No 70 June 1985 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League International labour action not imp-erialist sanctions Smash apartheid- Black struggle needs workers party! May Day 1985 in South Africa saw the nationwide two-hour work stoppage to protest tain their rule. And while governments in largest workers' rallies in 35 years as against the racist murder of two prominent Westminster and Washington click their black labour continued to mobilise against black activists in police custody. tongues over some 'excesses'. at every cru­ the brutal apartheid regime. Hundreds of Strikes, stayaways and township revolts cial point they back their Cold War allies trade unionists who gathered outside the Jo­ continue to sweep South Africa. Mounting re­ in Pretoria to the hilt. Various liberals in hannesburg headquarters of leading anti­ pression has not quelled the revolt of the this country, notably the Anti-Apartheid apartheid organisations to celebrate the in­ black masses. But the entrenched white mi­ Movement (AAM) , look to imperialist sanc­ ternational proletarian holiday by chanting nority which lives off the superexploitation tions for a road to black freedom. But at freedom songs were dispersed by police dogs of black labour is armed to the teeth and home and in South Africa itself the key to and tear gas. Two weeks .later on 14 May determined to give up nothing. They will victory is proletarian class struggle, in forty black and multiracial unions called a murder, torture, maim and terrorise to main- continued OIl page 15 ~lop. Thatcher'S deDortations to Lanka terror Open the door to Tamils! ., ~. With lts Uecibi tu vlrtually b2~ thc genOCidal terror has bel~n met by outra~e frO~l entry of Sri Lankan Tamils into Britain, the a wide spectru'l:, including even the SDP and Home Office has rondr~ned thousands of people the Council of Churches as well as a range of ~ ~ to torturr and death. More than a thousand human rights and immigratIon agencies. The "' recently arrived refugees from the hellish labour movement in particular has a responsi­ terror which is JR Ja)cwardene's Sri Lanka now bility to strain every muscle to foil That­ face the prospect of being dragged away in the cher's deadly scheme. dead of night by Thatcher's immigration polict On 30 May a Spartacist League-initiated 7. and forced aboal'd the next plane back to Lanka; picket of the Home Office, joined by rep­ ~ ~ thousands more still in Lanka are told by this resentatives of the Tamil organisations TELO ~ dictate to stay put and die. Like her fellow and NLFT, demanded 'Stop the deportations butcher JR, Thatcher is intent on cold-blooded Full right of asylum for Tamils!' Several days murder of Tamils! later a Spartacist contingent was part of The unprecedented restriction on MPs' rep­ another protest initiated by the Indian Workers resentations for Tamils threatened with de­ Association. What is urgently needed is mass­ portation to 24 hours as opposed to the normal ive labour-centred protest coupled with a com­ 4-8 weeks and the subsequent ban on any entry mitment to ensure through trade-union action by Tamils without visas, stripping them of a that not a single plane carrying Tamil refugees right accorded to every other Commonwealth back to Lanka is allowed to take off. The heavily­ ":it' citizen, could have come straight from Lankan minority workforce at Heathrow airport can despot Jayewardene. And in a manner befitting take the lead -- Stop Thatcher's death planes! that would-be despot in Downing Street, the decislon was made in dead secrecy while Par­ Deportations to death liament was in recess and without a public In a disgusting editorial, Rupert Murdoch's announceme~t. This vindictive, cold-blooded Times (29 May) backed T~tcher's murderous death sentence on a people threatened with policy with the claim that, 'At the Sri Lankan JR Jayewardene's Sinhala·chauvinist killers, here seen marauding through Tamil province of Jaffna. ~ end the condition of the country is not such ~ spearhead against all non-Anglo-Saxon immi­ ] that flight is a compelling course for the ;: Tamil minority in general .... Most of the gration into Britain. Thatcher vowed to be THATCHER ~ country is tranquil'. Was Nazi Germany in the vindictive in victory over the miners, and ~ 1930s 'tranquil' for the Jews as well? In the two that vindictiveness runs deepest when directed Kits MINERS, years since the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms, against those who were staunch supporters of hundreds of thousands of Tamils have either the miners strike, not least the oppressed been killed or made homeless or forced to take black and Asian minorities. She makes no bones JR the hazardous escape route across the narrow about her admiratioll of strongman Jayewardene' s Palk Strait to India. Roadblocks manned by iron-fist approach to 'troublesome' minorities, KIUS TAMlS Sinhala-chauvinist