No. 18, February, 1980
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'----'---"--- ""- J ~ No18 February 1980 15p BRiTAIN/ Sgread the steel strike-Get the Iron LadyJ ," ~.1~ J:' , \\ '\ I II Spartacist Britain The national steel strike has turned into far now virtual 'dual power' --_IIliI._B'. ---=:ar _0 _____ A-~_" ____ and away the most crucial class battle this within the striking country has seen since the miners' strike ·of unions. :While ISTC Gen 1974. Ever since the first picket lines appeared eral Secre~ary Bill Sirs PAY outside British Steel plants on January 2 the and his cronies in London '\ ~ \. strike has steadily escalated in scope and in try to stifle,militancy \~ '\ THE tensity -- to the pOint where steel ~nion lead and slow the strike down J ers and the TUC express open fears that it may in the hope of a sellout . flit \ have escaped their bureaucratic grip. 'A general 'compromise' based on '. It- I, \\ STEEL strike cannot be far off', said a worried Sid productivity deals with t..l1 . Weighell, general secr,etary of the Railwaymen, BSC man~gement, militant i.\-. \~~ ~ .,' ~\.~~ WORKERS in late January. 'It's a 1926 situation.' strike committees -~ es ~, Indeed it is. As the strike entered .its fifth pecially South Yorkshire ~\\\\'i.~~\ ~,V.\,\ ~~,,'; ,t\"\ week, the militancy and determination of the -- keep defying instruc ot\\ strikers showed n9 signs of abating. Originally tions ,ndescalating the ',"" ":"'::;-o@ ,Ue:d OP tA";-~e 'iBi!me<~-t-p:ry~'t~ff'!ke-"r "pFcke-tin g :'''''QuestTOiled''' .,- now threatening to become an all-out confron about the anti~strike in tation with the Thatcher government and the cap junction a South york italist state. On January 28 Wales was shut down shire strike £ommittee by a one-day general strike. A day earlier the spokesman assured private sector was finally called out, after Spartacist Britain, weeks. of bureaucratic procrastination and in the 'We're carrying on as face of a court injunction solicited by the com normal. _" The majority panies, which illegalised this extension of the of the private sector strike along with all secondary picketing and will not turn. up for work Angry steel strikers demonstrate against Keith Joseph' in Birmingham on January 11 blacking. The steel union bureaucrats quickly in the morning.' showed their readiness to knuckle under to the strikebreaking provocation: 'The Executi~e will For y~ars the steel workers have seen tens of steel workers at Corby and Shotton by agreeing abide by the law', Iron and Steel Trades Confed thousands of their fobs sold down the river, to plant closures in the face of massive local eration (ISTC) President Les Bramley told the while the pay packets of those workers remaining opposition. press. However he quickly added, 'Whether our grew steadily slimmer .. For years'thej have been But steel workers are clearly fed up with members in the public sector will is another asked to 'sacrifice' in order to 'save' nation futile sacrifices. For four weeks the strikers matter. ' alised bankrupt British Steel. Only a few months have bravely fought the bosses, the government, Bramley has good reason to doubt. There is ago the union ch~efs were sealing the fate of continued on page 4 Afghanistan: • 81 e rmv! around the world -~ from Whitehall to the Down with imperialist Chinese Great Hall of the Peoples -- responded with an obscene hue and cry againit 'Soviet ex pansionism' which had 'trampled on the national anti- Soviet sabre-rattling sovereignty and integrity of Afghanistan'. The imperialist media pulled out the stops to build The effective deployment of thousands of sympathy for 'freedom fighters' b-attling sophis Soviet troops in Afvhanistan is one more sting ticated tanks and planes with sticks, stones and ing humiliation for American imperialism in the chants of 'allah akhbar' -- 'freedom fighters' Middle East. For months the Soviet high command whose exploit~ included last year's slaughter of had watched as Khomeini's Iran slipped into 30 Russian tourists and the massacre of 25 near-total chaos, as US aircraft carriers lined Soviet military officers, some skinned alive, up in the Persian Gulf, as the Soviet-allied others castrated and dismembered. But in the regime in Kabul was threatened by a reactionary military confrontation pitting the Soviet jihad (holy war). Seeing Washington,at 'an im soldiers ,backing the nationalist People's Demo passe with the ayatollah, the Kremlin bureau cratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against crats seized the time to quell the ,uprising by feudal and pre-feudal forces aided by imperial the mullahs and khans (religious and tribal ism, Marxists side with·the Russian tanks. Hail leaders) . Red Army! Soviet soldiers patrol village outside Kabul US imperialism and its allies and sycophants continued on page 2 ;~".~ '1:, troops to roll a~ross the bQrder or land at alone there is no solution to national and Kabul airport to begin fulminating about social oppression. These questions are linked, Hail Red Army ~ .. 