No 53 December 1983/January 1984 20p BRITAIN Thatcher's Cold War heats up at home

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Vicious cop rampage against NGA mass picket at Warrington. 29 November. Remember the Pentonville Five (1972). saved by threat of general strike. 'The whole country is watching us!' Those the' capitalist state has been trying to ham­ point new technology is synonymous with reduc­ were the words on the lips of many a trade string and' cripple the powerful British unions ing the number of workers. The working class unionist outside th~ scab print works of Eddie for decades -- from Wilson's 'In Place of should not oppose new technology, as long as it Shah's Messenger group when 4000 members of the Strife' to Heath's Industrial Relations Act to is not at the workers' expense. That means embattled National Graphical Association and Labour's social contract. Now Thatcher's crew maintaining and extending union control of hir­ other trade union supporters confronted an army are imposing the Prior and Tebbit acts which ing -- modernisation with.out sackings. Make the of 2000 scab-herding cops. Behind Eddie Shah and effectively outlaw the right to picket and pre­ bosses pay for modernisation -- divide the work his small-time scab racket stand his brain­ paring new legislation which brings internal among print workers with no reduction in wages! trusters of the zealously anti-union Institute union affairs directly under the control of the Half the newspaper chains locked out the re­ of Directors, the press barons of Fleet Street bosses' state. The struggle for trade union in­ turning workers with a mass sacking; shamelessly and the Tory government. Behind the NGA must dependence from the capitalist state is an im­ the NGA leadership ordered the other half to stand, as it has not so far, the full weight of mediate, burning question. return to 'business as usual' instead of shut­ the organised working class in this country. The The imposition of a £175,000 fine/court bill ting down all Qf Fleet Street as part of an all bourgeoisie wants to relegate the trade unions on the NGA and the sequestration and seizure. of out print strike, and seizing the print works to the status of friendly societies of a century its funds 'and assets '-- the 'legal' theft of as ransom against the court theft. ago, wiping out the right to strike, to picket, union property -- is a decisive escalation in The ferocity of. the Tory drive against the to enforce the closed shop that were established the anti-union offensive. This is an historical­ unions was expressed in full force at the through struggle. It must be stopped! ly strong craft union with a firmly established Warrington mass picket on November 29. Two closed shop tradition and a union-controlled The ruling class's provocativ~ and thinly thousand cops in riot gear ready to crack hiring list. When the NGA shut down Fleet Street veiled attempt to smash one of the strongest skulls, their numbers removed to avoid identi­ in a weekend protest strike over the court de­ unions in the country is the product of years of fication. They were there not simply to defend cision, the press barons seized the opportunity capitulation and vacillation by the reformist some small-time scab printer, but to teach the. to try and smash the union once and for all in bureaucracy and a sharp reflection at home of workers a bloody lesson. They deliberately its own bastion in order to introduce job­ t.he imperialis t drive to war against the de­ smashed up the NGA sound system early on. These slashing new technology. ,From the bosses' view- formed/degenerated workers states. Across the were the lessons learned by the British bobbies board, from the closed shop and,/the right to from their brutal assaults against black and strike to the greatest single gain of the pro­ Asian youth in the inner cities two years ago. letariat this century, the creation of a planned' Interview with POED 'militant And these are the people whom Militant sup­ economy in the Soviet Union, the capitalists are porters on the picket line defend as-'workers seeking to destroy every significant gain of the in uniform'! On the NGA buses returning to workers. This is their answer to a profit system London on the Wednesday morning there was wide­ 'Shut down the City!' spread dissatisfaction and anger at the lack of collapsing into crisis. Our answer must be to wrench industry, finance and transport out of leadership on the picket. With an all-out strike their hands through the workers seizure of behind it, an explicit call for organised soli­ ... p5 darityaction and a class-conscious picket power. Whether under Labour or Tory administration, continued on page 10 'The .rst punishment a communist could suffer was to be outside the party'

