No 16 November 1979 1Sp BRITAIN

BL workers: Seize the •I

15 • With unemployment the resources to back already aiming towards the losers', sneered Sir two-million mark and in­ Michael. flation predicted to top 20 per cent next year, Sir Betrayal after betrayal Michael Edwardes' an­ nouncement in early Neither does the working September that British class! Not one more job Leyland would die without must be sacrificed to keep massive surgery and the interest pay~ents another transfusion of (which devoured more than government cash was hardly half of the £48 million welcome news for the pre-tax profits for the ruling class. The Ryder first six months of this Plan instituted under year) rolling into the Wilson's Labour government hands of the banks and was supposed to have been former shareholders of BL's salvation, through a this nationalised capi­ programme of nationalis­ talist loser. The only ation and rationalisation worthwhile 'vote' in underwritten to the tune Edwardes' phoney refer­ of £1000 million from the endum is to burn the state's coffers. Four ballot. years and £775 million But BL workers are sad­ later, BL self-evidently dled with a do-nothing remains the 'sick man' of leadership and demoralised a sick economy. by a 'string of defeats, Since his appointment including last year's by Labour as BL chairman, closures of the Speke and Edwardes has added his own Southall plants. At Park ruthless touch to the Royal, workers have Labour rationalisation already opted for a redun­ scheme: in the past eight­ dancy offer of several een months jobs have been thousand pounds (predi­ slashed at the rate of cated on uninterrUpted 1000 every month. To no production until the plant avail -- BL's sales have Leyland workers demonstrate against proposed sackings, London, 9 October shuts down next June). MG- continued a steady de­ Abingdon may survive the cline, its share of the cuts, but only because of domestic market slipping to 20 per cent. cost of eight plant closures, five more partial a concerted outcry fromMG faddists around the Despite the Thatcher government's proclaimed closures and a minimum of 25,000 redundancies world; the bureaucrats have not lifted a commitment to a policy of denationalisations and (to hit upwards of 40,000 in the wake of yet finger in defence of its workforce. no more bail-outs, right now it is not likely to another 'productivity incentive' scheme). And to On the contrary, the Confederation of Ship­ let BL just go by the boards. The chronically make absolutely clear that he is out to snap the building and Engineering Unions has actually ailing balance of payments is already in the spine of militant trade-union defence of working come out in open support of the sacking of red; BL's demise would lead to the loss of conditions, Edwardes has singled out London's 25,000 of its members. The Transport and General another £900 million in exports. And the politi­ Park Royal bus plant -- with enough orders on Workers Union bureaucracy, representing half the cal consequences could be even more disastrous: the books to keep it busy another two years -­ BL workforce, followed by the small white-collar hundreds of thousands more unemployed, with a which he claims must be shut down 'simply be­ TASS, were more discreet -- but they are simi­ particularly cataclysmic effect in the indus­ cause of the appalling lack of productivity' . larly doing next to nothing to fight Edwardes' trial heartland of the Midlands. The bosses responded to some tepid verbal proposals. Edwardes' plan was also rejected by Edwardes' real message is union-busting opposition from BL shop stewards by playing a 13 October mass meeting of Leyland shop stew­ blackmail. Leyland's workers will have to beg 'workers' participation' for all it is worth. A ards. Yet beyond vague promises of support for for 'survival' (illusory though it may be) -­ 'Secret Ballot on the Company's plan for the any plans to resist the closures, all these and pay the price. If BL is to go to the govern­ recovery of BL' was.posted to everyone of the 'leaders' have offered by way. of strategy'is a ment for the remainder of its subsidy and yet 165,000 employees. Foremen were sent to pros­ call for blacking any work transferred from another handout, then BL workers have to acqui­ elytise for a 'yes' vote on the line, special threatened plants. esce to Edwardes' proposal that the failing appeals issued to the 'wives and families', even What else can they offer? Down the line they motor ~iant 'be streamlined in terms of plants a piece of cinematic trash entitled 'The Big all hailed the 39-hour week (to be implemented and slimmed down in terms of people' -- at a Decision' was churned out. 'We just do not have continued on page 2 workers tear off the social-democratic strait­ for the nationalisation~ without compensation of jacket which holds them responsible for re­ the entire automotive industry and the banks if Leyland ... pairing the bosses' economy. No bargaining over jobs are to be protected' (Socialist Press, 17 (Continued from page 1) government bail-outs, no negotiating over who October, emphasis in original). gets the axe, no agonising over alternative But for all the WSL's sputtering against the in 1981!) cajoled out of the engineering em­ recovery schemes -- Seize the plants! For im­ Stalinists; nationalising the car industry can ployers through the recent weak-kneed one and mediate occupation of all BL plants, the only 'protect jobs' if it is part and parcel of two-day strikes as a 'historic victory'. And occupations to be run by rank-and-file elected a chauvinist campaign to 'buy British' in order shaving 12 minutes off the work-day is not much factory committees! Hit the bosses where it to prop ~p the ailing national economy. It is of a basis for fighting mass redundancies hurts -- not just Leyland, but an immediate patently obvious from the Leyland experience through work-sharing on full pay. industry-wide strike! that by itself nationalisation is not going to Not that a fighting programme was forth­ Not one penny lost, not one job lost! Any protect jobs. In the decade following 1963, cQming from the fake Trotskyists of the Inter­ necessary retraining and relocation must be at Britain's share of car production in Western national Marxist Group (IMG) and Workers the bosses' full expense. For work-sharing on Europe and Japan fell from 27 to 11 per cent Socialist League (WSL) , who also lauded the full pay -- not a 39-hour week but thirty hours and with lost sales have come tens of thousands engineering strike outcome as a 'historic hours for forty hours' pay! For unemployment benefits of lost jobs, whether in nationalised companies breakthrough' (Socialist Press, 10 October). In equal to full pay and guaranteed by the state! or not. virtually identical interviews on facing pages Let the bosses try to get Leyland out of its The plight of Leyland workers will not be of the IMG's Socialist Challenge (18 October), bind. solved by a Leyland writ large -- a nationalised Socialist Challenge supporter and Jaguar stew­ British car industry propped up by subsidies ard Paul Shevlin and WSL leader and Cowley scab For bankruptcy under workers control? lifted from the taxpayers' pockets and bolstered deputy convenor Alan Thornett came out with against international competition'by protection­ virtually identical calls for 'resistance' BL's crisis condition is the product of ist import controls. This is nothing but the by the plants already targeted for the axe -­ decades of gross mismanagement, miserly capital reformist, inherently chauvinist, formula for and occupations only in those plants. under investment and a well-earned notoriety for dividing up a shrinking pie -- 'saving' car Certainly the threatened plants must fight shoddy quality and service, accelerated by the workers' jobs in Britain at the expens~ of the the sackings. But a fight centred just on those situation in the motor industry internationally jobs of car workers internationally. Indeed the plants would be doomed to 'defeat. It is pre­ and further aggravated by the overvaluation of whole reformist hue and cry over saving Leyland cisely this sort of narrow parochialism with British export goods. Dividends were lavish and is infused with social-chauvinist sentiment over which Thornett justified his support of Cowley's capitalist commonsense scarce -- as much as 'our' nationalised motor industry -- a foul scabbing on the national engineering strike. fifteen years after the merger of Austin and foretaste of the furore these 'socialists' will (See 'Alan Thornett: Scab!', Spartacist Britain Morris the two divisiohs maintained separate whip up to save 'our fatherland' in the event of no 15, October.) Thornett must be breathing easy books and separate boards of directors. Even another inter-imperialist war foreshadowed by that 'his plant is not among those bestowed with should Edwardes' latest speed-up scheme succeed, stiffening protectionist barriers. the privilege of single-handed 'resistance'! BL's targeted production capacity would still be Leyland workers must demand to see the books, The parochial, craftist outlook which leads less than half that of its major capitalist but not in order to counsel the ruling class on workers to view their interests as separate from competitors internationally. how better to run a bankrupt industry, or worse those of other trades and other factories is a Little wonder that even the right-wing Tory yet, to run it themselves as a 'socialist' reactionary and divisive hangover from the era Spectator (22 October) has offered the following island in a capitalist sea. Far from demonstrat­ of the guilds. BL's redundancy plan is an attack 'modest proposal': ing the historically progressive character of on all Leyland workers, and its repercussions 'British Leyland is clearly not a great national nationalised property relations, 'socialism in will be immediately felt on working conditions asset .... Since the company is worth nothing or one industry' proves only that 'worker-managers' throughout the entire motor industry. A success­ less than nothing ... give the entire operation can go bankrupt under capitalism as easily as ful struggle against the BL sackings can and to the workers and let them manage it privately owned enterprises -- as the erstwhile must be taken beyond Leyland itself. Leyland themselves. ' enthusiasts (like the IMG) of the Lip watch workers' brothers at Ford, for example, are strike, the Clyde shipyard work-in and the And predictably enough, this Tory parody of right now pursuing their own claim. They must Lucas 'Alternative Plan' should ably testify. 'socialist self-management' is exactly what the combine their fights to win much higher wages Allover the world, Britain's 'socialism' a la Labourite Militant (21 September) wants: , and better working conditions throughout the Leyland is just what right wingers eagerly pOint industry. to as their proof that socialism doesn't work. 'A board of one-third workers in the industry, No, workers must demand to see how much elected through the trade unions, one-third Seize the plants! elected by the TUC, and one-third appointed by Leyland really has been driveri into the ground the government [!] would ensure that the inter­ by the irrationalities of capitalist mismanage­ If the social democrats and their camp fol­ ests of the working class, not those of big ment -- and incidentally to see how many other lowers are incapable of advancing a programme to business, were in a majority .... perks and baubles it is hiding besides the now fight Leyland's attacks, it is because their 'Such indust~ies would by their success show notorious £60,000 recently profferred to only solution is to plead with the bourgeois their clear superiority over private enterprise. Princess Anne's playboy husband to buy show­ state to 'save Leyland', with one 'alternative' The nightma~e of industrial decline and unem­ jumping horses, or the million pound 'luxury' recovery scheme after another. With Leyland ployment ... could become a thing of the past.' trip round the gale-ridden Irish Sea for already under state ownership, they can no Leyland's unfortunate dealers. If BL can be set longer trot out their favourite old plea for All this social-democratic cretinism is on its feet, let the bosses try it -- at their nationalisation -- s.o they demand instead more echoed in only a slightly more leftish form by own expense. If not, the plants and assets cash bail-outs, more production (to be sold the other fake Trotskyists. Arguing against the which the workers have seized should be disposed where?), more protectionist import controls or Stalinists' 'nationalist call for import con­ of by the workers -- not the capitalist state, ... more nationalisations. trols' the centrist WSL advances the demand for not the bondholders -- and all the mone~ The BL sackings can only be defeated if opening BL's books, to 'confirm the necessity continued on page 7

