No 45 November 1982 20p BRITAIN Down with protectionist, poison!

faCing yet another round of redundancies and closures, know that they must either save the Miners, steelworkers, NHS jobs they have or never work again. The miners, who have se,en sixteen pits close in the last two all out to smash Tory attacks! years and 22,000 ,jobs go out the window, are balloting over strike action for a 31 per cent The spectacle of Labour Party leader Michael wage rise and against a new NCB 'hit list'. Foot and TUC general secretary Len Murray Their leaders give them only one answer: wait ambling along like aging Sunday school teachers for a Labour government that will try harder to at the head of the 22 September 'Day of Action' put Cold War depression British imperialism on demonstration speaks volumes about how these its feet again. For the Labour/TUC bureaucracy, messenger boys for the bourgeoisie intend to 22 September was organised not as a springboard 'resist' the Tory onslaught. Next month, Tebbit's for class struggle, but as a vehicle to cement bill becomes law, outlawing all solidarity the unity' of the Labour traitors at Blackpool action, aimed at smashing the closed shop, aug­ the following week. Whilst the Labour right wing menting the already viciously anti-union Prior went about its job of crippling its erstwhile Act. The new Tory 'think tank' report promises left opponents, health workers were paraded an end to indexation in social security and around the Blackpool conference centre to rap­ pensions, an end to state-financed higher educa­ turous applause. The siren call of the trade tion, death to the already miserably inadequate union bureaucracy echoed all the way down the National Health 'Service. And minority workers 'Golden Mile' and beyond -- vote Labour for face everything from deprivation of social ser­ NATO-loyal Social Contract austerity! vices, to deportation, to death by fascist killers. Buoyed by the Falklands war, the decline of From the Labour/TUC leaders come .. , sp,eeches. the Liberal-SDP Alliance and Labour's faction Hat'red for this government runs deep. ASLEF fight, Thatcher now looks forward to winning the strikers last summer were prepared to stay out next election even with, and over the backs of, even under threat of 'PATCO treatment' sackings more than three million unemployed. Her confi­ from the Tories. Health workers have been wait­ dence says a' lot about the state of Britain -­ ing seven months for a barely minimal wage rise and about the state of the trade union 1eader- and have been told to drop dead. Steelworkers continued on page 11 Blackpool's promise: Cold War Social Contract The trade union bureau­ in order to be available for 'responsible' cap­ crats came to Blackpool, in italist rule. With Militant constitutionally im­ the words of David Basnett, paled, Benn politically prostrate and the with 'grim determination' to National Executive and Shadow Cabinet solidly see the return of a Labour stacked with right wingers committed to aus­ government in the next elec­ terity at home and a nuclear-armed NATO abroad, tion. After three years of Labour's promise at Blackpoo1 was a the most turbulent factional government of Cold War and Social Contract. warfare in the Labour Party for decades, this year's an­ Defeat the witchhunt nual conference saw a com­ To the dyed-in-the-wool social democrats of plete and utter rout of the Militant, the witchhunt must have seemed like ,a left -- with the TUC calling supreme injustice. Their record of service to the shots. From the over­ the party leadership is long and inglorious -­ whelming vote for a witch­ refusing to demand imperialist troops out of hunti~g register and purge Ireland, falling into line behind Thatcher's of the Militant tendency on Falklands war with their 'socialist policies' to Monday to Tony Benn's path­ defeat Argentina, inviting the racist cops into etic oath of unconditional the union moyement, dropping any defence of the loyalty to Michael Foot on thousands of youth arrested in the inner-city Thursday, a set-piece battle explosions of summer 1981 after a reprimand from was played out whose outcome the Labour leaders. Their' stewardship of the was never in doubt. LPYS has helped channel the disaffections of The right wing's reasser­ thousands of youth into ,the dead end of Labour­ tion of control was a message ite treachery. They achieved their modest Len Murray, Michael Foot "lead' 22 September Day of Action into to the ruling class that success over the years faithfully playing by Labourite diversion. Labour is putting its house continued on page 10 Pacifist patriots in a' panic Student eND leader won· to ·Trotskyism

When Alison Pont, founding president of joined CND when it was Liverpool University CND, distributed a state­ reborn as a result of ment on the first day of Freshers Fair announc­ I the renewed Cold War ing her break from CND pacifism in favour of the following the Soviet in­ Trotskyist politics of the Spartacist League tervention in Afghani­ (SL), it threw CND stalwarts 'into a frenzy of stan. I supported the confusion and elicited considerable interest Soviet action simply on from many students. The first meeting of the the grounds that it held university CND was 'not going to be the usual more hope of a better old CND meeting where we talk about how terrible life for the Afghan nuclear weapons are', she said. Her statement people, especially the argued that the first meeting of the CND society women, and that the Red later that week debate out a resolution to 're­ Army must be preferable ject any support to CND, which channels oppo­ to the religious fanat­ sition to the war drive into support for the ics opposing them who capitalist system' and to recognise rather that were reminiscent of the 'the Soviet Union must maintain the utmost religious fanatics in nuclear vigilance against the NATO threat .... Iran. The road to peace lies through class war and thE Like the majority of struggle for workers revolution .... ' people who join CND, I There followed three hours of heated arguments was paralysed by terror and bureaucratic manoeuvres which.included at­ of nuclear war. This be­ tempts by CNDers on campus to get the student came a block in my mind union first to suppress and then to censor the obliterating all other SL contingent at anti-Cruise march: the communist alternative to CND leaflet. This having failed, the small-time issues so that I felt pacifism. patriotic pacifists on campus contacted Mersey­ that nothing could be side CND, who in turn contacted national CND, solved until we had 'got rid of the Bomb'. That had a point! It was suggested at the same con­ who in turn empowered a Merseyside CND heavy to CND depends upon this fear for recruitment is ference that we should have a CND symbol visible simply disaffiliate the university group if it evident in the continued use of the film The War for TV cameras to pick up during the pope's got 'taken over'. Needless to say this blatantly Game, and its slogan 'Protest and survive', visit, as 'the pope is the biggest peacemaker anti-communist measure has never been necessary which er,lphasises that the campaign is primarily in the world' . against the numerous fake-revolutionaries like concerned with survival, that all you have to do the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party or is 'protest' in order to achieve this. I be­ 'Classless' pacifism serves the bourgeoisie International Marxist Group, whope aims are lieved that nuclear war grew daily nearer be­ qui te compa tible wi th those of Msgr Bruce Ken t cause of 'increased international tension', a In fact, CND is not classless, but a campaign and the other preachers, patriots and pacifists handy phrase for CND because it operates as a which attempts to tie the working class into an who run CND. catch-all which evades the issue that there is a alliance with the bourgeoisie, ie a popular Shortly before the meeting began, a handful military confrontation between imperialism and front on a bourgeois programme. Unity is the of campus CNDers planted theltlselves outside the the workers states, and that one must take a watchword for CND but occasionally someone's room to distribute a statement calling on side defending those workers states -- despite politics would emerge and I would find myself students to boycott the meeting, reiterating degeneration under the political control of horrified by the reactionary company in which their commitment to dismantle nuclear weapons in parasitic bureaucracies -- against imperialist I found myself. For example, it emerged in a 'all countries, East as well as West' and throw­ attack. CND seemed like the perfect answer to discussion with a fellow member of the Univer­ ing out the standard CND slander tha~ the me at the time; I had been involved in si.ngle­ sity CND that she was not only anti-abortion, Trotskyist SL is some sort of Kremlin surrogate, issue campaigns before -- pro-abortion, anti­ but believed that the National Front had the , pro-Soviet'. This did not stop more than 35 nazis, fight the education cuts, boycott Bar­ right of free speech. On another occasion I heard people from attending the meeting (as compared clays etc -- but this one seemed to override all some companions complain on a Hirushima Day to the 20-25 who attended the meeting called-for others because it was about the survival of the march that even.the slogan 'Maggie out' (which those ' who share' CND's aims the foilowing week). planet. is usually a safe bet on CND demos) was 'too A Merseyside CND spokesman illustrated his self­ In April 1981 I set up the University CND and political'. During my activities with CND I avowed 'left wing' views by affi~ming that they by October had recruited over two hundred mem­ very rarely came across criticism from the left, would chase after even Young Conservatives in bers. The trouble was that I had swallowed the although in the CND groups with which I was in­ the cause of disarmament and explaining how a CND argument that if only you could unite enough volved there were members of organisations such nuclear war could be triggered by 'a flock of people then you could get rid of 'the Bomb'. as the Communist Party (CP) and the Socialist seagulls'! We urge all students and youth who This 'classless strategy' led to a broad church Workers Party (SWP). They too submerged their are mistakenly drawn to CND out of a desire to of people including out-and-out pacifists, anti­ politics in order to maintain unity. On one fight the anti-Soviet war drive to consider the abortionists who believed that all life is occasion I proposed to a fellow CNDer that we arguments outlined by cde Pont in the letter re­ sacred, feminists who argued that nuclear have a public debate between uni- and multi­ printed below, explaining why she was won to the weapons were the result of a society dominated lateralists but was advised against this as it programme of proletarian revolution. by 'male values' and that technological and could split the campaign. I later learned that scientific terms were part of she was in the CPo Indeed CP members were only 'man-made' language used to baf­ identifiable often by overheard conversations. fle them, ecologists opposed to I never heard any of the people that I later .allnuclear power, Christians, knew to be supporters of the CP talk about any­ defenders of Britain who argued thing but peace and of course they avoided all ,I' I that conventional weapons were reference to the Soviet Union and the question perfectly acceptable. In order of its defence against imperialism. An SWP . CltJD for all these groups to work to- speaker talked about 'Jobs not bombs', suggest­ ing that we should ask the bourgeoisie to spend t ACIFI5N gether, divergent views have to P11 , _ be suppressed; at a conference, their money differently, within the framework of I . for example, an argument which capitalism, and all would be well. Questioned as to what means he would use to defend a revolu­ ()~ ~~()J>';'~:~e~:~~~~~e:n~e::~~:t:~~~!:ts tion he agreed that a revolution would have to I NP£RIALI5T about our being addressed by be defended, but that nuclear weapons were al­ two supporters of the World ways unacceptable·. This worried me at the time, WA R . Disarmament Campaign, who for I could see that the guy was not facing up boasted that their campaign to the issue -- if he was serious about wanting . had the approval of Reagan and to make a ,evolution then he should be serious Thatcher, was stopped when a about defending it. girl cried 'what are we bick­ For months I was able to get away with call­ ering amongst ourselves for, ing myself a socialist and devoting time and what does it matter whether energy t'o organising CND, telling myself that we're unilateralists or multi­ nuclear war was the most immediate issue and CND begs imperialist warmakers to 'ban the bomb'. Spartacist League lateralists, we're all Christ­ that we could not have socialism until we had fights for class war against imperialist war. ians together'. And maybe she got rid of 'the Bomb'. None of the so-called

2 SPARTACIST BRITAIN revolutionary groups within CND challenged this impulses over both Afghani'stan and El Salvador, there were nuclear weapons on board the fleet in view. I can see now that it would have forced that the issues were those of class politics order to placate those 'pacifists' who wanted to them to question their own role in a pacifist and that CND's talk of 'international tension' go all the way with conventional war. Although movement when they.should have known that Lenin hid what was really going on. Although I now I did not knaw the history of the position, when said 'only after we have overthrown, finally understood that the Soviet Union was not capi­ I heard that the Spartacist League called for vanquished and expropriated the bourgeois'ie of talist and should be defended against imperial­ defeat to both sides and ~the main enemy is at the whole world, and not only one country, will ist attack including by means of nuclear weap­ home' I knew that this was correct. I was now wars become impossible'. I came to realise that ons, I could not for some time admit to myself far from CND's position, I knew that I would there was nothing new in this attempt to unite that two years' time and energy had been wasted. have to stop working with them. For a time I 'all classes' against an 'overriding threat'. In I had the vague idea -- not clearly formulated considered other left groups, still unclear as the thirties we were told that socialism had to -- that I was in some way helping Russia by to why all the left didn't join together. Then I wait until we had defeated the fascists; today working for Britain's unilateral disarmament. read Ten Days That Shook The World by John Reed it is 'the Bomb'. In both cases' the 'unity' is I did not see that 'better red than dead' only and understood what a revolutionary situation one which serves the interests of the bour~ says that anything is better than being dead. was like and that it would be crucial to build a geoisie against the working class. It left me with nothing to say about Polish revolutionary party based on a revolutionary That CND is protecting the interests of the Solidarnosc which I came to realise was a programme. In reading State and Revolution by bourgeoisie became apparent to me only gradual­ counterrevolutionary threat to the deformed/ Lenin I finally understood the nature of the ly. I felt uneasy with the debates in which CND degenerated workers states and which therefore capitalist state and saw that building CND had tried to work out alternative defence strat­ had to be stopped. And moreover that the Polish not been harmless but that I had bee~ construct­ egies for Britain once we had got rid of nuclear bureaucracy, which was directly responsible for ing an obstacle to proletarian revolution. weapons, thus trying to reassure those in power the growth of counterrevolution, would have to that CND posed no threat to the status quo. I at be oUS,ted through proletarian political revolu­ I had joined CND because I was terrified that first solved my own unease with this, exempli­ tion -- a political revolution to reestablish there was going to be a th!3rmonuclear third fied by CND's use of quotes from such saurces as the rule of the soviets, the workers councils,' world war. Now I can see that the only way to Lord Mountbatten, by retreating into complete in defence of the socialised economy. stop this happening is to work for proletarian pacifism. Here again I found myself in a contra­ The Falklands war finally proved to me that revolution. Central to this is the defence of diction. This left me nothing to say about the CND had no answer to imperialist war. I could the gains already won for the international US-backed junta slaughtering workers and see no reason to support either side. I had an working class in the deformed/degenerated peasants in El Salvador, when my gut impulse was argumen,t with some friends who as pacifists workers states. These gains will not be defended to support the guer~illas fighting the junta. werp CND supporters yet who now argued about the by the CP/Moscow-loyalists who work within CND need to defend 'our' territory; thus I saw how to promote 'peaceful coexistence', but only Defend the Soviet Union in time of war pacifists line up with the through a strategy of socialist revolution in bourgeoisie. CND came out with support to the the west to disarm the bourgeoisie and political In October last year I came into contact with cry to 'withdraw the fleet', lining up with revolution'in the deformed/degenerated workers Spartacist politics and began to examine the little-Englander nationalism in recommending states to oust th~ Stalinist bureavcracies. The contradictions in my views again. I came to see the best way to defend the long-term interests only group which offers such a programme is the that there was a consistency in my original gut of the British bourgeoisie. CND hinted that Leninist-Trotskyist Spartficist League .• 'Red Robbo' runs, CP thugs move in On the evening of 28 September, at a public management at Leyland. When, despite his record that is ripping the CP apart. And the last thing oeeting and film showing organised by the Commu­ of aiding management, Robinson was sacked by in the world either CP leadership-loyalists like nist Party branch at Sharrow in Sheffield, known Michael Edwardes in November 1979, Robinson and Robbo or the pro-Moscow wing of the party wanted CP members brutally assaulted two Spartacist the CP stood by Terry Duffy and ordered the to talk about was the Russian question. Resisting League (SL) supporters outside the meeting. Did thousands of men who had come out to defend him abusive attempts to shut her up, a Spartacist anyone see this attack? Of course not! When the and their union to go back to work and await the speaker at the Sheffield meeting insisted on dozen or so who had come to the meeting were outcome of a scab enquiry'. the need for the British working class to take a already safely inside and there was no one to Despite his attempts to blame the working clear position in this war drive on the side of witness this thuggery, a number of CP goons came class for its defeats, Robinson, in response to the Soviet Union. As she said, 'The Morning Star out of the room and struck out at our sellers. a question from the floor at the Rotherham meet­ had Thatcher's line on Afghanistan, "Soviet Having thrown one male comrade down a flight of ing, was forced to admit that struggles like the troops olit", and the Morning Star supported the stairs, these cowards then turned on the re­ ASLEF strike had been betrayed, and maybe thls only union Thatcher likes -- SGlidarnosc in maining comrade, a slightly built woman. Seizing had something to do with 'the quality of leader­ Poland.' While the SL fights to defend the her by the arm, CPer John Flatley kicked her, ship they're given'. So who is it that has done Soviet Union, the CP builds the anti-Soviet CND. knocking her down the stairs and forcing her to the betraying, and just what is the 'quality of reqUire hospital treatment for a cracked rib. leadership' the CP gives? As the SL spokesman This vicious attack was made known to the' pointed out, it was the Straight Left supporter Class t~aitor, 'drunk or sober' labour movement through an SL leaflet entitled Ray Buckton who condemned the train drivers in And what did Robinson have to say on the 'Stalinist thuggery will not silence Trotskyism!' ASLEF to isolation and thereby defeat by in­ Russian question? He made it perfectly clear at distributed to CP events, trade unions and work­ structing his men to cross NUR picket lines one the Doncaster meeting: 'I would not defend the places in the Sheffield district. Among the week before their strike began. It was the CP Soviet Union drunk or sober. That would be a trades unionists who signed their names to a whO, along with Bill Sirs, fought against bring­ weakness.' Little wonder that.the Sheffield protest statement were 11 militants from the ing out the miners and dockers during the steel meeting was shut down! With the CP deeply divided Shepcote Lane steelworks and a membp.r of the strike of 1980. It was the SL who fought to ex­ between those like Robinson and the leadership Yorkshire Area Executive Committee of the NUM tend the strike, and turn the steel strike into who are prepared to side with Solidarnosc from Hatfield Main. Union militants know from a general strike to stop the ruling class attacks counterrevolution in Poland and those like their own experiences that the trade union mis­ and put the working class on the offensive! Straight Left supporters in Sheffield who look leaders know no limits to the bureaucratic sup­ For all wings of the CP class struggle is uncritically to Moscow, neither side wants the ression they will employ to defend their something to be sacrificed in their pursuit of al­ Russian question raised in public right now. It betrayals. The CP are behaving in like manner. liances with a non-existent 'progressive wing' is the Trotskyist politics of the SL -- for un­ Down with violence in the workers movement -­ of the ruling class. The CP champions 'unity' in conditional military defence of the Soviet Union defend workers democracy! the Labour Party behind witchhunter Michael Foot against imperialism combined with political In fact it was the SL's effective political -- and even seeks 'unity' with the anti-Soviet revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracies exposure of the CP's own catalogue of betrayals, warmongers of the SDP. Robinson told the Rother­ that provides the answer to imperialism's Cold iIi particular against CPer Derek Robinson, former ham meeting that 'we need to appeal to the SDP War drive. And that is what has got the CP's convenor at BL Longbridge, that was the immediate because they are not a lasting influence'. So thugs so upset. precursor of the attack. By the time 'Red Robbo' even NATO/CIA lovers like Owen and Jenkins can The Stalinists of the CP have a history of had reached Sheffield on 24 August as part of a be persuaded into doing good things for the violence in the workers movement, but even frame­ speaking tour in the Yorkshire area to promote working class if only class struggle doesn't up trials, bullets in the back of the head and sales of the flagging Morning Star, so rattled alienate them from the cause. the murder of Trotsky did not stop Trotskyists were the CP by our interventions that they aban­ If the reminder of their betrayals in the in the past. The thuggery of the CP will not doned their own platform and shut down the meet­ trade unions got the CP going it was the Russian stop us in our fight for authentic Bolshevism ing early rather than have to reply to our in­ question that really gored their ox. It is ore­ today. We will continue our struggle for this terventions! The following night at Doncaster cisely the impact of the anti-Soviet war drive programme and we will defend workers democracy .• Robinson in a frenzy tried to prevent SLers from distributing literature, telling us we would not be allowed to mention the Soviet Union in our interventions and threatening violence. In the meeting hall the CP tries to suppress our ~p-artacist League London Class Series Trotskyist programme -- and outside it's vicious attacks on our supporters. 4 November 2 December Speaking on the subject 'The Media and the Defend the gains of the Russian Revolution! F.or a pr.oletarian perspective in Ireland Labour Movement', Robinson quickly set straight Against Solidarnosc counterrevoluti.on in British troops .out n.ow! Not green against orange but anyone who thought that the CP was going to argue Poland! class against class! for class struggle against the ruling class, com­ plaining that with the hail of p~opaganda cominl! 18 November 9 December from Fleet Street 'anyone would think we were The fight against racial .oPpressi.on Crisis in the lab.our Party ~rying to overthrow the government with violence Smash the Nati.onality Act and NHS/DHSS race Drive out NATO/CIA-loving right wing! Break with ald force'. Of course the CP would never dream checks! Bennite reformism - for a leninist vanguard party! of that! Making Britain safe for capitalism is Build workers defence guards t.o smash the what their 'peaceful coexistence' reformism is fascists! all about. Derek Robinson himself knows all \ All classes at P.olytechnic of North lond.on, Holloway Road site (nearest tube Holloway Road), about class collaboration, like when he sup- TV r.oom. 6,30pm For more information. telephone (01) 278 2232 ported schemes for workers participation in