-,Dear comrades, the working class in class collaboration. We stability and parliamentary democracy, all are seeing the inevitable fruits of reformist bought at the expense of millions of colonial With this letter I am applying to rejoin the betrayal, the failure of socialist revolution in helots (as George Orwell put it, if Britain Spartacist League. I have thought and read a the heartlands of imperialism -- naked assaults had had no empire it would have been a cold, lot since I quit, especially in the last two on all the gains of the working class, above wet collection of poor islands in the North months, and I believe that I understand the fun­ all the highest gain of the USSR. The class Sea, subsisting on herring and potatoes), add damental political pasis of the revisionist, struggle in every' country and in international the resentment of decline and a workers leader­ opportunist positions I generated and articulat­ relations has become more vicious, open, vio­ ship which has never even made a pretence at ed in the last period of my membership. I know lent and explosive. In this period the totally Marxism and internationalism and the end pro- that the habits, impulses, petty-bourgeois back­ inadequate, and therefore reactionary, far-left duct is a potent obstruction to the independent ground that fostered these positions are not 19708 style radicalism has shown its true colors struggle of the working class. Once you lose combatted or overthrown all at once or through over every major test of the class struggle, sight of the need for conscious combat with an individual effort, but only through participa~ tailing Khomeini in Iran, siding with imperial­ internationalist programme against the social­ tion in the fight to build an international ism in Afghanistan, boosting clerical restora­ chauvinist misleaders then you open the door revolutionary party, in ~iffering circumstances tionism in Poland. My particular political to every kind of bourgeois ideology. and in many struggles. Nevertheless I consider weaknesses, which taken together can be summar­ myself to be in agreement with the iSt's pro­ ised as an incomplete break from the petty­ 'Fog over the channel - continent isolated' gramme, and I want to make my contribution to bourgeois, parochial politics of the British My political positions showed that fact sys­ the party, to fight to really assimilate and 'Trotskyists', spread their tentacles as the tematically. I viewed the anti-Soviet war drive act on that programme. heat came on. The centra! characteris~ic of as something distinct from the domestic attacks When I quit I didn't want to work out why this political trend was little Englandism. I on the working class, apart from the political I just wanted to get out. In my resignation did not strive to approach every question first developments in the Labour Party. For me the letter I acknowledged particular differences of all' from the international standpoint. And real question in determining what -the British that I had had, but never their real roots in as British imperialism declines and war fever bourgeoisie did was the state of the British the Cold War attacks of the imperialist bour­ mounts the provincial, smug arrogance of the economy, the balance of forces between the geoisie. Since February I had to think about labour bureaucracy (ultimately the mentality trade unions and the ruling class. 'Interna~ where I was going. I could leave politics en­ of the ascendant British bourgeoisie of the tional issues' I saw as an add-on the way the tirely, go and earn a lot 'of money and become middle nineteenth century) more and more passes ruling class talks about foreign policy. This an unalloyed petty-bourgeois creep. I could try from national narrowness and indifference into is completely undialectical. First of all, and be just a 'sympathiser' of the SL, which open chauvinism and xenophobia. Within the Britain is not an independent operator: every-

