The Immediate Situation Ireland’s Crisis Cambodia - Class Analysis The Demonstration Paul Hoch on the Press The Arts Council Pilkington Strike May Day/Black Panthers

Established 1817 Vol 14 No 34 25th May 1970 Price 2/- The East is Red Photo: Sally Fraser. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 2

The Immediate Situation.

The US invasion of Cambodia has opened a new Wallacite platform, and he has called off the ing. Kosygin’s equivocating and vacuous utter­ stage in struggle throughout the world. In Indo- desegregation of schools. On May 2 a conservative ances contrast with the militant and clear posi­ China it has spread the war across the Peninsula, Nixon Republican, Bentsen, defeated a liberal Re­ tions taken up by the Chinese. posing new opportunities and new dangers for the publican Yarborough, in the Texas primary. This It is not only the colonial and capitalists worlds revolution. It has revitalised the flagging revolu­ Texas victory was on a pro-war platform. that have been transformed by the 1960s. The tionary forces within the US itself, and it has split But the unity of Nixon’s foreign and domestic Sino-Soviet dispute, and the rise of a critical the US ruling class. Cambodia, combined with the policies was even more clearly shown by his Post­ opposition in Eastern Europe, have weakened Middle East, has sharpened an existing economic master General, Blount, who declared at the end Soviet control over the eastern camp. The Soviet crisis and plunged the stock markets of the west of April: “Our history shows all too clearly in Union itself is in an economic crisis which has into the biggest fall since 1929. which direction the middle class moves when it is caused conflicts within the leadership, and its for­ The political importance of these developments frightened, angry or threatened. It goes to the eign policy is marked by defensive and repressive can be grasped by seeing them in terms of the his­ right, not to the left. The more frightened it be­ tendencies that have only smothered, not solved, tory from which they emerge. After 1945 the world comes, the angrier it gets, the more extreme its the problems it faces. While it pours arms into an was gripped by cold war: a solid Russian-led East action. And America has the largest middle class Egypt that cannot use them, and while it equivo­ faced a solid US-led West. Contradictions between in the world”. When Nixon announced his cates on Indo-China, it is still pursuing the defen­ countries or classes on either side were stifled. In Cambodian invasion, he specifically linked sive aims of the 1950s. In Vienna it is engaged in the third world, countries either followed one or “anarchy at home and abroad”. The next day, as a rapprochement with the US through the the other camp, or slithered into an enfeebled and he lurched, drunk, from a Pentagon briefing, he Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Across the anodyne neutrality. ranted on about “campus bums”. border in Prague its tanks are proping up a pro- Throughout the 1960s this static world-order But Nixon’s attempt to class war col­ Soviet clique. disintegrated, and the Cambodian events mark a lapsed when four students were shot in Ohio. Al­ The Cambodian events have therefore marked a new, third phase in this process. Each of the though only a week before the Vietnam turning point in all three areas of the world. In the phases has been marked by a change in the Indo- Moratorium Committee had closed its offices with colonial lands of Asia they have marked a strate­ Chinese war. In 1965 the US sent troops into Viet­ collapsing finances and organisation, and although gic extension of the revolutionary movement. In nam and started bombing the north, opening a many revolutionary leaders have been shot or the “socialist” camp, they mark a big swing of more intense phase of military struggle in Indo- imprisoned, a revived mass resistance swept power to China and further reveal the static per­ China, and a new, intensified phase of political across the American continent. Moreover the spectives of the Soviet leadership. In the capitalist struggle in the capitalist world. The Tet offensive tumbling of Wall Street showed that one vital sec­ world they have accelerated a pre-existing poli­ of early 1968 marked a second phase, of military tion of the US ruling class had no confidence in tical and economic crisis. retreat by imperialism and of mass political ac­ Nixon’s policies. The opposition had revived; the All these events will affect the situation in Bri­ tion in the USA and in Europe, especially in ruling class was split. tain. The Wilson clique is moving towards an elec­ France. The invasion of Cambodia, two years In steady decline since December 1968, Wall tion, which it will try to hustle its way through be­ after the revolutionary upsurge of May 1968, sig­ Street has been depressed by many factors: the fore the economy breaks down once again. Un­ nals the start of a third phase in this development. world-wide high in interest rates has sucked employment is at its highest since the war. Wilson The rise of colonial revolution, in the previously money out of the stock markets; there is universal has slavishly supported the US in Indo-China. But excluded “third” world, has melted the frozen poli­ pessimism about the future of the US economy; he knows that the recession in the US will hit the tics of the cold war. It has shown countries under the politics of Nixon at home and abroad inspire UK, and this external pressure will combine with imperialist control the way to throw off this con­ little confidence in financial circles. The stock the internal evolution of the UK economy. OECD trol. It has provoked severe economic and poli­ market fall both reflects and then encourages the predicts that the UK will have one of the lowest tical crises within the ruling classes of the capita­ fall in real output. growth rates in Europe during the 1970s and the in­ list world: France was split by Algeria, and the This economic crisis in the US has spread dustrial bourgeoisie will soon put up prices to des­ US by Vietnam. It has led to a spectacular rise in across the capitalist world. While Europe and troy the real effects of the recent wage increases. revolutionary politics within the advanced capita­ Japan may be gaining ground on the US, they are The warnings by Lord Shawcross, about the need list countries themselves. Freed from the need to still under its economic sway. The fall in Wall for another devaluation within eighteen months, choose between Stalin and the west, workers and street has been matched by a fall across the mar­ show that one section of the ruling class is already intellectuals have seen the possibility of making kets of London, Tokyo and Sydney. The fall in US on the alert. their own history. They have learnt the lesson of output will provoke a contraction in world trade. The UK is also faced with its own specific colo­ the Vietnamese—that mass action, led by Marxist No capitalist country can escape the influence of nial problem, the Vietnam of the late nineteenth parties, can defeat imperialism. They have used the dominant imperialist power. century—Ireland. While the expansion of Euro­ the contradictions opened up by colonial revolu­ Significant in this respect is this fate of IOS, the pean capitalism transformed the Irish Republic in tion (hostility to conscription, foreign exchange largest popular investment fund in the world. Its the 1950s, the political resurgence of the 1960s gal­ crises) to organise against capitalist society. collapse reflects a counter-offensive by European vanised the north. The two have combined to re­ This rise of revolutionary politics has gone to­ (especially German and British) capital against a suscitate a fight that has been dormant since the gether with a growing economic instability particularly vicious American competitor. On an­ counter-revolutionary settlement of 1921. throughout the capitalist world. America’s junior other level it has signalled a general and accele­ These events demonstrate the unity of the world cold war allies (the Common Market) and the old rated loss of confidence in market stocks and crisis, provoked by the disintegration of the post­ Axis powers (Japan, Germany) have risen to chal­ added to the crisis emanating from Wall Street. war order. Capitalism unified the world, but it did lenge her economic supremacy. Since 1958 the US This economic and political crisis in the US and so in an uneven way, and it is through this Mar­ has had a balance of payments deficit, which has its allies has been sharpened by, and has coin­ xist concept of the combined and uneven develop­ been sharply increased by the expenses of the Viet­ cided with, the Cambodian invasion. In Asia itself, ment of the world that the paradox of the present nam war. She used, however, to have a surplus on the invasion has transformed the co-ordinates of multiple yet united crisis can be grasped. visible trade. This has now gone, and a wave of revolutionary struggle. In Indo-China it has The upsurge of May 1968 was a political move­ defensive protectionism has started to sweep the spread the anti-imperialist struggle to Laos and ment contained by repression and token conces­ States. “The cause of the current battle is fairly Cambodia and opened up new problems, and new sions. The sharp international currency crisis of clear: it stems from mounting American frustra­ openings, for the revolution in Vietnam. More­ 1969 was solved because it was a question of in­ tion at seeing the historic U.S. postwar trade sur­ over, it has now brought the war nearer to stitutional and political decisions, which the capita­ plus, which reached $6.4 billion record of exports Thailand, Malaysia and Burma, where the guer­ list states took rationally to prop up their over imports in 1964, shrink to almost nothing” rilla forces will now be in a stronger position. economies. The crisis of May 1970 is of a different (Newsweek 23. 3. 70). The Cambodian invasion also coincided with a order. It combines the political conditions of 1968 Losing out in the world market, the US is also in deepening crisis at the other end of Asia. In the with deeper material and economic conditions, the grips of an internal economic crisis. GNP has week that the Daily Telegraph reported how the which are soluble neither by repression, nor by ra­ fallen this year. Unemployment is rising. Earn­ Dhofar situation was “causing grave concern at tional adjustments. But one immediate response ings for the first quarter of 1970 are all down for the Foreign Office” (29. 4. 70) the US was thrown in­ will be increased political repression: the new such big US firms as General Motors, Ford, Stan­ to hysteria by rumours of Russian pilots flying in anti-demonstration laws in France, and the trials dard Oil of Indiana and Boeing. But prices are go­ Egypt. in the US make this plain. ing up, and the US is now caught in a triple bind Strategically these two sets of events can be The central factor of this whole crisis is the con­ with economic recession, price inflation and the seen as a huge pincer movement converging on flict between the US ruling class and its opponents largest balance of payments deficit in its history. the Indian sub-continent. Throughout the vast at home and abroad. Marx pointed out in the intro­ “In its attempt to control inflation and simul­ underbelly of Asia, from Saigon to Amman, the duction to Capital that the American War of Inde­ taneously prevent sever recession, the Nixon Asian continent is stirring with incipient pendence of 1776 heralded the French Revolution Administration has used up most of its options” revolution. of 1789, and that the outbreak of the US Civil War (Time, 4. 5. 70). The two most populous states in Asia, China and in 1861 provoked the economic crisis which have The political response of Nixon to this combined India, have now been brought into closer involve­ birth to the First International of 1864. To-day, military and economic crisis has been Repression. ment with the revolutionary struggles around when the US occupies a far more important world Nixon’s aim has been to unify the white middle them. The Indian revolutionary movement is still role, the growing crisis there will have momen­ class behind him, to scare them and to form them in a fragmented stage, but it will receive a power­ tous consequences. into a solid conservative bloc. His policy is one of ful impulse from developments to its east and Yet it is the unbelievable heroism, suffering and intensified class war. west. The Cambodian events have brought China militancy of the people of Asia that has charac­ A wave of repressive trials against students and back into world politics. While the Russians mini­ terised the present epoch. It is because the east is blacks has been sweeping the US. Nixon’s mised the tripartite alliance of Sihanouk, the NLF red that new revolutionary possibilities have been “southern strategy” is to win the south on a and Pathet Lao, the Chinese press gave it top bill­ opened in the west. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 3 The United Irish; divided together.

have been rational, but the results have that revolutionary republicanism has no From our Belfast Correspondent ground on which to grow. But, turning Sunday May 10 been explosive. The conflict in the North has now been completely transformed... against each other, the cabinet split when Today, under the wry headline ‘United Lynch decided that Haughey and Co had Iceland’ the Dublin paper the Sunday Whereas two years ago the struggle was led by a small group of students, the gone too far for Lynch’s own safety. Independent lists the following: “Sinn Without this shift in Fianna Fail policy Fein is split. The Ulster Unionists are split. Peoples Democracy is now helpless an un­ able to intervene. The basic division with­ as a whole, the posse of Northern poli­ The Ulster minority is split. The Labour ticians who arrived in Dublin on May 8th Party is split. Fianna Fail is split. Fine in what the Sunday Independent called ‘the Ulster minority’ no longer lies be­ to defend Haughey, Boland and Blaney Gael alone at present is united”. In other would have been unthinkable. Side by side words, only the most backward and re­ tween the moderate civil rights movement (Corrigan, Hume Kennedy) and the PD. with leading members of the Provisional’s mote of all Irish political forces, the right- Northern command were Paddy Kennedy wing farmers’ party Fine Gael, has sur­ It is now a bitter battle between the two sections of the republicans, and Fianna (Republican Labour MP in Stormont) and vived intact the storms which in 1968 Aiden “count the Catholics” Corrigan. woke Ireland from its apparently endless Fail itself has been a party to this change. Eddie McAteer, president of the Nationa­ political slumber. What has happened is that divisions list Party expressed his regret at being un­ But like a stubborn Rip van Winkle, Charles Haughey have opened up within Sinn Fein and the able to attend. None of these forces would Irish politics seems determined to return IRA. The Dublin leadership proved itself have lined up with both the physical-force to its sectarian past. In a changing world, There ears close to the ground, they militarily incompetent during the crucial the chaos and disunity of Ireland’s present sensed a mounting opposition to Lynch, al­ month of August last year. It has con­ republicans and the Fianna Fail two years crisis throws out an erie light. The most ways regarded with suspicion by the rank’ tinued to move towards a socialist, but at ago. Their collective presence signals the dramatic and heart-felt political emo­ and file as he lacks any filial or personal the same time less militant position. This realignment which has taken place. tions—of country class, and nations are be­ connections with the national revolution. has encouraged the growth of ‘anti­ The class character of the new line-up ing endlessly regurgitated by mean and As far as popular opinion was concerned, communist’ physical-forcers (now known is clear. By playing into Paisley’s hands in narrow men maneuvering to salvage a Lynch’s lack of the traditional scars of as The Provisionals) within the IRA. In re­ the North, it has further divided Pro­ power base for their own personal ends. Irish struggle rendered him vunerable to cent months as these have gathered testants from Catholics and the Irish work­ The latest of the splits, and the most selling Ireland out lock stock and barrel. strength against the Dublin leadership, the ing class from socialism. sudden, has rent Fianna Fail, which has On the other hand, despite the long record Blaney/Boland faction within Fianna Fail Today Belfast is recovering from sus­ governed the 26 counties almost un- of republican treachery, no such suspicion has decided to back them. There is little piciously unspontanious fighting in North brokenly since the early thirties. Fianna falls on Blaney, whose family pedegree in­ doubt, in fact, that they have known about Queen Street, an area under the leader­ Fail is a conservative republican party cludes victims of an earlier Northern and encouraged the split between the Offi­ ship of the Provisionals. Clearly it is in which, before the war, won the support of pogrom. cial and Provisional leadership of the IRA. Haughey’s interest to create fighting in the the small farmers and sections of the Into the apparently insoluble contradic­ Almost the entire Southern Government North, if he wants to unseat Lynch. He urban working class in the South on the tion between Lynch and the Blaney group, must have been privy to this decision to has to embarass Lynch and show that his basis of a militant flag waving anti-imperia­ stepped the now ex-Minister of Finance back the Provisionals. This includes not policy of moderation is leaving Catholics list platform. Charles Haughey. Fianna Fail’s only poli­ only the three Ministers mentioned, but defenceless against the Paisleyites and the Since August last, when the guns came tical and economic brain of any stature, also Minister of Justice Moran (in charge British Army. At the same time Haughey out in Belfast, there have co-existed two Haughey was responsible for the economic of the Special Branch), Minister of De­ has no intention of leading a full scale mili­ clearly opposed positions within the recovery of Southern Ireland and its fence Gibbons (in charge of Army tary action into the North against the Fianna Fail leadership. There is the posi­ economic integration into the UK. A man intelligence) and, therefore, inevitably, wishes of the British—his entire economic tion represented by Prime Minister of ambition, Haughey was not content Prime Minister Lynch. and financial work of the last years would Lynch, which advocates a federal solution with remaining Minister of Finance. His Republicanism has always been a be ruined by such an adventure. What to Partition, a rapprochment with the main problem was to find a power-base danger to a Fianna Fail. They have never Haughey wants to do, and what he may North and the transformation of Fianna from which to launch a suitable attack on forgotten that the uprising in 1916 was led have succeeded in doing, is to cash in on Fail into a moderate Christain Democratic Lynch. With growing rank and file re­ by Connolly’s anti-capitalist citizen’s the new militancy of republicanism before party. Against this strategy, Blaney and publicanism, with the new strength of the army, and their traditional relationship to it becomes politicised and moves to the Boland, the so-called “wild men” of the “ Physical-force” militants, and with republicans has been to. jail them. Now left. He then wants to use this for a bid for party, advocated a flag-waving and Blaney and Bolands control of the Party they have decided to imprison them in a leadership in the South and a strong hand apparently anti-British policy towards the machine, the gun-runners offered a posi­ different way. Exploiting republican mili­ to bargain with the British. Without doubt North. tive attraction to the cool headed tancy to strengthen their own internal posi­ he wants a united Ireland, and at the same Blaney and Boland were jointly organi­ Haughey. tion, the entire Fianna Fail leadership time he has no intention of leading an sers of the Party’s national machine. The thinking behind each step may encouraged the IRA division to ensure independent one.