'informational', that the workers had not SWP scabs at LSE demanded that they be respected, that the workers could not be told what to do etc etc. So, Comrade Cliff, we're still waiting for the expulsions. But then again, if the SWP started Spartacist students' supp~rt NALDO strikers expelling members for betraying elementary pro­ letarian principles, they'd have to start right On Monday, 1 October, NALGO members at Not so the 'socialist' parliamentary cretins at the top. universities throughout Britain staged a one­ of the National Organisation of Labour As a letter from the Spartacist Society to day strike. This action naturally demanded the Students, or the pro-Albanian Stalinist student the LSE student newspaper concluded: full support of all university workers and pro­ bureaucrats of the London Student Movement -­ 'Those interested in strike support, not working-class students -- so student members and or the 'honest militant' workerists of the strikebreaking, and a revolutionary programme, supporters of the Spartacist League in both Lon­ Socialist Workers Student Organisation (student not hollow rhetoric, will know in future to don and Birmingham joined the NALGO workers' group of Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers Party look to the Spartacist Society and the picket lines. [SWP]). Everyone of these fake-left groups at Spartacist League.' (B,'aver, October 1979) At the London Sthool of Economics, strikers LSE crossed picket lines to peddle their re­ welcomed Spartacist Society members bearing formist tripe at the Freshers' Fair. At least placards saying 'Victory to the NALGO workers' one SWP member also waltzed past the NALGO LSE Spartacist Society public forum and 'Picket lines mean don't cross'. In a pickets at Birmingham University. The Cliffites leaflet the LSE Spartacist Society pOinted to actually violated the call in their own leaflet the need for 'united labour-student mobilis­ for students to 'honour the pickets'. For workers revolution ations against all education and social service So~when seasoned reformist Tony Cliff him­ cuts' within the framework of full support for self arrived at LSE four days later to speak on in Iran this and all workers struggles: the need to fight the Tory~offensive against 'The picket line is the class line -- students the right to picket, one of our comrades nat­ The Mullahs' Left-Wing Apostles must rally to the workers' side. Today, our urally rose during the discussion to point out Paved the Way for Khomeini's place is not inside getting our NUS cards and that Cliff had better set his own house in Islamic Reaction~ talking about fees and grants but 'outside with order first. Feigning incredulity and outrage, the workers who are fighting against the same Cliff retorted that if any SWP member did cross ft government and administration attacks that a picket line, he would personally see to it Tuesday 13 November affect us. The whole university should be shut that they were immediately expelled. 1.00pm down until the workers' demands are won.' The SWP leader's chance came only seconds Room S075, St Clements Building Several students were in fact dissuaded from later, as an embarrassed SWP stUdent got up to London School of Economics crossing the picket lines lipon reading our 'justify' crossing the picket lines, offering Houghton St, London WC2 comrades' leaflet. the old scab refrain that the lines were only for more information ring (01) 278 2232