____ ; \'''~' ,W amounts to putting off any real de­ thing depends on its relationship w~th the US. cision. I could ignore and reject DRIVE OUT SOP FIFTH COLUMN! Ori a more fundamental level, the war drive what I knew of Trotskyism and become against the USSR is not a 'sideline' to the a very highly cynical ORO. What that l ..SOUR PARTY CAN BETRAY r~al business of Tebbit bills or dismantling meant came out pretty vivi.dly when WITHOUT CIA CONNECTION! the NHS. We live in the imperialist epoch. The Tom Riley of the ET phoned me, argu­ SMASH NATO! DEFEND US~R productive forces generated by capitalism are ing that the SL/ANZ faction fight was , )rfJ~:,~,', \)'1' constricted by the nation state. Every advanced an apolitical tussle over power, con­ country in the capitalist world is continually cealed 'behind slogan formulation dif­ looking for the 'best' division and redivision ferences (ie the Rus~ian question is of the backWard, ex-colonial countries. And as a tenth-rate issue)', and qui te unable the slump squeezes the bourgeoisies, they look to offer any criticism of the SL/US's with greater and greater desperation at the actions and perspectives for victory wQxkers, states whose~exfsTence aepMf'iv1;§ eapl"'al-~'-~ to the PATCO strike, despite all the ism' of enormous productive resources and"'1fI'e!Hls slighted ballyhoo over flying. Talk­ for exploitation. ing to Riley made me acknowledge World War III will continue the unfinished clearly that my own political trajec­ imperialist business of WWII -- the dismember­ tory, stripped of local peculiarities, ment of the USSR. There is no solution to the ,was leading to the same social-demo­ economic crisis in any imperialist country, let cratic anti-Spartacism. Finally I alone Britain with its gross structural back­ could try to figure out what I had wardness, by domestic reaction alone, whereas been doing politically from the the conquest of the USSR and the other deformed standpoint of seeking to become a workers states could as Trotsky put it, give revolutionary, a party member, again. capitalism a fresh lease of life for a period. I have done the last because I knew War is not an optional extra, a policy decision, whenever I allowed myself to think it is integral to capitaMsm iIi the imperialist about it seriously that the maniacal epoch. For the bourgeoisie the struggle to break brutality and oppression of declining the unions, and to witchhunt ostensible Marxists capi talism can onl,Y be ended by and union activists is the same struggle as the socialist revolution', and that I had preparations for a war of conquest with the fled in the face of the pot~ntial Soviet bloc, the same as the subversion of Poland for serious struggle against the na­ from within. The vanguard of the imperialist tionally-limited, petty-bourgeois bourgeoisies looks at its aims in a unified 'parody of Trotskyism' I was advancing. workers movement such attitudes form an asphyxi- way, everything directed at rolling back the The common thread that links the positions I ating chain tying the proletariat to the war g~ins of the proletariat, up to and including espoused in the run-up to quitting is capi tul·a- machine of the bourgeoisie, and leaving the October. Revolutionaries similarly understand tion to the pressure of the British bourgeoisie ground free for state-organised or state- that the struggle to overthrow capitalism in the period of Cold War II -- ie world capital- sanctioned racist scape-goating and terrorism, (which is ultimately the only real defence ist crisis and decline generating anti-Soviet strengthening the capitalists against the en- of the USSR) is impossible without conscious­ war preparations, swelling inter-imperialist tire working class. ly combatting at every step the political rivalries and great-nation chauvinism, across- The gamut of my opportunist positions and preparations for anti-Soviet war, bringing the-board attacks on the working class, espe- centrist waverings can be traced back to this the real goals of imperialism into view from cially women and minori ties. This is not the one point. I never really understood why the behind the 'democratic' mask and showing how post-19G8 era, with defeat for the US in Vietnam British section was subjected to prophylactic only a party dedicated to the defence and fresh in the mind. The bourgeoisie is not in the attack after attack by the comrades of the in­ extension of the achievements of the world main seeking popular front coalitions to harness ternational on the 'Fog over the channel--con- proletariat can fight successfully against the tinent isolated' spirit. Of course, I thought, capitalist offensive in any individual country. CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: ,all the labour bureaucracies in every country The clearest example of this was the Birmingham ...... (021) 5547141 are social-chauvinist, reflect the nationalism Washington anti-Klan demonstration last year. London ...... (01) 2782232 of th& bourgeoisie. 