That the whole business was largely a personal vendetta against Cornfield is indi­ cated by two factors: firstly, he was hated by the gnomes of Geneva. Blondes, private aircraft, wild parties, and short working hours gained him the contempt of the capitalist establishment. Cornfeld quits top job Secondly, as soon as the Banque Rothschilde in France, Pierson, Heldring & Pierson in Holland, Drexel Hairman Ripley and Smith Barney in New York and Hill Samuel in London (who were the in big IO S shake-up chief underwriters to the I.O.S. share issue) demanded the resignation of Corn­ field and his right hand man Edward Cowett, from the board the shares began to pick-up on the market. Now this clause has been fulfilled the banks are injecting the necessary funds into the operation to Bernie Cornfield built up a financial funds were bringing in $20,m. a month. save it. empire selling mutual trusts throughout He had more money staked in Italian C IT Y D W A R F Cornfield’s story is the clash of two the world: mutual trusts are funds, similar industry than the Vatican itself. Before the kinds of capitalism. Cornfield believed to British unit trusts, which enable a small crash, his personal holding in the company the biggest share issue Europe has ever that everyone should have a share in the investor to get a stake in equities. The sec­ was worth $100m. Dover Plan, the re- known. fruits of capitalist enterprise, even if the ret of Cornfield’ success, which enabled ently launched British end of the busi­ Then things started going wrong. It lion’s share was his own. Not only an I.O.S. to place a total $2,300m. dollars in ness, was growing at an unprecedented would appear that the empire suffered estimated 12 of his senior advisers were equity investments was his tribe of whizz- rate, despite the generally gloomy outlook from having too much money: the cash multi-millionaires, but the whole tribe of kid salesman, each one of whom was re­ for most existing unit trusts, 100,000 was literally being eaten away by inflation investors from Moscow to Wall Street warded not only with a handsome salary people are now insured with the group. before it could be usefully invested. (yes, there are even Cornfield funds in and commission, but with stock option in Last autumn Cornfield launched a There is nothing that the capitalist Russia) were getting rich. the company, which was bounding ahead public sale of shares in his two companies: establishment likes more than to murder a He also believed in the flamboyant and in the markets. I.O.S. Ltd and I.O.S. Management; a re­ successful upstart in their ranks, as soon flagrant use of wealth. One of his first reac­ In France alone, Cornfield’s various ported $150m. dollars worth were issued as he shows signs of weakiness. Witness tions to the crash was to cut expenses of the recent Robert Maxwell affair). And his executives overnight, to save $lm. a Cornfield was ripe for murder. Traditional year, which indicates they were scarcely finance did not hesitate. pasimonious before. Numerous banks throughout the world Geneva, the Rothschilds and what have EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE by now had substantial share stakes in the you, believe in the cloistered discretion of Anthony Barnett, Vinay Chand, Clive Goodwin, Fred Halliday, I.O.S. empire. By selling these shares on money making, in keeping it strictly within John Hoyland, John McGrath, Adrian Mitchell, Mike Newton, Sheila Rowbotham. the market they could shatter confidence the established hierachies of wealth, and overnight. They did. When the share price in not flaunting it in the face of the world. Editorial: Vincent Haig Jo Dale, Judy crashed, Cornfield’s personal fortune Ferguson. So as long as the structure continues to Layout: Dave Craddock, Mike Newton, Ruth Prentice. plunged by $50m. They hoped to trigger exist men like Maxwell and Cornfield are off a dual reaction, the selling of shares by god-sends to the revolution. They expose a salesman whose total holding was con­ the whole game for what it is; they weaken siderable, and even more crucially to kill Published by THE BLACK DWARF, 79 CROMWELL ROAD, LONDON millions of people’s faith in capitalist in­ SW7. the company’s income by causing the vestment, and they provide the not un­ Printed by Larcular Ltd, 32 Paul Street; London EC1 small investors to lose confidence in the Distributed by Moore-Harness Ltd, 11 Lever Street, EC1. pleasant sight of two different kinds of parent company and cancel their plans, on capitalist dragons trying to cut each others which its entire income depended. throats. PERCY INGRAMS. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 4 Pilkington Glass. Life depends on it.

From the editorial staff of Big Union and talk about mass resignations HOW IT BEGAN. WHY THE STRIKE HAPPENED. Flame when they return to work. Only the Bridlington agreement prevents another “I ’ll stay out for 2 years if necessary. THE PICKET LINE AT ST. HELENS Pilkington’s own and run this town and its Union embracing them now in mid-strike. Things are getting a bit tight but I ’ll steal about time it stopped". if I have to. I'll eat bloody glass before Outside agitators? The only agitators are The strike is now largely confined to St. they get me back in there". Helens which goes to confirm the impor­ those trying to get in through the gates”. The Union’s collaboration has been in­ The strike’s insignificant beginning is The scabs left the Sheet Works in St. tance of the company town setting. dispensable to maintaining. Pilkington’s proof of the underswell of unrest at Suddenly all the factors which operated Helens to roars of abuse from the militant 100 year strike-free record, bar the picket of maybe 800 men and women, many Pilkington’s. On Friday 3rd April there in the firm’s favour have been reversed. general strike. The Union’s refusal to was a dispute about an incorrect bonus of them in their fifties. A woman shouts: The theatre, the free Christmas chicken make the strike official, its attempt to drag payment in one section of the Sheet Glass for every employee, and the JIC are all “there’s the thousands who returned to the workers back for the £3 rise rather Works. The men involved arranged a meet­ seen with fresh eyes for what they are. work”. Everyone laughs: they all know by than the £10 the rank and file strike com­ ing which quickly decided to demand a £5 There seems to be a conspiracy to keep now that the press lies. mittee demand, and its lack of contact rise. The delegation met local manage­ the workers down to which the local About an hour later the rumour spreads with local feeling are all in the NUGMW’s ment soon afterwards and were told that that the bulk of the scabs are going out. paper, the Union, the firm and the police highest traditions. Where this Union is nothing could be done except through the are all parties. The picket, joined by 30 or so local build­ strong wages are low. The basic rate at JIC. If management had been able to tell ing workers, surges forward as the scabs The Labour mayor, a Pilkington Pilkington’s for a 40 hour week is £15. the men that there would be immediate employee, preserves his neutrality by near the gate—about 100 of them. “Let’s Bonuses and overtime vary so erratically talks none of the rest might have going to dinner with the Lord and Lady. get at them lads”. With only a thin blue from week to Week, even for men in the happened. But they could not, and the Because he sens and daughters are shat­ line seperating them, scuffles break out same jobs, that those who want their fami­ Sheet Glass strikers began a march from tered to perceive how they once partici­ and the scabs are put to rout. Loud cheers lies to survive are often compelled to work St. Helens to call out the other plants. By pated in their own enslavement, there is and the strains of ‘solidarity for ever’. 60 or more hours. midnight that Friday, 1, 000 were out. By all the viciousness of a family bust up. Another pause while police reinforce­ Sunday, the £5 demand had doubled. By ments, including horse fuzz, are brought Once free, they cannot be restrained. Monday 8, 000 workers were on strike and “Men who have spent the best 30 or 40 up, still the scabs dare not leave. At last The Union’s role as Surrogate manager all six St. Helens factories stopped. By the someone goes into parley and comes back years of their lives to enrich Lord Harry depends on 3 factors. Most important is following Friday all the factories in Britain were now walking ten feet tall” wrote a with the scabs’ guarantee that won’t cross the Joint Industrial Council, a collection had stopped as well. The next Monday, the picket line next day. member of the strike committee in Big of 22 management and 22 Union re­ the Unions national official, Dasent, Flame. There is a thirst for knowledge That was Tuesday. On Monday, the un­ presentatives, which meets about twice a appealed for a return to work: “In fact to official rank and file strike committee (it now about what is happening outside St. year. get negotiations going”. The response of Helens which is breaking through the in­ is recognised by 8, 800 strikers in St. the mass meeting of 8, 000 was an over­ Helens but not by the firm nor the Union, sularity of the St. Helen’s workers. whelming rejection. That set an unchang­ Not everyone believes that low wages, the notorious National Union of General This 50 year old mummy is to all ing pattern. and Municiple Workers) had decided appearances invulnerable to rank and file bad housing and paternalism are sufficient In rejecting the return to work con­ ingredients of the strike. Lady Pilkington against a blockading picket in case if pressures. In normal times it serves sistently, the rank and file has effectively would provoke a violent response. They Pilkingtons and the Union well. When says: “... can’t believe that the strike was deposed both the union officials and the started by our loyal employees in St. were right, of course, but they were fast trouble arises, it takes too long to convene self appointed strike committee of con­ overtaken by a spontaneous militant leap and is too remote for it to be effective Helen. I think it was started by trouble servative shop stewards (known univer­ makers in Liverpool who don’t care about forward. And that is how the Pilkington against revolt. If the JIC had been more sally as the Twelve Just Men, although Strike, now in its fifth week, has deve­ flexible, the strike might have been the company and its traditions”. The they only seem to be able to muster nine charge is predictable but not borne out. If loped: surprising bosses, Union officials squashed at source. Second, many of the names at present). The unofficial strike and the workers themselves by its sudden stewards raised and trained in the atmos­ the recent £5 Ford’s rise set people think­ committee, composed of one steward and ing in St. Helens it was the fault of the development. In retrospect, naturally, it phere of the JIC regime are in practice one rank and file worker from each fac­ all seems inevitable. Once the legitimacy ancilliary supervisors. Thirdly, the Union T. V. rather than a band of desperados tory in St. Helens, regards itself as the ser­ from Liverpool. of the Pilkington empire was challenged it is totally out of touch and beyond the con­ vant and organiser of rank and file follow­ was bound to collapse. It was built on trol of its people. It spends more on offi­ ing, but places most emphasis on the for­ AND IN THE END .... paternalism, the odious atmosphere of a cial cars than on strike pay, and its mer role. It has undergone a crash course company town, and the moumentally cor­ General Secretaries come to a peaceful in strike organisation and Socialism. It has ‘‘The Press are on the firm ’s side. Bloody rupt and undemocratic collaboration of and prosperous end in Debretts. When the come to realise in the fifth week the neces­ cameramen are hanging around like vul­ the NUGMW. Union tried to force a return to work sity for calling on collective support from tures. An old man collapsed here this through a secret ballot, papers were workers throughout the area. Already LORD PILKINGTON AND ST morning (on the picket) and when the addressed to dead members of the union, most supplies to the factories have been ambulance came, they were there. In to­ HELENS non members of the union, and even some halted, non-Pilkington workers have morrow’s papers it will be ‘mob real members of the union. It did not even joined the picket, and there have been violence!”. ‘‘Some people in the community adore the have an up to date list of its members in offers of material and financial support The most intimate sequence of capita­ Pilkingtons, while the Pilkingtons are busy St. Helens. from workers on Merseyside. kicking legs from under them". iism is held out before the striking Pilkingtons, the biggest private firm in workers. Every element in the system Britain, still owned by the founding plays its role. The police have brought in family, rules the glass industry and St. 200 reinforcements to harrass the picket Helens—the first by size and technology, when they can—one picket even had his the second by old style determination. It bicycle brakes tested on the line—and the totally monopolises the other glass fac­ head of the St. Helens police declares: ‘if tories in Lancashire, Doncaster, Glasgow, necessary, even more men will be brought Birkenhead and Wales. It counts as the in to preserveorder and ensure that any­ world’s fourth largest glass producer with one that wishes to return to work may do factories in 10 countries. Pilkington’s APPEAL so unmolested’. major breakthrough in glass technology, The ultimate political lesson will be the float glass process, is licensed to manu­ when pickets are arrested and brought be­ facturers in 11 countries. Almost every fore the local justice, Lord Harry himself. window you look through in Britain was St. Helens, the company town, is the produced by the sweat of the firm’s microcosm of the authority relations of capitalism. 33, 000 workers—and it realises roughly We appeal to all fellow workers to help £10 million profit a year. us in our fight with Pilkington’s. We are The Press have concentrated on what Half the Pilkington’s labour force is in fighting for the £10 a week rise on our they see as the end of paternalism. In one St. Helens which means that a third of all basic rate of £15. The strike is now in its respect they are right. But they are wrong working adults there are in their pay. fifth week and we urgently need funds to to see the strike as exceptional because of Today, deserted bars, shops and buses in continue the struggle. The union is not this. After 144 years of subservience, the St. Helens testify to the enormous impact’ supporting our claims, in fact it is fighting workers have decided to rebel. The of the strike on the town’s economy. with the management, so we are not receiv­ combination of reasons, the archic diffe­ Pilkingtons has been St. Helen’s overseer ing strike pay. Please send contributions rentials, the example of the recent big for 144 years and the forms of their hold to me, John Potter, Treasurer for Rank wage rises, the younger and more militant are formal and informal but pervasive. and File Strike Committee, at 63 Parbold workers, do not hide the fact that, with ex­ Lord Harry and two fellow directors are Avenue, Blackbrook, St. Helens. Tel: plosive force, the workers of St. Helens, J.P. s. Lady Pilkington dispenses charity on 29941. trapped in a company town, have decide various local boards. The firm has built a overnight to take their employer, their theatre in the town. Last Thursday the Union, the police and the press. This council’s Labour majority increased, but it switch has been backed with an amazing makes very little difference. For stubborness. Without strike pay, with the Pilkington’s paternalism is translated by knowledge that they will soon be throwing the council in to thoroughgoing com­ thousands of car workers off their jobs, placency. 10% of all houses are unfit for FROM THE the men and women of Pilkingtons have habitation and the town’s appearance is an decided that they have had enough. exact replica of a northern industrial town Their action is an immediate confirma­ of the 1920s. tion that the increase in industrial mili­ STRIKE COMMITTEE tancy has come not just from the white col­ THE NATIONAL UNION OF lar workers, teachers, draughtsmen and GENERAL AND MUNICIPAL pilots, but from sectors of the ‘old’ work­ WORKERS. ing class, like the dustmen, forgotten until they decide to fight. “Top and bottom of it is-—it’s all the At the same time, though class con­ bloody Union". sciousness in St. Helens is high, and the Last week there was an attempt, com­ men there are receptive to a revolutionary pletely spontaneous, to ransack the local alternative to the reformism of the Labour office of the Union. Windows were Party that they still vote for, there is no smashed, but the local officials had long effective alternative. Politically they will since retreated from St. Helens. The lapse back when the strike is over. They strikers reserve a deep hatred for the are learning many lessons but they have few ways in which they can retain them. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 5 Labour's Politics means Unemployment

