupt and. able' 'left' alternative within the framework 'free enterprise' in East Europe (also calling starve out downtrodden Liverpool, with its of Labourite reformist treachery, for the Polish economy to be controlled by Militant-dominated local council. Now he's And what do they have to show for it? the I~W bankers' cartel!), the SL/US demon­ oiling the wheels for the expulsion of Derek Renewed purges. Kinnock to the contrary, strated outside a Solidarnosc press conference ~atton, Tony Mulhearn and other local Mili­ this crassly reformist outfit masquerading at the offices of Albert Shanker's teachers tant leaders. Meanwhile Roy Hattersley's as Trotskyists would be like fish out of union, demanding 'Stop Solidarnosc Counter­ Birmingham Sparkbrook constituency recently water outside the Labour Party. True to revolution!' More recently, as Irving Brown carried out a racist expulsion of two 'black form, ten Militant supporters in Stevenage has been working overtime to 'capture' the section' activists. faced with expulsion went running to the emerging black trade unions in South Africa, Militant are hardly the 'dan~erous revol­ bosses' courts to save themselves. Derek we have warned that his 'aid' is the kiss of utionaries' of rleet Street mythology. Hatton and Neil Kinnock may deserve each death to independent workers struggle. Rather than mobilise Liverpool's plebeian other, but the Labour leadership want to From Chile to El Salvador, from Poland to masses in struggle against the Tories (par­ prosecute this purge in order to present the France, the labour lieutenants of inter­ ticularly when it would have had real im­ party as a 'responsible' capitalist alterna­ national capitalism do their best to subvert pact, during the miners strike), the Militant tive to the Tories. It is in the interest of class-struggle unionism. As usual, the social councillors managed to antagonise both the every working-class militant to oppose this democrats are in the 'ideological' front lines city's trade unionists and its significant witchhunt. Defend Militant against Kinnock's of the anti-Soviet Cold War drive (now joined black population. They even handed out purge! by their anti-Trotskyist camp followers).