'But there is a particular The SL was the only organisation capable of Sheffield ...... ," ..... (0742) 737067 virulence and backwardness to British social­ standing firm and mobilising the labour/ chauvinism. Trotsky pointed out in Where is black forces to stop the Klan, precisely be­ Britain Going? in the chapter 'One or two pecul­ cause only the SL has fought against the bi­ iarities of Labour leaders' that partisan anti-Soviet war drive of both 'An island position, wealth, success in Democrats and.Republicans, right back to world politics, all this cemented by Puri­ Carter's human rights campaign. That means tanism, the religion of the "chosen people", that on the central question of the day only Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the international Spartacist tendency. has turned into an arrogant contempt for the SL has been able to maintain an indepen­ EDITORIAL BOARD: David Strachan (editor). Caroline Carne everything continental and generally un­ dent working-class line, to oppose the pop­ (production manager). A Gilchrist, Faye Koch. John Masters. British. Britain's middle classes have long Len Michelson. Ellen Rawlings frontist rebuilders of the stinking Democrat CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jeff Pascoe been convinced that the language, science, coalition, and to see that the mobilisation Published monthly, except in January and August, by Spartacist technology and culture of other nations do of the key black component of the American Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1H BJE. not merit study. All this has been complete­ Subscriptions: 10 issues for £2.00; overseas airmail £5.00. proletariat is strategiC to the defeat of cap­ Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU). ly taken over by the philistines currently italist war and austerity. The same can be Opinions expressed in Signed articles or letters do not necessarily express heading the Labour Party.' the editorial viewpoint. Compound this with decades of relative social continued on page 8

2 SPARTACIST. BRITAIN You can't fight Eurocommunism with Stalinism Euros sweep CPOB congress 'The Communist Party is Eurocommunist. It ised in the British Road to Socialism which lies states which are ruled by parasitiC bureauc­ passed a vote in support of Solida~ity in behind the stand we take on Poland'. In other r~cies whose nationalist programme of 'socialism Poland. But the imputation is .that to be a words parliamentary reformism in Britain, and in one country' undermines the defence and ex­ Communist is to be uncritically pro-Soviet. capitalist counterrevolution in Poland. Poland tension of the gains of October. For proletarian It is not so.' is the touchstone of social democratic loyalty political revolutions from Havana to East Berlin So spoke Monsignor Bruce Kent in his own de­ to the bourgeoisie, and the Eurocommunists are to Moscow! Many CPers, recoiling from outright fence against the tirade unleashed by the Tory lockstep with anti-Soviet, pro-capitalist social and total capitulation to the social democracy, establishment for his address to last month's democracy. ' want some positive, at least sympathetic, atti­ congress of the Communist Party. In his own way Our pamphlet 'Solidarnosc: Polish Company tude to the USSR. But a revolutionary answer is the Catholic priest and CND head rather accu­ Union for CIA and Bankers' has been a best sel­ not to be fOl,lnd in apologies for Stalinist rately characterised the present-day CPGB. Its ler among CPers trying to marshal arguments betrayal. decline and the deep divisions between the Euro­ against the Euros. As the Poland debate was For decades the whole reformist strategy of communists and the Moscow-loyal wing which have about to begin one dashed up to a Spartacist the CP has centred on being a second-rate Labour been sharpened and exacerbated by the onset of seller to buy his copy, exclaiming 'That's the Party promoting 'another' Labour government or Cold War II were to the fore at the 38th con­ one I want'. And an East European observer putting pressure on 'progressives' to 'fight the gress. The p,arty' s membership is scarcely 15,000, suggested we should donate one to prominent right'. The main protagonists inside the of whom only 6495 are dues-paying. General Euro Bill Innis. But, contrary to Johnstone, the Communist Party today all act within this frame­ Secretary Gordon McLen~n included a threat of tankies don't have the same position as us. work. Those CPers who object to the abject tail­ purge in his opening address, and as the con­ Their failed amendment on Poland 'fully supports ing of social democracy and who espouse 'pro­ gress proceeded an increasi~gly self-confident the Polish United Workers Party in their strug- Sovietism' must face the fact that the Moscow's Euro majority escalated its threats. The three gle to consolidate socia11:·~s~m~'~.