2 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Pope, !s and ProvOs

'In whatever country he is invited, Pope John message the capitalist politicians were waiting kept as firmly as ever in the home, that new­ Paul II can descend from the sky and be greeted to hear. In this town steeped in Irish Catholic fangled notions like secular education never see by millions with genuine love. Such magnetism nationalist symbolism -- where Cromwell put the the light of day, and generally that Ireland re­ is power. The Pope knows it, enjoys it and in­ entire garrison and as many priests as he could mains a fertile breeding ground for the thou­ tends to use it .... ' find to the sword, and the Protestant William sands of nuns and priests needed to man the of Orange decisively routed the forces of the Catholic missions of the world. With these rapturous words, the Economist deposed James II -- John Paul blessed the pre­ hailed the recent Irish and American visits of served head of Oliver Plunkett, the canonised The pope's tour showed exactly what the medi­ the Apostle of Anti-Communism. From Westminster Catholic bishop who was hung, drawn and quar­ aeval papal philosophy is all about -- not just to Washington, imperialist politicians joined tered by Charles II in l68~. And there on the a more superstitious version of Christian dogma in the'singing of hosannas, for in the globe­ altar was Social Democratic and Labour Party than that propounded by the now-equally reac­ trotting 'human rights' pope they have not just leader John Hume, reading the epistle of the tionary Protestant religions, but a social and the head of an institution which wields the day; alongside him stood Fianna Fail Minister political programme flatly opposed to every sce~tre of mediaeval reaction over hundreds of for Posts and Telegraphs, Padraig Faulkner, interest of the workers and oppressed. The Holy millions of the world's oppressed, but a tire­ leading the crowd in prayers in Gaelic. Father appealed to Northern Ireland Protestants less messenger of the 'virtues' of capitalist Echoing some of the worries of US imperialist not to think of him as 'an enemy, a danger or a oppression. spokesmen like Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy that threat'. Yet he demonstrated throughout his In Mexico the pope beseeched the starving a solution must be found to the Irish crisis, visit that he was an enemy, a danger and a masses of Latin America to surrender unto the pope nevertheless predictably aimed most of threat to every Irish worker -- Protest~nt and the military dictators of the continent all that his sermon against the petty-bourgeois national­ Catholic. was asked of them. In Poland he urged his flock ists of the Provisional IRA and their continu­ And what did the Provisionals think about all to assert the 'temporal authority' of the Church ing military campaign against the British im­ this? They did politely beg to differ with the against the godless reign of Communism. In perialist army: 'The longer the violence Pontiff about the need to struggle against Brit­ America he implpred jobless blacks to eschew continues in Ireland, the more the danger will ish imperialism, but focussed their ire on 'dis­ material values. And his sermon'to the two-and­ criminating editorials ... which called on the grow that this beloved land could beco~e yet a-half million Irish (the vast majority of the another theatre for international terrorism.' Provos, and not the 400,000 Irish women on the Catholic population of the entire island) who His sermon was clearly directed at reinforcing Pill, to say "The Pope is right, there is turned out to hear him during his three-day the subordination of the Catholic masses in the another way'" (ibid). Presumably if the Irish visit was no different: hew to the traditional South to their bourgeois rulers and in the North papers had launched an even-handed campaign paths of piety' and devotion, shun material ad­ to their imperialist overlords. against the provision of contraceptives and the vancement and abandon the struggle against op­ But if the pope did not bestow his blessings IRA, then the Provisionals would have been con­ pression in the North. on the IRA, the Provisional Republican movement tent. After all this is the same organisation But Ireland is the land where, as prodigal all too enthusiastically bestowed their bless­ whose group in the Clonard area of Belfast son James Joyce put it, 'Christ and Caesar go ings on him. 'The northern nationalist people in issued a leaflet in 1977 citing as an example of hand in glove'. Wherever he went John Paul II terms of being a beleaguered Catholic community 'Brit oppression' the 70,000 'babies killed' in was surrounded by Green nationalist politicians badly need spiritual reassurance and acknowl­ Britain as a result of the 1967 Abortion Act: as eager to kiss his ringed fingers as they are edgement at this time', they preached (An Pho­ Only when the Irish workers are led by a rev­ to kiss the arse of British imperialism. The blacht/Republican News, 6 October). Their one olutionary party -- which enjoys decisive sup­ whole travelling road show for clerical reaction regret was that the pope didn't visit the North port from both the Catholic and Protestant work­ provided as dramatic confirmation as could be but they felt ,that the 'breathtakingly satisfy­ ing masses -- to the seizure of state power will - wished that there is no solution to the oppres­ ing sights in Phoenix Park and elsewhere' might the democratic questions facing the Irish masses sion of the Irish masses within the framework be sufficient pastoral compensation. be resolved: the separation of church and state, of gombeen nationalism. Waltzing about in his So what about John Paul's 'spiritual re­ the securing of equal rights for women, breaking velvet cape, bearing his jewel-encrusted cruci­ assurance'? In Dublin he told a crowd of over the chains of national oppression in the North. fix, admonishing women made haggard by child­ one million to uphold the Rosary, Benediction Such a party can only be built by those with the bearing against the mortal sins of contracep­ and Holy Hour devotions; at Limerick he excori­ programme and determination to raze to the tion and abortion -- and visibly receiving mass ated divorce, abortion and birth control and ground the sectarian barriers which divide the support and adulation -- the Ayatollah of Rome called on the government to 'always support working class -- a programme of unconditional did more than any Loyalist tract could ever do marriage, through personal commitment and opposition to imperialism, to the reactionary to reinforce the backward chauvinist prejudices through positive social and legal action'. At sectarian Orange state and to the Green of the Protestant workers in the North. Why Galway he told assembled youth, 'Do not imagine nationalist goal of forcibly incorporating the break the chains of British imperialism and its you can organise your own lives.' At Knock he Six Counties into a united capitalist, Catholic royal 'defender of the realm' 'only to be bound stepped out of 'his helicopter to affirm that the Ireland. And, such a party will be infused with by the chains of a spiritual prince whose mass Mother of God had indeed landed there a hundred the spirit (paraphrasing Voltaire) that auth­ influence is every bit as reactionary and more years earlier (presumably not by helicopter) and entic freedom will finally come when the last all-embracing? should henceforth be known as 'Mary, Queen of capitalist is found dangling from the entrails Ireland'. With thIs 'spiritual reassurance' of the last priest -- or parson. Pope against the Provos, Provos for the pope added to its reactionary arsenal, the powerful Troops out now! Not Orange against Green but Irish Catholic hierarchy, notorious for its class against class! For an Irish workers re­ It was at Drogheda, on the first day of the opposition to any liberalising reforms, will now public in a socialist federation of the British visit, that the pope delivered the political redouble its efforts to ensure that women are Isles! • IMG cheers PorISh The pseudo-Trotskyist International Marxist independence' . nist pilgrimage to Poland in the summer. It Group (IMG) has found a new East European 'dis­ , In response to the question 'What are the remarks: sident' movement to champion: the explicitly aims of the KPN?', Moczulski again quotes the 'The new party draws its support from outspoken reactionary, anti-communist Confederation of party's declaration: anti-Marxist, Catholic and nationalist activists Independent Poland (KPN). Uncritically intro­ '''The opportunity to create a new, third Polish in the Movement for the Defence of Human and ducing an interview with chief KPN spokesman ,republic, independent and democratic, must not Civil Rights as well as from some student groups Leszek Moczulski on 27 September, the IMG's be wasted. The only road to this aim is the end­ and other factions that have split off from the Socialist Challenge says of the new party: ing of Soviet domination through the liquidation regime-sponsored Pax movement.' of the power of the Polish Unified Workers Party 'This is a major development: for the first time [Polish Communist Party].'" (Socialist In fact the for~ation of this party appears an opposition group has taken up the problem of Challenge, op cit) to have been directly influenced by the new power. Previous efforts were defined in terms of crusading 'human rights' papacy. During his And on the question of the nationalised Polish "democratisation", which often ended up in push­ continued on page 6 ing for initiatives from the bureaucracy. economy, Moczulski adds: 'The KPN, on the other hand, is saying in ef­ 'Certain groups which are part of the KPN fect: no demo~ratisation without overthrowing think that it's necessarv to build a real the bureaucracy.' socialist system .... 'Other groups, however, who see state control of In its enthusiasm for 'overthrowing the bu­ the economy as leading straight to totalitarian­ reaucracy', the IMG appears not to care whether ism, en~isage a large area of private A monthly newspaper for the rebirth of the Fourth International. this is accomplished by the proletariat in a ini tiative. ' published for the Central Committee of the Spartacist League. British section of the international Spartacist tendency. by Spartacist Publications. political revolution for soviet democracy or by The KPN echoes both the phrases and the mess­ counterrevolutionary forces seeking the resto­ age of Western imperialist leaders, who seek to EDITORIAL BOARD: John Masters (editor!. Sheila Hayward (production) ration of capitalism. The Confederation of Inde­ smash the gains of the social overturns in the Alastair Green. Ala'n Holford. Jim Saunders. David Strachan pendent Poland is clearly an example of the deformed workers states and restore capitalist latter. Its founding declaration (reprinted in exploitation. The rhetoric is all there: for CIRCULATION MANAGER: Kinsey Freese Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, September­ 'democracy', 'independence' and 'human rights' ; Publistled monthly. except in January and in the summer. at 26 Harrison October 1979) rails against 'Communist Russia' even a bit of vague 'real socialism' for more Street. London WC1. Printed by trade union labour. Subscriptions 10 and attacks the Western imperialist powers for social-democratic palates. issues for £1.50. International air mail rates: Europe £2.10. outside allowing 'the subordination of Poland to Soviet Imperialist mouthpieces have welcomed the new Europe £3.00. Address all letters and subscription requests to: Spartacist hegemony' after World War II. It announces: party with almost as much enthusiasm as the Publications. PO Box 185. London WC1H 8JE. To contact the Spartacist 'League. telephone (01) 2782232 (London) or (021) 472 7726 'Today the Polish nation again awakens and editors of The Socialist Challenge. Economist (Birmingham). raises its head', and calls on 'all Poles within (8-14 September) describes how the KPN was Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the country and in exile to join in common ac­ founded after a special mass in Warsaw Ca­ the editorial viewpoint. tivities with the aim of freedom and thedral, in the wake of the pope's anti-commu-