NOVEMBER 1982 3 Lenin and Trotsky fought shoulder to shoulder for international proletarian revolution. Brezhnev rubs elbows with 'peaceful' imperialist butcher Richard Nixon. Still looking to Brezhnev's 'world communist movement' , aiaisis' la limbo We reprint below a letter, dated 24 July, to cretins of Straight Left,. to two formerly throughout the international workers movement a grouping in and around the British Communist pseudo-Trotskyist groups, Royston Bull's mini­ between opportunists and revolutionaries: Party (CPGB) which publishes the journal scule Workers Party and the vicarious Third 'The old theory that opportunism is a "legit­ Leni'nist and shares in key respects the views of World cheerleaders of the Revolutionary Commun­ imate shade" in a single party that knows no the Turkish Iscenin Sesi (the 'Leninist' wing of ist Group. They raise only the most abstract "extremes" has now turned into a tremendous the Turkish CP). Both of these left-Stalinist programmatic criteria for this unification (eg deception of the workers and a tremendous groups are sometimes sharply critical of the for soviets as against parliament) and justify hindrance to the working-class movement .... Kremlin bureaucracy and the CPs aligned with it, it primarily on the basis that all these group­ Kautsky, the most outstanding spokesman of whilst remaining loyal to and seeking to reform ings to one extent or another defend the Moscow this theory, and also the leading authority the pro-l1oscow 'world communist movement'. In bureaucracy politically. (All other organisa­ in the Second International, has shown him­ the period since writing this letter a third tions, from 'third campists' to Maoists to the self a consummate hypocrite and a past master issue of their journal has appeared which raises Leninist-Trotskyist Spartacist League, are con­ in the art of prostituting Marxism.' ('The points, several addressi~g questions dealt with signed to the dustbin of the 'petty-bourgeois Collapse of the Second International', May­ in our letter, requiring additional comment on left' in the Leninist's schema.) The Leninist June 1915) our part. has programmatic differences with its various We state in our letter that their 'brief putative bloc partners on questions as funda­ statement on the Falklands war appears to paral­ mental as peaceful coexistence, anti-imperial­ 24 July 1982 lel our position' of revolutionary defeatism on ism, Labour-loyalism, to name a few. both sides. A longer piece in Leninist no 3 con­ Their tortuous justifications for this call Dear Comrades, tinues to argue for defeatism on both sides; amount to: first that while the Labour Party We have read carefully the first two issues however it also calls for the 'right of self­ clearly supports the bourgeoisie, the CPGB's op­ of the Leninist and, following the suggestion of determination' for the 1800 Empire-loyal Falkland portunism 'has not become ripe' because 'British your supporter comrade Gavin, are writing to kelpers, who are by no means a nation in the imperialism has yet to pass into a crisis of outline our comments on, and criticisms of, your Leninist sense of the term. Also the statement critical proportions'; and second, that there political positions. quotes without comment the CPGB's call for 'max­ exists 'rich evidence' in the history of the As you may know our international tendency imum use of the UN'. For genuine Leninists, has developed in large part through a regroup­ opposition to the United Nations and its fore­ ment of cadres from different political tradi­ runner the League of Nations (termed by Lenin an tions who have come to a common programmatic 'impe~ialist den of thieves') has always been a understanding. Today the task of regrouping matter of principle and was in fact part of the subjectively revolutionary cadre towards the Twenty-one Conditions for admission into the forging of a principled Leninist vanguard both early Communist International. Lastly, the state­ in this country and internationally is under­ ment attacks 'those who call the Argentinian scored in urgency with every new provocation regime "bonapartist'" for 'disguising the essence from the warmongers in the White House and of fascism as counterrevolution in the epoch of Downing Street. imperialism' (their emphasis). In the Stalinist The current anti-Soviet war drive and par­ movement promiscuous characterisations of auth­ ticularly the events in Poland have provoked a oritarian regimes like the Argentine junta as deep crisis within the Communist Parties hither­ fascist have historically been used to justify) to broadly aligned with MOSCOW, what you call class-collaborationist popular fronts with the the 'world communist movement'. Doubtless you 'democratic' bourgeoisie. (See our polemic are aware that in this situation we have against Iscenin Sesi', -, Leninism v Stalinism', in oriented a considerable part of our resources to Spartacist ~ri tain no 29, Feb,ruary 1981.) , winning CP supporters. From our standpoint your On the question of the Labour Party, the recognition of, and opposition to, the anti­ Leninist now takes the position that in the Soviet war drive and the CPGB's capitulations in absence of a Communist candidate in elections the face of this is important. Similarly your 'there can be no other call but vote Labour'. As opposition to counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc we elaborate in our letter, such a guarantee to in Poland. From the fragmentary material in the vote Labour under all circumstances where a com­ Leninist, you indicate a willingness to stand munist vanguard cannot counterpose electoral against the pervasive Labourite illusions and candidates offers the Labour traitors stra­ a current Bennite influences in the British left. tegic alliance, not rope with which they can a As well your brief statement on the Falklands be hanged. With this position the Leninist shows war appears to parallel our position. We recog­ that it still carries much inherited baggage nise that your positions are not fully formed from the decades of ,CPGB prostration before and are in the process of elaboration, but such Labour. If the Labour Party is a prop of bour­ a process can never take place in hermetic con­ geois class rule, the CPGB has, within its cap­ ditions, Organised discussion between our two acities, served as a prop for the Labour Party. German CP leader Thaelmann, 1932: 'After Hitler, us.' With its refusal to stop Nazi rise to power, tendencies can only assist in clarifying ques­ The Moscow~loyal Straight Left's open Labour Comintern passed over to reformism. tions of revolutionary strategy facing all liquidationism is simply a continuation of the ostensible revolutionary currents. party's decades-long espousal of socialism communist movement on the need for organisation­ through a left Labour government, whilst the al unitg with opportunists. World War II was a The record of Stalinism: betrayals, 'crisis of critical proportions' and the CPGB Eurocommunists are social democrats of the not mistakes second mobilisation. joined the Labour Party in openly supporting its Finally, and most central for a revolutionary bourgeoisie in war. Indeed, the CPs in every Al­ At the centre of any discussion between us 'critique of the Leninist's politics, an editor­ lied power supported their bourgeoisies, no less must be the question of the 'world communist ial statement in issue no 3 entitled 'A Call to vociferously than the social chauvinists wi th movement' and your perspective of reforming all Communists' elaborates their pespective of whom Lenin had split in 1914, thus confirming organisations which we believe have been long reforming the pro-Moscow 'world communist move­ again the definitive degeneration to reformism dead for the purpose of proletarian revolution. ment'. They call for the unification, inside the of Stalin's Comintern in 1933. ' Verball'y at least, your comrades have disavowed CPGB, of a wide range of tendencies, which are As for 'the idea that 'uni ty wi th opportunists' much of the tradition and practice of the 'world characterised variously as 'centrist', 'inexor­ is a principle of Leninist party-building, after communist movement'. Some of your comrades have ably drawn towards liquidationism', 'revolution­ 1914 Lenin generalised the programmatic struggle "even'gone so far as to renounce this tradition ary sectarian': from the Kre~in sycophants of he had carried throug~ against the Mensheviks from 1924 onwards. The record of Stalin. and his the New Communist Party (NCP), through the recent for more than a decade into an understanding collaborators and his successors includes collu­ NCP split-off 'Proletarian' and the Labourite that an organisational split was necessary sion in the TUC's betrayal of the 1926 General •

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Strike (abo.ut which yo.u have an ambiguo.us refer­ o.f 'so.cialism in o.ne co.untry'. Against the Left ence in Leninist ~o. 1); sending tho.usands o.f Oppo.sition's struggle fo.r internatio.nal revo.l­ Chinese Co.mmunists to. their deaths at the hands utio.n as the decisive defence o.f the gains o.f o.f Chiang Kai-shek in .1927; o.pening the way fo.r Octo.ber the Stalinists co.unterpo.sed first al­ the rise o.f Hitler and the slaughter o.f the liances with the treacherous so.cial-demo.cratic flo.wer o.f the Euro.pean pro.letariat in Germany; labo.ur bureaucracy and then alIi ances with a sabo.taging the Spanish revo.lutio.n thro.ugh per­ mythical 'pro.gressive' wing o.f the bo.urgeo.isie. nicio.us po.licies o.f the po.pular fro.nt; strike­ The aim o.f the Stalinists was two. fo.ld: first to. breaking and support fo.r the Allied imperialist fend o.ff a war which wo.uld threaten the so.cial war effo.rt in Wo.rld War II; beheading the rev­ fo.undatio.ns upo.n which the bureaucracy rested o.lutio.nary upsurges in France, 'Italy and Greec'e and thus their existence; and seco.nd, to. prevent at the end o.f Wo.rld War II; thro.ugh to. the pro.letarian revo.lutio.n which wo.uld have threat­ advo.cacy o.f a 'nego.tiated settlement' and the ened to. raise the Russian pro.letariat against refusal to. give any backing to. a military vic­ bureaucratic abuse, hence stripping the para­ to.ry o.f the leftists in EI Salvado.r. Pick any sitic caste o.f its po.wer and privileges. Armed year since 1924 and we will sho.w yo.u not just with this analysis it is clear that Leo.nid mistake but a gross betrayal o.f the interests Brezhnev is no. mo.re a centrist because he wanted the internatio.nal wo.rking class by the 'wo.rld to. be rid o.f So.lidarno.sc than is the wretched co.mmunist mo.vement'. right-refo.rmist Bill Sirs because he had to. call Simply ackno.wledging these betrayals is no.t a natio.nal steel strike a co.uple o.f years ago.. goo.d eno.ugh, yo.u must draw the necessary rev­ Bo.th Brezhnev and Sirs are animated by the same o.lutio.nary co.nclusio.ns. Yo.u need a materialist thing -- bureaucratic self-interest. explanatio.n and alternative pro.gramme. Yo.ur The Co.mmunist Parties internatio.nally were characterisatio.n o.f the Co.mmunist Parties as subo.rdinated to. the interests o.f the So.viet bu­ 'centrist' and faith in the revo.lutio.nary cre­ reaucracy. Thus pro.letarian revo.lutio.n was dis­ dentials o.f the likes o.f Gus Hall, the Kato.wice placed by a co.nsistent strategy o.f appealing to. Fo.rum and Hafizullah Amin flies in the face o.f the bo.urgeo.isie, manifested in class-co.llabo.ra­ the repeated and decisive departures fro.m the tio.nist, cro.ss-class blo.cs, in the uto.pian ho.pe essentials o.f revo.lutio.nary Leninism. And de­ o.f staving o.ff imperialist aggressio.n against spite yo.ur talk o.f 'ideo.lo.gical struggle' and the So.viet Unio.n. To.day in the USA, the heart­ denunciatio.n o.f mano.euvres yo.u end up with a land o.f the anti-So.viet war drive, Gus Hall's perspective o.f seeking unprincipled blo.cks to. CPUSA is faithfully translating Mo.sco.w's po.licy refo.rm the CPGB. o.f 'peaceful co.existence' into. practice by seek­ ing (again) an alliance with the Demo.cratic Proletarian political revolution Party. In yo.ur jo.urnals yo'u co.rrectly po.int to. to oust the bureaucracy Lenin's po.sitio.n that the true test o.f interna­ In yo.ur article o.n Poland yo.u po.int to. the tio.n~lism rests with fighting fo.r revo.lutio.n at need 'to. eliminate the co.untry's thick bureau­ ho.me. But the CPUSA's pro.gramme is no.t even cratic strata'. Tro.tsky analysed the gro.wth o.f 'defending so.cialism' in 'the mo.st deadening this bureaucratic stratum in the So.viet Unio.n in conservative manner'; it is actively undermin­ the aftermath o.f the civil war. Nurt~red by the ing the fo.undatio.ns o.f the So.viet state by attendant eco.no.mic devastatio.n, the slaughter wo.rking against the American so.cialist revo.lu­ and dispersal o.f the leading elements o.f the tio.n. This is a po.licy no.t o.f 'centrism' but o.ne wo.rking class in the civil war and the failure every bit as co.unterrevo.lutio.nary as that o.f the o.f the internatio.nal revo.lutio.n -- in particular so.cial demo.crats. The same is true o.f all the the failure o.f the German revo.lutio.n -- the bur­ parties o.f the 'wo.rld co.mmunist mo.vement'. eaucracy hardened into. a co.nservative o.ppo.nent o.f the resurrectio.n o.f so.viet demo.cracy and o.f 'Reforming' the politically bankrupt internatio.nal revo.lutio.n. Fro.m 1923 o.nwards Writing in the first number o.f the teninist Tro.tsky and the Left Oppo.sitio.n carried out a yo.u describe the CPGB as 'a seething mass o.f struggle against this emergent bureaucratic bo.urgeo.is and petty-bo.urgeo.is tendencies -­ caste. Fo.r a decade Tro.tsky's perspective was feminism, pacifism, eco.no.mism', liberalism, anti­ o.ne o.f refo.rming the Co.mmunist Party and the So.vietism, natio.nalism ... '. The CPGB lo.ng ago. Co.mmunist Internatio.nal. Even when Tro.tsky was political revo.lutio.n to. o.ust the bureaucracy cut lo.o.se fro.m its revo.lutio.nary mo.o.rings, expelled fro.m the So.viet Unio.n in 1928 and with while still upho.lding the pro.letarian pro.perty having fo.llo.wed every twist and turn o.f Stalin's many leading o.ppo.sitio.nists already in Stalin's fo.rms o.f the So.viet Unio.n. po.licies. The 'British Ro.ad to. So.cialism' priso.n camps, the L~ft Oppo.sitio.n co.nsidered Tro.tsky drew the analo.gy with the co.urse o.f thro.ugh all its drafts is a tho.ro.ughly refo.rm­ itself as just that -- an o.ppo.sitio.n in the the French revo.lutio.n o.f 1789, where, feeding o.n ist parliamentarist pro.~ramme, a co.dificatio.n o.f Third Internatio.nal. But in 1933 Tro.tsky was the exhaustio.n o.f the masses a co.nservative the CPGB's practice for years befo.re. The first co.mpelled to. re-examine his po.sitio.n. In that Thermido.rian reactio.n displaced the radical draft, sanctio.ned and pro.mo.ted by Stalin, re­ year the po.licies o.f the Third Internatio.nal Jaco.bin wing o.f the revo.lutio.n, tho.ugh still flected the wishes o.f the Mo.sco.w bureaucracy fo.r left the way o.pen fo.r Hitler's victo.ry and the ruling o.n the basis o.f the new progressive a neutral bo.urgeo.is Britain in the face o.f the mass destructio.n o.f the German labo.ur mo.vement. bo.urgeo.is pro.perty relatio.ns. In the So.viet first Co.ld War and the creatio.n o.f NATO. The This histo.ric betrayal met with no. significant Unio.n the revo.lutio.nary leadership was displaced po.licy o.f capitulatio.n to. th~ British bo.urgeo.is­ resistance inside the Co.mintern. The Co.mintern by Thermido.rian elements which gained po.litical ie pro.duced the CPGB o.f to.day with its uto.pian had pro.ved itself in practice to. be a passive po.wer ato.p the new pro.gressive pro.letarian pacifism, its class co.llabo.ratio.n and the ever instrument o.f the Stalinist bureaucracy fo.r co.n­ pro.perty fo.rms instituted by the Octo.ber Revo.lu­ mo.re so.cial-demo.cratic anti-So.viet refo.rmism o.f ciliating the imperialist bo.urgeo.isies, no.t fo.r tio.n. Flo.urishinrr in the co.nditio.ns o.f scarcity the latest BRS draft. Yo.ur o.wn effective attack o.verthro.wing them. Tro.tsky co.ncluded that it was o.f the po.st-revo.lutio.nary situatio.n the privi­ o.n Sam Aaro.no.vitch's presentatio.n o.f the 'Alter­ hencefo.rth necessary to. build a new internatio.n­ leged bureaucracy develo.ped material interests native Eco.no.mic Strategy' pro.vides ample evi­ al -- against the Stalinists. Like Lenin in 1914 distinct fro.m -- and co.unterpo.sed to. -- tho.se o.f dence o.f the CPGB's refo.rmist character. he to.o.k his stance o.n the basis o.f revo.lutio.nary the pro.letariat. And in defence of its privi­ While yo.u advo.cate that the CPGB get rid o.f po.licy and no.t acco.rding to. his immediate base leged po.sitio.n the bureaucracy developed an the wo.rst o.f the o.ppo.rtunists and liquidatio.n­ o.f suppo.rt. And as well Trotsky develo.ped and alternative programme -- co.unterpo.sed to. that o.f ists, yo.u pro.po.se a blo.c with the left wing and systematised his analysis o.f the rise o.f the international so.cialigt revo.lutio.n. This pro.­ 'all tho.se who. favo.ur its co.ntinued independent bureaucracy, raising the call fo.r a pro.letarian gramme was embo.died in the anti-Leninist theo.ry existence' and who. stand fo.r the 'purging o.f the party o.f the liquidato.rs' (Leninist no. 1, p3). In similar vein yo.u indict the Sid French split in 1977 fo.r a 'failure to. unite the left o.n a co.mmo.n platfo.rm fo.r actio.n' (Leninist no. 2, p2). But if yo.ur co.ncern is fo.r 'ideo.lo.gical strug­ gle' fo.r po.litical clarity and fo.r the po.litical independence o.f the wo.rking class and no.t just fo.r the o.rganisatio.nal existence o.f the CPGB, surely what yo.u are pro.po.sing inside the ·wo.rld co.mmunist mo.vement' will no.t achieve this. Yo.ur 'united o.ffensive' wo.uld be a ro.tten blo.c with so.me o.f the wo.rst Mo.sco.w syco.phants and hardline apo.lo.gists fo.r the Kremlin Stalinists and o.f the ro.tten betrayals o.f the CPGB beginning with the 1926 General Strike thro.ugh the British Ro.ad to. So.cialism, at least up to. the recent Euro.co.mmun­ ist excesses. Undo.ubtedly there are go.o.d peo.pie to. be wo.n to. revo.lutio.nary po.litics amo.ng these trends, but no.t by co.nciliatio.n. Yo.ur appro.ach to.wards such trends indeed has much in co.mmo.n with that ado.pted by elements o.f the party centre to.wards the mo.st o.pen Euro.co.mmunists, abo.ut which yo.u are sharply critical. What is this "militant co.mmunist traditio.n inside the wo.rking class vanguard' yo.u appeal to.? Is it fo.r o.r against suppo.rting Churchill and British imperialism in Hungarian workers uprising confirmed Trotskyist programme of proletarian political revolution. continued on page 6