The pound is strong, the balance of payments that this extra productivity does not generate CHART 1: MERGERS AND TAKEOVERS is at present in Britain’s favour, and 617, 000 extra jobs. The result, as the second chart £1600m British workers are unemployed. For the last shows, is that output has risen while employ­ two months unemployment in this country has ment has if anything diminished. been higher than at any time since the war. Thus the two main prongs of Labour’s £1400m While the number of unemployed rises the economic policy—short term squeeze to save length of time that men are without work is the balance of payments, and long term also increasing. Before Labour came to power ‘rationalisation’ to make the economy more the average length of unemployment was two profitable—have both combined to increase £1200m weeks. Now it is a month. And behind that unemployment. The Labour Party has ensured average are many who are out of work for that it is the working class which pays the bill months on end. for reforming British industry and consolidat­ Why are the numbers who suffer the ing Britain’s position in the world markets. It £1000m poverty and degradation of unemployment on is also ensuring that big business takes the the rise? The young and unmarried who con profits. Not only is the Labour Party’s foreign the State are only a marginal part of the policy imperialist, its economic policies are £800m figures. nakedly capitalist. Two main factors cause unemployment. A drop in production, or a rise in productivity. CHART 2: OUTPUT AND EMPLOYMENT Since 1964, and especially since 1966, both EMPLOYMENT AND OUTPUT AS % £600m these causes have been in action. The Labour OF THEIR 1963 LEVELS Party has squeezed demand and and cut back 130 output as a short term solution towards the £400m balance of payments problem. In 1966, almost 125 immediately after it returned to power with a comfortable majority, the Labour Party put a 120 tight limit on people’s ability to buy more £200m goods by raising taxes and making it harder to get credit. 115 £100m At the same time the Labour Party set out towards a long term ‘rationalisation’ of the 110 1964 1966 1954 1958 1962 1968 1960 1956 economy. They used two weapons. Firstly, an incomes policy which was used to enforce pro­ IMIS CHART SHOWS HOW THE CON­ ductivity agreements throughout the biggest 105 CENTRATION OF CAPITAL HAS BEEN industries. Secondly, the streamlining of INCREASING. OVER 8,000 COMPANIES British capitalism itself. In 1966 Labour set up 100 HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN MERGERS an Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, AND TAKEOVERS SINCE 1954. SINCE gave it £150 million, and told, it to enforce, 95 LABOUR’S INDUSTRIAL bribe and cajole British captialists into com­ 1967 1968 1969 REORGANISATION CORPORATION bining. STARTED TO HELP FINANCE MERGERS Mergers have accelerated fantastically (see THIS CHART SHOWS THAT ALTHOUGH IN 1966, IT HAS BEEN THE GIANT chart 1). The GEC-AEI merger, which threw THE OUTPUT OF MANUFACTURING IN­ COMPANIES WHICH HAVE BEEN MERG­ 12, 000 out of their jobs, shows how the in­ DUSTRY HAS GROWN (AT ABOUT 4% PER ING RATHER THAN THE MEDIUM ONES. creased efficiency of these giant firms causes YEAR) SINCE JANUARY 1967, (THE NUMBER OF FIRMS INVOLVED IN direct unemployment. Combined with the pro­ EM PLOYM ENT IN MANUFACTURING HAS 1968 WAS ONLY TWICE THAT OF 1954, BUT ductivity deals, which now cover 25% of the FALLEN. THIS IS HOW ‘‘PRODUCTIVITY” TH EIR VALUE WAS FIFTEE N TIMES work force, output per man has risen steadily. HAS RISEN: MORE OUTPUT FROM LESS THAT OF 1954. ) At the same time the squeeze has ensured MEN. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 6

The demonstrators at the Embassy end of North Audley St; hoping that somewhere somebody was doing something.

Debacle in Grosvenor Square.

In London the opposition to the imperia­ from the plaintive flowers held by the The police and the BCPV planned to be almost unscathed). list invasion of Cambodia was a parade. British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam to turn the march down Duke Street into the But the marchers did not know what Like lightning without thunder it illumin­ the equally indulgent war-parties that Square on the side furthest away from the they wanted. Unwilling to move away ated the weakness of the British Left. roamed the town into the night—the Embassy. But the militants ran straight from the Embassy, too afraid to charge the In October 1968 tens of thousands took whole pathetic scenario of the anti­ past Duke Street, leaving 200 of the offi­ line of police horses, too ill-organised to the streets, linked arms, chanted, ran, but imperialist “movement” was laid bare. cial leadership stranded on their own, hold their ground, they hung back from never made Grosvenor Square. On The British Campaign for Peace in Viet­ mournfully signing the names of the four moving in any direction at all. The steady Saturday May 9th, nearly two years later, nam led the way out of Trafalgar Square Kent students. pressure of the crowd, the coaches on the six thousand marched up the Charing and up Charing Cross Road. In Oxford North Audley Street, whicl leads North side of the road, and the space left Cross Road towards the Embassy.... Street militants behind the VSC and IMG straight down to the Embassy, was by the police line, combined to move the But even the few lessons of 1968 had banners held the march back and took blocked by the police. The main body of mass (it was by this time neither a march been forgotten. Few people linked arms; effective leadership. In between the two, the march broke through the line, forced nor a confrontation) in a diagonal. They they didn't bunch up tightly; they didn’t Cinema Action, with an enormous banner, the police back, and piled up into North hit the police lines up against the park rail­ choose their own group and stay with was left stranded in Oxford Circus as the BC- Audley street. The police gradually gave ings almost opposite the Rossevelt them. The chanting was patchy; the slo­ PV disappeared towards Bond Street and the way and switched their tactics. Unable to Memorial. gans were old and unimaginative; there VSC held its ground. Then with a certain clear North Audley Street without a Here, for a few minutes, some real fight­ was no collective strength. From the head of steam packed up behind it, the bloody frontal charge, they decided to let ing took place. The police line was bro­ speeches, which went unheard, to the list­ VSC ran a few lengths, crossed Regents the demonstration out into the North Side ken, and for a moment it seemed as less and even more demoralising discus­ Street and moved on towards the entrance of the Square, exposing their valuable though the demonstration might break sions that rambled on into the evening; to the Square. police coaches to the mob (they were to

DEMONSTRATORS Police P o l i c e horses Police coach The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 7

free into the Square’s fine greenery. But Acton Railway Workshop Joint Trade police reinforcements were rushed up and Union Committee was still there the line was held. Then the police retal­ behind them. What would happen in iated by driving first a wedge of cops and the Square? Would the new then the horses into the thick of the clus­ spontaneous alliance of forces be ter of militants. For a few seconds sealed, or drowned, in blood? Or truncheons were out and there were a would we be allowed into the couple of gashed heads. A car was over­ Embassy alongside message-bearers turned, one policeman was rumoured to LONDON MrsGladys Easton and Mr Ben have been unseated. But the police drove Birnbaum of the London District the militants backwards with relative ease, In Trafalgar Square, the Old-Tory speeches by Bill Jones (TUC General Committee of the Tailor & Garment for there was only empty space behind imperialists of the Monday Club were Council & British Peace Committee), Workers Union? them. The rest of the demonstrators were warming up to the strains of Pomp Sid Bidwell (Left-Labour MP for The dizzying hopes died abruptly, still standing around in the bottom of and Circumstance and Land of Hope Southall), John Gollan (CPGB as the eagle-crowned façade came in North Audley street trying to work out and Glory. Plainly every ounce of General Secretary), and Stan Newens sight. Somehow, the serried and what was going on. gentlemanly sang-froid would be (Left-Labour MP for Epping). It serious ranks behind had melted Before long, the bulk of the demon­ needed before this audience which would take more than a little aggro to away. As usual, the adventurists found strators were leaving the Square, and a consisted, entirely and embarassingly, stop this, the annual outing of the themselves alone, and the customary thousand hot, tired and impatient agitators of National Front cads. ‘Enforce Law real, old, solid Left. The timeless sense of impotent rage and frustration were left. Shepherded helplessly along by & Order’ and ‘Red Jackboot Follows phrases rang out, relieved by the sun, descended. We learned later that the the police and by their own undirected Student Chatter, ’ stated the neatly- ice-cream, children, and a steady srocession had let itself be cut in two momentum, they followed each other printed posters. infiltration of adventurists. by the police. Somewhere else, out of round the Square. When they reached the First through the Square was the Two Vietcong banners were sight, Brothers Gollan, Newens, South-West corner, they ground up Socialist Labour League Young unfurled as Gollan ground his way to Norwood, Birnbaum and Easton were against the police again—the police hav­ Socialists on their sequestered way to a conclusion. While Stan Newens took being ushered through the police lines ing moved all their forces across to meet an afternoon of May Day orations in un the burden, these began to and emerging stern-faced to their them. For a time there was an impasse. the Lyceum Ballroom. The TV circulate through the sunbathing reward, a full front-page spread in But when nothing seemed to come out of cameramen all panned industriously crowd; there were cries of ‘To next day’s Morning Star. it, people started to drift away. And as the from National Fronters to Young Grosvenor Square!’ Previously, it had So, hemmed in by blue, the left- numbers diminished, the police became Socialists and back again, establishing been announced from the platform extremists held their own May Day more aggressive: horses moved in on the British point of view for that even­ that a delegation would bear a protest meeting sitting in the street on marchers who were sitting down, a car ing. message to the US Embassy, and the Grosvenor Square, south side. In tried to drive its way through the crowd, Half an hour after the SLL came masses had been (incautiously) invited those situations where one wants to groups broke away from the Square and the more varied and gregarious march to go along as well. Now, under sheer do everything, and can do almost went off to find other targets, and a police­ fathered by the Communist Party of pressure of boredom, they began to nothing, what counts is to do man leant out of a police-bus to squirt a Great Britain: trade union district get up too soon and follow the something, however limited, for the fire-extinguisher containing Hydrogen committees, trades councils, Young extremists with the VC flags. sake of morale and another day. An Tetrachloride into girls’ eyes. But the Communist Leaguers, Unity Theatre, Anarchists materialized. The American comrade just back from main battle was over. People hung around the Connolly Association, and some International Marxist Group appeared Vietnam told us about troop revolts for another hour or so, and then went bands. Already on the Embankment it with a large banner. Robin Blackburn against the war there. Another burned home. had been joined by some people con­ was seen waving a flag with the Starry his draft-card, and reminded us that While they were milling at the end of cerned with the US invasion of Plough. thousands like us were fighting inside North Audley Street, the marchers had Cambodia than with the dusty ritual This motley crew of schismatics the USA too (this was before the Ohio looked in vain at each other, at the police, of a ‘May Day’ which was not even on moved away from the Park towards shootings). Robin Blackburn pointed at the odd extremist shouting directions, the 1st of May. The number of such Grosvenor Square, followed out that we were too few to take the hoping that somewhere somebody was do­ extremists grew as the march neared (unbelievably) by most of the May Embassy but should come back in ing something. Broken, fragmented and its destination, Hyde Park. Day assemblage of trade union greater force on Saturday, May 9th. half-hearted, the demonstration was yet an­ In the Park, some skinheads were worthies, CPGB dignitaries, and Pat Jordan warned us to stick together other outing of individuals, old friends and on the prowl. Easily the most effective fellow-travellers. A unique accident of as we dispersed, in view of what had the occasional under-mobilised group. demonstrators of the day, they had history, this Popular Frontist’s night­ happened to the Panthers a few days There was little political anger, no class- just disrupted the Socialist Party of mare wound its way back down before. hatred, not an ounce of determination to Great Britain’s meeting to joyful cries Oxford Street towards the massed But police provocation was confront the forces of imperialism. of ‘Knees Up! ’ But they were fuzz. Libertarians in the front rows unnecessary. We were only white Worst of all, with the bodies of Viet­ swallowed up by a larger May Day chanted ‘Kill the pigs!’ and natives, restless but not yet in revolt, namese floating down the rivers of assembly which now arrived to sit on (sarcastically) ‘Ho-Ho-Di-sci-pline!’, and heavily out-numbered. Cambodia, with 45, 000 GI deaths, with the grass, several thousand strong, for looking back to make sure that the Peter D ’Angelis uncounted tens of thousands of Viet­ namese killed by bombings and massacres, with the judicial murder of the Black LIVERPOOL Panther all fresh in their memories, white chauvinist American students were joined Unlike London, Liverpool celebrated by English in their chant: “Four dead; May Day on May 1st, and 10, 000 how many more? ” men, dockers and building workers took the opportunity to stop work. Four dead? How much longer will these The BBC called it absenteeism, to de­ charades go on? politicise the strike. But 5, 000, the bulk of them workers, far from being There were creditable incidents. There absent, made their presence felt in a was a brief attempt to storm one of the US large and successful demonstration. military buildings. Some IMG comrades They walked the two miles from “caught” a blue-windcheatered plain- Islington Square to Pier Head, where clothesman outside one of the coaches. they held a meeting. Dockers still in The Women’s Liberation contingent, the throws of their fight with the frustratingly trapped in the rear, fought on Labour government, a thousand to the end, clashed bitterly with the students from the university, where police, and lost their banner. And despite ten of them have been victimised for Pat Arrowsmith’s protestations, the exter­ last terms occupation, a dozen or so sident appointed one of his puppet nals of the Indonesian Embassy were Trade Unionists from Girlings, still The Young Socialists’ slogans are damaged. smarting from the sacking of Rosmary students to take their place. In order directed against the witchhunt un to return to the college all the sus­ A South American was overheard say­ Whippe, the SLL, the Young Socia­ leashed on Rosemary Whippe. ing that the demonstration lacked lists, the CP, the IS, again in contrast pended students have been required “savour" —there were no “muertos”! In to London, Liverpool managed a com­ to sign a statement promising never to fact it lacked politics. Despite the anger bined showing of potential strength. take part in any more demonstrations that many of the marchers felt personally More repression followed the wake while they are at the college, all leaf­ about the invasion, there was no intel­ of the Merseyside marchers. Forty lets and notices explaining what has ligence about the demonstration, no col­ students from Kirby College of happened have been banned, and lective organisation, no leadership—which Further Education took part in the meetings of the student body Was badly needed—and with some honour­ demonstration. As a result they were forbidden. able exceptions, no effective willingness to summarily suspended for a week by While Kirby and Liverpool Uni­ struggle. their Principle. The students included versity out do the country in brazen re­ In Vietnam the NLF continue to fight the President and Secretary of the pression of student militants, against Imperialism... Liverpool’s May Day again underlined students Union, so the College Pre- The Students on their way to join Daniel Read the unique political character of The meeting at Pier Head. Merseyside. the march. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 8 The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 9