NOVEMBER 1979 3 Rollen,_yes - A bloc? NOlforlong Gel/Moreno manoeuvres

As events in Nicaragua send the United Sec­ retariat carousel madly whirling, the USec has spun off an unexpected liaison. Suddenly the French Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI) of Pierre Lambert is making common cause with Nahuel Moreno's Bolshevik Faction (BF). Only yesterday it would have seemed to casual observers that the Lambertistes and Morenoites stood on opposite ends of the pseudo-Trotskyist spectrum, and never the twain would meet. The BF these days lays claim to the USec's left flank, while the OCI represents the closest thing to a chemically pure social-democratic parody of Trotskyism. Yet today they unite to praise the Simon Bolivar Brigade (BSB) which was recently expelled from Nicaragua by the victorious Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and to denounce a 'reconstituted' (but unstable) USec majority led by Ernest Mandel and Jack Barnes. Today, but not tomorrow; for this most putrid of rotten blocs is likely to have the lifespan of a mosquito. At a stormy meeting of the United Secretariat Moreno over the weekend of September 30 the USec adopted a series of motions which add up to placed his money and picked his horse. Brigade during the Spanish Civil War for total liquidation of an independent presence and In the face of the SWP's outrageous support instance was principled and admirable. But since political line in Nicaragua, in favour of com­ for Sandinista Front repression against the one can't expect to operate independently of an plete subordination to the petty-bourgeois workers and its alliance with the 'anti-Somoza existing military leadership it is essential to Sandinista Front. The Moreno-led Bolivar Brigade bourgeoisie' in a capitalist country, and in establish and defend the uniquely proletarian was unequivocally condemned and the BF ordered contrast to the Mandelites' more shamefaced and character of such a unit. The Bolivar Brigade to cease operating as a 'public faction' on pain was a parody of these principles. Its very name of expulsion. A lengthy political resolution, whimpering capitulation, it is very cheap for the Moreno/Lambert bloc to look left on denies a working class character and the Moreno­ 'Nicaragua: Revolution on the March-' ,fulminates Nicaragua. Thus the OCI wrote of the new FSLN­ ite 'open letter' calling for its establishment against a 'headlong plunge into ultraleftism' appOinted regime: says flatly 'the only programmatic point of the and 'adventuristically forcing the rhythm of the Simon Bolivar Brigade is to support the struggle class struggle', while labelling calls to break 'This bourgeois government installed solely due of the Sandinista people' (El Socialista, 22 with the bourgeOisie a 'sectarian temptation of to the reconciliationist spirit of the Sandin­ June). In addition to the Morenoites' usual applying an abstract schema' ista leaders ... has received for the (Intercontinental financial shady dealing -- the Columbian PST 22 October). It ends by calling for the accomplishment of this counterrevolutionary Press, which organised the Brigade raised money by USec supporters to act 'as loyal militants of task the support of imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy .... ' (IO, 8-23 August). selling bogus Sandino Bonds -- they appealed to the organisation which led the overthrow of the Colombian government to 'legally recognise Somoza' -- ie time to dissolve your organis­ Similarly the Costa Rican Organizacion Social­ the Simon Bolivar Brigade, guaranteeing its ation, join the FSLN, shut up and take orders. ista de los Trabajadores (OST) , a USec. sympath­ papers, transportation and financing' . In response to this treachery Moreno sub­ ising section which is linked to the LTT and But if Moreno & Co tried to capitalise on mitted a countermotion condemning the USec's directly tied to the French OCI, wrote in its enthusiasm for the Sandinista-led revolution scandalous refusal to express even elementary newspaper Que Racer? (26 June-II July) shortly against the hated tyrant Somoza and their solidarity with its own 'comrades' in the face before the fall of Somoza that the opposition by gimmick simply blew up in their faces, at least of repression by the bourgeois Nicaraguan the FSLN's provisional government to immediate they stood to the left of the petty-bourgeois government. This Bolshevik Faction resolution elections 'clearly demonstrates its intentions nationalist FSLN. In contrast the Costa Rican 'reject[s] these measures, which break all rules of safeguarding the interests of the ~ational OST and by extension its co-thinkers in the of democratic centralism', and calls on mili­ bourgeoisie and imperialism .... ' (translated in Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency denounced the tants to 'prevent the holding of an anti­ Intercontinental Press .. 1 October). In t-urn the Sandinista Front as criminally adventurist and democratic World Congress'. The threat to split Colombian Morenoites of the Partido Socialista ultraleftist! Their chief spokesman on Nicaragua before the USec's 'Eleventh World Congress'; de los Trabajadores (PST) write that Latin is one Fausto Amador, a brother of assassinated scheduled for early Nov~mber, was clear. In American governments' ... bought "life in­ FSLN founder Carlos Fonseca Amador, who split addition to Moreno's BF: 'members of the surance" for capitalism in Nicaragua with their from the Front several years ago as a demoral­ Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LT!) voted for intervention and support to the FSLN .... To sum ised element. In a pamphlet entitled 'Donde va this motion. (The LTT is a grouping of former up, the "democratic" bourgeoisies have sent the Nicaragua?' ('Where is Nicaragua Going?'), supporters of the Leninist-Trotskyist Faction bill to the FSLN; and the advice of Castro is published in February by the OST, Fausto Amador led by the American Socialist Workers Party -­ . very clear: pay up!' (El Socialista, 7 and Sara Santiago presented an analysis that was who after the SWP's dissolution of the LTF in September) . not only one hundred per cent wrong -- it 1977 wanted to continue the factional struggle These are very left-sounding critiques of the amounted to defeatist propaganda, in effect against the USec majority under Mandel, and have currently popular Sandinista regime, but the calling on the Nicaraguan masses to lay down since politically aligned themselves grosso modo real policies of the BF/BSB and the OCI/LTT are their arms when the showdown with the dictator with the Lambertistes.) considerably to the right of their present was almost under way: posturing and moreover mutually sharply counter­ Immediately after the explosion in Brussels 'In Nicaragua, the second offensive was rapidly posed. In fact before ~he FSLN took power on representatives of the LTT and the BF held a being converted into a myth which no one be­ July 20 there was no basis whatever for Moreno­ lieved any more .... There will not be a second private meeting with the leadership of the OCI ites to unite with Lambertistes in or over offensive. That is obvious for everyone, at which then provocatively published this fact in Nicaragua. As we have explained previously least in the immediate future .... The lack of a its public newsletter (Lettre d'Informations ('Sandinistas Expel Bolivar Brigade', Spartacist second offensive revealed the September [1978] Ouvrieres, 10 October) along with various USec Britain no 15, October 1979), the Morenoites' action as an ill-fated adventure.' internal documents ('from a dossier given us by present hostility to the FSLN is the pique of The OST/LTT's 'alternative' -- peaceful comrade Moreno'). The newsletter publicly en­ rejected suitors. Over the last year they have demonstrations for democratic rights -- was dorses the Simon Bolivar Brigade and the BF as repeatedly called for a Sandinista government, cretinous legalism in a country suffering under attempting to '-aid the masses in developing later dressed up as 'a government of t~e Front a bonapartist dictatorship and, moreover, in the their own organisations' while the 6 October and of the workers' and people's organisations' throes of a popularly-suP90rted insurgency. As issue of the OCI's newspaper Informations (El Socialista, 15 June) and similar formulas. we noted when the American SWP printed a similar Ouvrieres (IO) announces that refusal to defend But the FSLN under the pressure of imperialism piece by Amador and Santiago last June: the BSB's right to stay in Nicaragua would be and 'friendly' Latin American capitalist govern­ 'To present this social-democratic cowardice and joining 'the liqUidators of the Fourth Inter­ ments and at the behest of Castro prefers the national'. (In the previous month and a half the demoralization as having anything to do with company of industrialists and technocrats. Marxism is just about the worst thing the SWP/ weekly IO had nothing to say on the subject.) As for the Morenoites' policies in the Simon USec could do to besmirch the name of Trotskyism So the bloc is sealed, at least for the Bolivar Brigade, they were even more opportunist before the Central American masses.' (Workers purposes of the jOint wrecking operation against (while also aggressively pressuring the FSLN no 234, 22 June). the SWP and Mandel, while the OCI's previous tops, soon leading to their downfall). Sending attempts to join the United Secretariat have an international brigade is a sometimes necess­ As for the OCI, its opposition to the new FSLN apparently been shelved for now. Lambert was ary and valiant tactic for communists in civil regime is based purely and simply on Stalino­ angling to blow apart the USec and now that a war situations; the participation of several phobia -- denouncing 'the sudden resurrection of 3plit is clearly in the offing he has simply dozen European Trotskyists in the POUM's Lenin the moribund Nicaraeuan Socialist Party