NOVEMBER 1982 5 and personal rivalries (for a useful discussion Stalin's description of the Soviet Union as see Fred Halliday, 'Revolution in Afghanistan', socialist was designed to hide the political 'Leninists' ~ .. New Left Review no 112, November-December 1978) , monopoly, material privileges and counterrevolu­ (Continued from page 5) we consider both to be left-nationalist currents tionary role played by the bureaucratic caste. whose Leninist terminology is attributable to What it leads to is an identification of the World War II, for example? A sharp programmatic the key fact that Afghanistan has for years been bureaucratic regime with the workers state. We struggle is needed not only against the 'liquid­ a client state of the Soviet Union and thus the have pOinted out how this can lead to the idea ators' but also against the 'left'. intelligentsia and military officers are over­ that the dictatorship of the proletariat can be Internal oppositionists of course ought to whelmingly Soviet educated. Given your own reformed back to capitalism. In various verbal put up as effective a political struggle as pos­ appraisal of the CPSU ~eadership as centrist one' exchanges, some of your supporters have inti­ sible with the aim of splitting revisionist or­ telling piece of evidence against characterising mated that you are considering the position that ganisations. But how is this related to your Khalq as Leninist is that it solidarised with China has reverted to capitalism. If we under~ call for 'all ,revolutionaries not in the CP to the resolutions of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of stand correctly, this position would place the JQ1n it'? Your perspective of seeking to reform the CPSU in 1969. Neither wing of the PDPA was restoration of capitalism in China with the so­ the politically bankrupt CP appears to be his­ proletarian, being composed rather of civil called Cultural Revolution and provide an ex­ torically generalised in the way you interpret servants, military officers and teachers and planation for the Chinese regime's counterrevo­ several historical references. other intellectuals. Thus the leading role you lutionary alliance with US imperialsim directed In your review of Martin Kitchen's The Coming attribute to the proletariat in Khalq's strategy against the Soviet Union. There is some irony in of Austrian Fascism you argue that the Austrian is meaningless in any but the most abstract this dating because it was just at that period ep's inability to split the SDP flowed from be­ literary sense. Neither does the Khalq have a that the Chinese leadership began to describe ginning the ideological struggle too late and proletarian strategy nor is there a significant the Soviet Union as 'state capitalist', a popu­ splitting too early, 'for until at least a large proletariat! In fact what took place in the so­ lar position with many of the leftists attracted minority of the vanguard is won, a split could called 'Afghan Revolution' was a massive purge to Maoism at the time by its greater verbal onlY.,lead to impotence'. It was Stalin's crimin­ of the officer caste aimed at implementing a leftism and by their revulsion at the Soviet al policies of the 'third period' which pre­ far-reaching programme of radical (for Afghan­ policies of peaceful coexistence/detente. vented the CPs playing an effective role in op­ istan) democratic reforms. Its failure to do so At the time we characterised the Cultural posing the fascists and splitting the Social without a massive Soviet military presence Revolution as an intra-bureaucratic struggle Democrats in the struggle for a workers united speaks primarily to the narrow social base for between two wings of the Chinese bureaucracy, in front and for socialist revolution. More gener­ such reforms. Thus what makes the Soviet mili­ the face of economic difficulties at home and US ally, your characterisation seems to utterly tary intervention in this case progressive is imperialist hostility, and involving cynical ignore the historic significance of Lenin's not its aid to this impossible 'National Demo­ manipulation of the masses on both sides. Much break with the Second International and the cratic Revolution' but the,fact that it intro­ evidence has come to light since then to confirm formation 6f the Third International. Thus Lenin duced the possibility of a revolutionary trans­ that view. In particular both the Mao and Liu criticised Rosa Luxemburg's approach to the SPD formation of Afghan society. The 'Menshevik' Shao-chi wings were qualitatively identical in (which had such tragic consequences for the Karmal, aided and abetted by the Moscow 'cen­ their nationalist hostility towards relations German Revolution of 1918-19) not just for de­ trists', may slander and have murdered Amin. with the Soviet Union, mirroring in fact the laying the political struggle against the re­ The Soviet military intervention, however, does Soviet bureaucracy's nationalist attacks on the visionist right and centre (indeed Luxemburg not represent 'the extinguishing of the flame of possibility of genuine communist unity with recognised Kautsky as a revisionist before revolution' but the introduction of a force China. Did not the Soviet Union take a pro­ Lenin), but for her hesitation in carrying this that could guarantee lasting social transforma­ India stance during the Sino-Indian border war? struggle through to an organisational split. tion, albeit with gross bureaucratic overhead. Indeed China's alliance with US imperialism is As well you cite Lenin's bloc with the pro­ Your position shows that you still hold some a qUintessential example of the reactionary, party Mensheviks in 1908. There are several version of Stalin's two-stage revolution strat­ inherently nationalistic policies common to all pOints on this analogy. Firstly Lenin formed egy -- first the democratic and later the the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies determined this bloc prior to the full development of his socialist revolution. Artifically dividing ~he in every instance by a defence of their own position on the vanguard party. Secondly Plek­ democratic from the socialist tasks you find narrow, nationally centred interests. It was on hanov's grouping acted under the political dis­ yourselves in programmatic agreement with the the basis of this understanding and the stra­ cipline of the Bolshevik centre -- do you be­ left-nationalist Amin. We are reminded that it tegic weight of the Soviet Union's military/ lieve for a moment that the 'left' of the CPGB was just such a division that allowed Stalin to industrial strength vis-a-vis imperialist re­ will bloc with you on such a basis? Thirdly admit Chiang Kai-shek to the,Comintern. You may vanchism that we were able to postulate such an Lenin did split with the Mensheviks in 1912 (two well understand this as an application of alliance in 1969, during the heyday of US-Soviet years before the collapse of the Second Interna­ Lenin's 'Revolutionary dictatorship of the 'detente' (see Marxist Bulletin no 9, 'Develop­ tional and Lenin's call for a new Third Interna~ proletariat and the peasantry' but in the April ment and Tactics of the Spartacist League', p25). tional). Surely you are also familiar with Theses Lenin rejected this slogan as outmoded Any analysis which attempts to argue the Lenin's scathing indictment of the August bloc, and his subsequent course throughout 1917 in­ restoration of capitalism in China is necessar­ which Trotsky was involved in and which he later dicates that he came to understand that only ily premised on a failure to distinguish between called the worst political mistake he ever made. proletarian socialist revolution could complete the political regime in existence and the social And more apposite, what about Lenin's approach the unfulfilled bourgeois democratic tasks. This (ie class) foundations upon which it rests. Con­ to the anti-war left during World War I where he was universally confirmed, albeit negatively, cretely, the Cultural Revolution in China did was prepared to suffer isolation for the sake of through Stalin's disastrous strategy in the not destroy the proletarian property forms upon political clarity. Lenin insisted that what came Chinese Revolution. which the Chinese deformed workers state exists. first was the clear defence of the revolutionary In fact this sort of analysis is simply the ob­ programme, even at the risk of immediate isola­ Socialism in one country verse of seeking to find in the CPSU leadership tion. Far from leading to isolation and impo­ at least a revolutionary kernel (or 'centrism') tence, Lenin', s spli t from Menshevism and the On Poland, apart from some minor differences simply and purely because it happens to rest Zimmerwald centre and conciliators led to the (a more critical attitude to elements such as atop revolutionary social foundations. And obvi­ strengthening of the cadre nucleus of the future those around the Katowice Forum) your p'osition ously with this framework a more complete dis­ mass Bolshevik Party. As you said in the Lenin­ appears to us to be in all essentials the ,same illusionment with the Kremlin tops can easily ist no 1, 'Marxists are "stuck" with the model as that of the TKP Leninists. For our comments turn into abandoning the defence of the Soviet of the Russian revolution, because it is tpe and disagreements on the question of Poland we Union. richest living expression of how the proletariat therefore refer you to our article 'Poland and The other possibility stemming from this seizes power and keeps it.' the TKP Leninists' (Spartacist Britain no 42, identification of the bureaucracy with the work­ May 1982) which we believe you have already ers state is that you will view with hostility 'National democratic revolutiQn' and stagism discussed internally. We would like to make four all uprisings against the Stalinist regime, see­ supplementary points here. In Leninist no 1, p23, ing all workers movements in the workers states On Afghanistan we would like to make two you describe soviet power as 'one form of the as identical with Solidarnosc. It would be help­ pOints. Firstly, in line with your attempt to 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. We would ful if you would clarify what you mean by 'the identify revolutionary' currents among the describe the Soviet degenerated workers state tragedies of Hungary and Czechoslovakia'. We be­ presently constituted tendencies within the and the deformed workers states of Eastern lieve that the 'tragedy' of Hungary 1956 was not 'world communist movement', you characterise the Europe, Cuba, China, Indochina and North Korea that the Hungarian workers rose up against the Khalq wing of the PDPA as fully Leninist. Se- as another form of the dictatorship of the Stalinists but that they were crushed by Soviet condly, and related, you advocate a 'National proletariat. We would not use Lenin's term 'the tanks. Unlike Solidarnosc today, the Hungarian Democratic Revolution' at best blurring over the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat' workers in 1956 sought to defend proletari~n qualitative distinction between the Menshevik to describe these states. To achieve this form property through their factory councils against theory of stages (resurrected by Stalin in the of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which late 1920s) and the Leninist/Trotskyist under­ the proletariat genuinely holds political power standing that the vestiges of feudalism and through democratic ,workers organs such as imperialist exploitation can only be eradicated soviets, the only one which can ensure the ad- through the di~tatorship of the proletariat. vance to world communism, the bureaucratic Our position on Afghanistan was predicated on The struggle caste must be overthrown through political of the a two-fold understanding: 1) that the military revolution. This is important, because elsewhere Trotskyist defence of the Soviet Union was posed, particu­ (Leninist' no 2, p16) you talk of the 'party re­ Left larly by the imperialist attempt to create a assertingl its role as executive of the dictator­ Opposition feudalist/clericalist client state on the USSR's ship of the proletariat'. But for Lenin the against borders; and 2) that Afghanistan is qualitative­ executive and the legislature for the dictator­ Stalinist ly similar to those regions of Soviet Central ship of the proletariat was meant to be the betrayal Asia, where before the revolution there was no armed proletariat organised in soviet-type working class to speak of, and therefore the bodies, bodies in which the Leninist party would social gains associated with proletarian revolu­ Price: 45p compete for leadership with other parties that tion can only be introduced from without. Thus stood for the defence of the dictatorship of we raised the slogans, 'Hail Red Army in Afghan­ the proletariat. istan! Extend the Social Gains of October to Afghanistan!' Under the current Soviet leader­ Similarly you repeatedly refer to the Soviet ship, this would result in, at best, a deformed Union and Poland ,as 'socialist'. We refer you workers state still requiring political revolu­ again to the discussion of this question in tion to proceed on the path of full development 'Poland and the TKP Leninists'. As well we are enclosing two extracts from Trotsky's Third Make payable/post to: towards socialism. Spartacist Publications. PO Box 185. London WC1H 8JE While the political differences between Khalq International After Lenin and the Revolution and Parcham are murky and entangled in ethnic Betrayed which discuss this question.