thugs in and out of uniform leftists and trade unionists in Lanka. Indeed -- armed with anything from machetes to ma­ it was on her tour of Southeast Asian dictator­ chine guns -- routinely stop buses to butcher ships that she boasted about how she'd 'seen BLOODY any Tamils found on them. According to the off' the heroic miners. British Refugee Council, 73 Tamils returned But what's operating here is more than a from Italy and Holland last month were arrested mutual admiration society of viCiously racist immediately upon arrival at Colombo airp;rt. continued on page 14 As Jeremy Corbyn, one of a handful of Labour ~Ws actively defending Tamils here, put it, the effect of the Home Office ruling is to create 'a queue of terror in Sri Lanka'. That­ Down with state terror cher's policy towards Tamils today is strik­ ingly reminiscent of the British government's against Tamils criminal refusal to accept Jewish refugees Young Tamil militant at 28 July 1984 demonstration in - from Hitlerite Nazism. London marking first anniversary of anti·Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka. Now gauleiter Thatcher wants to ship This attack is not just a life-and-death in Sri Lanka! ... p3 Tamils back to persecution, torture and death. question for Tamils; it is part of a racist British miners must stand with anti - apartheid struggle Ul We print below excerpted remarks by Dave tacking it were also true of the union itself. l> r Douglass, branch delegate, Hatfield Main NUM Coupled with the fact that they called m "U (in a personal capacity), at a 2 June Workers throughout the strike for these ballots and Hammer public meeting on South Africa in Hat­ non-recognition of the strike without a vote, field, S Yorks. the fact that they were holding meetings with First of all, I would like to congratulate the scabs in Nottingham and giving kind of a you for organising the meeting and to recog­ left face to them. All of these things defi­ nise the role that your group have played nitely didn't make a very healthy atmosphere through the strike. It's true to say that we for political groups to intervene. Coupled had some considerable friction before, and with that we'd just had the Workers Revol­ that's partly caused by the natural suspicion utionary Party's massive attack on Arthur, and that people in mining communities have for other members of the union including myself people who appear to come from outside, and in wouldn't stand for it. fear that groups were trying to undermine the So it's against this background that when strike and undermine the authori ty of the union. the Spartacists moved into this area they That kind of suspicion had been created in found that people already had their guards up, particular by the Revolutionary Communist and I think it's true to say that we've also Party who had corne into the village and got a natural resentment of being pressurised launched an unstinting attack on the union as to do anything or to do anything in a hurry, a whole, not simply on the leadership (which and that added some friction. I can say with was bad enough), for the reasons they were at- honesty that in the course of that struggle, those pOints of friction were rounded off, and South African mineworkers welcome striking British fiorkers Hammer and Workers Vanguard are two miner last year. of the few papers on the left that I actually sit down and read from cover to cover. Most South Africa are the self-same individuals and others wait in a big pile till I eventually companies that are already poised to buy up read them two years after they've been pub­ any section of the British mining industry lished. So I'd salute the initiative of your that's denationalised. So when we say that tendency to call the meeting, without hesi­ it's the same struggle against the same enemy, tation. I'm always pleased to speak, not­ I don't mean that in an abstract way. withstanding the points of disagreement that I also think it's important to make another we have on other issues. point. If anybody thinks that the kind of The tribune On the question of South Africa and the slavery that's going on in South Africa and of the people current phase of the struggle there, it's im­ the mass industrial murder that's being prac­ portant to recognise that that isn't 'some­ tised there is something to do with -- it's thing else'. You can get in a frame of mind of because they're black workers, it's something Trotsky and Lenin thinking that the struggle you're involved to do with some kind of inefficiency or back­ with is the battle, and then there's other wardness on their behalf -- then they might In his pamphlet 'What is to be done?', things, like there's what's going on in South soon be proved wrong, unfortunately, because Lenin explained the difference between trade­ Africa, there's what's going on in Ireland, what we've learnt is that capitalism isn't unionist and Communist politics.