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN (national branch office of the Kremlin)' and where at the height of the fight'ing between the were attacking the SWP 'from the right, arguing 'the excessive weight of its members vis-a-vis South African-led, CIA-financed imperialist in effect for a consistently social-democratic the Sandinistas in the government' (ID, 8-23 drive on Luanda the SWPjLTF refused to take position of opposing all Stalinist regimes'. We August) . sides for the military victory of the Soviet­ summed up: backed MPLA. (Later they tried to disguise this 'Add up the SWP/LTF positions on China, Vietnam, Portugal, Angola, Cuba . .. , vile betrayal by some heavy-handed 'editing' of Portugal and Angola and throw in a deformed the January 1976 SWP National Committee state­ workers state posltion on Cuba and what do you We have dealt elsewhere with the stark ment.) Moreno denounced this in the most violent get? A fleshed out program of Stalinophobia.' contradiction between the abstract 'leftism' of terms, publishing a whole book on the subject Moreno's Bolshevik Faction on Eurocommunism, the (Angola: Revolucion Negra en Marcha [1977]) The LTTjOST's openly counterrevolutionary po­ dictatorship of the proletariat or popular where he said that 'the best way to aid Vorster sitions on Nicaragua, calling the Sandinistas' frontiS1ll in far-off Europe and its ultra­ and Yankee imperialism was to say what the SWP victorious 'second offensive' an 'adventure' are opportunist practice in Latin America (political said .... ' So how does Moreno feel about uniting vivid confirmation of our earlier conclusion. support to Peron, Torrijos etc). But what of its today with people who consider the SWPjLTF stand new bloc partners of the Leninist-Trotskyist 'historic'? Tendency (and its mentors in the OCI)? In And Cuba? On Cuba the LTT supports 'the gen­ ... and the strange case of Fausto Amador opposing the dissolution of the LTF in 1977 the eral line of D Keil's contributions', while future LTTers put forward a face of left-wing three leaders of the Costa Rican OST (Andres, These questions -- the most basic issues of militancy: where the SWP called the Mandelite Rodrigo and Sara) signed a document together revolutionary perspective in key recent events wajority ultraleft they said centrist; where with Keil labelling the Castro regime a 'bureau­ -- are but the small change in the course of Jack Barnes said the faction was formed to fight cratized workers state' ('For a Change in the trading combinations and recombinati9ns in USec guerrillaism alone they said it was also to Fourth International's Position on Cuba', [SWP] factional struggle. There is a basis of sorts fight popular frontism at home. But by the time IIDB, December 1978). Again, at first glance for the MorenoitejLambertist bloc: both are it came to formulating a 'Call for the Formation this might seem a move to the left from the deeply reformist while appearing left today in of an International Tendency' ([SWP] Inter­ USec's political support to the 'unconscious Nicaragua. Besides there is the attractive bait national Internal Discussion Bulletin, December Trotskyist' Fidel (now taken to new lengths by that the OCI recently broke with Moreno's long­ 1978), the future LTT stood on the whole of the the SWP's latest panegyrics to Castro, the cham­ standing opponents in the Argentine Politica 'programmatic and political acquisitions' of the pion of peace and friend of the world's chil­ Obrera group (an enemy of my enemy makes you my LTF and in particular the texts of the LTF on dren). But as we pOinted out in our article 'For friend etc). But there are a few sticking points the "Portuguese revolution and on Angola. Workers Political Revolution in Cuba!' (Workers even for these consummate opportunists and This statement definitely branded the Vanguard no 224, 2 February 1979), Keil et al continued on page ? Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency as a reformist for­ mation and ignominious capitulators besides. For what did the LTF stand in Portugal and Angola? At the height of the 1975 polarisation in Portugal when Lisbon workers were taking over factories, the LTF called for a purely 'demo­ cratic' programme of defence of the Constituent Assembly (at the time the battle cry of the right). As the Socialist Party of Mario Soares was leading the mass anti-communist mobilis­ ations which were burning down CP offices, the SWP proclaimed that the 'real vanguard of the Portuguese working class .. , participated in the SP demonstrations' (Militant [US], 8 August 1975). And the OCI called for a 'Soares govern­ ment' (ID, 23 July-6 August 1975). Moreno broke from the SWP and the LTF precisely over this issue, while the future LTTers were at first even harder in condemning the SWP's tailing Four years before 'unity' after Soares (only to capitulate a few weeks - Moreno defended Portuguese CP, whose later and vote for the LTF's 'Key Issues in the offices ( right) were Portuguese Revolution' resolution). burned by anti­ For principled Marxists differences of the communist mobs magnitude that divided the Morenoites and mobilised by Lambert­ Lambertists over Portugal would make unity backed Portuguese SP impossible: like the SWP and Mandel they would have been facing each other on opposite sides of the barricades in Lisbon. The same on Angola;

dent in question and draw all the lessons so meet the leadership of the Front to ask that USee I Bolivar Brigade ... that events of the same nature and such gravity the Simon Bolivar Brigade be kicked out of don't occur again. Nicaragua. (Continued from page 8) The events described below happened in a Comrades Olivier and Romero, who arrived in situation in which the whole Simon Bolivar Managua on Tuesday the 14th, gave a different Are they true? Just how did the FSLN pick out Brigade was summoned (through the press and version of the position of the United Secre7 the Morenoite leaders of the very much larger radio) by the leadership of the Sandinista tariat, stating that it did not include colla­ Bolivar Brigade? Did USee representatives sup­ Front for the afternoon of August 14; the situ­ boration with the leadership of the Front ply them with names? In a Marxist organisation ation of confict between the leadership of the against the Simon Bolivar Brigade. any member (much less a leader) guilty of such Front and the Brigade was therefore known to The events described above are strictly treason would be expelled. And faced with such all the protagonists. those which we witnessed, in a situation itl charges, silence by the accused can only be Sunday at midnight comrade Manuel, a member which we warned comrade Manuel that he could interpreted as admission of guilt. of the United Secretariat, made a phone call to not count on our collaboration in this ma­ Did Peter Camej03 the SWP and the USee the United States. After 'this phone call, he noeuvre which we disapproved of from the start. finger the Simon Bolivar Brigade? We demand stated that comrade Pedro [sic] Camejo had just The position presented as that of the United an answer! informed him that the position of the comrades Secretariat, which, according to comrade Manuel of the United Secretariat in Oberlin was to be had been communicated.by telephone by comrade even harder on the Simon Bolivar Brigade, to Camejo, and was enforced by him seems to us to take no responsibility [for the Brigade] with constitute a break with our political prin­ Managua, 20 August 1979 the Sandinista Front and to collaborate with ciples. Whatever the magnitude of our differ­ United Secretariat of the Fourth International the. leadership of the Sandinista Front in order ences, collaborating with the petty-bourgeois to help it get rid of the Simon Bolivar Brig­ Dear Comrades: leadership against members of the Fourth Inter­ ade. Manuel stated that comrade Cam~jo had ask­ national, within which they are organised as a At dawn on Friday August 17, 1979, the lead­ ed him to remain in Nicaragua so as to be pres­ faction, cannot be tolerated. Such unprincipled ership of the Sandinista Front expelled from ent at the meeting of the Simon Bolivar Brigade and factional manoeuvres can nevertheless only Nicaragua part of the membership of the Simon with the leadership of the Sandinista Front on damage greatly the clarity of the clash of the Bolivar Brigade, members of the Bolshevik Fac­ Tuesday and make clear the position of the political orientations present in the Nicar­ tion of the Fourth International. The context Fourth as regards the Simon Bolivar Brigade. aguan revolution, as well as the defence of the in which this expulsion took place was marked On the afternoon of Monday the 13th comrade International and of its unity. by a serious factional incident between a mem­ Manuel had a discussion with Julio Lopez, a Trotskyist greetings, ber of the United Secretariat and the leader­ representative of the Sandinista party organi­ Sara (Executive Committee, OST Costa Rica) ship of the Brigade, and we consider it our sation, during whiCh, according to what the Felix (Executive Committee, OST Costa Rica) duty to transmit in written form to the leader­ comrade himself reported to us, the Simon Boli­ Galene (Central Committee, French LCR) ship of the International an account of the var Brigade was discussed. events which we witnessed. This testimony does Immediately afterwards (Monday, August 13 at cc: Bolshevik Faction, Socialist Workers Party not imply any support to the Simon Boyivar about 8.00pm) comrade Manuel went to the Brig­ (USA), Partido Revolucionario de los Trabaja­ Brigade's [political] orientation, of which we ade's headquarters. In front of the head­ dores (Mexico), OST (Costa Rica), Liga Comun­ have an extremely negative opinion~ Our only quarters a discussion took place in our pres­ ista Revolucionaria (Spain), Ligue Communiste objective is to help the appropriate bodies of ence in which comrade Manuel informed the Revolutionnaire (France), Manuel Aguilar, Pedro the International to throw light on the inci- leadership of the Brigade that he was going to Camejo, Olivier .•