6 SPARTACIST BRITAIN the abuses of the bureaucracy. The popular party) standing in coalition with a bourgeois of imperialism, can only be achieved through leader of the insu~gents was an army colonel party. proletarian revolution. named Pal Malete,r who, in contrast to Lech For our analYSis of the current left-right In the case of Northern Ireland that is both ,Walesa's penchant for hauling crucifixes around schism in the Labour Party we would refer you underscored and e~acerbated by the specific with him, was never to be seen without his par­ to Spartacist Britain no 41 (April 1982). '1'0 problem of interpenetrated peoples. Your dis­ tisan red star. The Budapest workers council briefly summarise w~ would have advocated a gust with the objectively pro-imperialist stance passed resolutions in defence of socialised vote to Tony Benn in the recent deputy leader­ of the CPGB (echoing the Labour Party) appears property; Cardinal Mindszenty, the counterpart ship election. For our tendency this in no way to us to have been translated into a positive of Poland's Glemp, was forced to seek refuge in i'mplies the adaptation to Benn's reformist pro­ programme of support to the Green nationalist the American embassy, whilst the fascists of the gramme practised by organisations such as project of the IRA, a position common to many pre-war Arrow and Cross organisation were physi­ Straight Left or the myriad of fake-Trotskyists. fake-Trotskyist organisations (and others like cally suppressed by the workers councils. The The split in the Labour Party is a direct re­ the RCG). The IRA is not fighting simply against Hungarian uprising opened the way to the removal flection of the renewed anti-Soviet war drive. the Bri tish imperialist state but for a Catholic­ of 'the thick bureaucratic strata' in favour of Healey is a principal exponent and architect of dominated unified Ireland -- one, therefore, soviet-type democracy, which required the lead­ Labour as a safe pro-NATO bulwark in the British necessarily oppressive to what would be a ership of a Leninist-Trotskyist party to be car­ labour movement. Indeed there is a mass of evi­ Protestant minority (indiscriminate terror is a ried through to its conclusion. Nevertheless, it dence directly connecting Healey with the CIA. sharp expression of this). For this reason, the was a living confirmation of the Trotskyist pro­ ,gramme of political revol'ution. In Czecl(pslo­ call for a 'united republic' is in vakia, the reform movement was largely led by a the case of Northern Irel~d a pro­ liberal wing of the bureaucracy, and it was when foundly anti-democratic slogan. The the events threatened to escape from these Protestants of the North are in no bounds that the Soviet Union militarily inter­ wise akin to a coQonial caste (a la vened. We opposed this intervention, as stifling the Rhodesian whites), but nor are a developing situation which could have led in they in any sense part of a 'united' the direction of political revolution. Irish people. To speak of a 'nation­ alist' people and a 'loyalist' people, as is traditional among sup­ Communists on the Labour Party porters of the Republicans in the British left, is to obscure the ex­ Finally we would like to comment on those istence of two distinct communities two issues which are of particular cent"ral im­ with different cultural and histori­ portance to revolutionaries in Britain: the cal origins laying claim to the same Labour Party and Ireland. To begin we agree with territory and to imply that it is you that the CPGB's characterisation o,f the simply ,a difference of 'anti-imperi­ Labour Party as the 'federal party' of the work­ alist' consciousness. The loyalism ing clas~ contradicts Leninism, that the Labour which permeates the Protestant popu­ Party 'carries out the interest of imperialism ration is a derivative expression of when in ~overnment; like the Tory party' and CPUSA head Gus Hall's 'Marxism-Leninism' means support to the this self-identification separate and Democratic Party of Bay of Pigs, Vietnam butchery. particul~rly that '''The disillusion" of workers apart from the Irish Catholic people. with the Labour Party is absolutely necessary' . Our vote to Benn, who calls for unilateral You yourselves note that 'When that partition With respect to this last point, and while not­ nuclear disarmament and, de facto, for a very became a fact, the division which already exis­ ing the different traditions and social weights different relation with NATO, is first and fore­ ted in the Irish working class movement was of the organisations _and the need for particular most a ~~ll to drive the CIA-connected right frozen and reinforced'. appropriate tactical approaches, we would note wing out of the labour movement. A split of this Thus we believe that in Ireland (as withlthe that this is just what is needed with. the CPGB sort would enhance the political struggle intermingled Hebrew-speaking and Palestinian as well. against Benn's left reformism on the terrain Arab peoples) there is no democratic solution We appreciate that you would feel the need to most advantageous to revolutionaries, ie out in possible within the confines of capitalism. emphasise the bourgeois character of the Labour the open without the cover of a right ,wing to Furthermore because we see nothing progressive Party in arguing in the CPGB milieu and we note blame for his betrayals. This tactic was prem­ in a simple reversa.l of the terms of oppression that in places you also use'the terms' the ised, of course, on our cQunterposition of a and in order to break the Protestant proletariat bourgeois party of the working class' and revolutionary programme (notably, unconditional from its prO-imperialist ideological hold and 'bourgeois labour party'. But there can also be military defence of the Soviet Union against concretely the Orange bourgeois ascendancy, it dangers in a one-sided emphasis on the bourgeois imperialism and principled opposition to coali­ is necessary to oppose any scheme of forcible nature of the Labour Party. tionism) to that of Be,nI;l. Through a. revolution­ reunification, whether bourgeois or 'socialist'. ary intervention, a left-r1gh t spl1 t in the just as we opposed the unjust imperialist par­ Focussing exclusively on the bourgeois nature Labour Party would prepare the way for a deeper, tition. While you are quite right to lambast of the Labour Party could either lead to a more fundamental split towards revolutionary those opportunists who would seek to blame the sterile sectarianism (refusing to ever call for politics from all variants of reformism. IRA's military tactics for the division in the a vote to it or contemplate uni,ted fronts o'r Northern proletariat and advance economistic Likewise in the current witchhunt against the entry) which leaves the workers to the reform­ 'unity', it. is necessary nevertheless to address left, we counterpose to the pervasive unity­ ists. Or it could fit snugly with class-,collab­ those divisions. Thus we raise a programme mongering and Labour-loyalism a defence located orationist opportunism which argues that it is which, while oppOSing imperialism intransigently in the context of prosecuting an offensive to permissible to support and vote for a bourgeois as well as any manifestation of Protestant drive out the right wing. party. This latter approach has a long history privilege, seeks to cut through communal antag­ with the Stalinists, being closely associated' onisms and forge proletarian unity against the with popular-frontist class collaboration, and Ireland: for class unity not nationalist unity Orange and Green bourgeoisies,. A central pro­ as we noted above, is just what Gus Hall is do­ grammatiC aspect of such a programme is the On the Irish question your articles demon­ ing with the Democratic Party. As a further formation of united workers militias to combat strate a break from the abject pro-imperialism example, the TKP Leninists, while they rejected both imperialist rampage and sectarian terror, of the CPGB"in particular over the elementary support to Ecevit's RPP, do not in general rule whether Orange. or Green (see our 'Theses on question of the demand for the immediate uncon­ out electoral support to such a bourgeois party. Ireland', enclosed). Any other perspective is a ditional withdrawal of the British army. In the The Labour Party is a bourgeois workers dead-end (however heroic it may be) which can first article your po'sition comes across as an party: bourgeois in its programme and leadership only fuel inter-communal civil war and subor­ adaptation to the republican movement, offer­ but resting on the mass support of the working dinate the class question to the national ing unconditional support, justifying its ter­ class, centrally through its historically question. Also, part.icularly given that the rorist stragegy and posing no independent prol­ evolved links with the trade unions. There will historical evolution of the Protestants of the etarian perspective. In the book review in your be no British revolution unless the ranks of the North is historically intertwined with Britain second issue you focuS on the need for the work­ Labour Party, principally those organised in the itself and not yet definitively resolved, the ing class to take the lead in the struggle trade unions, are split away from reformism and national question in Ireland cannot be demo­ against imperialism and criticise Connolly for rallied under a revolutionary leadership. It is cratically resolved in any framework other than not breaking with the Catholic Church and not this strategic perspecti·ve which informs our a socialist federation of the British Isles. 'We providing the working class a central role in tactical orientation towards the Labour Party; demand an Irish Workers Republic as part of a his last struggles. But Ireland is a graphic and to impel such a split a correct tactical Socialist Federation of the British Isles. example of what is wrong wi th the idea of ,a stance is vital. Our stance is drawn from the In a letter such as this it is not possible 'national democratic' revolution, even if the position adopted by Lenin's Comintern. Electoral to take up all your positions in the detail that working class is allotted a 'central role'. critical support, an application of the united may be required, nor certain other issues of front; is a key tactic in this approach. But it It is certainly fundamental for revolution­ importance ,to a revolutionary strategy today. We is only that -- a tactic, to be used only when ists to stand foursquare against British imper­ are enclosing some material documenting our op­ calling for a vote to Labour against the'open ialism and thus to demand the immediate uncondi­ position to feminism and strategy for women's parties of the bourgeoisie can be used to dis­ tional withdrawal of British troops and to mili­ liberation, including on the work of the early credit the reformists. To apply it as a strategy tarily defend republican forces in actions Communist International. We expect that on the as most ostenSibly revolutionary groupings do, directed against the imperialists (even in par­ question of fascism we might have differences calling for a vote to Labour under all circum­ ticularly futile acts of individual terror similar to those which we have argued with the stances, vitiates its effectiveness and is in against representatives of the British state). TKP Leninists over the nature of the Turkish fact counterposed to a perspective of splitting However, as Lenin made clear in his 'Theses on junta. We have only cursorily dealt with the Labour. We will illustrate our approach with two the National and Coloni'al Question', it is not question of revolution in backward. countries and examples. In 1974 we extended critical support the task of communists to give a blank cheque to permanent revolution versus two-s'tage revolution. to Labour, when it meant a class vote against petty-bourgeois nationalist movements under any We understand that you intend to reply to the union-bashing Tory government of Edward circumstances. In particular we do not defend this letter in writing. We feel strongly that Heath. In 1979, when Labour stood on a record of acts of indiscriminate terror by republican any exchanges between us would be greatly aided Social Contract and the Lib-Lab pact, including forces against the Protestant population. The by a meeting between representatives of our two vicious strikebreaking and austerity thrQugh Leninist attitude to the national question is organisations, and would like to make arrange­ five years in office, we opposed a vote to essentially negative, to opp'ose any manifesta­ ments to do this. Labour. Instead we directed our propaganda to tion of national oppression and privilege in Comradely, those workers disillusioned with these betrayals order to enable the national question to be re;­ and the promises of another bout of social con­ moved from the historical agenda and facilitate David ~trachan tract attacks. Under no circumstances do we call proletarian class unity. Genuine national liber­ On Behalf of the Spartacist League Central for a vote to Labour (or any bourgeois workers ation, in the sense of removing the stranglehold Committee

NOVEMBER 1982' 7 f they set foot on American soil, they could most decadent royalist count to the most pr1m1- be arrested and sentenced to as much as five tive Stalinist hack. Even Britain's Margaret I years in prison. The malefactors: the top IThatcher, for all her fervent anti-Sovietism, executives of West Europe's leading engineering told Reagan he was way out of line on this one. firms. Their 'crime': selling equipment to the The sanctity of contracts and all that, you Soviet Union to construct a 3500-mile natural know. gas pipeline between Siberia and West Europe. One can say of Reagan's. pipeline sanctions Venting his frustration at the failure of what Theodore Draper said of John F Kennedy's Solidarnosc counterrevolution in Poland, on 18 Bay of Pigs adventure: it is that rare example June Reagan struck back .•. against his European of a perfect political failure. It has infuri­ capitalist allies. He ordered all foreign firms ated all his European allies, heartened the using technology acquired through American li­ Russians -- and failed to delay the construction censes to rip' up their Siberian pipeline con­ of the pipeline. The failure is so striking ~racts or face the full rigor of US legal saric­ 'the Russians couldn't have planned it any tions. In addi tion to possible criminal p.enal­ better', commented one European diplomat -- ties, this could mean fines of up to five times that the Reagan administrat'ion is already back­ the value of the components shipped and a ban on ing off. In September treasury secretary Donald the future acquisition of products made in the Regan announced that the original sanctions USA. 'were a little too sweeping' and that violators The European reaction was swift and defiant. will be barred only from US-made oil and gas West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, in one of eqUipment. the milder responses, told CBS News: 'The pipe­ line will be built, and the British, the French, The Lone Ranger shoots, himself in the foot the Germans ,and other Europeans will stick to the agreement which their firms have been making What caused Reagan to do something so stupid? with the Soviets.' Every West European govern­ Part df the answer is that he actually believes mentinvolved has conspicuously ordered the his own anti-Communist propaganda that the firms to meet their contra~tual obligations. The Soviet economy is on the verge of 'collapse a la French minister of· industry, Jean-Pierre Poland. When last June he called upon the Bri­ Chevenement, declared that Dresser France, a US tish parliament to join him in a new 'crusade" subsidiary, was 'a French company subject to to overthrow Communism, he assured them that: French law', threatening to 'requisition' its 'We are witnessing tod'a, a great revolution­ facilities if it did not deliver pipeline com­ ary crisis -- a crisis where the demands of pressors as scheduled. The private reaction the economic order, are colliding directly among West European ruling circles was commen­ with those of the political order. But the surate. According to a top US trade negotiator: crisis is happening not in the free, non­ 'All they wanted to do was talk about the Marxist West,. but in the home of Marxism­ pipeline. You read a lot about European re­ Leninism, the Soviet Union.' sentment of the pipeline deCiSion, but you Ten days later Reagan decided to give this have to see' it to appreCiate it.' ( Wall imagined 'final crisis of Marxism-Leninism' a Street Journal, 15 July) little push by trying to sabotage the Siberian One does not have to see it in the flesh to pipeline, ass~rting that 'the Soviet Union is appreciate the depth of the European bour­ very hard-pressed financially and economically geoisies' resentment. The $10 billion pipeline today. They have put their people literally on a 'project -- Brezhnev calls it 'the deal of the st~rvation diet' (New York Times, 1 July). Every century' -- is big business, and very welcome Western diplomat, journalist and even tourist in an's· business amid the worst econom~c conditions rdoscow or Leningrad can see that the Russian since the Great Depression of the 1930s. When people are not starving. In fact, the Soviet completed it will supply much of West Europe's standard of living has visibly improved in the gas at prices well below those charged by North past decade or so despite the burdensome mili­ • • African and Near Eastern producers. And whatever tary expenditure necessary to counter the im­ Reagan may think, European capitalists know that perialist arms buildup. Reagan's wild statements the Soviet Stal,inist regime is a far more re­ about the Soviet Union are not just Cold War liable supplier than the Bedouin chieftains, rhetoric but the more or less seriously held Shi'ite ayatollahs and Ba'athist colonels on views of a man who 'can blow up the world at I e Ine whom they now depend for energy resources. will. For many of the firms.involved the multi­ If Reagan sees the Soviet Union about to col­ million-dollar pipeline contracts are a matter lapse, he sees in his European NATO allies a of financial survival. AEG-Kanis in West Ger­ fatal weakness of a different kind. The former • many, for example, is one of the few profit­ Hollywood actor turned preSident' is evidently making operations of the about-to-go-bankrupt playing Cold War II according to the scenario AEG-Telefunken empire. The pipeline contract c.f the 1950s Gary Cooper film High Noon. The accounts for fully 70 per cent of the Italian townsmen (West European allies) are too cowardly Nuovo Pignone's backlog of orders. to fight the bad guys (Russian Communists) so lasco Over and above these considerations of marks, the lone marshal (American commander in chief) has to do it himself. The Reaganites th