JANUARY 1986 11 WORKERS Smash the UOM! , omaan union' • • In e coa Ie s

Roy Lynk's 'Union of Democratic Mine­ part and parcel of a class-struggle strategy Neither Solidarnosc nor the UDM -- the workers' has set itself up as a rallying point to rearm the NUM and the entire labour move­ only 'unions' in the world supported by for every scabby element in and outside the ment in preparation for battles ahead. And Thatcher -- are genuine unions; they are British labour movement. Centred on the anti­ that requires a political break with reformist bosses' unions financed, set up and run by the communist, ballot-mongerin~ scab opposition to class collaboration and with the Labour/TUC capitalists and their government. Nor should the miners strike in Nottinghamshire, the UDM traitors whose backstabbing and ballot­ it be surprising that the myriad fake left has since gone on to claim a dubious majority mongering paved the way for, and now further­ groups like Workers Power who support imperi­ in South Derbyshire and inroads in other areas, encourage, the accursed UDM. alist 'democracy' a la Margaret Thatcher in notably Lancs. Lavishly financed by the bosses, Poland supported the Iron Lady's scab ballot openly opposed to striking, quick to sign a UDM: Tory paymasters, Labour godfathers in Notts as well. The virulently anti-Soviet 'sweetheart deal' with the Coal Board on Liberally endowed with hundreds of thous­ RCP, which now seeks to pose as defenders of wages and pensions, this anti-union, anti­ ands of pounds from the likes of the anti- the NUM to cover up its notorious scab pos- democratic outfit is a 'company union' in the fullest sense. The bosses are rubbing their hands with glee over the emergence of their own wretched little version of 'democratic' counterrevol­ utionary Polish Solidarnosc. The rise of the UDM is today at the sharp end of the Cold War splitting operation in the labour movement. The Electricians' Eric Hammond has joined hands wi th the Spenceri te UDM again8t the miners and with the Fleet Street bosses' of­ fensive against the print unions. The Elec­ tricians and Engineers, unions that scabherded against the miners strike. take government money and embrace anti-union laws. And the Labour/TUC leadership under Neil Kinnock and Norman Willis are trusted tools and ac­ complices of the Cold War right wing. Kinnock et al arc out to make the Labour Party safe for open scabherders in order to demonstrate their fitness for Number Ten. If the UDM is allowed to fester and grow, it poses a threat to unions not only in the coalfields but elsewhere. Just as with the Spencer union of the 1920-30s, the coal bosses are playing the UDM card for all it's Battle lines drawn during the strike continue today: the 'Union of Democratic Mineworkers' is anti-union, anti­ worth in their effort to weaken and destroy democratic, anti-Communist. It must be crushed through class struggle! the National Union of Mineworkers. But unlike the period following the 1926 General Strike, communist Freedom Association and American oil ition in favour of the ballot during the the militant layers of the working class today tycoon John Paul Getty, the UDM exhibits all strike, even today gives credence to Thatcher/ have not been demoralised into prostrate the hallmarks of corruption typically associ­ Lynk's 'democratic pretensions,' blaiming passivity. The NUM emerged from its defeat ated with CIA-style splitting and wrecking support for the UDM on 'the NUM's bureau­ bloodied b~t unbroken, with tens of thousands operations in the international labour move­ cratic methods.' (Next Step, 22 November) And of its members profoundly radicalised. At the Dent (see article, page ~). Several right­ the November 1985 Eurocommunist-loyal Leninist same time the oppressed masses of the inner­ wing NUM officials like Leicestershire's Jack moans, 'Hasn't the whole banner of "democracy" city ghettos who were among the strike's Jones and COSA's Trevor Bell have told of been handed to the right in this battle?' staunchest supporters demonstrated their own UDM/Coal Board attempts to bribe them with If the pro-CIA TUC/Labour Party Cold combativity in warding off Thatcher's cop cars and improved 'pensions' into taking their Warriors openly support the UDM, militant riots in the autumn. And the Iron Bitch her­ sections into the UDM. Meanwhile the NCB de­ miners can expect little better from 'Judas' self remains widely reviled throughout the liberately stalls wage negotiations with the MacKinnock and Norman Willis. It should be an population. NUM to allow the UDM to get 'bedded down'. The elementary demand that all the architects of Sentiment for an effective campaign Spencerite breakaway has not only been given and activists for this company union be booted against the scab union runs strong in the exclusive negotiating rights in the two areas out of the Labour Party -- yet Kinnock's gene­ coalfields, and significant battles are being where it does have a significant presence, but ral secretary Larry Whitty warns local cons­ waged against the Spencerite breakaway. At is also being given national negotiating tituency parties not to take any actions Westoe pit in the North East last month, the rights in all coalfields equal to the NUM. against UDM members. And the TUe talks about NCB sacked a man for allegedly 'intimidating' But if the Tories are the paymasters for 'deals' and 'compromises': Clive Jenkins harks a UDM recruiter. In the pivotal Notts border these professional strikebreakers and anti­ back to the early federated structure of the area of North Derbyshire. one fool scab pro­ communists, it is the Labour/TUC traitors who miners union upon which the rotten 1930s re­ vocatively 'preaching Um!' entered a pub provide the political inspiration. Len Murray unification with the Spencer union was based. filled with Warsop Main strike veterans having and Frank Chapple foreshadowed the Notts Yet the 'lefts' refuse to let go of the coat­ a pre-Christmas drink. Doze~s of cops hastily splitters with their vicious anti-communist tails of the scabherding rights. Recently arrived at the scene to provoke a bloody fight ~itchhunt of Arthur Scargill at the 1983 retired Emlyn Williams hailed Kinnock as 'a ending in the arrest of five miners. The end Dlackpool TUC for his forthright stand against good friend of the South Wales miners'! And of the strike has certainly not meant an end Polish Solidarnosc and anti-Soviet warmongers from Benn to Skinner to Scargill, they all of struggle in the coal industry, which has Heagan and Thatcher. And indeed it was the continue to boost Kinnock's fortunes as the seen dozen~ of local strikes over the past ten anti-Soviet Cold War elements within the next (strikebreaking) prime minister. months. At Silverwood colliery in Yorks last workers movement -- like Eric Eammond,. Dill month face workers who had just set a new Sirs and Terry Duffy -- who were the biggest No reliance on capitalist courts! production record called a well coordinated scabherders against the miners. Today it's For all his undoubted commitment to the work stoppage when management reneged on these same anti-communists, headed up by union, Scargill's left-reformist/Labourite promises to rehire 9 sacked miners. Hammond of the EETPU, who collaborate openly continued on page 11 Lynk's scab outfit must be destroyed as with the UDM.

12 JANUARY 1986