The right-wing coup in Cambodia on four years education at the Buddhist On March 18 Sihanouk was ousted. MarchInside 18 was not just a sudden blow, the Cambodan crisis. university and then one gives up the The new regime was based on the engineered by th US to save its priesthood. There are in any case social groups favouring closer ties weakening position in Vietnam. It 70, 000 monks in Cambodia and they with the US. There are six key men was the result of a long process of form an organised social force: The in the ruling roup: General Lon Nol, social contradiction that had been ex-monks are also a force, since pre­ Prime Minister; Cheng Heng, Acting maturing for several years within cisely because they had to become Head of State; Trinh Hoanh (of Cambodian society. It had however monks to get an education, they lack Vietnamese origin), Secretary- been in the interests of both the the family connections or money to General of the National Salvation major forces in the area, the US and get the jobs they want in the admini­ Government; Yem Sambaur, Op north Vietnam, to underplay these stration. So Phnom Penh is full of Kim Ang and Sirik Matak—all contradictions and to support instead educated unemployed intellectuals of Deputy Presidents. The army is the neutralist regime of Sihanouk, to peasant background, many of them solidly Khmer in composition, and try to influence his regime rather hostile to the regime. the officers are drawn from the than to overthrow it. The latent civil The French, who ruled Cambodia ruling class, although the peasantry w ar was staved off, until a particular from 1858 to 1954, relied on the mon­ make up the rank and file. The combination of internal and external archy and village chiefs to serve clergy are probably pro-Sihanouk, factors ignited the keg. them, and imported Vietnamese to but are in no position to resist the The great majority of Cambodia’s fill the expanding administration. army. The commercial bourgeoisie 7 million population are peasants, Unlike Vietnam and Laos their rule are solidly behind the regime, and living off rice, and the fish that was not marked by big peasant have been given a boost by the de­ breed in the Mekon and its risings, and the first nationalist nationalisations of the last few tributaries, which they pickle into movements in the 1930s were centred months. the national dish of prahoc. Most pea­ among the intellectuals. During the The two alliances. A US special advisor with a Cambodian soldier, and in Peking. Prince Sihanouk receives Mao Tse-Tung’s hospitality. The new regime was obviously in sants own their land, and villages Second World War a Free Cambodia close contact with the US before the often co-operate in sowing and (khmer issarak) movement arose, coup, and they received almost harvesting. Social distinction within and on the Japanese withdrawal it winning mass popularity and out­ for seats. The result was that all but French. De Gaulle’s visit to Cambodia instant recognition. The US has the peasantry is generally on the declared Cambodia’s independence, witting his opponents; at other times three of the ninety-two deputies in 1967 was the occasion for a big seized the opportunity to advance: to basis of owning better or worse But British troops (as in Laos, it showed a dangerous, and, in the returned for the National Assembly speech attacking the Americans. But try and knock out the NLF ‘HQ’ in lands, and of how much is owned. Vietnam and Indochina) invaded in end, fatal overconfidence. It was were rich and reactionary Lon Nol had become Prime Minister eastern Cambodia, to score a major There is no large class of feudalist or S e p te m b e r 1945 and re tu r n e d never enough to resolve the concrete politicians, who had won votes in August 1969 and when, later in the psychological victory. But instead of exploiting landowners. The social Cambodia to the French. political contradictions it served to through buying them. They wanted year, Sihanouk flew to Paris to try to taking their time they have had to group whom the peasants see as During the Indochina war that adorn. denationalisation, and closer negotiate a new aid and economic rush in to save the tottering Lon Nol their enemies are the government followed (1946-54), three different He himself was known as samdech relations with the US; they were also agreement with the French, his regime. In particular, they have tax-collectors and administrators, groups of Cambodians tried to sahachivin (my lord, comrade) and encouraged by the anti-communist absence enabled the right to con­ used the old Khmer Serei and the moneylenders and mer­ achieve independence: the monarch his party’s youth section was called coup in Indonesia in September 1965 solidate. Lon Nol started to sack un­ mercenaries and sent them into chants who buy their crops. Sihanouk, tried to win independence the Royal Socialist Cambodian and saw their champions as General reliable officers from the army and Cambodia. A major problem they There is little industry in the one from the French by negotiations; the Youth. One of his favourite pass- Lon Nol (the Cambodian version of edged out pro-Sihanouk cabinet have faced is that “the Cambodian big city, Phnom Penh, population revived khmer issarak started to times was making films, in which as Suharto) and Prince Sirik Matak, a ministers. Sirik Matak got money army has proved weaker than any­ 600, 000. There, thousands are attack government outposts and in a Stuart masque all the royal cousin of Sihanouk’s who had a long­ from the Americans, through a one expected” (Time May 4), and employed as shopkeepers, bicycle- officials in the countryside; and a family and court would act, with term quarrel with him on the Khmer Serei friend songsak, a instead of attacking the NLF from taxi peddlers, and government communist People’s Party (prachea Sihanouk himself in the leading role. grounds that Sihanouk had been corrupt banker exiled in Bangkok, the west, from Phnom Penh, the US officials. The ruling class are either chon) was established, drawing its On the night of the reactionary coup, made king by the French in 1941 and Lon Nol and Sirik Matak toured has had to do so from Vietnam itself. members of the old royal family, main strength from the Cambodian his Embassy in Peking was showing when the rightful heir was Sirik the provinces checking on their Nixon has had to invent a “large who lived off taxes; or members of minority in the Vietnamese Mekong a film in which the heroic Matak’s father. support. enemy buildup” to justify his in­ the class created by the French Delta, and on intellectuals trained Cambodian king, acted by Sihanouk, This internal tension was combined This year in early March the crisis vasion. A chimera that was denied (administrators, army officers) or of abroad. The precise relations bet­ put down a military coup led by a with the affects of the increased fight­ came. Sihanouk had, on March 11, by the Americans on the ground in that created by American influence ween all three are unclear, but in right-wing traitor general. ing in Vietnam, when the US sent in agreed in Paris on a new economic Western Vietnam (Sunday Times (foreign aid profiteers, villa owners, 1951 a tripartite alliance was signed His rule was characterised by troops in 1965. As revolutionary treaty with France. He was pre­ May 3). import-export merchants). The latter between the Vietnamese, Laotain peace and by a steady rise in agri­ troops started to use Cambodia’s un­ paring to return home with the The most difficult question has CAMBODIA-WORLD WIDE India: May 6th, in Calcutta the lib­ are known as the khmer bleues. and Cambodian revolutionary forces, cultural production; this, and his populated eastern mountains as solution to the nation’s problems, but been the reaction of the Cambodian DEMONSTRATIONS rary of the American University This class structure intersects with military activity was stepped up and lavish use of royal display, won him bases for the Vietnamese war, food was going via Moscow and Peking. left. On the political level they Centre is ransacked and Nixon is bur­ ethnic differences. Most of the Vietnamese and Laotain troops popularity with the peasantry. The prices shot up. Many peasants made The right-wing government moved behind Sihanouk. Most We have received the following re­ ned in effigy by 1, 000 demonstrators population are brown-skinned entered Cambodia as part of the left also tolerated him, and many considerable profits out of selling organised demonstrations to bum important of all his message to the ports of demonstrations over the in­ outside the U.S. Information Agency. Khmers. But, for centuries there has common struggle. In the period of Marxist intellectuals joined his food, mainly rice, to the NLF. This down the NLF and north Vietnamese Cambodian people of March 23 was vasions of Cambodia and the Kent been a Chinese minority, 8% of the greatest fighting in Cambodia, 1953- party, hoping to win him to socialist also enabled the administrators to diplomatic buildings. They got the follow ed on M arch 26 by a State shootings. These all took place Italy: May 6th, after a rally in the population, concentrating on money 4, the left openly denounced policies. At the same time the squeeze the peasants for more taxes. impoverished taxi-peddlers and declaration of support by the three before the weekend of the 9th/10th Piazza de la Republica 15, 000 march lending and trade. Many Chinese are Sihanouk for being an imperialist military and civilian rulers of the For the right the NLF represented a secondary children from the Youth left deputies leading the guerrilla May. We do not include the massive on the U.S. Embassy in Rome. integrated “Sino-Cambodians” who lackey, and he used the threat of right got rich on corruption and major threat. Reactionary policies League to demonstrate outside the forces (Peking Review April 17). demonstrations taking place every Police in riot gear and armed with are relatively assimilated; Cheng growing communist influence to per­ speculation, and the one attempt at were forced on Sihanouk, and the buildings, then members of the army This was backed up by a tripartite day in the United States. tear gas seal off all streets leading to Feng, the present Acting Head of suade the French to grant him an anti-Sihanouk rightist coup, in three left deputies—Hu Nim, Khieu were sent in to sack it. (The plan for alliance of the NLF, Pathet Lao and the embassy. State is one of these. The independence. 1958, was put down by Lon Nol him­ Sam Phon and Hou Youn, all Ph. D. this had been prepared as early as Cambodian left. Obviously, using Australia: May 6th, 500 demonstrate Vietnamese minority on the other Although a revolutionary govern­ self. There was an organised right graduates from French universities May 1969). Sihanouk will enable the left to win in Canberra. New Zealand: May 6th, eight arres­ hand fall into several different ment under a patriotic Buddhist opposition the Khmer Serei, headed fled to the jungles where they joined Then a chauvinist anti-Vietnamese instant support among the May 8th, 30, 000 demonstrate in ted after a sit-down protest outside categories. Some families have been monk, Son Ngoc Minh, was by a politician called Son Ngoc the resurgent forces of the old campaign was launched. The war in peasantry, and Sihanouk is in no Sydney. In Adelaide 10, 000 demon­ the U.S. Consulate in Auckland. there for centuries, as merchants, recognised by Hanoi, it disappeared Thanh, who had worked with the People’s Party. Vietnam had caused inflation, and position to resist the left now. He has strate with N. L. F. and red flags. In fishers, and tailors, and are con­ at the time of the Geneva Conference Japanese during the war, and then In the spring of 1967 the left there had been a drastic oversupply issued a flood of statements, full of Melbourne 20, 000 march into the city S. Africa: May 6th, White students at centrated in the capital. The French on Indo-China. Hanoi radio ceased worked for the Americans. As organised a big peasant rising in the of 500-rial (about £4) notes, reliably appeals to his mother, “my tolerant centre and the government warns Cape Town University hold a silent brought in more: some were loyal denouncing Sihanouk, and his Sihanouk held out, the Americans province of Battambang and by 1968 believed to have been printed by the and clear-sighted Buddhist clergy” people to stay out of the city. vigil outside the university. Students Catholics used to staff the colonial delegation was the one that sat at the financed a Khmer Serei army of armed struggle had spread to 11 of NLF. These were all withdrawn last etc. He has also set up the at Witswatersrandt University plan a Cambodia: An American television one day strike for May 12th. civil service, and others were in­ Conference. The prachea chon went Cambodians recruited in Vietnam, Cambodia’s 17 provinces. Sihanouk December hitting many traders. But Cambodian United National Front interview with two soldiers of the dentured labour brought in from into suspended existence. who were transported to Thailand. reacted by threatening to cut off ties in general, and particularly outside (FUNC) which groups all the forces Lon Nol Cambodian army, fleeing Sweden: May 7th, in Stockholm more around Hanoi to work in the French- For the next twelve years (1954-66) From there, they carried out with China and north Vietnam, and the capital, the Vietnamese presence opposed to the regime. The clear aim from a major battle 20 miles from owned rubber plantations; which both the US and the revolutionary sabotage against the Cambodian by imprisoning and killing some was not resented, and the NLF bases of the left is to use Sihanouk as a than 7, 000 march on the U.S. Phnom Penh, exposed the myth of Embassy which is guarded by 700 Cambodian peasants refused to forces tried to win over Sihanouk frontier in the Dangrek mountains. comm unists. But the left still saw its were all in unpopulated mountain means of winning support, to sweep the ‘Vietcong’ offensive. According police. work. while maintaining him in power. The But they were always a limited actions as a means of pressuring areas. All the coup leaders had made back into power, and then to convert to the soldiers over half the libera­ Part of the hostility to Vietnamese US poured in money, and created a force, and the US concentrated Sihanouk into breaking with the money from the trade with the NLF. the national struggle into a socialist tion army that they were fighting U.S. Army: Reports from American dates from the historic expansion of class of speculators dependent on US mainly on working within the right, not of overthrowing him. While this chauvinist manipulation transformation. were Cambodians. the Vietnamese south-westwards bet­ aid. They also tried to black mail Within Cambodia itself the pressmen talk of ‘unmotivated and Cambodian ruling class. Known popularly as the khmers was a blunder on the international Canada: May 7th, 1, 000 demonstrate ween the sixteenth and nineteenth Vietnamese workers in the rubber undisciplined’ U.S. troops. Sixteen Sihanouk into joining SEATO (South- Sihanouk’s balancing act started to rouges they combined the old scale, it served to divert popular dis­ outside the U.S. Consulate in centuries. But acute hostility to plantations have fled to join the soldiers at first refused to go to the East Asian Treaty Organisation) and. break down in 1964. In that year he People’s Party cadres with Marxist content with the regime into racial Toronto. 13 arrests after one wall of Vietnamese is confined to the cities, Dulles frequently attacked the idea nationalised all foreign trade and con­ channels. revolutionary forces. Many forward base in Vietnam from which intellectuals educated in France; the building is painted red. they were to fly into Cambodia. One since the peasants have contact not of neutralism. Sihanouk’s centrated power in two big ministries, like the three deputies who joined intellectuals have also left the with them but with the Chinese as said “ We’ve no business in neutralism, however, served as an Sonaprim for imports and Sonexim them in 1967. They were also joined Roped bodies floating down the Mekong capital. moneylenders or merchants. China: May 8th, reports of massive Cambodia” . Eight men of that divi­ important buffer for China and for exports. This created a class of by many of the unemployed Opting for tactical retreat and demonstrations all over the country. The only major colonial hold over Vietnam, and kept US bases and rich opponents, who had lost their intellectuals of Phnom Penh, who protracted war on the military level, sion (the U.S. 25th, Division Task the country comes through the Force) were killed when they came troops out of a strategic area. source of income. His breaking of had suffered particularly from in­ the revolutionaries are probably cal­ Costa Rica: May 5th, American ex­ rubber plantations, which are still Sihanouk himself set about diplomatic ties with the US in 1965 flation and from the rise in culating on favourable changes on under an artillery barrage from their owned by the French. But much of change students demonstrate outside own side. (Also see Diary). consolidating his own power. In 1955 added to this force, since many administrative corruption after 1964. three political levels: first, the splits U.S. Embassy, 10 arrested. the country is untouched. Half of it is he dissolved all existing parties and Cambodians had lived off providing Through 1967 and 1968 the crisis in the US and the economic crisis forest or savannah, and less than Cuba: May 8th, 20, 000 students in Venezuela: May 5th, police use tear set up his own Popular Socialist services for the US aid and Embassy grew. The US also stepped up its will force Nixon into a climbdown; Havana stage a spontaneous demon­ half of the arable land is used. Community, the sangkum, with the personnel. On the other hand, the secondly, as the Times stated on gas and clubs to disperse students interest, and after the Tet offensive stration. marching on the U.S. Embassy in Despite the surplus of land, however, three-pronged ideology of “nation, two big ministries became vast of early 1968 a crash course in May 4 the entry of US troops without many peasants have moved to the religion and king. ” He abdicated centres of corruption, and peasant directly helping Lon Nol’s army has Caracas. May 8th, two students kil­ Cambodian language began in France: May 6th, students at the led and four wounded as police fire capital, living there off odd jobs. from the monarchy, but remained discontent rose as taxes and bribes several US universities. The right angered the nationalist masses in The country is intensely religious American College in Paris begin an on a massive demonstration. political leader. His personal shot up. were using the growing economic Phnom Penh; thirdly, the fighting it­ unlimited strike. (Buddhist) and one easy way to get political style was a mixture of show­ In 1966 Sihanouk, attempting to self will polarise the population and crisis to call for reopening ties with Formosa: May 8th, 20 American Yugoslavia: May 6th, windows of the an education, if you are a peasant, is manship and adroit manouevre. As allow popular discontent some lay the basis for liberating the whole the US, and in 1969 they got Sihanouk students demonstrate outside the U.S. Embassy reading room in to become a “temporary monk”: one with Krushchev, Sihanouk’s clowning expression, permitted elections in of Cambodia. to do this. Sihanouk tried to stem the FRED HALLIDAY. U.S. Embassy in Tai Pei. Belgrade smashed. becomes a monk, goes through the was sometimes a successful way of which several candidates competed tide by getting support from the The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 10 The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 11 will of the advertisers! The press is big business. BOBBY SEALE ON TRIAL: Not only is the press itself big business, but its in­ dividual ‘independent’ voices are intimately related both to each other and to the rest of big business through a whole series of interlocking directorates, A ll in the Family. common investments, family backgrounds, and over­ lapping interests. Take the ‘rival’ quality British ClassWar Paul Hoch, currently in Jail for eating papers for example. In 1962 the Telegraph told the in the LSE Cafeteria, writes on Royal Commission that its Manchester edition was Britain's incestuous press. printed by the Thomson group (publishers of The Times). Similarly until the Sunday Telegraph was Did you ever wonder how it is that all segments of Or shall we consider student ‘unrest’? Take the launched, the Telegraph presses printed the Sunday not RaceWar. our Free Press manage to consistently oppose all London School of Economics. Last year, when Times. The Times presses have long printed what is forms of industrial militancy, student radicalism, writing LSE: the Natives are Restless, I discovered now its Sunday edition’s main ‘rival, ’ The Observer, tenants associations; how it is they all agree on ‘the experience. ’ The presiding judge, Hubert S. MacDonald, that five LSE governors were also directors in LSE and the Thomson group also prints the London A representative, at present in national interest, ’ the desirability of South African said he was satisfied that the composition of the grand Chairman Lord Robbins’ Financial Times group. edition of its main daily ‘rival, ’ The Guardian, and London, of the International jury met the state requirements, and would indeed have investments, advertising, and the Consumer Wav of even rents them their London office. In 1962, Committee to Defend the Panthers, Life? Another, C. V. Wintour, is Editor of the Evening met federal requirements. Standard and a director of Beaverbrook News­ according to the Royal Commission report, the The diagram contains only a few of the industrial has written this statement of the The main front in the battle for the life of Bobby Seale papers, another Lord Robens himself, is a national Thomson group was a joint stockholder with The is not inside the New Haven courthouse. The American subsidiaries of the giant newspaper corporations, as Committee’s aims for Black Dwarf director of Times Newspapers along with London Observer in the Clyde Paper group, and with The well as a handful of the more important interlocking law has never safeguarded the rights of black Americans; University Governor Lord Shawcross. The Guardian in North News (publishers of Manchester directorates. Had the rest of the subsidiaries been in­ Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther their condition makes a mockery of the U.S. Constitution. Chairman of the Observer trustees, Lord Goodman, Evening News). cluded, the number of lines would have quadrupled. And, like the hundreds of other Panthers on trial in is the solicitor for LSE, as well as for Harold Or take the populars. The interpenetrating Mail- Party, is on trial for his life in New Haven, Had the rest of the interlocking directorates been ‘criminal’ cases, Bobby Seale’s crime is a political one— Wilson, and the Granada TV and publishing group. Mirror groupings weren’t unscrambled until 1947, Connecticut. Seale’s trial, on charges of first added in the number of lines would have increased that he leads a political party that challenges US The LSE governing body was also top heavy with and as late as 1949 the Mail group was still degree murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, and ten-fold more. Had the links to the 20 major imperialism, that has rallied around it the broad masses ITV programme company directors, including managing the Mirror group’s evening paper in ‘binding with criminal intent, ’ marks a climax in corporations that account for over two thirds of all of the black community, and is being recognised by ever former LSE Director and ITV Vice-Chairman Sir Lincoln. In its 1962 submission to the Royal the campaign to eliminate the Panthers. A cam­ advertisements been put in, there would have been larger sectors of white youth and students as their van­ Sidney Caine, who doubles as Trustee of the right- Commission, the Mail group admitted that it prints paign lauched by the Nixon administration fif­ guard also. Bobby Seale’s trial is a political act of ruling more lines still. And it all those newspaper part of the run of Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express wing Institute of Economic Affairs. teen months ago. class repression. His conviction and execution can only be directors, editors, and reporters from business back­ and that it is co-partners, with Beaverbrook in Price grounds, as well as their investments, and those of These superficial connections would not be quite Since then a hundred Black Panther Party organisers stopped by a political force that forces the American state so bad, except for the incidental fact that the British Brothers of Canada (paper), on whose Board both to back down; for fear of the consequences. their papers had been included, the diagram would Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook now Sir Max have been imprisoned, on counts that range from have become an indistinguishable black blob. press is the most inbred and monopolised press in elaborate frame-ups on criminal charges, to the all- To inflict such a defeat on the US imperialist state the Western world. Freedom of the Press here Aitken sit as directors. It was only a couple of years The point is that our Free Press is a class embracing statutes on ‘conspiracy’ that the American would be as important as the defeats that it is suffering means that three millionaires (Cudlipp, Aitken, and ago that the News of the World presses stopped institution totally integrated within the upper legal system, like the British, keeps in reserve for use externally from the popular force in Vietnam and in Laos. Rothermere) control 6 out of 7 copies of all printing Rothermere’s Daily Sketch. And linking the There is no doubt that, in the words of David Hilliard, echelons of capitalist society and, for this reason, populars and the ‘qualities’ the Royal Commission when nothing more concrete can be made to stick. This morning papers sold every day, and if Rothermere fascist campaign is directly organised at the ‘Justice’ Black Panther Party Chief of Staff, ‘if they turn the juice totally restricted in the manner in which it treats the is replaced by Murdoch, three millionaires control 8 found that the Mirror group and the Financial things most dear to the class of which it is a part. Department under Attorney General John Mitchell, and on Bobby Seale, the black people will turn the lights off out of 9 British papers sold on Sunday. Of course Times group were co-partners in the St. Clement’s For example, consider the sort of pressures that each State police force and judiciary was eagerly enlisted in America for days. ’ But even more is at stake. US ruling anyone is ‘free’ to start a daily paper of his own__ Press and in Associated TV; that the Mail group class repression does not just aim to eliminate the present make Times reporting of Nigeria so ‘responsible. ’ whose directors is none other than Sussex to play its part in the campaign of repression. all you need is about £20 million and the sort of and the Thomson group are co-partners in Southern vanguard of the black people in North America. The The Times is part of Times Newspapers, one of Chancellor Lord Shawcross, a director of Shell, On December 4th last, the repression reached a new editorial approach that allows you to keep the good­ TV; that the Thomson Organisation had a minority present wave of repression against the Panthers has the which has multimillion pound investments in interest in the Scottish Daily Record and Sunday level when Chicago police burst into the apartment of Nigerian oil. Times Newspapers is part of the Fred Hampton, chairman of the BPP Illinois branch, and deeper political aim of driving a wedge between the black Mail, controlled by the Mirror group; and that the movement and the white movement. Hence the criminal Thomson group which, not only has substantial in­ deal to print the News of the World's Manchester shot and killed him in his bed. Panther Mark Clark was vestments in Nigeria, but until the mid-60s owned also killed, and four others wounded. The survivors were frame-ups, and the greater violence exercised against edition on Thomson’s Manchester presses was an black militants. The Panthers are so great a danger to the the Lagos Daily Express. As we look down the list important factor in pursuading Thomson to close charged with attempted murder. of leading Times advertisers, we see—lo and be­ Previously, on April 2 1969, the New York 21 were imperialist power structure precisely because they have the Sunday Empire News (despite its two million transcended the limits of cultural nationalism. They have hold—Shell-Mex and BP. If we look at the leading circulation). arrested. Their trial began in February 1970, on the ludi­ buyers of ad blocks in The Times Business News it crous frame-up that they plotted to dynamite five depart­ proved their ability not merely to lead the black masses, Over the years, a group of famous families have but also to unite with genuine anti-imperialist forces in begins to look like a Who’s Who of Nigerian invest­ helped to interlock British journalistic traditions: ment stores and other targets (The B. P. P’s opposition to ment. So Nigerian affairs are treated with velvet terrorist tactics in common knowledge). Bail was fixed at the white movement, and to function as the vanguard of The Harmsworths (Mail, Mirror, Sketch, Times and the American anti-imperialist struggle. That is why the gloves, and British investments there are only men­ Observer), the Astors ( Times and Observer), the up to 100,000 dollars per head, in flagrant disregard of tioned when Biafran ‘terrorists’ start attacking the U.S. Constitution, which, like English common law, American ruling class must try and smash the Panthers Berrys ( Telegraph, Sunday Times, Sketch and now, before they succeed in uniting, not just white them. Financial Times) and the Cudlips (editors for the forbids exorbitant bail. However the U.S. Supreme Court Or take the Financial Times reporting of refused to rule on the New York Panthers’ appeal. Last students, but also as the political and economic crisis of Sunday Express, the News of the World, the Daily American society intensifies, sections of the white Southern Africa. It could hardly criticise invest­ Herald, and the Mirror group). month, bail was raised for two of the thirteen still under ments there, since its parent company controls the indictment, leaving eleven who have now spent over a working class. The onus is on the white radical groups to South African Longmans Publishing group, as well year in prison. While in jail, the New York 21 suffered close ranks around the Panthers and prove, to the black as the Financial Mail of South Africa, in partnership extreme maltreatment. All were beaten after arrest. Joan community, to the imperialist state and to the white with the group which controls the Rand. Daily Mail. Bird was given the ‘thumb torture’, hung upside down by working class, that the black people’s struggle can take Financial Times group directors sit on the boards of one ankle from a third-storey window. Lee Berry, an the form of a Class War, and does not have to be a Race De Beers mining, the Standard industrial group, the epileptic was thrown into an isolation cell in ‘The Tombs’ War. Eldridge Cleaver in a statement from exile put the Commercial Union Assurance company, as well as without even a mattress, and refused medical attention matter like this: the leading South African military engine supplier for four months. All the 21 have been kept in complete ‘Black people will never accept this premeditated de­ Rolls Royce. And the leading Financial Times ad­ isolation, denied library and recreation facilities, and at cision o f the fascist power structure to murder Chairman vertisers (like BP, of which Financial Times times denied mattresses, medication, sheets, showers and Bobby Seale in the Electric Chair. So that the question is chairman, Lord Robbins, was until last year a toilet paper, in a concerted effort to break their morale. now posed, pure and simple: Is America going to have a director) are again a Who’s Who of Southern Africa Their real crime was the success of the B. P. P’s children’s Class War or a Race War? The fascists have already investments. breakfast programme and medical centre, which built declared war up on the people. Will the people as a whole Drawings by Howard Barnes support for the Panthers among the Harlem community. rise up to meet this challenge with a righteous People’s The trial of Bobby Seale and the Panther 14 in New War against these fascist pigs, or will Black people have Haven is the present focus of the campaign against the to go it alone, thus transforming a dream o f inter-racial Panthers. To frame up Bobby Seale, the FBI instigated solidarity into the nightmare o f a Race War? the New Haven police department to murder Panther ... The Black Panther Party, as everybody knows, has Alex Rackley on May 22nd 1969, two days after Seale taken a leading role in trying to avoid precisely this had visited New Haven to speak at Yale University. disasterous RACE WAR which the fascist oppressors George Sams, a police agent who had infiltrated the New have been working night and day to bring about. But we Haven B. P. P. chapter, testified that Seale ordered, and the cannot and will not continue this policy to the point of others of the 14 carried out, the murder of Alex Rackley, racial suicide. We will not sacrifice Chairman Bobbv believing Rackley to be a double agent. It is public Seale on the altar of interracial harmony if White people Moreover as we look at the top executives in the knowledge that the Black Panther Party has conducted, continue to sit back and allow this ghastly plot to go for­ newspaper industry, we also find the closest over more than a year, a drastic purge of its organisation, ward. So if the so-called freedom loving White people of connections to other areas of big business. For and expelled all doubtful elements. But no-one has ever America do not stand up now, while there are still a few example, Cecil King, Chairman of the M irror group alleged that the Party at any time took the risk (political moments of time left, and put an end to the persecution until 1968, served as a director on the National and moral) of killing suspected agents. And Alex Rackley o f Chairman Bobby Seale, then Black people will have to Coal Board, the Chairman of which was Lord was a New Haven Panther in good standing. Immediately go it alone and step forward alone. This will mean the Robens, one of the four national directors of Times after ‘finding’ Rackley’s body, the cops arrested the end o f our dreams for the Class War which America Newspapers. According to the 1968 Directory of leading members of the New Haven chapter, and Bobby needs and the beginning of the Race War which America Directors: Max Aitken, the Chairman of the Seale was later arrested in San Francisco, where he lives. cannot endure. This is the political consequence which Express group is a director of Associated TV, of Bobby was however to spend the next months on trial in America faces because of this unspeakably evil attempt to Price Brothers of Canada, and of Riverside Chicago on charges arising out of the events at the murder Bobby Seale in the Electric Chair. Chemical company. J. M. Coltart, Deputy Chairman Democratic convention in summer 1968. After having On May 1st 30, 000 mainly white students demon­ of Thomson group is a director of ITV News and him bound and gagged for his protests against the cops’ strated outside the New Haven Courthouse. It was only a the Voice of British Industry (! ); A. M. Burnett, the false evidence, Judge Julius J. Hoffman summarily start. For the battle outside the courts must end with Thomson group’s Depurty Managing Director was a handed him four years for ‘contempt of court’; he has not Bobby Seale’s aquittal inside. This admission of defeat director of both the Press Association and Reuters yet been sentenced on the charge of ‘conspiracy to riot’ can only be forced on the power structure by the masses. (the Press Association is the largest share-holder in for which he was being tried. The inter-racial alliance forged in this campaign will of Reuters); Lord Drogheda, the Managing Director of On March 2 this year, Bobby Seale was extradited necessity be an offensive front which can pave the way the Financial Times is a director of two major in­ from California to Connecticut. He was flown under for further advances. While failure of the entire white surance companies as well as Reuters and a score of heavy armed guard in a specially chartered plane. On radical movement to rally around the Panthers could spell cultural and publishing firms; another Financial March 18 he made his first appearance in the New Haven disaster. Times director, J. L. E. Smith is a director of Rolls Superior Court. To create the hysterical and threatening For this reason it is vital for the anti-imperialist forces Royce; Lord Rothermere is a director of Price atmosphere that the prosecution needs to carry through in Britain and the other imperialist metropoles to actively Brothers of Canada, British Movietone, Hamilton this trial, the court was packed with dozens of state and join in the defense of the Panthers. Every sign of Brothers Oil and many others. And so it goes. Cecil local police, FBI agents and sheriffs. Seale’s lawyers were solidarity from European workers and students, besides King even served a stint as Governor of the Bank of granted till April 14 for filing motions. The defense began an additional pressure on the American ruling class, will England. The people who make the decisions in by contesting the validity of the grand jury that indicted also help to cement the inter-racial alliance in America newspaper boardrooms are heavily committed, both Seale. In cross-questioning the New Haven county sheriff, itself. It is the duty of all anti-imperialist and progressive by dispostion and financial interest to monopoly it emerged that out of 20 grand jurors, the defendant’s forces here to follow the events in New Haven, and to pre­ capitalism, and all the counter-revolutionary alleged peers, 17 were white, 13 were aged over 50, 6 pare for and organise whatever forms of action in mentality, overseas imperialism, infectious con­ had served previously on grand juries, one as many as 14 solidarity with Bobby Seale and the New Haven Panther sumerism that goes with it. They have no difficulty times. More seriously, 12 of the 20 were either personal 14 that are within our power. locating what they call ‘the national interest, friends of the sheriff or recomendees of personal friends, because—by chance—it coincides so neatly with one was known to him as a jail guard, one as his barber, FREE BOBBY SEALE! one as the proprietor of the barbers’ shop, and one was FREE ALL AMERICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS! their own. DEFEAT RACISM, IN AMERICA AND IN BRITAIN! PAUL HOCH the son of a friend of the sheriff who ‘wanted legal The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 13 The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Pagel2 grants from 50 applicants. The applicants stated their promote human relationship and human values in administrators of our official culture were forced into a case, then they were questioned by anyone who wanted to British Artists fight opposition to the dehumanised society that the Arts confrontation with the real world. Let’s hope they question them. It was grass-roots democracy in action, the State Council represents. They want to create something learned something. ” and it worked. different from the world of Copyright and All Parts The Occupation was a success. Sir Joseph Lockwood The total amount of money asked for was £5,000 in Thereof—the Art with a capital A that is such an integral completely lost his temper (as had been expected) and Sir short term applications, and £125, 000 in long-term part of our tourist industry. In fact many of them reject Edward Boyle thanked the occupiers most sincerely (as applications. As there was only £1000 available the 5 the notion of “Art” altogether. Art is dead. Or rather, had been expected). But the next day Jennie Lee was on Regional Representatives had the difficult task of vetting they are out to make “living itself a work of art. ” This the phone to Bridget Riley wanting to know what the hell the applications on the basis of the discussions at the means that these “new” activities aren’t merely artistic was going on, which shows how fast the news of even open-meetings. They presented their decisions to a final ones. They merge into fun on the one hand and politics limited areas of dissent travels upwards. The NAC now open meeting of over 100 people the following week, on the other. They are social activities, and according to knew it had a real and determined opposition that was where their selection was ratified (though the meeting many of the people involved in them, what matters about capable of making it look very foolish. To keep its had the power to make any changes it wanted). them is not that they possess certain aesthetic qualities, options open, it presented FACOP’s Case to the Arts The London Region had proved that this method of but that they are helping to create a better society. Council, which, of course, rejected it as “impractical and deciding on grants could work. But unfortunately, unacceptable. ” because the meetings were necessarily advertised before­ “CAPTURING YOUNG Finally, the NAC produced its “Draft Interim Report”. hand, and because anybody could attend them, the Press PEOPLE” It was, as the Artists had foreseen, a shoddy, threadbare got hold of the story. The result was that The Daily Mial and incompetent document. It went through to the Arts was able to warn its readers: “They’re giving away Council, who accepted it, and formed a new “New Why then, did the Arts Council—whose main job seems YOUR money to spoonfed Hippy ‘Art’.” Goodman made Activities Committee” under the chairmanship of the Rt. a lengthy statement in the Evening Standard, in which he to be the propping up of a collapsing ideology—concern Hon. Astor. This NAC, like the first, was to enquire into itself with giving these people money? The brazen and cal­ talked about a “small group of agitators” amongst the the new activities and produce a report. But it now artists. Astor babbled on television about “Trotskyists” culated answer comes from a speech by Lord Goodman, actually had £15, 000 to conduct the enquiry with. the Arts Council Chairman: and “permanent revolution”. There were even questions “Young people lack guidance, lack certain ties, lack in the House about it. The fuss focussed on their accept­ values, ” he said. “They need something to turn to... Once ARTISTS AND ing Jim Pennington’s application. Jim had staged a captured for the arts they are redeemed from many of the REVOLUTIONARIES happening outside the U.S. Embassy. The event had dangers that confront them at the moment. ” involved firing a cap-pistol at the embassy, for which he The setting up of the NAC and its subsequent history had been arrested and fined £10. The London Region In response FACOP called a national conference in July artists had agreed he should have a grant to pay the fine. is a classic case of what the situationists call at St Katherine’s Docks. They were worried that their “recuperation”—the process by which the bureaucratic activity so far had been too localised, and had involved system attempts to absorb and neutralise any area of too few people. COFFEE IN THE CORNERS rebelliousness and autonomous activity which might con- Artists came to the conference from all over Britain, conceivably pose a threat to it. In this case the area con­ proving to the NAC once and for all that FACOP did London artists hear applications for NAC grants at their unofficial open meetings in the Arts Council. cerned is the drug-subculture, and the bureaucracy con­ represent a broad body of opinion. The NAC itself was cerned is the Arts Council. Braden, who for 2 years has organised “Pavilions in the Lacking the support of the mob at the gates, and with­ The final scene of the comedy was when these THE LAST ISSUE OF IT (IT N0. 78) also invited, but none of them turned up. applications were presented to the NAC. The 5 artists The conference, in spite of its rather vague structure, Parks” which gives people a chance to see modern out continued discussion about the ends to be achieved, CONTAINED TWO PAGES ON THE paintings that are normally only shown in galleries, if they are the NAC 6 became confused and disillusioned. The who had been elected by the London Region wanted to WHO PAYS WHO FOR WHAT? was a significant event for most of the hundreds of artists make their recommendations personally. But the NAC, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT IN who did turn up. It expanded the work of FACOP in shown at all: struggle became merely one of tactics, and increasingly ASTOR: “What are these Pavilions in the Parks? ” the real issue—the issue of control—faded away. For like all government committees, meets in secret, so they BRITAIN, STATING THAT A breaking down the desperate competitive individualism weren’t allowed to attend. The London Region 5 felt that DIALOGUE SHOULD BE OPENED At the beginning of 1969 FACOP started to meet once a nurtured in the art Colleges, and in creating instead a SUE: “Well, last summer in Cheyne Walk—which is some, this meant that the best thing to do was to stay on week. Before long between 50 and 80 people were 100 yards from your house—we had 3 pavilions up for 3 the committee, pushing for as much money for as many they were being treated like naughty children, and BETWEEN THE LEFT AND THE sense of community among artists—something that has decided once again that they would occupy the meeting. attending the meetings. The discussion was passionate, never really existed in England. More important, it months, and they were visited by 30, 000 people. Didn’t people as possible (which was not really the point) and, UNDERGROUND. THE BLACK confused, diverse. It was about the first time that artists you notice them? ” maybe having influence on the Committee’s final report They walked into the arts Council wearing dunce’s hats, helped create the beginning of a collective political and went to stand in the corners of the room. DWARF WELCOMES THIS had come together to think about themselves as a consciousness among artists. ASTOR: “No. ” (They failed to do most of these things). For others, the community, with common problems that needed Astor may know nothing about the arts, but he is a lack of an on-going collective dialogue meant that politics “You have no right to be here! ” shouted the Right GESTURE, IN SPITE OF CERTAIN There was also a certain polarisation in the discussion Honourable Astor. SNIDE AND UNTRUE collective solutions. which could have proved decisive had it been allowed to fairly astute politician. His Committee consisted of six became sterile. They decided that the life of the bureau­ At first they talked about the Arts Council, and the “non-artists”: Sir E. Boyle, Lord Harewood, Prof. Frank: crat was not their cup of tea, and either they resigned or “We represent 247 artists, ” said the 5. “Who do you STATEMENTS IN THE PAPER’S continue afterwards. Many speakers at the conference represent? ” way it patronises dead artists and ‘Museam Culture’ were critical of the role of most artists—including those Kermode, Ian Bruce, Peter Jay and Grizelda Grimmond, were eased out by Astor—who finally made sure of his Unable to answer, the members of the NAC discussed EDITORIAL. HERE, IN THE FIRST (Theatres, Galleries etc) at the expense of the living and who worked in Arts Labs—on the grounds that what who was chosen because “she had a curiosity about the position by adding 13 more tame bureaucrats to the a motion to have the 5 thrown out by the police. But they OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON the involved. FACOP discovered that the Arts Council people were doing was basically a masturbatory ritual in­ arts. ” It was as ludicrous a committee as the previous Committee. couldn’t reach agreement for Grizelda Grimmond, Jo’s ‘UNDERGROUND’ AND ITS (out of a total budget of £7 million) gives £13/4 million to volving only a tiny proportion of the population. If this one, but he added to it six of the most effective members daughter and like her dad a liberal, voted both for and RELATIONSHIP TO THE REST OF Covent Garden Opera, of which £37,000 goes to the can­ was all FACOP was fighting for, they might as well forget of FACOP, leaving himself with the casting vote. In this WHO MAKES THE SOCIETY, JOHN HOYLAND teen alone. Compared with Covent Garden (regarded by it. As Gustav Metzger said, it was necessary to under­ way he hoped to appease the guilty consciences at the against the motion! So the 5 stayed there in the corners, most of the FACOP artists as aesthetically and socially stand the difference between artists who were concerned Arts Council, and also avoid any further escalation with DECISIONS through seven hours of incredible unreal bureaucratic dis­ EXAMINES THE CASE OF THE obscene) the budget for all the living painters and with economic survival, and artists who were attempting the artists. cussion. Because this is Britain, though, they were served with coffee the same as everyone else. ARTISTS VS THE ARTS COUNCIL. sculptors in Britain is only £70,000. to change society. In the latter category, some speakers Commented CIRCUIT: In October, however, FACOP did make a last ditch The applications they presented in fact went through— Galvinised by facts like these, FACOP prepared what pointed to groups like Action Space, who perform environ­ stand. Feeling that things were slipping out of their grasp, “Mr Astor’s initiative shows how the system of with the exception of Embassy-shooter Jim Pennington became known as “The Case”. It was a detailed criticism mental mixed media events in local communities, involv­ administration by repressive tolerance makes sure than a they decided that since the NAC refused to be modified of the mode of operation of the Arts Council, singling out ing the local people and their children, and breaking in the way they wanted, the artists would simply have to and BIT—the two most overtly radical. Subsequently the group such as ourselves are not turned into unreachable Arts Council itself turned down another four, including RUMBLES IN THE for attack things like the “Filtering Process”—the rules down the performer/consumer barrier. This was the kind set up an alternative structure of their own and put it into dissenters who might be prepared to press their case the London New Arts Laboratory. that ensure that any application for money has to be of “New Activity” that really meant something, and was home... The end result is yet another committee appointed effect. The NAC had already divided the country up into PAUNCH BELT Now, after 18 months of enquiry, the NAC is to vetted and selected by a whole series of petty bureaucrats worth fighting for. in secret, operating on the same assumptions and 8 regions, each of which was to have a “gathering” to present its report to the Arts Council. Micheal Astor In December 1968 the three editors of Circuit magazine, and sub-committeesbefore it even reaches the bureaucra- Other speakers mentioned the Agitprop Street Players, methods as all the others.” present its recommendations to the NAC. Each region plus four other assorted freaks, were surprised to find crats on the Arts Council itself. “The Case” concluded who have involved themselves directly in working-class was allocated £1000. FACOP members visited each of wrote 3 draft reports and came up with 12 pages of themselves invited to the House of Commons. that an Arts Council Committee structured in this way struggles, and who, in two years of more or less THE BUBBLE BURSTS these regions and persuaded them to elect five delegates rubbish that was rejected by his own committee. So They were to give evidence to a Committee that had could never properly understand or serve the real needs continuous performances, have still never played in a to a national artists’ panel. another report was prepared, which was marginally been set up tb investigate “New Activities” in the Arts. of the artists. Instead, FACOP proposed that the present theatre. For groups like Agitprop, who see their artistic Astor’s astuteness wrecked FACOP. For a start, they On October 29th this embryonic Artists’ Panel met better, but which ignored the questions of structure that They turned up there to be confronted by a row of august bureaucratic structure should be replaced by an Artists’ skills primarily as a means of strengthening were split on whether to go in or not. Would the 6 get the public at a hastily organised national conference in St. FACOP had posed from the beginning. Meanwhile FACOP is presenting its own report—which will insist, gentlemen under the chairmanship of Sir Edward Boyle. Panel, consisting of elected representatives of the artists revolutionary propoganda by making it interesting and absorbed and neutralised, or would they be able to fight Pancras Town Hall. Sadly this conference was a failure, due to themselves, and holding all its meetings in public. In this once more, on the FACOP case: Let the artists elect their The Committee—henceforth known as the New Activities enjoyable, grants from the Arts Council are both more effectively from inside? Eventually they decided to a conflict between London and the other regions—the way the artists would actually administer their own own representatives, and let their meetings be held in Committee (NAC)—included such people as Sir Edward impossible and irrelevant. go in—but as delegates who were accountable to regions felt that the FACOP Londoners might be finances and affairs. The slogan of self-management had public, as had happened with complete success in himself, Prof. Frank Kermode (or Commode, as the New FACOP, and with certain demands which they would attempting to control them in some way, playing entered the world of art. London. Activists like to call him), Sir Joseph E. Lockwood of ABSORPTION fight for to the finish. The demands were as before: Open manipulative politics not too dissimilar from the Arts E.M.I., and the Right Honourable Micheal Astor an ex- meetings, and an elected artists’ panel. Council itself. The regions still had no direct experience Conservative MP. They were all, as poet Jeff Nuttall told While the Artists were attempting to grapple with these Becoming part of a committee whose very existence of the pernicious way the Arts Council operates, so they QUESTIONS... them, from the Paunch Belt. They had copies of IT OCCUPATION problems, the process of recuperation was beginning. you are opposed to is a dangerous business, but it couldn’t quite see what all the fuss was about. spread out in front of them opened at the “What’s FACOP still held that the NAC should be run by artists wouldn’t have mattered if the artists’ own conditions for Lacking national support, the Londoners decided to go On the whole, the first round of the battle with the Arts Happening” page. They asked the bemused seven who were responsible to artists. Astor decided to divide themselves had been fulfilled. And this is where worker- it alone. In February of this year they arranged to hold questions like: As well as talking, FACOP wrote a series of angry letters and rule, and started interviewing people for his NAC directors and students’ representatives on Governing Council has been won by the bureaucrats. to Lord Goodman, protesting about the arbitary way the open meetings at the Arts Council to hear applications for But a lot has been learnt. And even more, questions “What is this ‘Mixed Media’ anyway? Mark 2. He hoped to siphon off the artists’ rebelliousness bodies need to take note—had the artists remained firm their regional grant of £1000. As an unofficial body (even NAC had been set up, and challenging the Arts’ Council’s are now being asked that were largely being ignored “Has it got any aesthetic qualities, would you say?” by recruiting a few of them onto the committee. The total in fighting for their demands, and had they continued to though the five organisers had been elected by a priorities and values. They received the usual meaning­ before the FACOP afair. The relationship of the artist to They were completely out of touch with the subject unsuitablility of Astor as chairman of the NAC, and the be, in a real sense, delegates who were accountable to significant number of artists) all they could do was made they were supposed to investigate. Their level of dis­ less replies, amounting to the words: correctness of FACOP’s case that the NAC should consist their comrades outside—then the conflict would have the state; the relationship of the artist to the “Thankyou for your criticisms, which were most recommendations. But they felt it was worth doing this, if cussion about it was irrelevant, superficial and arrogant. of representative artists is indicated by the following continued in a sharper and more fruitful way. But only to prove that open meetings of artists presided over revolutionary movement and the working class; the way They were about to make administrative and financial interesting. I shall, of course, take no notice of them piece of conversation. Astor was interviewing Sue the collective discussion between the NAC six and the institutions seek to contain or control even the highly whatsoever. ” by elected delegates could do the job as they had argued decisions about a world they had never entered, nor were artists outside stopped, because at this very point—the in “The Case. ” personalised and individualistic vision of the artist as part ever likely to enter—a world for which they had nothing Letters were no use, so other methods were resorted most crucial of all—FACOP ceased having its regular of a general attempt to preserve an established culture— to. The artists reckoned they knew more about New The meetings took place on five consecutive days. In but contempt. It was capitalist bureaucracy in action with meetings. all, some 250 people attended, hearing applications for these questions can now be discussed with much greater a vengeance. Activities than the bureaucrats on the NAC, and they set clarity and understanding than before. The next day FACOP was formed, the letters standing out to prove it. While the NAC dithered about holding its The really crucial question is: who are the artists for “Friends of the Arts Council Operative. ” secret meetings, FACOP wrote off for applications to be working for? What point is there in creating works of art The mobilisation of the artists against the Arts Council had placed before the NAC, should the NAC decide the designed only for a minority audience of rich begun. continue its existence and start giving out money. In less intellectuals? How can artists break out of the High-Brow than a week, FACOP channeled in £60, 000 worth of Culture circuit, and reach out to new audiences, saying NEW ACTIVITIES AND NEW applications from “new activities” round the country. new things in new ways that are consistent with Then FACOP learnt that the NAC was to hold its final contemporary reality? How can artists take their part in SOCIETIES meeting in April 1969. Mysteriously, the NAC was about the general revolutionary offensive against our society to decide what would be done about ‘New Activities’— and its culture? It is at this point that the concept of For the Arts Council, “New Activities” are cultural about which they still knew nothing whatever. “Art” itself comes into question. What used to be called developments that don’t fit easily into the slots, or FACOP decided that this time the bureaucrats would art overflows into many other kinds of social activity—play straight-jackets, that the Arts Council is divided into— listen to them whether they liked it or not. They decided activity, technological innovation, politics. Literature, Theatre, Painting etc. They are things like to occupy the meeting and confront the bureaucrats with And it is at this point that the FACOP artists have mixed media shows, rock music with lights and dancers, the Case and the applications they had received. For already learnt something very important. For once artists street-theatre groups, experiments involving new techno­ three weeks beforehand they rehearsed the occupation, leave their mental attics and attempt to revolutionise logies, happenings, environmental events, etc. They tend simulting the situation so as to reveal the likely reaction to come out of that social grouping that is vaguely called of the Committee and showing up the weaknesses of the themselves, their work and their society, then they come the Underground, and they are often centred round Arts confronters. They reduced their numbers to six, in order up against the state and its bureaucratic machine. At first the machine seems formidable. But in fact the people Labs. to give themselves the cohesiveness and incisiveness they They also usually involve certain ideas, and this is required. They even produced documents (including the who administer bureaucratic institutions are both vul­ where the Arts Council’s difficulties started. Although the Government White Paper on the Arts) in order to deal nerable and, in the last resort, incompetent. They ideas are more to do with personal liberation than social with the arguments they knew they would meet from the continue their existence only by virtue of their position in liberation, and although their end-result is often merely Committee. The day came, and in they marched. the power structure—which depends on the assent and self-indulgent (if not plain sloppy), the people concerned The Black Dwarf commented at the time: the apathy of the people below. Once that assent is with­ do have a real sense of hostility towards our society and “It must be one of the first organised invasions of a drawn, and is replaced by mobilised, determined, permanent opposition—then the bureaucracy’s days are its official Culture (or Art). At their best, they are out to government committee... For two hours ten worthy numbered. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 14 Black Dwarf has been carry­ In March, we carried a con­ angry responses and in the first full analysis of Jack ing a continuous debate on troversial and polemical piece next issue, Black Dwarf 32, we Straw’s politics. Now in this Student politics and student written in the heat of the printed a critique of it which issue we continue the debate action. In February we pub­ occupations over the files accused the author of with a vigorous attack by a lished a long article on issue. It was called ‘The ‘‘Leaping Sideways" . In No 33, political militant on unplanned ‘Students and the Vanguard'. student Movement comes of a fortnight ago, we printed the and unwinnable occupations. Age'. It provoked a number of Sitting-in- year after year.