8 SPARTACIST BRITAIN as a touchstone of alliance loyalty.' itional fifth week of annual summer Among capitalist states, anti-Communist ideo­ vacation. Add to this an ambitious lorrical unity is all well and good, but not at IT's· POIII8LE1 ITs TOO BAD. nationalization program with gen­ IT'S R£AJ.J.y A1!CllT E\JRtf'E"""" the sacrifice of v.ital n~tional economic in­ PQ01Bl.£J_OOR erous compensation and a major re­ terests. (Even Begin's Israel is supplying some STUDIES SHON armamen t dri ve . pumps for the Siberian pipeline!) This is" of I.IMJTEI) NOCLEAR Where, pray tell, would the bil­ course, no less true of Reagan than of his WAR/J" lions of francs needed to pay for European imperialist counterparts. Reagan in­ PO.IJIBl.£1 all this come from? From the print­ furiated the European bourgeoisies when one ing press, said the smart money. month after ordering them to tear up th~ir The day after Mitterrand's unexpec­ Siberian pipeline contracts, he announced the ted Victory in May 1981 both the US was extending its multi-billion-dollar grain Paris Bourse (stock market) and trade agreement with the Soviet Vnion. In his franc went into a tailspin. Within heart of hearts Reagan would like to cut off two weeks of the election France grain shipments to the USSR, indeed to starve lost $7 billion of its $27 bi.1lion the Russians if he could. But alas for Reagan, in foreign-exchange reserves. The he operates within the framework of bourgeois run on the franc was halted for the parliamentarism, and the Republicans badly need moment only by jacking up interest the farm vote come November. Farmers too are rates to levels even higher than in suffering from this most unusual recession which combines record-high interest rates with slump­ L--=~~~~~ __ ~::~::~~~~::::::::::::::~~~~~~~~ __ j Reagan's America. This definitely ing agricultural prices. pipeline sanctions. No wonder the European put the kibosh on any prospect for a recovery of Reagan was elected president two years ago bourgeoisie has been howling in rage ever since. capital investment. In fact, since Mitterrand's promising to restore military 'superiority' election French capital has 'been on a slow- (first-strike nuclear capability) over the The Francois and Mon Cher Ron Show folds down strike. Outside the nationalized sector Soviet Union while cutting everyone's taxes by a industrial investment fell 10 per cent last ' While the policies of the California Gaull­ third. This was to be the 'supply-side' economic year and worse is expected this year. ists have hurt all of West Europe's economies, miracle based on the crackpot theory of a With the French rate of inflation more than none is quite so vulnerable as Mitterand's claque of right-wing eC9nomists. Cut taxes twice that of its main trading partner, West France. At a time when other capitalist govern­ enough, they prophesied, and this would stimu­ Germany, the devaluation of the franc was in­ ments were preaching the virtues of austerity, late such a vast outpouring of work effort and evitable. The inevitable came the first time the French popular front came to office in the capi tal investment ,that national income would in October 1981 as the franc was dev~lued 10 spring of 1981 promising prosperity, full increase enough to, restore the old total tax per cent against the deutschmark. To curb in­ e~ployment and sweeping social reforms. At the revenue, even more. flationary pressures (fueled in part by the cur­ same time Mitterrand aligned himself closely 'To restrain the inflationary impact of the rency depreciation', itself), the Mi tt,errand gov­ with Reagan's anti-Soviet bellicosity. The huge federal budget deficits in the meantime, ernment reimposed wage/price controls which had right-wing London Economist (12 December 1981) the supply of money and credit was squeezed been lifted by the conservative Giscard/Barre commended him for 'a more anti-Russian policy hard. The predictable result was that real in­ regime three years earlier. This provoked a than any previous president of the Fifth terest rates (subtracting the inflation rate) strike _wave, concentrated in, the nationalized Republic' . went through the ceiling. Historically in the industries, which marked the beginning of work­ Mi tterrand' s strident ant'i-Sovietism came US real interest rates have been in the 2-3 per ing-class disillusionment with the new popular­ from h~s social-democratic heart, but he cent range; under Reagan they've been running at front government (see 'Strikes End "Socialist" probablY.. ,also thought it entitled him to 8-10 per cent. The effect has been a massive Honeymoon in France', Workers Vanguard no 293, Washingtoh's economic largesse. If Reagan rechanneling of money capital from corporate in­ 20 November 1981). showers dollars on the Salvadoran junta, he may vestment and mortgage and auto loans into the Despite these attempts at holding down wages, have reasoned, why not on France, a far more Pentagon budget. Despite the arms boom, corpor­ the Mitterrand regime was faced with the impos­ important ally. ate investment is projected to fall 5 per cent 'sibility of what the snotty Economist termed And Mitterrand needed Reagan's aid for ~iS this year. In July new orders for machine tools 'Keynesianism in,one country'. The French budget own economic gamble. Reagan won the US presi­ -- the core of any industrial construction pro­ deficit for 1982 is expected t9 be the hig~est dency promising a 'supply-side' economic mir­ gram -- were'almost 50 per cent below last year. deficit in postwar French history. To finance acle; Mitterrand won the French presidency this huge deficit the Mi tterrand regime was Reagan's unorthodox method of financing his promising a Keynesian/soclal-democratie econ­ running the printing presses at a time when in­ preparations for World War III has not ,only omic miracle. If elected, he told the French flation in the rest of the advanced capitalist crippled Ameri,can industry' but has sucked in working class, he would create 200,000 new world was being damped down by the impact of footloose money capital from the world's finan­ pUblic-sector jobs, reduce the workweek from tight money, slashes in social programs and an cial markets. Why should the sheiks of OPEC keep 40 to 35 h,ours, increase state pensions and ever-growing reserve army of the unemployed. their funds in London, Paris or Frankfurt if the family allowances by 50 per cent, raise the With the franc still way overvalued, French return is so much higher in New York? Reaganom­ minimum wage 25 per cent and institute an add- continued on page 12 ics thus has produced an excruciating dilemma for the West European governments. If they do not raise interest rates to more or less New Well, genuine socialists do -- as do the York levels, they will suffer massive capital Scottish workers who owe their jobs to the flight, enormous balance-of-payments deficits Soviet pipeline deal. Indeed SOA' s only worry in and a rapidly depreciating currency which will inciting the working class to anti-communism is generate domestic inflation. If they do raise Stalinist the number of jobs that would be lost. So they interest rates sufficiently, they will choke off suggest that Scottish workers should follow any recovery in capital spending. the example of the Massey-Ferguson employees - A few months after Reagan was elected presi­ who earlier in the year blacked components dent, Helmut Schmidt decried 'the highest inter­ from Poland's Ursus tractor factory and begged est rates in Germany since the birth of Christ, pipedream management to find a different supplier. Maybe as far as real interest rates are concerned'. the militant workers of 'Red Clydeside' should The one-side interest rate war quite dominated have their bosses sound out the oh-so-progres­ Reagan's provocative and arrogant diktat to the July 1981 economic summit in Ottawa Canada sive Saudi Arabian sheiks on some pipeline his NATO allies in the dispute over the con­ where Reagan in effect told the Europew't parts instead of helping the Soviet economy? leader~ struction of the Siberian-West European pipe­ to shut up and eat it. As West Europe slid deep­ line has infuriated large sections of the West Trotskyists stand for the unconditional er into depression, the complaints against the European bourgeoisies, uniting Stalinists military defence of the Soviet Union, and op­ international effects of Reaganomics became social democrats and tge most rabidly ant~-' pose the anti-Soviet sanctions. For the Stali­ shriller. Earlier this year French finance min­ Soviet Cold Warriors in opposition. Even the nists, however, with their dangerous day­ ister Jacques Delors denounced high US interest Labour Party's chief CIA-lover Denis Healey dreams about 'peaceful coexistence', more rates as 'the principal obstacle' to European is opposed to Reagan's sanctions threats, and pipeline deals are all that is needed to stop economic recovery and asked rhetorically: 'How Little Englander Tony Benn applauded Thatch­ the imperialists from nuking the Soviet Union. can we defend our alliance with the United er's 'commendable resilience' over the pipe­ Thus the Communist Party's Morning Star (31 States when critics say American policy is mak­ line issue. The pipeline dispute underlines August) says: 'The more the peoples of Europe ing us bankrupt?' (New York Times, 13 February) . the tact that the drive by imperialism to roll work together, the more they co-operate on While the US Treasury was sucking in money back the proletarian gains embodied in the joint projects of benefit to them all, the capital from Europe, US industrialists were mov­ collectivised economies of the deformed and less likely they are to see themselves as po­ ing to k~ep European exports out. Last January degenerated workers states, combined with the tential enemies in a future war .... That is . Pittsburgh once again declared war on the Ruhr deepening inter-imperialist conflicts engen­ why it could be called a Dipeline of peace.' Lorraine and South Wales. US Steel and its ' dered by severe economic depression bring And the paper widely SUDPorted by the pro­ lesser brethren filed a petition with the Com­ ever nearer the threat of a third world war. MoscoW, supposedly Leninist, opposition in the merce Department charging the European Common But the fake-Trotskyist Socialist Organ­ Communist Party, Straight Left (October 1982) Market with subsidizing steel production and iser Alliance (SOA) manages to out-do them all says just the same: 'The pipeline project, dumping it on the American market. After efforts in Cold Warmongering. This group called for which joins socialist and capitalist states in at a negotiated solution failed, in June the trade union blacking of Polish and Russian a giant, mutually advantageous venture, shows Commerce Department announced stiff penalty exports in support of counterrevolutionary that there is an alternative to the insane duties -- up to 40 per cent -- on steel imports Polish Solidarnosc after last December's pre­ polici'es of the war-mongers. The poUcy of from the Common Market countries. On 12 June ventive countercoup by the Jaruzelski regime, "detente" can and does work. Let us say no to New York Times financial correspondent Clyde effectively lining up with Reagan's anti­ war and yes to peace, co-operation and co­ Farnsworth commented: Soviet sanctions. Now, after the perfunctory existence.' Since when have Thatcher and Mit­ 'The penalty would amount to the severest sniping about Reagan's 'hypocrisy' and talk terrand beEm advocates of detente?! While trade restriction that the United States has of 'working class boycott action' in the communists wholeheartedly support trade with set in years. The Europeans said that much of cause of anti-communism, they end up explic­ the Soviet Union, the fact remains that the their steel would be priced out of the Amer­ itly solidarising with Reagan: 'Socialists in only road to Deace and the removal of the ican market and threatened retaliation Britain, like Solidarity activists in Poland, threat of a nuclear World War III is not against American exports.' do not rejoice at the sailing of the "Happy begging the imperialist bourgeoisies for more One week after dealing with this body blow to Worker" with its load of turbines from the business but fighting for international work­ the depressed European steel industry, the Reagan administration struck again with the Clydeside' (Socialist Organiser, 30 September) . ers revolution .•

NOVEMBER 1982 9 'The elections became a major showdown on the key his left-reformist politics could be more ef­ issues tearing the Labour Party apart, albeit fectively exposed and combatted' (Spartacist Blackpool .... expressed negatively: for or against the CIA­ Britain no 41, April 1982, emphasis in original). (Continued from page 1) loyal exponents of Cold War; for or against the We wanted, and still want, to show how Labour archi tects of coali tion and austeri ty. ' doesn't need the CIA connection to betray -­ Labour's reformist rules. But the Blackpool It was on this basis that critical support to that it is' equally capable pf doing so as Little witchhunt was not about whether or not Militant Benn was a necessary stand for Leninists seeking England's 'own' bourgeois workers party. From is truly loyal to the Labour Party of war, rac­ to split the Labour Party on a revolutionary chauvinist import contro.ls to anti-working-class ism and imperialism. For the TUC and party programme. wage controls and racialist immigration controls leadership, giving these house-trained 'Trotsky­ -- the politics of all wings of the Labourite ists' the chop was the most demonstrative way of Three decades of 'Labour unitateralism' bureaucracy stand flatly counterposed to the proving Labour's willingness to wage Cold War in Anp what are the supposed 'socialis t policies' interests of the working class. office. adopted at conference? The overwhelming vote to ,I In an attempt to prolong their criSis-J;"idden In contrast, our pseudo-revolutionary oppq­ maintain imperialist troops in Ireland? Protec­ system, the imperialists are today driving' nents hailed the rise of the new Labour left as tionist import controls, centrepiece of the towards thermonuclear war to roll back the the route to resolving the crisis of working Alternative Economic Strategy, which far from g~s of the Russian Revolution and make Lenin­ class leadership. The Communist Party (CP) long grad look more like Liverpool (with dole queues saving jobs only promote nationalist poison and ago degenerated into little more than a reform­ set worker against worker? The promise to repeal and burnt-out slums). This stepped-up anti­ ist pressure group on the Labour Party, using Soviet war drive, the main factor in world pol­ the Tory Nationality Act, a promise vague on its influence in the trade unions to mobilise itics today, has also been the key underlying everything except Labour's commitment to. 'enact the ranks to back the mainstream social demo­ issue in the post-1979 turmoil in the Labour and enforce its own restrictive and racialist crats. Marxism Today and Morning Star have been Party. It gave a new and significant dimension anti-immigration legislation? As for the opposi­ devoted to regular, well-nigh uncritical cover­ tion to statutory incomes policy and the two­ to what otherwise might have been simply one age not only of Tony Benn but of Michael Foot; thirds vote for unilateralism, claimed as the more go-round in the cycle of Labour in opposi­ indeed the Staliuists' reaction to the witchhunt tion refurbishing some 'left' credentials fol­ main left victories of the conference, here too was far worse than Benn's. Straight Left (Octo­ what is involved has nothing to do with lowing the betrayals of Labour in government. ber 1982), the Labour-loyal paper sponsored by socialism. The Bennite left scored its initial successes the CP's pro-Moscow minority put it most plainly: Conference has opposed statutory incomes pol­ in the inner-party battle by channelling dis­ ' ... the right's purge and Militant's policies icy since 1971 (now even the SDP opposes it!). gruntlementwith the arrogant Callaghan/Healey have one and the same effect -- to divide and Yet every postwar Labour governmen.t has engin­ leadership's domestic Social Contract/coalition demobilise our movement to the benefit of the eered a sharp decline in real wages. With cap­ betrayals into a series of constitutional re­ enemy'. Thus the witchhunting right is equated italist Britain 1982 in far worse shape than at forms. But they soon became centrally identified with the witchhunted Mtlitant -- and Straight any time since at least'the 1930s, leftandright with the utopian nationalist programme of pulling Left's only worry is that Foot/Healey's 'undemo­ alike know that a new Labour government must at­ Little England out of the Cold War crossfire cratic cold-war rules ... strike at the very tack workers' wages and living standards. Thus th~ough unilateral nuclear'disarmament. Their nature of the Labour Party as a mass, all­ the farcical 'debate' on economic policy was 'non-nuclear defence strategy' is explicitly embracing political expression of. the working presented by. Benn, darling of pseudo-revolution­ posed as an alternate means of defending im­ class' . aries, and summed up by Healey, spokesman for perialist Britain -- particularly so since the the IMF -- and differences were hard to find. This utterly false analysis of the Labour jingoist furore over the Falklands and the re­ Where Healey's message was that 'general elec­ Party as an 'all-embracing political instrument', newed emphasis on strong conventional forces. tions do not change the laws of arithmetic', implicitly open to be won to any politics what­ But their unilateralist programme is out of step Benn spoke of respecting government 'cash soever, is basically shared by all the pseudo­ with the needs of the anti-Soviet war drive -­ limi ts '. Dotting the i' s and crossing the t' s, Trotskyist cheerleaders for Benn, from Militant and the capitalist' class soon made clear they conference as a whole went on to enthusiastically leftwards. Socialist Organiser long ago dubbed were not about to countenance the idea of a Benn­ endorse the TUC's 'national economic assessment' itself 'Bennite' and openly projects a left ,ridden (let alone Benn-led) Labour Party in document which calls explicitly for a~reements Labour government opening the road to so.cialism. office. on wage and public spending limits between the Socialist Challenge even today writes fawning Thus was the SDP born, as many of Labour's TUC and a new Labour government -- ie wage con­ 'Dear Tony' letters, urging Benn to stick to a chief right-wing Cold Warriors took their cue trol and social spending cuts under a Mark II 'fight to defe~u socialist policies' in order to and began decamping ~rom the party amid fanfares Social Contract. provide a 'genuine alternative' to a capitalist from Fleet Street. A year later Benn came within The much-vaunted unilateralism vote also re­ government. And the Workers Power group, while a hair's breadth of deposing Denis Healey, for peats past conference policy -- and not just the more critical of Benn & Co, chases the will-o­ decades one of Labour's chief CIA/NATO-lovers, celebrated case of Scarborough 1960. Labour en­ the-wisp of 'democratising' the structures of in the deputy leadership election. Even with tered election campaigns in both 1964 and 1974 the party and the trade unions, in particular Benn's defeat, the haemorrhage continued as La­ formally opposed to the nuclear 'deterrent', won the bloc vote. bour limped along a poor third in th~ opinion both times -- and of course did nothing. The polls amid seemingly incessant internal wrangling. For Leninists, the strategic task of split­ capitalists do, of course, remain worried about Finally the TUC, worried lest the Social ting the Labour Party,' winning its proletarian Labour even toying with the idea of unilateral­ Democrats succeed in displaCing Labour as the base to a revolutionary alternative to parlia­ ism. But not too worried; as the Economist (9 mentarist betrayal, is part and parcel of the alternative 'party of government' to the To~ies 'October) put it, 'Don't yet panic, quite.' For (leaving Congress House right out in the cold), struggle for communist leadership in the trade they have their most trusted agents securely in began to pull the warring factions back into unions. The struggle to defeat the reformist place to ensure that, once again, nothing hap­ line at Bishops Stortford in January. They laid trade union bureaucracy hinges not on 'democrat­ pens which could unduly hurt the Atlantic down the law: party unity, a witchhunt of Mil­ isation' but on the fight, .in action, for a Alliance. itant, and the adoption of 'realistic' policies revolutionary programme. Today, having reas­ When conference exploded in applause at the to prove Labour's fitness for office. With Benn serted their control over the Labour Party, the two-thirds majority, Denis Healey demonstrative­ himself unwilling and unable to flout the TUC TUC has embarked on a series of orchestrated ly and defiantly remained in his sea:t;~ Along paymasters, the ignoble retreat began.:A few manoeuvres -- 'days of action', strike threats, with Roy Hattersley, he then predictably wasted 'fight like a tiger' speeches remained for cap­ speechi fying -- with the aim of providing an no time ge.tting th.e word around that the vote tive audiences, but the road was already well outlet for pent-up frustration at the base and need never be reflected in the manifesto, let paved to the Winter Gardens and the Labour left's channelling it int.o a crusade for reactionary alone in the actions of a future government. And September debacle. protectionism and for a new Labour government. Healey is shadow foreign secretary, one of the And debacle i t.assuredly was. After the vote A revolutionary intervention must say: No to key people responsible for Labour policy towards to establish the register, Militant's Ted Grant nationalist import controls -- Trade war leads 'defence'! With 'inveterate peacemonger'-turned­ promised his charges would.' fight, fight and to imperialist war! Not separate, sectional witchhunter Foot adding his own mumbled comments fight again', obscenely echoing Hugh Gaitskell's 'days of action' as Labourite election rallies, about 'commitments to allies' and how one vow to defeat the unilateralists in 1960. Three but all-out united strike action in the mines, couldn't accomplish everything overnight, weeks later even the rhetoric was gone as steel, NHS to smash Thatcher's attacks! Such an Labour's latest commitment to unilateralism is Mili tant whimperingly approached the NEC to apply intervention would point the way not only to clearly worth rather less than the paper it's for registration, promising (doubtless in vain) defeating the Tories' reactionary schemes, but written on. to change certain rules to achieve it. The only to polarising the labour movement against the Moreover the formal policy adopted is far hint of a 'fight' was a remarkably provocative social..,~emocratic betrayers and for~inF, the des­ from being even utopian pacifism. To .round off and thoroughly unprincipled mooted threat to perately necessary revolutionary alternative. the 'defence' policy debate, conference voted take the entire party to the bourgeois courts if The history of the British left is littered 5-to-1 to uphold Britain's place in the anti­ registration was refused! As for the mainstream with the political corpses of those individuals Soviet NATO alliance. And the unilateralist re­ Bennite left, at conference 22 anti-witchhunt and organisations who wasted their lives attempt­ solution itself includes a call to 'bring ing to transform the organically reformist, MPs announced they, were forming a new 'h~rd left' Britain's military expenditure as a percentage Labour Party into some sort of instrument for grouping separate from the (majority pro~witch­ of the gross national product irito line with the hunt) Tribune group. This too came to nought -­ socialist transformation. With the trade union average of our major European allies'. In other most of the 22, sensing their isolation, were and Labour bureaucrats now gearing up the workers words the Labour Party simply wants decrepit back in the Tribune fold at its next meeting, for the next election, we warn: what these Britain to spend no more than say, West Germany, announcing they had dropped active opposition to leaders have in store for you, far from being as its tithe to NATO! the register in order to unite behind Labour's socialist, is a replay of the 1974-79 government 'socialist policies'. This is only another way of Social Contract betrayal. Even the prospect Labo~r doesn't nerad the CIA connection of another anti-working-class coalition, this of calling for unity behind the present party to betray leadership of Foot/Healey/Hattersley/Shore -­ time with the professional Cold Warriors of the the same leadership (sans Callaghan) that brought Throughout the past three years of turmoil in SDP, is being mooted. And they project such a the betrayals of 1974-79. the Labour Party, the Spartacist League has government under far worse conditions of mass ,At Blackpool the normal symbiotic relation­ warned that to follow the road mapped out by economic devastation and the looming threat of ship between left and right in the Labour Party Tony Benn and his left camp followers would mean thermonuclear war. was restored, with the left again playing the disaster for the working class. We argued that We .say: Defeat the witchhunt! Kick out CIA/ role of providing a 's,ocialist' cover for the it was necessary to critically support Benn in NATO-lover Healey! For a revolutionary alterna­ (future) betrayals of Labour in office. Under the last year's crucial deputy leadership contes.t tive to Bennite reformism! No to another 1974-79 impact of the Cold War, as we pointed out in against Healer, not in order to bolster the government of betrayal! And we struggle to build 'Labour's Cold War' (Spartacist Britain no 41, credentials of this reformist muddlehead, but a revolutionary vanguard party not· to put a few April 1982), 'a distorted and uneven class line' 'in order to exacerbate and follow through the reformist parliamentarian~ on the benches of had been cleaved in the Labour Party,. rupturing split begun with the formation of the SDP, drive Westminster but to fight for socialist revol­ that symbiOSis, and manifested in the Benn­ out the blatantly pro-imperialist CIA-connected ution and a workers state. That is the only real Healey contest: right wing and place Benn in a position where alternative to Thatcherism .•