~A~s~w~e~w~r~o~t~e~,~i~n~ __~~~~ __~ __~~~~ __~~ ____,, __ -,-r~~~~~~~ central functionaries of Morning Star, editor Tony Chater, MickCostello and David Whitfield, ..... "'" along with other prominent 'tankies' were un­ Jobless get ceremoniously dumped from the national execu­ Morning Star organised tive. To underline the message, youth supporting nl'/1I1"" * * INC(laJlOllAt1NG THE DAILY WOIlIlD. MOtIDAY NO'¥IMIIIl 14 MIl Straight Left were excluded from observing the conference and forced to sell Soviet Weekly out­ * CND leader praises Communist· role side the conference building. No wonder Bruce Kent could tell LBC radio that the CPGB are 'by no means, pro-Soviet' . Partner$ in -peace Kent's speech to the congress, in which he 'warmly' praised the CP for keeping 'the peace movement going through'the lean years' (along­ side the Quakers,), was hailed as the 'highlight' of the congress by Chater's Morning Star, which ran the banner headline 'Partners in peace' . And with few exceptions the 'tankie' delegates to the conference joined in a standing ovation for Kent. When one conference delegate dared to protest Kent's presence, the Euro platform. snapped back: 'Bruce Kent's views are in the spirit of our party! ' But not our party! On the morning of the October 1981 anti-missiles march, the same day Mornin~ Star carried the banner headline 'Defend' ·.~A,tll Britain', the Tjmes devoted fully one third of an article to slanderous accusations by Kent that the Spartacist League was 'usually ex­ tremely disruptive' and 'liable to cause a sav(£' " breach of the peace'. What the Times and Kent clearly ,objected to was our stated intent to march with the banners 'Smash Nato -- Defend the Soviet Union' and 'Stop Solidarity's counter-­ revolution'. Kent told the Times 'This is a peace march' and 'the Spartacists are no part of CND'. If the Tankies don't like Kent's fulsome praise for the anti-Marxist Marxism Today, then our leaflet: here is even better proof of what Bruce Kent bureaucracy's reactionary programme of peace­ 'The Jaruzelski regime might have spiked stands for: Little England pacifist anti­ ful co-existence with imperialism is incompati­ Solidarnosc' bid for power in December 1981, Sovietism. ble with revolutionary struggle to overthrow but the PUWP Stalinists and their apologists In an attempt to rally support against the the so-called 'democratic' bourgeOisies, and do not have a·programme to resolve the pro­ Euro offensive, AUEW-TASS general secretary Ken with the struggle for class defence of the tracted crisis in Poland. Straight Left and Gill abandoned the customary detached posture of Soviet Union in counterposition to petty­ Morning Star talk about the "mistakes" of the CP's most prominent trade union bureaucrats bourgeois pacifism. Only the Trotsky~st pro­ the Polish leadership and "regeneration". towards inner party discussion. Gill decried gramme of socialist revolution in the West .and But the Jaruzelksi regime continues to pros­ the party leadership's obsession with 'other political revolution in the degenerated and de­ trate itself before the main base for social social forces outside the trade union movement' formed workers states can lead to world counterrevolution, ~the landed peasantry and (a reference to the Eurocommunist interpretation socialism. the Catholic church. They let Wojtyla, pope of the 'broad democratic alliance' as a popular Do you comrades want to spend the next period of reaction, conduct his anti-communist front with the SDP, wet Tories, etc, etc). And with your main activity being the frantic scram­ crusaae across Poland last June. And Tony he went on to allude to the parallel between ble to retain control,of Morning Star against Chater's Morning Star blithely commended the defending the trade unions and the workers the Euros' share buying offensive and incessant pope's "st'rong affirmation of the freedom states. Euro after Euro got up to denounce him. bureaucratic manoeuvring against a Euro majority and national identity of Poland". And while But what was Ken Gill doing when Cold War which is already moving to expel oppositionists. the Euro-feminists happily support movements right wingers at the recent TUC Congress Look at the content of Morning Star under in Poland and Afghanistan which have tar­ launched