The recent spate of student occupations the demise of the old aristocratic tradition over the ‘files’ issue has provoked from at of scholarship in face of the hydra-headed least one reader of Black Dwarf, the self- monster of technology. Who cares? We are congratulatory response that at last the Bri not in business to arbitrate between diffe­ tish student movement has come of age. A rent visions of bourgeois society. We are typically British maturation: a few occupa­ here to smash the whole edifice. tions, politely abandonned in face of, not Yet again the instinctive student res­ the riot police and tear gas, but court in­ ponse to authority has been the sit-in. junctions. As usual a few students and Ever since the first LSE occupation in date—at Hornsey—achieved precisely hopelessly inappropriate strategy and staff foolhardy enough to come into the 1966, four years ago, this outmoded tactic nothing, unless you count the mellifluous tactics. open are savagely victimised, and most of has been dragged back from the grave to mumbles of sympathy from the cultural The revolution is not at hand, and if it the rest return to work, waiting for the end each time in the same dismal failure. establishment. What else has been was we would be totally unprepared for it. next big non-event. Each time the authorities grow more adept achieved? A few staff and students sus­ Instead of exposing ourselves to the lists The files controversy could never been a at handling it. They know that, in the pre­ pended, sacked or even jailed: the exact compiled by M l5 for eventual encarcera- revolutionary issue. No self-respecting re­ sent conjuncture, an occupation has to number depending on the composition, tion in a concentration camp, we should re­ volutionary should be surprised that end. They know that public demands to ideology and staying power of the forces in­ main invisible apart from the effect of our universities, like all institutions, keep re­ discipline students are growing stronger volved. Oh yes, and the erection of a activities. Instead of forcing the universi­ cords on their members. After all, all the time. They know that leaders be­ cumbersome bureaucratic machinery of en­ ties to drop their liberal, paternalist employers have black-listed militants for come indentifiable and can be appro­ capsulation graced with the liberal epithet veneer at a faster rate than they are doing decades, and the State keeps files on mil­ priately dealt with as disillusion or even of participation. anyway, we should exploit this enclave of lions of us. As an issue, the opening of boredom sets in. We are all supposed to have read our relative freedom to the hilt. The univer­ files has its use as a preliminary tactical After the latest round of hostilities, the handbooks on guerilla strategy and tactics sities and techs should not be the battle­ skirmish. It gives the left an opportunity sentences on student militants have been but all their lessons seemed consigned to ground for masochistic militants but a to flex its organisational muscles and to more savage than ever before. The acade­ that romantic other world—the ‘third’ guerilla training base. Behind the facade watch which way the liberals jump. And mic kangaroo courts have had their wheels world. The student movement in this coun­ of bourgeois academic scholarship the real we can safely leave the problem to them. well oiled; ‘justice’ is dispensed swiftly. try has got neither the strength, organisa­ learning should be taking place. We are After all it was only the liberals who made The cry of victimisation goes up. How un­ tion or desparation to engage in an open, continually told that we are privileged. the connection between university files fair of the authorities to choose the most frontal, confrontation with the authorities. Why not put this privilege to some real and the general encroachment on indivi­ prominent. How do you remove the sen­ The NUS is less capable than even the use. dual privacy. Let Annan Leavis and tences from your comrades? The only solu­ most mediocre industrial union of protect­ This in turn means that we must re­ E.P. Thompson argue about the involve­ tion, besides legalistic appeals to the bet­ ing its members against victimisation. The answer our relation. to education and ment of industry with the universities, and ter nature of bourgeois justice, seems to left is too small and isolated. Yet we academic knowledge. Too few students be more occupations. However, unless the continue to use a tactic—the have realised that their first move against student body displays its solidarity in a occupation—which can only succeed when their own class must be to rebel against miraculous fashion all this will create is there is a real solidarity and strength. We their studies. The real and insiduous yet more martyrs. Faced with an opposi­ use a tactic that ends every time with mili­ enemy lies in the libraries—those heaps of tion cowed by legal injunctions, the tants being temporarily or permanently re­ accumulated debris of bourgeois civilisa­ authorities will get tougher. They will go moved from that sector of the struggle. tion through which the student is urged to as far with their victimisation as the liberal The apparent strength of the student wade, like a conscientious coprophiliac. conscience will allow them; and as we movement is largely illusory. Most partici­ Passive in face of the greatest commo­ know that conscience is very elastic, for it pants in occupations melt away when the dity-culture, students lose the last treats every extreme example of repres­ going gets really tough. The lesson: there vestige of imagination left to them after sion as an exception. is no point in a full scale confrontation un­ their years of repression in home and Four years of student activity in this less you are going to win. school. The left in this country is by no country and the most elementary lessons The student left may condemn the means free of this plague, it still haven’t been learned. Are we playing at re­ NUS for its bourgeois concept of politics, fetishises Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, volution, enjoying the euphoria of the but the left itself stands condemned for its Freud. It suffers from a bourgeois rever­ temporary solidarity, or are we engaged in inability to identify the precise nature of ence towards learning. It turns sources of a real struggle? The longest occupation to the struggle, and consequently its use of real knowledge into false gods.