10 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Militant goons for SolidarnoSe at LPYS demQ Witchhunted witchhunt

On 14 October nearly 3500 youth gathered in the attention of Militant bureaucrats -- and ing to t~ar down our banner (see photos above). Liverpool for a demonstration against youth un­ what outraged them completely were our banner When the march arrived at Pier Head Militant omployment called by the Militant-led LPYS. The and slogans opposing Solidarnosc counterrevol­ thugs again tried to force us out as we set up 8partacist League (SL) intervened with a contin­ ution in Poland. Militant's platform speaker our banners once more -- but to no avail. Just gent and a leaflet that addressed Militant's in­ announced't'hat the Spartacists' banner had nl,) as Healey is proving Labour's loyalty to the tentions on the demonstration: 'Militant seek to place on the march (we were later informed by bourgeoisie by witchhunting Militant, so use this demonstration of youth to prove their Militant that the demonstrators had 'voted' for Militant tries by witchhunting the SL to prove loyalty to the witchhunters inside the Labour our removal -- a 'vote' which has about as much its loyalty to anti-Soviet Labourism and its Party, to convince them that Militant are needed legitimacy in workers democracy as the Moscow determination to get Labour into Parliament to win impatient youth to waiting for another show trials); Militant thugs moved in and tried (with or without 'socialist policies') above all Labour government. It is a cruel lie to unem­ to isolate us but still groups of LPYSers else. But as we said in our leaflet: ployed youth, and it won't even work for gathered around our banner for discussions. Mili tant .' And part of proving their loyalty to Then as the march moved off, Militant stewards 'No matter how many Labour MPs get in there, the CIA-loving witchhunters was to witchhunt the started scuffles with our comrades and formed a no matter how many "socialist" speeches they Trotskyists of the SL. cordon that prevented us from marching on the make, Parliament will always belong to the Our line of 'Drive the CIA-loving right wing demonstration. Our chant of: 'Thatcher hates t~e imperialist butchers who have raped and pil­ out of the Labour Party', combined with counter­ Bri tish workers, Thatcher hates the Russia'n laged the colonial world. Channelled into posing the fight for'workers state power to workers -- Defend the workers' unions, de~end building a revolutionary workers party, a Labourite reformism and social-democratic racism the workers states!' led to Militant attempts to Trotskyist party, the anger of the youth and gained us a large audience, with groups of in­ drown us out with chants of 'LP -- LPY -- LPYS minorities will not be wasted burning down terested LPYSers gathering around our comrades -- OK! '. Pathetically unable to offer any serious the ghettos but can help tear down this rac­ for discussions and arguments. This earned us alternative to us, they were reduced to attempt- ist, capitalist system at its foundations.'.

nomic devastation and Scotland on the brink, take steps against imports but you now want us the only thing the reformists can offer -- from to take steps against imports.' TUC/Labour ... the right wing of the Labour Party to the left, (Continued from page 1) through to the Communist Party (CP) -- is an As Thatcher continues to ride the wave of re­ Alternative Economic Strategy of reflation and actionary chauvinism excited by'her dirty little ship. They sang the 'Red Flag' at Blackpool, but nationalist autarky. Take a look at Mitterrand's war in the South Atlantic, the workers' mis­ they waved the Union Jack. The recent steel­ France, where the economy is in better shape and leaders seek to ride the same wave to bolster workers' day of action had as its central theme the reflationary 'economic miracle' far more am­ their pleas for reactionary protectionism. 'Has the demand for import controls, as did the bitious in scope. Unable to keep inflation in the government the will to fight for the people threatened strike action at Vauxhall. And pro­ check and money capital from fleeing as US in­ of Britain in the same way that it has fought tectionism is the centrepiece of Labour's terest rates remain high, Mitterrand has in­ for the rights of the people of the Falkland Alternative Economic Strategy. creasingly resorted to the usual capitalist Islands?' (Guardian, 4 October) wails Bill Sirs. The reaffirmation of Labour's loyalty to alternative -- austerity. Whether it is Healey's As much as Sirs might desire it, Thatcher is. NATO's anti-Soviet war drive, the pervasive capitalist 'laws of arithmetic' or Benn's cap­ neither willing nor able to fight a war in de­ jingoism over the Falklands war which the labour italist 'cash limits', t9at is what Cold War re­ fence of the collapsing British steel industry. bureaucracy not only accepts but actively fuels, formism will mean for Britain too -- anti­ War with Argentina, perhaps; but with the US, the outcry of poisonous protectionism are all working class austerity. Germany or Japan? But Sirs could not have put it sure symptoms that the reformist leaders are And right now it means deflecting struggles better: trade wars lead to shooting wars. And preparing the role they have played since at against the bosses into cutthroat fights against when the time comes for it, the social-chauvin­ least 1914: leading the workers into inter­ 'foreign' workers -- and that inevitably means ists will as readily send the workers to the imperialist slaughter. A working-class offensive minority workers here as well. While Scargill slaughter as they now lead the economic charge is desperately needed now not only to stop campaigned for a strike vote in the NUM linking against workers in other countries. Thatcher, but to break the stranglehold of a re­ wages to jobs, he announced his willingness to The Labourite and CP misleaders are playing a formist bvreaucracy which is prepared to take drop the jobs demand if NCB head Norman Siddall deadly dangerous game for the working class. The the workers down with this dying system. gave 'assurance' (which he wouldn't) that there continued on page 13 And the opportunity is there. Everyone who would be no closures. For Scargill, the way to remembers 1974 knows what a miners strike would fight for miners' jobs is ... to fight CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: mean -- a political confrontation with the for Britain. Addressing a miners rally in Birm­ BIRMINGHAM ------(021) 643 5914 Thatcher government. And for that confrontation ingham he responded to the NCB's 'put country LIVERPOOL ------(051) 708 6886 to be successful it must go beyond a sectional LONDON ------(01) 278 2232 above class' anti-strike propaganda by trying to SHEFFIELD ------(0742) 737067 miners struggle. Centrally the miners must har­ out-jingo them: ness the power of the steelworkers to their own 'The Coal Board asks if we are looking to the for a no-holds-barred counteroffensive against future of Britain. We should be using British the Tory attacks and to drive the bourgeoisie coal. Who are they to ask us if we are look­ SPARtaClST into retreat. With the TGWU talking strike ing towards the future of Britain?' 'BRITAIN action at Vauxhall, with engineering workers, The reformists are even more strident than Ford, BL and local government workers having the bourgeoisie in pushing import controls. When Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League, British sp.ction of the outstanding wage claims, a decisive push by the Parliament debated the EEC's agreement to 'vol­ international Spartacist tendency. miners could break through the bure;ucracy' s 't>ro­ untarily' limit steel exports to the US rather EDITORIAL BOARD:.Len Michelson (editor), Sid Porter(production manager) John Masters, David Strachan, Charles Silver tectionist dead-end and catalyse the sporadic than face stiffer tariff barriers -- graphic Circulation manager: Ed Kosta sectional resistance into an all-out classwide proof that protectionism means profits before Published monthly, except in January and September, by Spartacist attack on the Tory government. All-out strike jobs -- Labour leader Michael Foot denounced Publications, PO Box 185, London WCIH 8JE action now! Margaret 'Buy British' Thatcher as not patriotic Subscriptions: 10 issues for £2.00; overseas airmail £5.00. Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU), Class war, not trade war enough, demanding controls op steel imports. Re­ plied the Iron Lady cynically: 'Do you not see Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily With Welsh mining regions already faCing eco- you have just been objecting to the US trying to express the editorial viewpoint. .

NOVEMBER 1982 11 From the outset the Mitterrand regime -- here help the gullible forget Carter's record of enthusiastically backed by the Stalinists -- has double-digit inflation and 'austerity' policies. Pipeline .•. been highly economically nationalistic. The main It was under the Democrats that Cold War II was (Continued from page 9) slogan used in pushing through the nationaliza­ begun, paving the way for Reagan's more ideo­ tions was to 'reconquer the domestic market', logically rarefied style. All wings of the exporters could not sell profitably in world in other words, trade protectionism. Now that bourgeoisie are committed to the anti-Soviet markets. Renault and Peugeot, for example, were the reformist pretensions of the popular-front military buildup, necessarily a multi-billion­ forced to sell cars at cost in West Germany, government have been totally exploded and it is dollar drain on a 'contracting capitalist otherwise they couldn't sell them at all. To calling for austerity and nothing but austerity, economy. bridge the widening balance-of-trade deficit, the appeals to French chauvinism are likely to And the depressed economic conditions inten­ France was borrowing heavily in the internation­ become more strident yet. That is all the sify all the destructive irrationality of the al money markets. In the first seven months of reformists have to fall back on. Th'e social­ capitalist order. It is no accident that a fan­ this year alone France increased its foreign democrats and Stalinists will undoubtedly blame atical warmonger ,like Reagan became US preSi­ indebtedness by a third. Mitterrand's France was all of France's economic ills on the 'multi­ dent at a time'when the American ruling class on its way to becoming the Poland or Mexico of nationals' and Wall Street and seek to channel keenly felt the loss of its former economic West Europe. the mounting proletarian anger against French and military superiority. A true reactionary, To get out of these financial straits Mitter­ imperialism's German, American and Japanese Reagan dreams of restoring the short-lived rand, who doesn't lack chutzpah, has tried to ri vals. 'American century' of the 1950s. This 'American induce other governments, above all Reagan's century' was achieved by defeating in war America, to subsidize France in the name of a Depression, trade war, imperialist war America's two principal imperialist rivals -­ 'new international economic order'. As host of The snide Tories of the London Economist re­ Germany and Japan. Now once again we find the June Versailles summit he proposed a series marked that the 'fiasco about a pipeline from American imperialism pitted against a German­ of grandiose schemes for restructuring world Siberia must be amusing the ghosts of both dominated Europe and a resurgent and ~arming capitalism. All these schemes had one thing in Groucho and Karl Marx'. Certainly the pipeline Japan. common: they would channel other people's money, It is very timely to point out that Japan, mainly denominated in dollars and deutschmarks, in particular, was driven into the Second World into the ,coffers of the Banque de France. In War by a decade of trade protectionism and particular the French ma,de a big push for inter­ economic sanctions directed against it. With the national currency stabilization, a scheme to onset of the Great Depression, tariff barriers have the US Federal Reserve take over the hope­ were erected everywhere against the Japanese less task of propping up the faltering franc. 'trade menace' as it was then called. Most No way, said Wall Street, was it going to damaging to Japan was trade protectionism in subsidi~e the French social democrats no matter the Asian colonies of the other imperialist how loudly they denounce the Soviet SS-20 mis­ powers (eg, British India, French Indochina). siles or whoop it up for the counterrevolution­ Japan was thus pushed into creating its own ary Polish Solidarnosc. The Wall Street Journal Asian 'Co-Prosperity Sphere'. (9 June) commented acidly: To counter Japanese expansionism American and 'The French, it appears, have been interven­ British imperialism resorted first to economic ing so merrily in the foreign-exchange mar­ warfare. In July 1941 (five months before Pearl kets they are about to run out of money. How Harbor) the US, British and Dutch embargoed 'nice it would be for them if Messrs. Reagan Japan's oil supplies without which it could not and Volcker could be induced to take over survive. The eminent British military historian the job of spending good dollars to mop up B H Liddell Hart has written: excess francs. 'Although Japan had stayed out of the war 'That would, in effect, amount to hitching hitherto, the steps which Roosevelt and the dollar to the spending schemes of Churchill took in July to cut off her econ­ France's Socialist government, and mercifully omic resources were bound to make her strike the Reagan team managed to slip out of Ver­ back in the only way possible for her -- by sailles without promising anything more than force of arms.' (History of the Second World a study of the whole idea of currency War [1970]) intervention. ' As the capitalist world once again slides A week after Reagan dumped cold water on them into depression, once again we hear the cries at Versailles, the French devalued the franc in West Europe and the US of the Japanese 'trade once again. More significantly, the Mitterrand menace'. When a Japanese trade delegation government imposed a four-month wage freeze on visited the Common Market countries last Oct­ all French workers. Not even the haughty bourg­ ober, they were shocked by the sudden upsurge eois Giscard had dared to risk a total wage in anti-Japanese sentiment. French trade min­ freeze as an 'anti-inflation' measure. The ister Michel Jobert (a loud-mouthed old Gaull­ economics. correspondent for the right-wing Le ist) told them bluntly 'there's nothing we Figa'ro, Yves Guihannec, wrote in a we-told-you­ really need' to import from Japan. so vein: Hawk in 'socialist' feathers Mitterrand inspects However, anti-Japanese feeling in Europe is 'The French government -- suddenly waking to French nuclear submarine. His massive anti-Soviet not nearly as strong as in the US. There is now the harshness of the real world after its rearmament drive contributed to largest budget a bill in Congress requiring that 90 per cent of second currency devaluation in nine months deficit in postwar French history, the content of Japanese autos sold there be is totally reversing its economic policies. manufactured in America. And the shock troops brouhaha has all the elements of first-class The fight against inflation becomes again, as in the anti-Japanese trade war are the same political farce. And as communists we"particu­ it was under former conservative Prime Min­ labor bureaucrats, centrally the Fraser gang in larly appreciate that the world's numbe'r one ister Raymond Barre, the No. I, priority.' the Auto Workers, who are also leading the give­ imperialist warmonger, Ronald Reagan, comes out (Wall Street Journal, 30 June) backs campaign and are staunch supporters of the of it with much egg on his face. Since June the economic pronouncemeri~s of the anti-Soviet war drive as well. It is the liberal But the pipeline dispute should not be treat­ Mitterrand regime are virtually indistinguish­ Democrats, the so-called 'friends of labor', ed simply as a subject for derisive laughter. At able from those of'Reagan or Thatcher. The lan­ who are most vocal in whipping up 'yellow peril' bottom it represents the intersection of the two guage of solidarite has been replaced with that chauvinism. At a closed Congressional caucus main forces driving us toward World War III: the of rigueur'. Social security', taxes on workers Michigan Democrat John Dingell reportedly called appetite of capitalist imperialism -- openly and have been raised, for example, while benefits the Japanese 'little yellow people'. Democratic loudly voiced by Reagan ~- to overthrow the are cut. A Communist Party functionary exclaimed Congressional leader Tip O'Neill is calling for Soviet Union, which despite Stalinist degenera­ to a British journalist friend: 'It's got a total ban on Japanese auto imports and speak­ tion still embodies the social gains of the through my thick skull at last: we're landed ing in Detroit last March boasted, 'If I were Bolshevik Revolution, and the intensifying with another government of the Right' (Manchest­ President ... I'd fix the Japanese like they've inter-imperialist economic conflicts. er Guardian Weekly, 25 June). This 'revelation' never been fixed.' Considering that his fellow Increasingly the capitalist world of the has not prevented the Stalinist ministers from Democrat ,Harry Truman dropped two A-bombs on the' 1980s resembles that of the 1930s. It is not loyally serving in Mitterrand's 'another govern­ Japanese, that is one hell of a threat. just the 30 million unemployed in West Europe ment of the Right' . Small wonder that the head of Japan's ruling and North America. It is not just that firms bourgeois Liberal Democratic Party, Susumu which have been household names for decades -­ Nikaido, recently told a US trade negotiator: Chrysler, International Harvester, AEG-Tele­ 'Opinions expressed about Japan in the United funken -- are on the verge of bankruptcy or can The real development States are anti-Japanese. They give us the im­ be saved from bankrUptcy only by government pression of the prewar days' (Los Angeles Times, of Bolshevism bail-outs. It is not just that every week sees 19 March). Perhaps Nikaido was justifying from 1903 to the another international financial crisis as Japan's rearmament program. The conventional Communist Mexico, Argentina or some country cannot meet picture of Japan as an economic giant but a their billions of dollars in debt payments. It International military midget is no longer accurate. The is that the bourgeois and reformist parties can Japanese military budget is the sixth largest in offer no credible way out of the prolonged eco­ the wor~d and is growing faster than that of any nomic slump. They offer only more austerity. West European country. Japan's rulers know bet­ Each in its own way, the spectacular failures of ter than most 'that world trade wars can easily Reagan's 'supply-side' economics and Mitter­ escalate into world wars of a far more destruc­ rand's neo-Keynesianism demonstrate the impo­ tive kind. tence of bourgeois governments before the The outbreak of the first imperialist world anarchy of the world capitalist system. Influential sections of the US bourgeoisie Price: £1.25 are fed up with Reagan's crackpot economic schemes and true-believer political gambits. Notice But no section of the ruling class can find a Spartacist Bri tain skipped an issue in October. way out of the underlying problem: the decline This does not affect the number of issues our Make cheques payable/mail to: of capitalism and its long-term and increasing subscribers will receive, which is ten issues Spartacist Publications Box 185 London WC1H 8JE unproductiveness. The US Democratic Party's per subscription. railing against 'Reaganomics' is intended to