NOVEMBER 1979 5

" Trotskyist freed after 27

Reports have reached the West recently of the the Fourth International. The International Sec­ release from a Shanghai prison of the prominent retariat of/the FI headed by Pablo suppressed Chinese Troyskyist Chen Chao-lin. According to a their desperate appeal for aid. And when Peng report in the 1 October Intercontinental Press, then submitted to the IS an 'Open Letter' to the 78-year-old·revolutionarY who spent a total arouse world-wide working-class protest over the of 34 years in jail, first under the Kuomintang persecution of the Chinese Trotskyists, it was (KMT) and then as a prisoner of Mao, was freed Mandel who arrived on his doorstep to announce last June 5. Chen's case had been taken up that the IS would not support it. As Peng wrote ,earlier this year by Amnesty International as in a letter to James P Cannon dated 30 December representative of a number of leading Trotsky­ 1953: ists who 'disappeared' during the Maoists' Germain came to talk with me about it. He nationwide round-up of the Chinese Left Oppo­ started by criticizing the form of the letter as sition in 1952 and were not heard from since. complet~ly wrong, and asked that it be written Many were 'liquidated', in the Stalinist par­ over again. According to their id~as,. I should lance of the day. As we said in our article, have opened the letter by first expressing a to­ 'Mao's Jails for Revolutionaries' (Workers tal support for the movement under the leader­ Vanguard no 63, 28 February 1975): ship of Mao's party, praising its revolutionary achievements, and then at last come to the point 'Taken away to be shot, these militants demanded of enumerating the facts of their persecutions that they be permitted to wear signs imprinted and made the protest. Secondly, Germain remarked with the single word "Trotskyist". They were re­ that the views expressed in this letter diverged fused that last subversive gesture, and were in­ considerably from the line of the Resolution of stead falsely branded "Kuomintang agents" by the Freed Trotskyists Chen Chao-Lin, left, and Wu Ching-ju the International, and for this reason he de­ Stalinists. Their executioners shoved cotton in nounced me as a "hopeless sectarian". At last he their mouths so that they could not shout out to said that the IS could not undertake the respon­ those watching and wondering why veteran revol­ lowing the Maoists' ascent to power in 1949, CCP sibility of sending this document to the differ­ ution.ists were being reviled and butchered.' leader Li Wei-han, who had known Chen in Paris, ent sections for publication. If I insisted on For years there was a curtain of silence over contacted him and asked him to compromise with having it published, I myself was to be respon­ these persecuted militants. Arne Swabeck, the sible for any step taken concerning it.' the new regime. But Chen refused to abandon his ex-Trotskyist turned Maoist (and now social struggle aeainst Stalinism. He was arrested on democrat), claimed in print that they had been Summarising his experiences with Mandel, Pene 22 December 1952 as the Stalinist bureaucracy released (Revolutionary Age, 1975); this was noted his 'wavering and conciliationist spirit', began a nationwide wholesale round-up of hun­ corroborated, he said,' by a letter from Pierre adding: 'In many respects, especially in his dreds of Chinese Trotskyist militants. For his Frank, a member of the fake-Trotskyist United temperament, he resembles Bukharin. He often refusal to capitulate, Chen spent the next 27 Secretariat (USec) of the Fourth International. wavers between revolutionary conscience and the years in jail, first in the notorious Ward Road Chen Chao-lin's re-emergence after 27 years in momentary consideration of power.' No doubt Peng Jail in Shanghai, later being transferred to a jail proves that all such apologies from the was reflecting on the steadfastness and courage labour camp. His wife, Wu Ching-ju, a dedicated friends of Mao are out-and-out lies. We demand of a Chen Chao-lin who was to survive 27 years revolutionary who had earlier been released from the immediate release of all the imprisoned in Maoist jails, compared to the cowardly ca­ prison, voluntarily shared Chen's last seven Chinese Trotskyists, or, if they have dted under pitulator Mandel, who at the slightest threat years of imprisonment; because of failing health, nearly three decades of Stalinist incarceration from Pablo simply threw away the Trotskyist in Peking, that their fate be known! she required constant medical care, which as a heritage. In our 1975 article, we publicised the plight political outcast in 'People's China' she could The struggle against Pabloist liquidation of of Chen, a leader of the 1927 revolution in the obtain only by going to prison. the Fourth International was also the struggle Wuhan area, and a founding member of the At a September 9 Stockholm electio~rally for for the lives of tae valiant Chinese Trotskyist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and of the Chinese the KAF, Swedish section of the USec, Ernest fighters. The American Socialist Workers Party Mandel announced the news of Chen Chao-lin's Trotskyist movement. A close collaborator of had initially defended the Chinese militants as release. Never in his whole life, said Mandel, Chou En-lai and Deng Xiaoping in Paris after soon as they knew of their plight. But in unify­ had he seen such a moving picture as that of Chen World War I, Chen was invited to Moscow in 1923 ing with Mandel to form the United Secretariat to attend the University for the Toilers of the ~nd his wife standing outside the prison with in 1963, they drew a curtain of silence over the East. Returning to China in 1924 he served as a their fists clenched_ No thanks to you, Ernest. shameful Pabloist betrayals in China, declaring leading party propagandist and, in 1927, as a It was this same Mandel, then known as Germain, them a matter of simply 'historical interest' member of the Hupei Provincial Committee of the together with Michel Pablo, then secretary of the and banning discussion on China for five years. CCP leading the revolutionary struggle in Wuhan. Fourth International (FI), who refused to defend In contrast to these pseudo-Trotskyists, the Witnessing the massacre of thousands of their the Chinese Trotskyists and suppressed their ap­ international Spartacist tendency has been comrades at the hands of their Stalin-imposed peals for aid. In one of the most shameful acts unique in opposing all wings of the Chinese 'revolutionary ally', Chiang Kai-shek, a sig­ in the course of their political degeneration, Stalinist bureaucracy, calling for proletarian nificant section of the leading CCP cadre were the Pabloist liquidators labelled the persecuted political revolution from the very moment of won early and hard to Trotskyism. Chen Chao-lin Chinese militants 'refugees from a revolution'. Mao's victory in 1949, and fighting for the re­ was among the 81 original signers of the mani­ While militarily supporting the Communi$t Party birth of the Fourth International through pol­ festo of the Chinese Left Opposition along with against the K~IT, the valiant Trotskyists refused itical destruction of Pabloism. to bow to the victorious Mao-Stalinist such party leaders asCCP general secretary A renascent Chinese Trotskyist movement that bureaucracy. Chen Tu-hsiu and CCer Peng Shu-tse. reappropriates its proud history will nei t'her forgive nor forget the Pabloists' vile betrayal Arrested by the KMT ~n 1931, Chen spent the As hundreds of their number were being round­ next seven years in jail, participating upon his ed up, imprisoned and many shot, the Chinese of Chen Chao-lin, Ying Kwan, Chiang Tseng-tung, Ling Hwer-hua, Ho Chi-sen and the rest of the release in th~ underground anti-Japanese resist­ Trotskyists smuggled out an appeal which was ance. According to Intercontinental Press, fol- brought by Peng Shu-tse before the leadership of heroic imprisoned Trotskyists .•

than, for example, an isolated religious crank Poland ... like Solzhenitsyn). The IMG's wholehearted support for it is thus all the more criminal. Subscribe! (Continued from page 3) In common with the rest of the United Secre­ recent visit, the Pope warned Communist Party tariat (USec), the IMG has never been too choosy secretary Edward Gierek that the Catholic Church about which Eastern bloc 'dissidents' to Srw:ttaClST was about to claim its 'total place' in Polish acclaim. But to applaud such overtly right-wing clerical anti-communists as the KPN is to take ---_BRn'AIN society, not· just 'freedom of religion'. The KPN NAME ______declaration expands on the same theme, stating: anti-Trotskyism to new heights -- a flat, reac­ tionary denial of the whole programme of the ADDRESS ______'The Polish national consciousness has formed Fourth !nternational. itself in its more than 1000 year process of ______POSTOOOE ______social and state development which has been Which is of course the whole point. In order accompanied in good and bad days by the exist­ to chase after the Eurocommunists, over the past ence of the Catholic Church. Irreplaceable in few years the entire European USec has shown this consciousness is ... the understanding of itself more and more prepared to junk the o Spartacist Britain: £1.50 for 10 issues the need for national sacrifice in the name of Trotskyist position of unconditional defence of Joint subscription: higher goals common to all and ties to the the deformed workers states. Moreover here in o world of values created by Catholicism and to Britain the IMG is currently courting the state­ £5 for 24 issues WORKERS VANGUARD the moral fundamentals of Christianity.' capitalist Socialist Workers Party, and a prin­ (fortnightly Marxist paper of SLjUS In 'Catholic Poland' such a reactionary clerical cipled stand on the Russian question would be a plus SPARTACIST BRITAIN for duration ('anti-Marxist, Catholic and nationalist') move­ barrier to pursuing the affair. Thus the Pablo­ of subscription plus SPARTACIST (iSt ment could well develop a mass base of support ites are now prepared to champion even capital­ theoretical journal) among the large peasantry, dissident intelli­ ist restorationist forces in order to underline gentsia and even backward religious sections of their rejection of the need to defend the USSR Make payable/post to: the working class. Thus the KPN is an invidious and the deformed workers states against im­ Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WelH 8JE and potentially dangerous organisation (far more perialist attack and internal counterrevolution .•