the following information from concern to the imperialist powers. It have been strong objections to our all universities and colleges: is the area of the third world nearest position on Zionism. names of students either on to Europe, it borders Asia and Three years have now passed since S ign als. Africa, it holds colossal reserves of outstanding charges or who the June War. Over the next three oil. have already been sentenced issues the Black Dwarf will develop Since the six day war in June 1967 its coverage of the zone. In the light Student Repression: for on-campus activities, the the Middle East has been politically of the changes caused by the war Information wanted nature of the charges, the sen­ transformed. As yet there is no end and its aftermath we will provide a tences, and the activities from in sight, either to the anti-Zionist class analysis of three major com­ The D w arf has been attem pt­ which they arose. This informa fight of Palestinians and progressive ponents of the changing situation: - ing to draw up a list of tion should reach us as soon as Israelis, or to the class struggle with­ First an analysis of the political deve­ students involved in the recent possible. in the Arab States against imperia­ lopment of the Palestinian resistance wave of repression. lism and the local ruling classes. and of the internal crisis in the Communications problems Black Dwarf has consistently re­ major Arab state—Nasser’s Egypt. have made the compilation of Coming in the Black Dwarf ported on, and supported, the Secondly there will be an analysis of struggle of the Palestinian people, of the crisis within Israeli society. this difficult. We have fairly A SERIES ON THE MIDDLE EAST complete information on Israeli anti-Zionists, and of the re­ Thirdly we will take a look at the volutionary Arab movements in the Keele, Liverpool, Cambridge, changing positions of the European After South East Asia, the Middle Arab states. The issues are some­ Left on the issues raised by the Essex and Oxford. We need East has become the area of greatest times extremely explosive, and there Middle East.