12 SPARTACIST BRITAIN war in 1914 signaled that the forces of produc­ US struggling to keep a' bare 40 per cent of its cracy back into Labour's fold. tion had outgrown capitalist property relations stee17producing capacity gOing, Reagan has made McGahey told a crowd of Welsh miners: 'The and the nation-state system, and so required the it clear that he is looking out for Number One. British miners can be a catalyst that can spark international socia~ist reconstruction of And with a glut on the international market, off the fight against the Tory government.' It society as the only alternative to destruction. Britain is the loser yet again. Thus, Redcar on is true and necessary. But to do it will take a As the warring European capitalist 'fatherlands' Teeside, marked for closure, is among the most conscious strategy which addresses the full sent a generation of youth to the slaughter, the modern steel plants in the world, but as the array of capitalist attacks, not McGahey's great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky raised Economist explained, 'it was designed to produce rhetoric. It will mean a fight for worksharing the call for a Socialist United States of 10,000 tonnes of steel a day ... but the trouble on full pay across the board to fight redun­ Europe. The continuing power of that program is is that nobody needs 10,000 tonnes of steel a danCies, including occupations of threatened proven, for example, in the demonstrated need day' . plants. It will mean calling the health workers for a Siberian gas pipeline, eve~ in the face of In the epoch of imperialism the nation-state out for jOint action not only in defence of the capitalist irrationality and Stalinist misman­ has become a reactionary fetter on the produc­ NHS.but around the demand for the sort of agement. Imagine the possibilities opened up by tive forces. Twice this century competing bour­ quality medical care today to be expected only a planned, integrated economy fully and ration­ geOisies have embarked on inter-imperialist from private hospitals. It will mean bringing ally utilizing the labor power, technical know­ world wars in an attempt to reorder the world life to Scargill's threats to bring out the ledge and natural resources from the Siberian market to their benefit. Now we stand o~ the miners against the Tebbit bill and calling on tundra to the Iberian peninsula. edge of a third world The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 war potentially more de­ was the first step toward a socialist world structive than all pre­ order. But the failure to extend the proletar­ vious wars put together, ian revolution, centrally to Europe, in the with the central aim of early 1920s led to the Stalinist degeneration retrieving for the cap­ of the Soviet Union, the victory of fascism in italist market the Sov­ Germany and the second imperialist world war. iet degenerated workers Now that the preparations for a nuclear World state. War III are well under way, the time is short to Despite the delusions resolve the historic choice facing mankind: of the Little England socialism or barbarism. lefts in the Labour Par­ ty and their Stalinist Adapted from Workers Vanguard, no 313, compatriots, Britain is 17 September 1982 not an island unto it­ self. Capitalism is an international system, and capitalist Britain ToC/Labour ••• is part of it -- no matter how many Labour (Continued from page 11) conferences pass resolu­ same week that Foot demanded import controls in tions in favour of with­ Parliament, in Birmingham steel unions picketed drawal from the world, Thatcher's war on workers and oppressed means united class the Motor Show demanding the use of British no matter how many Eng­ struggle, not waiting for another Social Contract Labour government. steel in car construction, the more left-wing lish hamlets declare TGWU demanded a halt to Spanish car imports and themselves 'nuclear-free zones'. And, wedded to other unions with wage claims outstanding to a CP election supplement in Birmingham North­ the nation-state, reformists must ultimately and join them in fighting around the same sort of field called for a British motor industry which necessarily.come to its defence. Since the first wage demand the miners are raising, linked to a used British parts from 'steel to wheels'. But inter-imperialist war, Leninists have counter­ sliding scale of wages to match inflation. Scar­ near BL Longbridge, the appeal to frustrated car posed the struggle for the Socialist United gill's oft-repeated talk about a Triple Alliance workers to mobilise in the streets under the States of Europe to the social-chauvinists' de­ strike in defence of wages and jobs can be given slogan 'British jobs for British workers' was fence of the fatherland. Rational planned econ­ reality with the following appeal to NUR mem­ coming not from the reformists but from the omies as part of an international division of bers: Weighell's been thrown out -- now tnrow fascist National Front! The fascists offer the labour, not nationalist autarky, is the answer out his miserly 6 per cent deal as well! ultimate nationalist programme: genocide of all to capitalist irrationality. Defend the Soviet A mobilisation of this character, across 'non-British' -- Asians, blacks, Irish -- and Union! Down with NATO's EEC! For a Socialist sectional lines, could rapidly develop in the the crushing of tl!e workers.' organisations. Rac­ United States of Europe! direction of a general strike. For the. reformist ism goes hand-in-hand with nationalism, and with misleaders. this is something to fear above all nationalism being fuelled by and for an anti­ Miners can lead the way else, posing as it does a direct 'challenge to Soviet war drive, racist terror reaches epidemic the capitalist class as a whole and placing on proportions. Import controls, no less than im­ Try as the reformists will to dress it up as the the agenda the question of which class rules. migration controls, fuel racist and fascist 'commonsense solution' to unemployment, protec- It is then that even the most left-talking terror! tionism does not save jobs. Just the opposite. reformists openly reveal their fundamental class Given the uncompetitive character of British loyalty to the bourgeois state. Only with a For a Socialist United States of Europe capitalism, in an escalating trade war British revolutionary leadership can the proletariat re- workers will end up with the short end of the solve the question of class rule in its favour. Protectionism not only cannot stop, but in stick. The possibility now concretely posed for But in the course of a general strike, the con­ fact has contributed to the industrial rot of a joint coal/steel strike does offer a real roadlditions could quickly ripen for ripping Labour's the British economy. Incapable of retooling its to fighting the jobs slaughter. One of the steel mass base away from its reformist misleaders and basic industries to a level comparable with its plants threatened with closure is Ravenscraig creating a party which will ptit the final blow international competitors, following World War I I, in devastated Scotland. And if it goes so do to the death agony of British capitalism. two other steel plants, Clydebridge and Glengar- Ever since the Tories came to office, the nock, as well as two local pits. With unemploy- trade union bureaucrats have counselled patience ment already running at 22 per cent in nearby until the next elections. When the steelworkers Motherwell, one steelworker was not exaggerati'ng strike nearly brought the country to the brink when he said, 'if the "Craig" goes, this town of a general strike, the trade union bureaucracy dies'. -- from Sirs to Scargill -- kept it isolated as It doesn't have to. But that means breaking long as possible until Sirs & Co stuck the ,knife with the Labourite 'solution' of Parliament and in just as the strike was spreading. More protectionism and wit~ any reliance not only on recently, they gave Thatcher a free hand to use Sirs but on Scargill as well. Scargill's cam- the 'Falklands factor' against ASLEF when paign for a 'yes' vote is designed primarily to fighting class unity was urgently and directly save his own credibility and to gain a little posed. Now the elections are approaching -- and more leverage at the bargainin'g table. It is a they promise workers nothing better than a long time since today's NUM president led the Labour government with the same policies and miners at Salt ley Gates. When asked following even the same personalities, in a far worse Blackpool if he was still in favour of indus- period, than the last. Enough is enough! Miners trial action to bring down the Tories, Scargill take the lead! For all-out strike action against demurely backed off: 'This government is so the Tory attacks! Forward to a revolutionary horrendous that it should certainly be removed workers government!. as quickly as possible -- in a general election. ' Clydebridge steelworkers lobbying an ISTC SUBSCRIBE! British industry was 'protected' and massively emergency conference in Sheffield last month subsidised mainly through Labour's nationalisa­ made it clear to Spartacist Britain that they o Spartacist £2 for 10 issues plus Spartacist tion schemes. But when the world recession had no illusions in 'King Arthur' but still ex­ Britain (international Spartacist tendency started to bite, British industry began going pected Scottish NUM leader and CP member Mick journal) under like a house of cards. McGahey to offer a lead. McGahey has his own o Women & Revolution £1.50 for 4 issues. Steel sums up in microcosm the reality of variant of class collaborationism to which he adds a tinge of Scottish nationalism, as in the British industry -- and how the TUC traitors try o Joint £6.00 for 10 issues of Spartacist Britain to 'save' it. Had the heroic 100-day steel Scottish Miner's appeal to 'churches, business­ subscription· PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard strike two years ago burst through the confines men, professional people, political parties, (Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist of trade union economism and broken free from progressive minded Scots' to back the Triple Al­ League/US) PLUS Spartacist (inter- the stranglehold of outright Labouri te treachery, liance lobby of Downing Street. But as Scargill , national Spartacist tendency journal) the entire Tory offensive would have been thrown has toured the mining areas, there by his side Name ______back. As it was, with the able assistance of' has been McGahey -- sharing the platform, shar­ Addr~s ______Bill Sirs, BSC boss Ian McGregor has been able ing the rhetoric and sharing the programme. to raise productivity to new levels by throwing McGahey personifies the contribution the CP has tens of thousands of steel workers onto the dole made to Labourite treachery over the decades -­ Make payable/post to: queues. But neither'import controls nor the Pro­ channelling the support of industrial workers Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1H SJE testant ethic will save British steel. With the seeking a militant alternative to social demo-