6 SPARTACIST BRITAIN over and failure of even minimal paper sales. In While the BF h.as as yet gained few adherents the same SWP Bulletin (December 1978) five Glas­ in Britain, there is now a sizeable contingent IM& in crisis ... gow cadre trenchantly described the CC's 'fact­ of the LTT, headed by a political quick-change finding mission' as 'nothing so much as a Red artist named John Strawson, whose main talent (Continued from page 8) Cross visit to a disaster area', stating: 'It· lies in borrowing a political line from else­ sWP's politics represent ~ syndicalist break will not be news to anyone that the SWP is a bit where and building an opposition around it. from revolutionary Marxism, ie Trotskyism' and lost at the moment. Socialist Worker reflects Having led an 'an~i-Pabloite' split from the IMG added that the SWP is 'prone to being drawn that general lack of direction, and feeds the to join the WSL in 1976, Strawson turned around behind alien class forces' (SWP Bulletin, demoralisation within the party .... Today the less than a year later to lead a Mandelite split December 1978). Replying for the SWP, Chris SWP is not an organisation of conscious rev­ from the WSL back to the IMG. A staunch opponent Harman lectured his 'critics': olutionary cadres .... ' of the SWP(US) line while in the WSL, Strawson 'What disappointed and angered us in all this wasted no time in making a bloc with SWP(US) was not merely the tone and sectarian phras­ International crisis supporters once back in the IMG, at the 1978 ~ology, which seems to have been borrowed from national conference, only to go on to his. some publication of the Spartacists or the WRP, In years past, IMGers downcast by domestic current stint with the LTT -- with yet another but what it indicates about the majority of your reversals and worn by incessant inner-party vastly different programme! If Strawson's leadership. They clearly do not take seriously strife could at least warm themselves in the re­ British followers -- many of whom.are doubtless the aim of unification of the forces of the rev­ attracted by the LTT's hard, 'orthodox' pose in olutionary left.' (SWP Bulletin, December 1978) flected glow of 'the FI', ie the pseudo- , Trotskyist USec. If a thoughtful IMGer was only contrast to the craven liquidationism of the The IMG response has been to discard more and too aware that the 'United' Secretariat was Ali/Ross/Grogan ilk -- were to exit from the more criticism. At the final session of the never united and daily demonstrated somewhere in USec along with the rest of the LTT,. they would recent Marxist Symposium -- amid an atmosphere the world that it could only betray the pro­ find themselves in the uncomfortable position reminiscent of a chummy Oxford Union 'debate' -­ gramme on which the Fourth International was of having to unite with the wretched British Tariq Ali proposed to the SWP cadre present that founded, still it was 'much the biggest group OCI section, the Socialist Labour Group. This as a 'serious revolutionary organisation' the claiming the mantle of Trotskyism. gang of reformists has toiled for the past few SWP should 'join the Fourth International' -­ Not for much longer will USec leader Ernest years to build a geriatric base for Tribune. which Ali explicitly stated did involve not Mandel be able to boast that 'For 15 years now, The incessant unclear factionalism, cynical international democratic-centralist discipline. the FI [sic] has not witnessed a single inter­ horsetrading manoeuvres and wild programmatic And what few criticisms remain are often from national split' (SWP[GB] International Dis­ gyrations which are the stock-in-trade of Pablo­ the .right. Thus IMG leader Val Coultas has cussion Bulletin no 9). If the decade-long fac­ ite politics have over the years ground down -­ lately been taking up the cudgels for consistent tional war between the American-led minority or even destroyed -- scores of subjectively rev­ separatist feminism against the SWP's decision and European-based majority led by Mandel has of olutionary IMGers, who gravitated to its earlier to turn Women's Voice into a front group. late subsided into an SWP(US)-dominated truce, impressionistic leftism in the absence of a (Coultas had the gall to attack the pop things are by no means quiet in the USec. The genuine Trotskyist alternative. A Trotskyist workerist-feminist Women's Voice as a 'communist left~posturing Bolshevik Faction (BF) led by party will not and cannot be built on the basis women's movement'!) chameleon-like reformist and charlatan Nahuel of tailing a 'mass movement' for Islamic reac­ And how about the Russian question, which Moreno is clearly headed for an expulsion or tion i~ Iran; of uncritically hailing treacher~ should be the key difference between the osten­ split, taking with it most of the USec's Latin ous Stalinists like Castrp and Ho Chi Minh; of sibly Soviet-defencist IMG and the 'third camp' American presence. So apparently is the French­ lauding any and every petty-bourgeois radical SWP? The IMG used to correctly consider this a based 'Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency' (which moveme~t which comes along as a short-cut sub­ key programmatic difference, sharply insisting politically supports the OCI of Pierre Lambert) stitute for the uniquely vanguard role of the that 'those who have deserted the revolutionary (see 'OCI/Moreno manoeuvres', p4). Add to this conscious proletariat. There is no substitute marxist position by refusing to adopt the class the extreme organisational difficulties and for the Trotskyist programme -- that is what line of unconditional defence of the workers membership"d'ecline of the European USec' s star is decisive in the struggle for a revolutionary states against imperialism have long since lost sections in France and Spain and you have a party; not numbers, not clever manoeuvres, not any claim to be considered as marxists' (IMG recipe for gloom. USec members desperately need impressionistic organisational 'turns'. Break Introduction to 'The Inconsistencies of State to tell themselves that it is better somewhere with the centrist swamp! For the reforging of Capitalism: by Ernest Mandel, 1969). else -- but it isn't~ the Fourth International!. Now however the same IMG makes crystal clear that it considers defence of the USSR to be of no fundamental importance. The IMG leaders feel obliged to wilfully distort the history of the Trotskyist movement for this, claiming in a re­ Leyland ... Del/Moreno ... cent reply to the SWP (authored by Ali, Ross and (Continued from page 2) (Continued from page 5) national secretary Brian Grogan) on inter­ from the sale of assets be divided equitably on one of these is the case of Fausto Amador, national perspectives: the basis of seniority among BL workers. already introduced to our readers. 'We do not believe that the state-capitalist Much better this solution, than a glorified For F Amador did not simply break from the analysis of the SWP necessarily excludes it from workers co-op vainly trying to compete in the FSLN. He was interviewed on Somoza's television the Fourth International. This was a position capitalist market with its best militants ground and spoke to Somoza's press where he urged other taken by Trotsky at the time of the foundation down by working four hours overtime each day for members of the guerrilla organisation to lay of the Fourth International and we see no reason nothing ~- all in the vain hope that the down their arms in return for promises of am­ to change it.' (International Socialism, Autumn 'workers control' and 'workers alternative' nesty from the blood-soaked dynastic dictator­ 1979) claptrap of the charlatans like Tony Benn, Ken ship. For this the FSLN leaders rightly consider But Trotsky did object on principle to forming Coates and Ernest Mandel will corne true under him a traitor. Lately as the Nicaraguan cultural a common organisation with anyone who drew from capitalism. Whatever BL is worth, it was ex­ attache in Brussels, ie an employee of Somoza, a 'state-capitalist analysis' the programmatic tracted from the sweat and toil of its workers. he was reportedly won to the USec's perversion conclusion of refusal to defend the Soviet Union: Leyland workers: Don't beg~ take it~ it's yours! of Trotskyism. Naturally this caused a certain 'The whole course of the world workers' move­ A series of militant plant seizures could be commotion in Central America where the case was ment, beginning with July 1914, demonstrates the clarion call for a massive class upsurge by well known. Moreno picked this up and was the that defeatists and defensists cannot remain in the whole British proletariat, ground down by first to make it an issue in the USec. At.a the same party, if the concept of a party has in years of recession and social-democratic be­ December 1977 meeting of the Central Committee general any sort of sense. The basic task of the trayal, consigned to an ever deeper slide into of the Colombian PST Bolshevik Faction leader present discussion consists in demonstrating the the living standards of the 'Third World' . full political incompatibility of defeatism in Eugenio Greco complained: Impending steel closures threaten to turn Corby relation to the USSR with membership in a re­ 'Do you know the name they give in Europe to volutionary proletarian party.' ('Defeatism vs and Shotten into ghost towns; Liverpool is pretty much one already. The question which must what Fausto Amador did? It is called ~ollabor­ Defensism', Writings 19.'37-38) ation .... If a very probable combination of be forced onto the agenda is not 'Who wants That was the position taken by Trotsky at the circumstances occurs: that Somoza falls~ that Leyland?', but 'Who rules Britain?' And the out­ time of the foundation of the Fourth Inter­ the Frente Sandinista emerges as a movement of come to that question hinges on the construction national and it remains true today. The SWP and great prestige because of its anti-dictatorial of a mass revolutionary party, which at every its predecessors are and have been social­ struggle .... The Frente Sandinista might say: step seeks to challenge and not salvage the I would like the Fourth International to explain democratic renegades from Trotskyism since their tottering capitalist class. why Fausto Amador is in its ranks. At that mo­ definitive capitulation to imperialism in 1950, Leyland is simply frontrunner for a British ment Trotskyism will be finished in Central when they abandoned the military defence of the capitalism in an advanced state of decay, and America.' ([SWP] II DB , April 1978). North Korean deformed workers state. In chasing the air surrounding the dying beast is suffused this organisation so assiduously the IMG is only with the stench of social democracy and its And so it .carne to pass. Today the notorious underlining how vastly removed from Trotskyism sticking-plaster nationalisations. We fight not Fausto Amador, leader of the Costa Rican OST, is they themselves are. for the bourgeoisie's spent castoffs, but for defended by the LTT and its new allies of Moreno There is a potentially fatal organisational its expropriation as a class by a workers & Co. The BF countermotion at the September 30 corollary to the IMG's politically liquidation­ government. As Trotsky said in the Transitional USec meeting explicitly defends Amador against ist course. For if the far larger Cliffite or­ Programme: his accusers, 'a petty-bourgeois leadership ganisation is 'revolutionary' and the outstand­ 'To those capitalists, mainly of the lower and foreign to the Trotskyist movement'. Attacks on ing differences are unimportant, the appropriate middle strata, who of their own accord sometimes the personal integrity of political leaders are conclusion for frustrated IMGers is ... to vote offer to throw open their books to the workers the bane of the Latin American left where most with their feet for the SWP. Indeed there are -- usually to demonstrate the necessity of splits focus on accusations of stolen money or reports that this is already happening around lowering wages -- the workers answer that they cowardice and betrayal. In the case of Fausto the country, as the IMG loses members to the are not interested in· the bookkeeping of indi­ Amador the charges are essentially proven by his larger and superficially more stable SWP. vidual bankrupts or semi-bankrupts but in the own admission; and yet he remains a recognised account ledgers of all exploiters as a whole.' The attractiveness of the SWP to the IMG leader of the USec. What is destroyed by this leadership is itself a measure of the/IMG's Only under proletarian rule can British indus­ fact is not Trotskyism, however, but the revol­ sorry state. For the Cliffites themselves have try be rebuilt with a socialist planned economy. utionary pretensions of these renegades from had their troubles. An investigatory team sent The working class will show that it can organise Marxism for whom Fausto Amador's hands are only out by the SWP Central Committee late last year SOCiety rationally and usefully in a Soviet a little dirtier than all the rest. came back to reinforce a grim picture of massive Britain, part of the Socialist United States of inactivity and confusion, rapid membership turn- Europe .• reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 242,26 October 1979