Dr. Joseph Needham. Main Hall, where Enoch Powell is speaking, to the Earth’ 8 p. m. Camden Studios, College of Preceptors, 2 and 3 hold a counter-meeting. Camden St. N.W.1. Tel: 263 0613 Events. Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1. at 7 p.m. May 18: Lecture on Productivity May 23-25: March and Rally planned Organised by Society for Anglo- Deals and how to fight them by Tony about David Kitson. From Ruskin Chinese Understanding, 24 Warren Cliff at Forresters Hall, Highgate St. London WIP 5 DG. 387 0074 College to Trafalgar Square. Road, Kentish Town, N.W.5. 8 p. m. Organised by Ruskin College Kitson May 16: Procession Concert by Contact R. McGibbon, 22 Estelle Rd. May 15: Palestine Day public Committee, Ruskin. Hall, Old Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch N.W.5. of Camden IS Headington, Oxford. meeting. Friends House, Euston Rd. Orchestra. Starts Richmond Tube 11 May 21: Trial of 4 Panthers 7 p. m. organised by Palestine a. m. June 1: South Africa Cricket Team (following 2nd March arrives Heathrow Airport. Solidarity Campaign. May 17: Demonstration then March Demonstration) at Marlborough St. May 15: Meeting to organise Anti- Demonstrations Organised by Stop 70 to Amer ican and Israeli embassies. May 21: Drug Dependants Care Tour. Powell Demonstration. Alperton 2. 30 p. m. Trafalgar Square. Group meets fortnightly on June 2: Demonstration outside Park Hotel, Ealing Rd, Alperton, Organised by Palestine Solidarity Thursdays, at 6 Endsleigh Street, Wembly. 7. 30 p. m. Campaign. Cricket Team hotel. Details from London W.C.1. All who care welcome Anti-Apartheid 580 5311 May 15: Bernadette Devlin, Michael May 18: (N.B. not May 17th) Enoch to attend meetings. Secretary: Ros June 6: Cricket Demonstration. Foot, Paul Foot and others to speak Powell speaks at Wembley Westwood c/o Caz Gibbon, 20 at rally to demand release of Irish Conservative Club, Copland High March from Marble Arch to Lords Linhope Street, N.W.1. Cricket Ground. Organised by Stop prisoners in England. Conway Hall, School, Wembley. Details 743 1172 May 22: Why Support Apartheid 70 Tour. Red Lion Square, W.C.1. at 7.30 p. m. Demonstration against racialism Sport? Peter Hain is speaker at June 6: Party, drinks and music at Organised by Irish Civil Rights organised by Brent People’s Action meeting at Kensington Central Camden Studios, Camden St. N.W.1. Solidarity Campaign. Committee Against Racialism. Library, Horton St. Kensington, 8 7. 30 p. m. Organised by Camden May 16 ‘Hand and Brain in Chinese Assemble forecourt of Brent House 7 p. m. Movement for People’s Power 8 Culture’ public meeting. Speaker: p. m. to move on to Copeland School May 22-23: Angry Arts film ‘Salt of Bramshaw Gardens N.W.5. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 15 the fourty four clubs of the first two miss the crucial point. Many older maintain gates but without this exten­ divisions alone each competing against players have often said that they sion of the game—an extension made the other for a team place and for a didn’t mind playing for such low necessary by the logic of capitalism— win. Only a tiny proportion of these wages, that playing for the club was who’s to say that football might not ear really big money at all enough etc. But hasn’t this become a already be dying? consistently. dangerous cliche? Maybe being Joseph Meisl ARSENAL, Highbury Just because the people involved exploited on the football field has are all working class it doesn’t mean advantages but it is exploitation never­ ROCK & NOISE that the game isn’t organised on a theless, and—need one labour the Black Dwarf, thoroughgoing exploitative basis. point—at the hands of their own It is about time that revolutionary True, in the very nature of the game class. In Paris in May ’68 hanging papers started to discuss Rock, and there must be some feeling of from the balcony of the French FA the piece on the Credence Clearwater solidarity within a club, some close was a red banner saying: ‘Football au Revival in your last issue was a start. connection between a club and its Footballeurs’. No, on the question of But the small item you carried with it supporters. In football it is the the ownership of the game. Football on the Incredible String Band, was a collective which is stressed and not now is essentially capitalist. One false start. the individual. But this, I suspect is example sums this up: Leeds United. Your short article on this group was secondary—something which has to Though they won nothing this year misconceived. Instead of locating and be there if the product is to be they are one of England’s most discussing their music, which comes successfully marketed each Saturday. successful teams—-financially. They first, it reproduced all the old, heavy Economics is determinant in the last earned a huge sum of money from the positions that the left trots out about LETTERS instance: star players are bought and 20 odd extra games they played in the hippies and their odious but sold; managers for years fired over­ Europe and in the Cup. They are significant culture. FOOTBALL/FOOTBALL night after a run of a few lost games. rated as one of the ‘most professional’ If you want to blast them, then Dear Black Dwarf, There may be a show of sentiment but teams and yet they are also one of the blast them right off the map; don’t The opening of a discussion on foot­ in the end it is cash which counts. worst supported teams in the first leave it at snide and offhand ball is to be welcomed and while Nor is it right to represent this division. Some have even suggested comments about being bored. If you hoping for a full critique of the article situation as the result of some quite that they only continued to win want a dialogue (with those whose of 20 May I’d like in the meantime to recent incursion of ‘business’ into the matches just as long as they played first language is noise) then give us a suggest some interim comments. The game. The modern game has always destructive football. Now they have proper analysis. two points around which the article been a business before all else. Until developed a side which plays Yours in love and struggle turns are the economics of football 1960 there was a maximum wage of attractive football they are destined to Lana Jonnes Islington lose. An exaggeration (from the lips of and the nature of football considered £20 a week, and it was only through Dear Editor, a Leeds player himself—be it said) but as a cultural form. Who owns and con­ the efforts of the players themselves May we appeal through your one which points the way for the trols football? That is one question. Is that this was raised, making possible columns to socialists who have op­ watching football, following football the new organisation of the game— future of the game. For the capitalist posed the suppression of democratisa­ essentially critical or even possibly better adapted to compete in the the future lies in Europe and in tele­ vision. With this perspective the tion in Czechoslovakia? For many disruptive? That is the second. ‘entertainment’ sector. Management months we have been receiving re­ working class base of the game It is naive, as the article suggests, capitulated in the face of rapidly ports of anticipated political trials in to believe that football belongs to the falling gates (’59/’60 to ’60/61 saw becomes almost irrelevant. Prague. The jailing of the Czech journ­ working class just because ‘The the largest single fall in gates between I have considered ownership. What alist Oto Filip confirms our fear that players, the trainers, the managers, seasons since the war) and loss of star about control? It is quite true that these trials are in preparation. the coaches,... are all working class.’ players like Greaves and Law to football followers know the game, and Last year Bertrand Russell re­ The directors are mostly working class European teams. Their primitive arith­ criticise it and that this involves them peatedly warned the Left of show as well but because they own the metic by which large profits were in the game in some sense. (Many of trials, and appealed for international clubs it is in the end they who call the made on huge gates and small wages course play it themselves) But this action to expose them. We are there­ shots. It is they who hire and fire had finally to go in the face of subtler cannot disguise the fact that fore asking the Left to stand ready for managers, who in turn buy and sell economic pressures. The game is as supporters are powerless to change the opening to make known the true players, each of whom must fight capitalist as it always was, only the the game in any way. Everybody hates nature of their “crimes”. every week for his wages by making owners have become better business­ defensive soccer but if that is what Yours fraternally, men. sure of his first team place. There is a pays that is what will be played. Ken Coates pool of about a thousand players in Maybe this is to exaggerate and European and World Cup hoopla may Chris Farley.