'Moscow aggression'. Carter's 'human rights' historically as well as SOCially, to the fate of (Continued from page 1) . crusade has been an anti-Soviet jihad right the Russian Revolution. The extension of the from the beginning, of late seizing on the October Revol)ltion to Afghanistan in 1921 was Since the almost bloodless PDPA-led 'revol flimsiest of excuses (eg Russian forces that prevented only by the presence of British imp ution' of April 1978, which installed Nur had been in Cuba for the last fifteen years) to erialism in India. And one need only look at the Mohammad Tarakki, the nationalists had attempted justify massive escalation of the American war gains that women have made in the Soviet East to to consolidate 'power with an army and officer machine. Bluste~ing that the Soviet Union would see what proletarian liberation of these pre co~ps that was built up by the former Daoud dic be made to 'pay a heavy price for its ag capitalist areas meant. Even though this work tatorship and the monarchy. Equipped and trained gression' in Afghanistan, Carter promised a suffered with the Stalinist political counter by the Soviet Union, the army (relative to the 'strong, unsurpassed defence capability'. With revolution, nevertheless women in the Muslim rest of Afghan society) had undergone a certain this he introduced a defence package in Con areas of the USSR have vastly more social gains radicalisation and was not without pro-Soviet gress for the new fiscal year which would more and real equality than in any bourgeois Islamic leanings, as revealed by its backing for the ,I i than double Pentagon military expenditures at country. 'April Revoluti?n'. But as the left-nationalist the height of the.Vietnam war. Although the Stalinist bureaucracy is imbued PDPA regime in Kabul became bogged down fight With the Soviet army operation in Afghani~ with Great Russian chauvinism, its conduct is ing a prolonged tribal insurgency, the army be .stan, all the claptrap about 'detente;, SALT etc conditioned by-the fact that Russians ~re a min gan to disintegrate -- with significant forces ~- by which the imperialists seek to negotiate ority people within the Soviet state -- albeit going over. to the Islamic insurgents and taking the disarmament of the Soviet degenerated the predominant minority. In order to integrate their Soviet weapons with them. As the situation the peoples af diverse national and ethnic back worsened, Tarakki was murdered and replaced in a grounds who make up the Soviet Union, the bu coup led by Hafizullah Amin, who met a similar reaucracy retained a democratic national heri fate when Babrak Karmal took, over following the tage (certainly in comparison to the grossly . r 'ii~:,.$.,- Soviet military intervention. , . Han-chauvinist Chinese bureaucracy) . ~~ ~o"", "l" US president Jimmy Carter and his Dr Strange The Soviet regime is particularly sensitive love national security adviser, Zbigniew regarding its Muslim borderlands, where it has Brzezinski; exploited the presence of Soviet often made the greatest efforts to grant local troops in Afghanistan to translate the Cold War and national autonomy in order to ma~ntain the rhetoric of their anti-Soviet 'human rights' loyalty of peoples related to the rest of Cen crusade into action. On January 4 Carter got on tral Asia. Notably many of the soldiers of the nationwide television to announce an embargo on Soviet army units in Afghanistan are recruited US grain shipments and sales of high technology from Uzbeks and Tajiks. And if 'fiercely inde products to the Soviet Union; four Coast Guard' pendent Afghanistan' is about to suffer such cutters were despatched to Alaska (to protect horrendous national oppression at the hands of the fish from Russian aggression); scheduled the Soviets, why indeed can ~!oscow ,use Muslim openings of consular facilities were stopped, as derived troops without fear? "Obviously because were any new cultural and economic exchanges. they know they're better off than they would be Carter concluded with a pitch to none other·than under the Afghan mullahs or Khomeini. Reportedly Khomeini, denouncing the attempt by 'a powerful one reason why the Soviet army deployed substan atheistic government to subjugate an independent tial forces in Afghanistan was the feeling that Islamic people' (New York Times, 5 January). the Kabul regime was being too high-handed and Washington also obtained pledges by other wheat insensitive to the problems of carrying out re producers to hold the line on exports to the Reactionary Islamic insurgents - imperialism's heroes forms and consolidating'a centraliied govern USSR. The message: Starve for human rights! mental authority in backward areas with diverse A week later US Secretary of Defense Harold workers state -- has been put into mothballs. Of peoples and was thereby fuelling the reactionary Brown was despatched to Peking to deepen the Islamic insurgency.