NOVEMBER 1979 7

0/ BRITAIN

.f.... e e e =.~ ;0III.. In criSiS :i"

The International Marxist Group (IMG) is devotion to dubious visibly in trouble. Its less and less frequent 'lefts'. Today hundreds public events attract ever smaller and more dis­ of IMGers, having stored pirited attendances. Its grand initiatives to away their Che Guevara attract the 'children of 68' -- through such posters and the motor­ menshevik 'regroupment' manoeuvres as Socialist cycle helmets which used Unity and an ostensibly broad, 'non-party' to be de rigeur on demon~ incarnation of Socialist Challenge -- have been strations, are esconced clear failures. Plaintive pleas in the lifeless in a mellow routine of Socialist Challenge throughout the summer indi­ parochial reformist cam­ cated serious financial problems and suggested a paigns -- cuts committees, dramatic decline in sales. And the backdrop to 'solidarity' groups, the it all is the increasing factional polarisation tired feminist milieu, and looming split in the IMG's crisis-ridden the ANL etc. For many, 'international', the so-called 'United Sec­ continued membership in Opportunists fallen on hard times: (from left) Brian Grogan, Ernest Mandel, Tariq Ali retariat of the Fourth International' (USec) the IMG is an act of a polarisation from which the IMG itself has nostalgia. predictably not been immune. It was not the opportunities which were lack­ a fusion of the London Spartacist Group with a The organisation exudes an air of decay. The ing, but a revolutionary programme with which to left oppositional faction inside the centrist student vanguardism and vicarious guerrillaism intersect them. Reformism has at least a consis­ Workers Socialist League, the Trotskyist Faction of the early IMG (circa 1968-72) have not aged tency of purpose in its pursuit of influence -- not,by uncritically courting the WSL as 'rev­ well. And the heady perspectives of a rapid within the bourgeois order. Centrism is by olutionary' but through an intransigent fight emergence of dual power in Britain, which guided nature transitory and inconsistent. Incapable of for programmatic clarity. the organisation through its next few years of engaging in systematic political combat with the rapid growth, have long since gone flat. Member­ much larger reformist, state-capitalist SWP -­ The 'turn' and the SWP ship since has remained stagnant; lately it has or even with the execrable political flotsam and begun to fall. This September's Marxist Sym­ jetsam which left the SWP to the right three But the IMG is not Trotskyist, and it has no posium, the annual fashion show for the IMG's years ago -- the only conceivable alternative programmatic clarity. So it can only go from one latest intellectual fads, featured one cadre for the IMG was to grovel before them. This futile get-rich-quick scheme to another. With after another musing on the organisation's nu­ failed with the SWP's offspring (what is the organisation in chaos, it is currently merical weakness, and John Ross openly admitted left of these people now comprise the Inter­ weighing two more. First is the 'proletarian a mood of pessimism inside the IMG. national Socialist Alliance, a tiny rump of turn' -- to the trade-union bureaucracy -­ It is not primarily an organisational, but a cynical workerist-reformists). So the IMG has pioneered by the American SWP and now being ex­ political crisis, which has brought the IMG to turned from the all-but-dead ISA in search of ported throughout the USec, which is premised on this impasse of despair and disaffection. Ut­ the big time, having already dubbed the SWP a wholesale immersion into heavy industry in terly lacking the anchor of a revolutionary pro­ 'revolutionary' (albeit with a few problems). order to construct a reformist 'class-struggle gramme, the centrist IMG has in recent years For Bolsheviks, Trotskyists, there is of left wing' in the unions. Second is the court­ drifted more and more rightward on the road to necessity another road -- genuine, revolutionary ship of the British SWP of Tony Cliff which at disaster. As one illusory 'new mass vanguard' regroupment through principled splits and least a section of the Hm leadership is bent after another faded into oblivion, the IMG's fusions on the basis of sharp progr~atic on pursuing. tailist appetites led inexorably in the direc­ struggle and exemplary revolutionary practice. The IMG formally approached Cliff & Co last tion of the social democracy, either in its Thus while the IMG/USec has bounced from one year with some centrist idea of discussion and Labour Party or more leftish Socialist Workers opportunist flirtation to another, the Sparta­ conflict in mind, in a ludicrous combination of Party (SWP) manifestations. Any IMGer dis­ cist tendency has broken out of enforced appeal and attack. An IMG letter la;t November comfited when the pape! defended abandoning national isolation in the US, forged an inter­ urging formal discussions enclosed a Central Brick Lane for the balloons of Carnival 2 last national cadre and become a pole of attraction Committee resolution which hoped that the IMG year would find it hard to igno,re the ever-more­ for many leftward moving tendencies from within and SWP could be 'moving toward unity in the rightist line on Ireland (eg banner headlines the USec and other revisionist organisations. . medium term', but began with the sentence 'The saying 'End the War Now! '), and the increasing The Spartacist League itself was founded through continued on page 7 Nicaragua: Did USee leaders finger BoOvar Brigade? The international Spartacist tendency has ally endorse the regime's anti-communist crack­ Nahuel Moreno -- is from three members of the learned that the sixty leaders of the Simon down. On September 3 Sandinista leaders were pro-OCI 'Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency' of the Bolivar Brigade deported from Nicaragua last handed a statement by a USec delegation stating USec. The authors politically oppose the Brig­ August by the Sandinista National Liberation that 'the FSLN was right to demand that the ade policies and mainly relate the story of Front (FSLN) may have been expelled from the non-Nicaraguan members of this group leave the this betrayal as it unfolded before their eyes. country at the request of their own ostensibly countryr. The events the letter relates are straight­ Trotskyist 'comrades'. The putative fingerman? Now at a meeting of the United Secretariat forward. A delegate of the USec in Managua Peter Camejo, a leader of the American Social­ over the September 30 weekend an 'official' allegedly spoke by phone with Peter Camejo at ist Workers Party (SWP). And behind him? The statement was voted to explicitly 'condemn and the US SWP convention in Oberlin, Ohio, in mid­ leadership of the 'United Secretariat of the repudiate the Simon Bolivar Brigade and its August and ~as instructed to 'collaborate with Fourth International' (USec), which allegedly activities'. However an amendment by USec the leadership of the Sandinista Front in order ordered the denunciation. leader Ernest Mandel mildly criticising the to help it get rid of the Simon Bolivar Brig­ As reported in last month's Spartacist expulsion as unnecessary was enough to cause ade'. The next day he carried out this mission Britain, USec leaders -- far from protesting the rabidly pro-Sandinista SWP to vote against and then so informed the leadership of the the FSLN's expulsion of the 'foreign Trotsky­ the resolution. Now it appears that this is Brigade. ist' leaders of the Bolivar Brigade (who were only the political aftermath of the affair. . Can the American Socialist Workers Party, beaten by Panamanian police yuring their tran­ The report we have received and reprinted the United Secretariat and/or Peter Camejo re­ sit through the land of 'anti-imperialist' on page 5 -- published in a bulletin of the fute the serious charges made in this letter? strongman Torrijos) -- went so far as to actu- Italian LSR, followers of Brigade mentor continued on page 5

8 NOVEMBER 1979