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The revolt of American youth offence committed in pursuit of a poli­ Pathet Lao currency, worth about General Electric in Minneapolis, Common­ against the Cambodian invasion tical objective. a dollar, shows the liberation wealth Edison in Chicago, and Union and the murder of four students As Bobby Seale put it: “To be a army bringing down U.S. war Carbide in New York. The Columbia revolutionary is to be an enemy of the planes over the Plain of Jars; the Broadcasting System’s AGM in San in Ohio was dramatically re­ Fransisco was the target of disruptions for ported in the British press. But state. To be arrested for this struggle historic funeral urns can be is to be a political prisoner” clearly seen. The note is enlarged broadcasting demeaning programmes the fact that this revolt spread We are now compiling a second list to nearly twice its size. about women. to sections of the U.S. Army went and would be grateful for any informa­ Richard Boyle. U.S. war reporter Most of the groups involved in develop­ strangely unobserved. The silence tion. It is particularly difficult to get turned anti-war militant, brought ing this tactic belong to the peaceful wing is the more strange when it is rea­ any hard facts out of Northern Ireland the note back from Vientiane. An of the protest movement and so far only lised that one of the places where where there some hundreds of young account of his experiences will be the Honeywell AGM has seen real vio­ the American Army has a large men and women still in prison. published in the next Black lence. But it is undeniable that such presence is Britain itself. The A former circulation manager of Dwarf. demonstrations hit companies hard at the news of what happened in the Bri­ this paper, Roger Tyrell, has just been moment when they are at the height of sentenced to six months for his pari in their annual public relations exercise. tish U.S. bases has been hushed With the recent spate of bombings (see up in an almost frantic security the Grosvenor Square Panther Demon­ stration. Both on this occasion and the Black Dwarf No. 32) such disruptive tac­ clamp-down. But the Black Dwarf subsequent Panther turn-out on 24 tics are a small but useful tool in the pre­ has learned of one incident which April, the police appear to have been liminary war of nerves against American may be representative of many particularly viscious and many cases capitalism . more. On Tuesday 5th of May, at involving black comrades are still WHO OWNS THIS UTERUS? the U.S. Airforce base at Chick- pending. sands, R.A.F. Cadington, Bed­ New York State still bars abortions, the ford, there was a spontaneous JUMPING PAY CLAIMS latest attempt to reform the law that keeps demonstration of 60 servicemen, them illegal, was defeated on March 30th. plus their wives and children, on The m edia’s Free Communications At present thousands of women are forced the lawns outside the Base’s Group have an irregular publication to have back street operations. Many die, chapel. The demonstration was called The Open Secret. The latest others- suffer terrible hardship as they scrape together the dollars for a rapid pro- quickly broken up by Military issue has a brief and inadequate attack on the slumbering National fessional job. Of those who are killed in Police, and 18 of the servicement the back streets, 80 % are non-white. were detained. They will almost Union of Journalists. In it Bryn Jones describes how he drew up the Daily Two days before the bill was rejected, certainly be sent back to the 2, 000 women marched from New York’s States. Mirror’s 1968 pay demands, which gave the Daily Mirror journalists their Bellevue Hospital to rally at Union Square This event is especially signi­ biggest ever pay-increase. He writes: where this picture was taken. They were ficant, because the Chicksands “I myself was working on the demonstrating for free and legal abortion Base is notorious for its strict detailed wage proposals on the night on demand. Some wore aprons reading: discipline. As soon as it occurred, that Bob Beamon won the Olympic DIARY “Is this uterus the property o f New York the authorities of the Base made long jump title. With an eye on the State? ” While conservative senators and strenuous efforts to ensure that TV screen I jotted down alternative doctors prate on about ‘mankind’, the the demonstration would not be re­ wage claims. The further Beamon the Front’s communiqué did not reveal butchery continues. jumped, the higher I fixed the claim. the name of the base. ported. Chicksands Base has a NEW BOOKS FOR THE LEFT When he finally set a new world More British units have been sent to “friendship” Committee with the Dhofar to reinforce the flagging efforts of authorities in Bedford, and record with the incredible 29 feet plus The latest issue of New Left Review leap I settled for what seemed the the Sultan’s troops, and to protect the celebrates ten years of publication, through this Committee the local astronomical figure of 30% average British bases. During early April, a British which as the Black Dwarf knows is a paper was given to know that any salary increase.” army medical unit, of both doctors and real achievment; by announcing a new exposure of the incident would be nurses, was sent to Salah. Sir Kennedy publishing company New Left Books. harmful to the interests of Anglo- Trevaskis, former Governor General of As the books are going to be well pro­ American co-operation. That is DHOFAR Aden, is reported to have flown to the duced and expensive, the NLR has why nothing was heard about the country for discussions with the Sultan’s also started something called New The coastal city of Suedha, in the eastern advisers on countering the Front's Left Review Editions, neither a club incident until an informant leaked advance. the information to our office. region of Dhofar, was captured by the nor a con trick, subscribing to the Edi­ According to our informant, the guerrillas of the Popular Front for the tions means getting the books at a re­ Liberation o f the Occupied Arab Gulf duced price, still in hardback but with­ Chicksands demonstration was (PFLOAG) towards the end of March, THE ACTION MOVES TO AGMs out the swish covers. just the tip of the iceberg. There according to a communique issued by the The first two books coming out this is considerable unrest in the Front’s office in Aden in the middle of A new tactic designed to upset the smooth month, are Lukacs' Lenin, and Ernest British Bases, and at least five April. The communique said that the surface of the corporate capitalist image M andel’s Europe versus America. The underground anti-war papers are governor o f the city, together with more has emerged in the U.S. Demonstrations first acclaiming the actuality of revolu­ known to be circulating amongst than 70 troops who had survived the shell­ at the Annual General Meetings of several tion, the second the contradictions in the G.Is. The black servicemen, ing and assault, surrendered to the guerril­ of America’s largest companies have dis­ world capitalism. Promised for the in particular, are beginning to get las. Suedha is the third city to be captured turbed the flatulent self-congratulation Autumn is a full biography of organised in a way that promises by the Front, after Delkot and Rakhyut that used to typify these occasions. The Gramsci, the great Italian revolu­ last year. On March 25th, the Front repul­ most successful disruption to date was at tionary marxist. increasing difficulties for the sed an attack by ships of the navy of the Honeywell’s AGM in Minneapolis. Anti­ Base commanders in Britain. Sultan of Muscat and Oman which were war demonstrators forced the manu­ HANOI ON THE BOMBINGS shelling the coast near Delkot, and shot facturers of fragmentation bombs to down one plane. Between March 20th and abandon their shareholders meeting minu­ According to Hanoi Radio, 57 people were killed by American POLITICAL PRISONERS March 23rd, according to another mid- tes after it began. The auditorium was full April communiqué, five engagements were of chanting protestors and more outside bombing raids over North Viet­ Our political prisoner chart in Dwarf fought in the central area of Dhofar, in smashing the plate-glass doors with bricks. nam between April 30th and May 32 commanded a great deal of support which more than 30 o f the Sultan’s troops In the last two months companies hit by 3rd. The deaths were caused by from many readers and some criticism were killed or wounded, four military similar demonstrations include: for involve­ delayed action anti-personnel from liberals who seem to believe that trucks were destroyed, and also a number ment in Vietnam: American Telephone bombs. They say that three like rabies it was something only other o f small installations. During the same per­ and Telegraph in Cleveland, IBM in planes were shot down on May countries had. Our definition was a iod, a British airbase was shelled twice, Atlanta, United Aircraft in Connecticut, 1st., and eight on May 2nd and simple one: any person in gaol for an with many casualties being caused, though and Boeing in New York; for pollution: 3rd and two on May 4th. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 2

The Immediate Situation.

The US invasion of Cambodia has opened a new Wallacite platform, and he has called off the ing. Kosygin’s equivocating and vacuous utter­ stage in struggle throughout the world. In Indo- desegregation of schools. On May 2 a conservative ances contrast with the militant and clear posi­ China it has spread the war across the Peninsula, Nixon Republican, Bentsen, defeated a liberal Re­ tions taken up by the Chinese. posing new opportunities and new dangers for the publican Yarborough, in the Texas primary. This It is not only the colonial and capitalists worlds revolution. It has revitalised the flagging revolu­ Texas victory was on a pro-war platform. that have been transformed by the 1960s. The tionary forces within the US itself, and it has split But the unity of Nixon’s foreign and domestic Sino-Soviet dispute, and the rise of a critical the US ruling class. Cambodia, combined with the policies was even more clearly shown by his Post­ opposition in Eastern Europe, have weakened Middle East, has sharpened an existing economic master General, Blount, who declared at the end Soviet control over the eastern camp. The Soviet crisis and plunged the stock markets of the west of April: “Our history shows all too clearly in Union itself is in an economic crisis which has into the biggest fall since 1929. which direction the middle class moves when it is caused conflicts within the leadership, and its for­ The political importance of these developments frightened, angry or threatened. It goes to the eign policy is marked by defensive and repressive can be grasped by seeing them in terms of the his­ right, not to the left. The more frightened it be­ tendencies that have only smothered, not solved, tory from which they emerge. After 1945 the world comes, the angrier it gets, the more extreme its the problems it faces. While it pours arms into an was gripped by cold war: a solid Russian-led East action. And America has the largest middle class Egypt that cannot use them, and while it equivo­ faced a solid US-led West. Contradictions between in the world”. When Nixon announced his cates on Indo-China, it is still pursuing the defen­ countries or classes on either side were stifled. In Cambodian invasion, he specifically linked sive aims of the 1950s. In Vienna it is engaged in the third world, countries either followed one or “anarchy at home and abroad”. The next day, as a rapprochement with the US through the the other camp, or slithered into an enfeebled and he lurched, drunk, from a Pentagon briefing, he Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Across the anodyne neutrality. ranted on about “campus bums”. border in Prague its tanks are proping up a pro- Throughout the 1960s this static world-order But Nixon’s attempt to enflame class war col­ Soviet clique. disintegrated, and the Cambodian events mark a lapsed when four students were shot in Ohio. Al­ The Cambodian events have therefore marked a new, third phase in this process. Each of the though only a week before the Vietnam turning point in all three areas of the world. In the phases has been marked by a change in the Indo- Moratorium Committee had closed its offices with colonial lands of Asia they have marked a strate­ Chinese war. In 1965 the US sent troops into Viet­ collapsing finances and organisation, and although gic extension of the revolutionary movement. In nam and started bombing the north, opening a many revolutionary leaders have been shot or the “socialist” camp, they mark a big swing of more intense phase of military struggle in Indo- imprisoned, a revived mass resistance swept power to China and further reveal the static per­ China, and a new, intensified phase of political across the American continent. Moreover the spectives of the Soviet leadership. In the capitalist struggle in the capitalist world. The Tet offensive tumbling of Wall Street showed that one vital sec­ world they have accelerated a pre-existing poli­ of early 1968 marked a second phase, of military tion of the US ruling class had no confidence in tical and economic crisis. retreat by imperialism and of mass political ac­ Nixon’s policies. The opposition had revived; the All these events will affect the situation in Bri­ tion in the USA and in Europe, especially in ruling class was split. tain. The Wilson clique is moving towards an elec­ France. The invasion of Cambodia, two years In steady decline since December 1968, Wall tion, which it will try to hustle its way through be­ after the revolutionary upsurge of May 1968, sig­ Street has been depressed by many factors: the fore the economy breaks down once again. Un­ nals the start of a third phase in this development. world-wide high in interest rates has sucked employment is at its highest since the war. Wilson The rise of colonial revolution, in the previously money out of the stock markets; there is universal has slavishly supported the US in Indo-China. But excluded “third” world, has melted the frozen poli­ pessimism about the future of the US economy; he knows that the recession in the US will hit the tics of the cold war. It has shown countries under the politics of Nixon at home and abroad inspire UK, and this external pressure will combine with imperialist control the way to throw off this con­ little confidence in financial circles. The stock the internal evolution of the UK economy. OECD trol. It has provoked severe economic and poli­ market fall both reflects and then encourages the predicts that the UK will have one of the lowest tical crises within the ruling classes of the capita­ fall in real output. growth rates in Europe during the 1970s and the in­ list world: France was split by Algeria, and the This economic crisis in the US has spread dustrial bourgeoisie will soon put up prices to des­ US by Vietnam. It has led to a spectacular rise in across the capitalist world. While Europe and troy the real effects of the recent wage increases. revolutionary politics within the advanced capita­ Japan may be gaining ground on the US, they are The warnings by Lord Shawcross, about the need list countries themselves. Freed from the need to still under its economic sway. The fall in Wall for another devaluation within eighteen months, choose between Stalin and the west, workers and street has been matched by a fall across the mar­ show that one section of the ruling class is already intellectuals have seen the possibility of making kets of London, Tokyo and Sydney. The fall in US on the alert. their own history. They have learnt the lesson of output will provoke a contraction in world trade. The UK is also faced with its own specific colo­ the Vietnamese—that mass action, led by Marxist No capitalist country can escape the influence of nial problem, the Vietnam of the late nineteenth parties, can defeat imperialism. They have used the dominant imperialist power. century—Ireland. While the expansion of Euro­ the contradictions opened up by colonial revolu­ Significant in this respect is this fate of IOS, the pean capitalism transformed the Irish Republic in tion (hostility to conscription, foreign exchange largest popular investment fund in the world. Its the 1950s, the political resurgence of the 1960s gal­ crises) to organise against capitalist society. collapse reflects a counter-offensive by European vanised the north. The two have combined to re­ This rise of revolutionary politics has gone to­ (especially German and British) capital against a suscitate a fight that has been dormant since the gether with a growing economic instability particularly vicious American competitor. On an­ counter-revolutionary settlement of 1921. throughout the capitalist world. America’s junior other level it has signalled a general and accele­ These events demonstrate the unity of the world cold war allies (the Common Market) and the old rated loss of confidence in market stocks and crisis, provoked by the disintegration of the post­ Axis powers (Japan, Germany) have risen to chal­ added to the crisis emanating from Wall Street. war order. Capitalism unified the world, but it did lenge her economic supremacy. Since 1958 the US This economic and political crisis in the US and so in an uneven way, and it is through this Mar­ has had a balance of payments deficit, which has its allies has been sharpened by, and has coin­ xist concept of the combined and uneven develop­ been sharply increased by the expenses of the Viet­ cided with, the Cambodian invasion. In Asia itself, ment of the world that the paradox of the present nam war. She used, however, to have a surplus on the invasion has transformed the co-ordinates of multiple yet united crisis can be grasped. visible trade. This has now gone, and a wave of revolutionary struggle. In Indo-China it has The upsurge of May 1968 was a political move­ defensive protectionism has started to sweep the spread the anti-imperialist struggle to Laos and ment contained by repression and token conces­ States. “The cause of the current battle is fairly Cambodia and opened up new problems, and new sions. The sharp international currency crisis of clear: it stems from mounting American frustra­ openings, for the revolution in Vietnam. More­ 1969 was solved because it was a question of in­ tion at seeing the historic U.S. postwar trade sur­ over, it has now brought the war nearer to stitutional and political decisions, which the capita­ plus, which reached $6.4 billion record of exports Thailand, Malaysia and Burma, where the guer­ list states took rationally to prop up their over imports in 1964, shrink to almost nothing” rilla forces will now be in a stronger position. economies. The crisis of May 1970 is of a different (Newsweek 23. 3. 70). The Cambodian invasion also coincided with a order. It combines the political conditions of 1968 Losing out in the world market, the US is also in deepening crisis at the other end of Asia. In the with deeper material and economic conditions, the grips of an internal economic crisis. GNP has week that the Daily Telegraph reported how the which are soluble neither by repression, nor by ra­ fallen this year. Unemployment is rising. Earn­ Dhofar situation was “causing grave concern at tional adjustments. But one immediate response ings for the first quarter of 1970 are all down for the Foreign Office” (29. 4. 70) the US was thrown in­ will be increased political repression: the new such big US firms as General Motors, Ford, Stan­ to hysteria by rumours of Russian pilots flying in anti-demonstration laws in France, and the trials dard Oil of Indiana and Boeing. But prices are go­ Egypt. in the US make this plain. ing up, and the US is now caught in a triple bind Strategically these two sets of events can be The central factor of this whole crisis is the con­ with economic recession, price inflation and the seen as a huge pincer movement converging on flict between the US ruling class and its opponents largest balance of payments deficit in its history. the Indian sub-continent. Throughout the vast at home and abroad. Marx pointed out in the intro­ “In its attempt to control inflation and simul­ underbelly of Asia, from Saigon to Amman, the duction to Capital that the American War of Inde­ taneously prevent sever recession, the Nixon Asian continent is stirring with incipient pendence of 1776 heralded the French Revolution Administration has used up most of its options” revolution. of 1789, and that the outbreak of the US Civil War (Time, 4. 5. 70). The two most populous states in Asia, China and in 1861 provoked the economic crisis which have The political response of Nixon to this combined India, have now been brought into closer involve­ birth to the First International of 1864. To-day, military and economic crisis has been Repression. ment with the revolutionary struggles around when the US occupies a far more important world Nixon’s aim has been to unify the white middle them. The Indian revolutionary movement is still role, the growing crisis there will have momen­ class behind him, to scare them and to form them in a fragmented stage, but it will receive a power­ tous consequences. into a solid conservative bloc. His policy is one of ful impulse from developments to its east and Yet it is the unbelievable heroism, suffering and intensified class war. west. The Cambodian events have brought China militancy of the people of Asia that has charac­ A wave of repressive trials against students and back into world politics. While the Russians mini­ terised the present epoch. It is because the east is blacks has been sweeping the US. Nixon’s mised the tripartite alliance of Sihanouk, the NLF red that new revolutionary possibilities have been “southern strategy” is to win the south on a and Pathet Lao, the Chinese press gave it top bill­ opened in the west.