NOVEMBER 1982 13 atics in the White House and the USSR. It is a grim irony that only the language Race checks ... associated with Nazi barbarism can adequately (Continued from page 16) describe the developing Zionist policy: 'Blitz­ krieg', the 'final solution', a 'master race' the most vicious current cases being that of and 'purification'. The Israeli population must Afia Begum, a young Bangladeshi woman who now faces deportation with her one-year-old son fol­ have been stunned with the comparison to Nazi lowing the death of her husband in a fire. His Germany when confronted with the government's claim that 'it aidn't know' what happened at ~omein a Labour Council-owned condemned build­ ing in Tower Hamlets was a firetrap. First they Shatila and Sabra. set up minority families for death, then deport The question of responsibility, however, as any survivors -- this is the reality of the ra~­ it is posed in Israel and the US is a whitewash i.st offensive: of the war criminals. It is not a question of The introduction of race checks (or a system mere 'knowledge'. Begin and Sharon planned and of internal passports for racial minorities) has executed the massacres at the'Palestinian camps. been seriously posed in Britain for over a decade. The early cover-up stories about how the The 1978 Select Committee on Immigration and Israeli military 'didn't know' and moved in to Race Relations report to Parliament called on protect innocent civilians as soon as they found the government to drastically cut immigration Racial minorities in the front line of capitalist attack out have been thoroughly exploded by Israeli as and introduce a quota system for British pass­ well as Western journalists. The basic facts are port holders. Among other provisions this obscene couraged anti-racists everywhere' (Morning Star, now clear. The Israeli army invaded predominant­ racist document called for devoting more re­ 4 October). But even the October CARL Newsletter ly Muslim West Beirut, surrounded the Pal~stin­ sources to the hunt for 'illegal' immigrants and admits: 'Many black people might still be rather ian camps and trucked in their killer-militia demanded the institution of some kind of 'inter­ sceptical about whether the next Labour govern­ from allover Lebanon to do the job. The nal control' passbook system for immigrants. The ment (whenever that is) is serious about its Israelis ushered them into the camps, provided report was not acted upon by the then Labour anti-racist commitment.' the staging areas, road signs, food rations and government, but was endorsed by all five Labour S'ceptical! Every black and Asian knows what checkpoints, and also lit flares so the butchery MPs as well as the 'Conservati ves on the Committee. Labour is. Labour in power meant deportations, could continue into the night. When the sadis­ When the Tories came to power in 1979, they racist attacks and virginity tests for Asian tic killers became tired they came out to the were determined to rebuild this rotting economy women. The pledge to repeal the Nationality Act Israeli command post and lounged around with the on the backs of the workers and oppressed. And is not worth the paper it's written on -- and Israelis listening to Simon and Garfunkel.songs. in depression/Cold War Britain, everyone who even if this Act did go otMer racist legislation The butchers of Shatila and Sabra were not isn't 'true blue British' has become a front would replace it. Home Affairs spokesman Roy Hat­ Christian militiamen who got out of hand and line target. With fewer jobs, less housing and tersley has made clear that Labour retains its went berserk. The were composed of disciplined swingeing cuts in social services, minorities 'commitment' to immigration controls -~ and all units directly controlled by the Israeli author­ are always the most expendable. The days of immigration controls under capitalism are racist. ities: Saad Haddad's Lebanese Forces and the 'Rule Britannia' are gone, but those upon whose Similarly the union, Labour and CP bureau­ Damuri Brigade. As for their acting on their ancestors' backs the empire was built, the crats unanimously fail to lift a finger to own, Haddad himself declared, 'Every move we former colonial slaves -- many of whom were mobilise against raCist/fascist terror, counsel­ make has to be coordinated with the IDF [Israel wooed to this country in the late 1950s to do ling instead reliance on state bans and the Defence ForceJ' (Times, 23 September). And so the dirty jobs the British wouldn't do -- are police. Reliance on the police! Tell that to the was this one. The Damuri Brigade (largely com­ being turned into scapegoats for the social and thousands caught up in the racist dragnet fol­ posed of survivors of a town where the Palestin­ economic misery engendered by capitalism in de­ lowing the inner-city explosions of summer 1981. ians massacred Christians in the 1975-76 Leban­ cline. The murderous poliCies of colonialism But the alternative is not the macho posturing ese communalist civil war) is not part of the have come home with a vengeance. and small-group adventurism typified by the Rev­ traditional Phalange. The trade unions must take the lead in mobil­ olutionary Communist Party and its pretentiously In Haddad's forces and the Damuri Brigade, ising workers and minorities in effective de­ misnamed Workers Against Racism. Such a strategy Israel has created its own contingents of local fence. Racial minorities are in the front line at best achieves only isolated victories and Lebanese murderers for the most bloodthirsty but the Tories are out to destroy the social more often sets anti-racist fighters up for de­ jobs. Sharon and Begin pulled the trigger just services and cripple the trade union movement as feat. Only mobilisations based on the mass or­ as surely as Hitler did for the dreaded Lithu­ a whole. The fight must become the fight of the ganisations of the working class, centrally the anian and Ukrainian SS Einsatzkommandos, or for whole class and all the oppressed. Opposition to trade unions, can truly show the way forward. the Croatian Ustashi. These East European fas­ the race checks must be taken up as part of the No reliance on the racist state! For trade union cists could be relied on to do jobs that even NHS strike -- minority workers make up the back­ and minority mobi1isations to crush the fascists! the German Nazi regulars might not have the bone of the health service. Miners and steel The aftermath of last summer's ghetto ex- stomach for. It was Ukrainian Einsatzkommandos workers, workers with industrial muscle, must plosions has seen only increased repression, who forced some 50,000 Jews out of their homes come out alongside NHS and social service work- terror and frustration for racial minorities. in Kiev and marched ,them to the mass grave at ers in all-out strike action to smash the Tory The Labour Party and trade union leaders condemn Babi Yar. The use of Haddad's forces and the offensive. Trade union/minority defence guards the working class and minorities to a future of Damuri Brigade in the West Beirut massacre is must, be' formed to smash racist attacks and crush 'progressive' degradation. These reformist part and parcel of Zionist genocidal policy to­ the fascists in the streets. leaders' screams for import controls, in the ward the Palestinian Arabs. Israel's 6 June But what is the union leadership doing? NALGO context of the anti-Soviet war drive and trade invasion of Lebanon had as its purpose to 'pur­ has called on its members not to cooperate with war, serve only to fuel nationalism, racist ify' that country of its half a million the new race checks ... until health authorities terror and the growth of fascism -- for import Palestinians. provide training on how to make 'racial assess- controls at bottom mean the fascist slogan, ments' and review staffing levels. In the DoE 'British jobs for British workers'. Israel's Labour Party and the US connection the CPSA's Militant-tendency-run 'broad left' The struggle to mobilise the working class in leadership has simply put out a circular asking defence of minorities must be linked to the The Shatila and Sabra massacres have thrown the membership what to do. struggle to build a communist leadership in the Israel into a full-blown political crisis. Today just about everyone is pushing the Labour unions, and to win minority workers and youth to Demonstrations of outrage exploded day after Party as the saviour for beleaguered racial min­ a revolutionary party that fights for the only day. The police moved in swinging their batons orities. The reformist~and Labourites all have antidote to capitalist decay -- a workers state at Jews as well as Arab youth. A cabinet member the same strategy: repeal the bad laws and re­ and a socialist planned economy. No deporta­ resigned in protest. More importantly, the com­ place them with 'good' laws, and elect 'good' tions! Smash the race checks! Full citizenship mander of the staff college quit over 'the people to enforce them, ie Labour. Just like the rights for all minority and immigrant workers! events in West Beirut'. Whole sections of the officer corps have threatened to resign and an call to ban the fascists it all boils down to For union/minority defence squads to smash rac­ elite military unit refused to mobilise. reliance on the racist bourgeois state to pro­ ist/fascist attacks!. tect minorities. Dave Cook, prominent supporter The supreme court chief justice refused Begin:s of the Communist Party (CP) and secretary of the directive to carry out an 'informal' investiga­ Campaign Against Racist Laws (CARL), says, 'The tion. And on 25 September the opposition Labour commitment to repeal the Nationality Act given Holocaust ... Party brought nearly 400,000 people -- over a at last week's Labour Party conference has en- tenth of Israel's total population -- into the (Continued from page 16) streets of Tel Aviv demanding an investigation bullet for the Zionist butchers! of those responsible; many signs called for the Just how many Palestinians were massacred at resignation of Begin and Sharon. Under the pres­ Shatila and Sabra will never be known. In any sure of Zionist military expansionism, Israeli Out case, while the Zionist racists have routinely society is becoming unstuck. And the authority murdered ten or even 100 Arabs for every Israeli of the Begin regime has been deeply shaken. soldier killed by the PLO, this was certainly The furore over Shatila and Sabra is not sim­ now! genocide: the bloodiest massacre yet in the ply a spontaneous expression of moral outrage. bloody oppression of the Palestinians. It is also a response to the pressure of US Begin ~nd Sharon have tried to sell their imperialism exerted through Washington's now genocidal'invasion of Lebanon to Washington as more-or-less open support to the 'moderate' the spearhead of Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive Labour Party opposition. Complaining about US in the Near East by casting the PLO and Syria as attempts to 'destabilise' his government, Begin Russian surrogates. This sales job was initially declared, 'Our American friends must know that successful as Reagan gave the June invasion the Israel is not Chile, and I am not Allende.' To green light. But the US opposed the Israelis' be sure, the American imperialist rulers, the takeover of West Beirut because it undercut ef­ men of Hiroshima and My Lai, are not 'shocked' forts to cement an anti-Soviet 'strategic con­ over Shatila and Sabra. But Reagan cannot easily sensus' with other Arab regimes in the region. court Arab sheiks and colonels for an anti­ When Israel seized West Beirut on 15 September Soviet 'strategic consensus' while Sharon is they seized the Soviet Embassy, an incredible ravaging Arab capitals with. Pentagon-supplied provocation against the USSR. The fanatical mad­ weaponry. Make payable/post to Spartacist Publications, men who run Israel today are trying to overcome US imperialism now poses as 'peacemaker' in their rift with US imperialism by humiliating the Near East and turns to the familiar faces of PO Box 185, London We1 H 8JE the Soviet Union, even if that means provoking the Labour Party, which ruled Israel for three a nuclear showdown between the anti-Soviet fan- decades, as the instrument for its policies in

14 SPARTACIST BRITAIN As the horror of the genocid­ al massacre in West Beirut on 18 September became known, the in­ 'For Arab/Hebrew workers revolution!' ternational Spartacist tendency initiated and participated in protest demonstrations around the world, from Sydney to Paris and Toronto. Our comrades of the Spartacist League/US initiated 'Stop Begin's final solution!' protest pickets, mobilising hun­ dreds in cities across the country including New York and San Francisco. Spartacist chants included: 'Reagan, Begin, blood on your hands! ' and 'stop Begin's final solution -- for Arab/ Hebrew workers revolution!' In Britain's main protest demonstration, which brought about 1000 people to Hyde Park .on 9 October, the Spartacist League contingent pOinted to the imperialists' complicity in the massacre and demanded 'Israel, US, France, Italy -- Troops out now!' While the bulk of Middle Eastern and British leftists on the march limited their inter­ vention to denunciation of the Zionists and uncritical hailing of the PLO, our slogans showed how only joint Arab/Hebrew prol­ etarian class· struggle could lead to Palestinian national 'liberation. Our call to break with suicidal nationalism aroused the ire of some pro-PLO marchers who, apparently egged on by the Qaddafi-loving provoc­ ateurs of the Workers Revol­ utionary Party, attempted to silence our contingent through physical attacks and verbal abuse. But they were unsuccess­ ful -- we continued to march, chanting 'Israel out of Lebanon! Defend the Palestinians!' and warning that bourgeois Arab nationalism is a dead end for the Palestinian masses with our slogan, 'Remember Black Septem­ ber, Remember Tel Zaatar! ,Smash Spartacist protests against Zionist holocaust (clockwise Zionism, break with PLO nation­ from top left): London, New York, San Francisco, alism -- for Arab/Hebrew work­ Paris. ers revolution!' the region. Who is the Labour Party to weep for in Lebanon is also related to the fact that trap for the Jews. The bloody terror of the Shatila? It was the Labour-Zionists in. alliance Syria is the leading Soviet client state in the Israeli war machine only makes that fate more with Begin's Irgun who in 1948 drove the Pales­ region and that the Soviet border itself is but certain. If the Jewish people in the Near East tinian Arabs out of Eretz Israel into the refu­ a few hundred miles away. Reagan's sending are to be anything other than a catalyst for a gee camps. The 'Labour' Party is not a reformist American forces to Lebanon is an attempt to use nuclear World War III, the Zionist state must be workers p~rty, but the party of the European­ these forces as a tripwire for large-scale US smashed. derived Israeli bourgeois elite which waged the military intervention in the region -- directly The Hebrew-speaking working people must be 1967 and 1973 wars. Moshe Dayan, the strutting posing the danger of a nuclear World War III. broken from Zionism and the deep-going racialist Zionist Prussian, was appOinted commander by chauvinism that pervades Israeli SOCiety. and successive Labour governments; Sharon was the For a socialist federation of the Near East unite in struggle with their Ara~ class brothers chief military adviser of the last Labour prime against the Begins and the Husseins. Palestin­ minister, Rabin. It was Labour which occupied The Shatila and Sabra massacre has exposed to ian militants must break from their reliance on the West Bank, Gaza and the Sinai, instituting millions the truly genocidal nature of Zionism. imperialist and Arab League diplomacy, a dead a regime of police terror over the conquered But it also exposes the utter bankruptcy of the end both for national justice for the Palestin­ Arab masses. It was Labour which began the Zion­ PLO's petty-bourgeois nationalism. Competing ians and for the liberation of the toilers of ist settlements in the occupied territories. nationalisms exacerbated and exploited by imper­ the Near East. The few million Jews in the Near In the Knesset (parliament) debate, Sharon ialism have left the Near East a bloody mess for East can be a valuable cultural and technical challenged Labour Party leader Shimon Peres generations. Today US imperialism is trying to resource in the region, but only in unity with over his new-found moral superiority. Referring set itself up as an arbiter between Zionism and the Arab masses. That unity requires above all to the 1976 massacre of Palestinians at Tel Arab nationalism. Arafat's fondest hope is a new the construction of a proletarian internation­ Zaatar in Lebanon, Sharon baited the former de­ Balfour Declaration (in Which in 1917 British alist vanguard party that fights for the right fence minister: 'How come your conscience does imperialism promised a Jewish 'homeland' in to self-determination for both the Palestinian not bother you? Thousands of people were Palestine) for the PLO. But Reagan's 'homeland' and Hebrew nations through a socialist federa­ slaughtered ... where were the officers of the for the Palestinians under the thumb of Jordan's tion of the Near East. IDF on that day?' Thus it now comes out that King Hussein would mean only more massacres and Adapted from Workers Vanguard no 314,1 October senior Israeli officers and Mossad (Israeli bantustan-type oppression for the Palestinian 1982, no 315, 15 October 1982 CIA) agents were in the command posts with the people. Phalangists when they took Tel Zaatar. The Arab military dictatorships and sheikdoms of the region, on the other hand, raised not a 'Peaceke~pers' make massacres finger to aid the Palestinians in Lebanon when Available they were under the guns of the Israelis. More­ now in Turkish: Even before the bodies had been unearthed over, these regimes have perpetrated even great­ at Shatila and Sabra, Arafat was claiming the er massacres against their own peoples (the Pamphlet on United States had betrayed the agreement to Syrians at Hama) and against, the Palestinians the TKP protect the Palestinian camps made by Philip (Jordan in its 1970 Black September massacre of Leninists Habib at the time of the PLO withdrawal. Indeed, more than 10,000 Palestinians; and Tel Zaatar in Contains: there was a betrayal with most bloody conse­ 1975, where the Syrian army played for the 'Stalinism quences. The imperialist 'peacekeepers' pre­ Phalangists the role Israel played for its versus pared the holocaust by disarming the defenders Lebanese fascist forces in Shatila/Sabra). Trotskyism' of the West Beirut camps. But who really ex­ Today the Palestinians face the Zionist holo­ 'Poland and pected the US to protect Palestinian refugees? caust. But there are only three million Jews in the TKP The real betrayal was Arafat's and those who a sea of 150 million Arabs. Israel's military Leninists' . called for the troops which set up the massacre. expansionism and mass terror against the Arabs Yet the PLO leaders have again called for and ultimately lead to the self-destruction of the got an 'international peacekeeping force' led by Hebrew-speaking people. Some day the IDF will be Make the US. Those who look to the US as guarantor craCked, and then the Begins, Sharons and Peres payable/post for a 'negotiated solution' in Central America to Spartacist will be tempted to launch their nuclear bomb at Publications, should look at what is happening in Lebanon. Baghdad. Damascus and Cairo, even if this means PO Box 185, The role of US imperialism in the Near East provoking the ultimate holocaust. On the eve of WC1H 8JE is the central political question now posed. World War II, Trotsky projected that the Zionist Price: 50p That the Pentagon would like ~ military presence settlements in Palestine would become a death-

NOVEMBER 1982 15 BRITAIN Imperialist" Israeli troops out of Lebanon! II II I I For a socialist federation of the Near East

In the final hours of the grisly massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the remain­ ing Palestinian men tried to make a last stand. They went searching for guns but found virtually none. The Palestinians had been disarmed by the ,imperialist 'peacekeepers' -- the US, French and Italian troops wBo had 'escorted' the PLO' soldiers out of the country only a few days earlier. The imperialists' 'gun control' paved the way for the Israeli invasion of West Beirut and the Zionist-organised mass murder of the unarmed Palestinian refugees. • The horrors committed at Shatila and Sabra reminded the world of' nothing so much ae the Nazi holocaust. The victims, mainly women, child­ ren, the elderly, were shot at close range; many of the women were raped in 36 hours of torture and mass murder. The dead number in the thousands. Now the bloody 'peacekeepers' have returned to complete the job of disarming and terrorising the Palestinians and Lebanon's Muslim majority. They are there to shore up the new Gemayel re­ gime ~hich is based on the same Phalange killers who carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Not surprisingly, the 'multinational force' did not occupy the Phalangist stronghold of East Beirut. Instead the French Foreign Legion -­ murderers of Algerian women and children and countless other colonial peoples -- occupied Muslim West Beirut; US Marines, who have not seen active duty since their Vietnam 'search and Zionist terrorist Begin ordered his Lebanese Einsatzkommandos to slaugh'ter of West Beirut. destroy' missions, set up a staging area at the airport; and the plumed Italian 'bersaglieri' onial rule gutted the Palestinian working class military goods to Israel and to the imperialist commandos, who specialise in terrorisirtgcivil- in the suppression of the 1936 general strike. troops in Beirut! Boycott all Israeli cargo and ians during raids of Red Brigades hideouts, held Me'anwhile, Begin's B1i tzkrieg invasion and transport until Israel gets out of Lebanon! the Burj al Brajneh Palestinian camp. Nazi-like massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon The imperialist troops pave the way for more In recent days French marines and paratroop- has fuelled fascist, anti-Semitic terrorist massacres, furthering the Israeli aim of terror­ ers actively participated with the Christian- attacks in West Europe, most recently the mur- ising Palestinians into fleeing Lebanon dominated Lebanese army in house-to-house derous attack on a synagogue in Rome where a altogether. Elementary defence of the Palestin­ searches of West Beirut, detaining thousands of' two-year-old boy was killed and 34 Jewish wor­ ian people's right to exist, as well as the ad­ Palestinians. In the southern suburbs the US and shippers were injured. These outrages echo the vance of proletarian revolution in the Near East, Italian troops watclied as Lebanese army bull- Zionist lie that anti-Zionism equals anti- demand first of all: Marines, Foreign Legion dozers destroyed 'illegal' homes and shops be- Semitism. The labour movement must mobilise to bersaglieri get out! No imperialist 'peace- ' longing to Lebanese Muslims. And now Lebanese crush these fascist killers at the same time as keepers! No British troops in Lebanon! Israel officials have asked that this 'murderous mul ti- taking vigorous class-struggle action to soli- out of Lebanon and the occupied territories! national force be expanded to include British darise with the defence of the Palestinians from West Beirut -- never again! Not another penny or troops -- the butchers who during Britain's col- Zionist genocide. For an unlimited boycott of continued on page 14 Smash Nationality Act! Race checks: hunger, death for minorities The message is out: get the blacks, get the and those suspected of 'fiddling' their 'poverty­ black youths burnt alive in the Deptford fire­ Asians and anyone not of 'true blue' British level entitlements can be turned over to govern­ bombing. Asian youths in Newham arrested by the stock. And if they can't'be kept or forced out ment authorities for 'further investigation' -­ guardians of racist law and order for attempting of the country, then hound them with race checks, ie possible deportation. With the country awash to defend themselves against fascist attack. unleash the fascists or starve them to death. wi th chauvinism following the Falklands war, wi th Home Se~retary William Whitelaw calls for rein­ The Tories' Nationality Act with its ex­ the Labour Party and trade union misleaders troduction of the notorious sus laws. Metropol­ plicitly racialist classes of British citizen­ feeding nationalist xenophobia with their 'Buy itan Police Commissioner Kenneth Newman pledges ship comes onto the statute books in January. British' campaigns for import controls, the the use of the full riot police arsenal of water Now it is being supplemented by apartheid-style Thatcher government is seizing the time to enact cannon and plastic bullets against 'rioters'. race checks in the Department of Employment and more and more repressive racist legislation The Tories' vile 'make Britain white' cam­ National Health Service. Under the guise of against minorities. paign has led to a spate of deportations, one of 'spending controls' NHS patients and DoE claim­ And while the parliamentarians prepare the ants are to -be vetted as to ethnic background laws racist terror stalks the streets. Thirteen continued on page 14 16 NOVEMBER 1982