a hysterical anti-communist tirade Chater, and remember that its policy is utterly get ted the rights of women, Morning Star against Arthur Scargill for daring to express in line with that laid ,out by ,JV Stalin and all (21 June 1983) presents the Polish church's the simple truth that Polish Solidarnosc was the editions of the British Road to Socialism -­ "case" against abortion. The Polish working 'anti-socialist'. Did he take the floor to the attempt to wean Britain from the American class must be mobilised behind its true counter these attacks and say 'we won't be your alliance and make imperialist Britain a 'friend' class interests: for the strict separation of tools to line up the workers behind your anti­ of the Soviet Union. The Straight Left grouping church and state, for Soviet/Polish workers' Soviet war drive?' No, that might have dis­ simply extends this policy towards complete unity in defence Of the Soviet bloc against rupted the 'broad left' alliance with the 'left' liquidation into social democracy. And the tiny capitalism-imperialism, for trade unions in­ social democrats. This is the sort of thing Leninist grouping has nothing more than 'soph­ dependent of bureaucratic control and based that happens when you start with peaceful co­ isticated' dilletantish explanations of every on defence of socialised property, for the existence -- you make peace with your own Stalinist betrayal committed. cancellation of the imperialist debt, for bourgeoisie. A lot of CPsupporters now recognise the collectivisation of agriculture, and for It was no accident that Monty Johnstone, the Spartacist League as the real Trotskyists. Those soviet democracy. The Stalinist regime can't CP's Trotsky 'expert' was chosen to introduce who want an alternative to Eurocommunist anti­ and won't do this -- it, requires a Leninist­ the Poland debate for the Euros .,/He launched his Sovietism, bureaucratic backs tabbing and apolo­ Trotskyist party. What is needed in Poland is defence of Solidarnosc against the 'tankies' getics for class betrayal must look beyond the a political revolution which will overthrow with: 'Your position on the undifferentiated CPo Today it is the programme of the Trotskyist the co'nservative, parasitic, repressive nature of Solidarnosc is the same as those Spartacist League which upholds the banner of bureaucracy and replace it with working class Spartacist Trots out there, outside our own con­ Leninism, proletarian internationalism and the organs, democratically elected soviets com­ ference'. Echoing theClA's call for 'free trade defence of the Soviet Union. Trotskyism is the mitted to the perspective of international unions' in Poland, Johnstone came to the heart continuity of Leninism. Break with the CP's SOCialist revoll,ltion.' of the matter when he emphasised that the CPBG's class collaborationist deadend, and as a number conception of 'socialist democracy' is 'visual- It is not only Poland but all the workers of ex-CP/YCL members have done, join us .•

DECEMBER 19831 JANUARY 1984 3 Stop racist anti-union frame-up! Freedom and jobs back for Ray a Lauren!

Oakland, California -- More than 400 militant Some of the most active workers for Lauren protesters in Oakland, California, October 29 put and Ray in the weeks before the demonstration the Alameda County District Attorney (DA) and were members of the Labpr Black League for Pacific Telephone ('Ma Bell') on notice: Stop Social Defense (LBL). The LBL was formed here the racist, anti-union frame-up of Lauren Mozee around the Spartacists' Martha Phillips election and Ray Palmiero! The predominantly black dem­ campaign last March, which had heavily stressed SH T onstrators, many of them trade unionists and the hideous pattern of racist killings by East their families, had come out in the drizzling Bay cops and the need to fight Klan terror IT DOWN rain to march and rally for 'Freedom and jobs through labour/black mobilisations like last . J back for Lauren and Ray! ~ In addition, massive year's November 27 mobilisation in Washington, . fir leafletting, posters, radio shows, newspaper DC. The LBL demonstrated with the Spartacist articles and publicising by the unions have made League in September demanding 'Vengeance for SHUT this case widely known throughout the area. Patrick Mason!' Lauren and Ray were facing seven and a half Among the unionists w~o provided stewards to tTTIGHT! years in prison for doing their duty as union­ help ensure an orderly march and rally were and Lauren on phone workers strike picket ist~ during the recent national phone strike. dockers, machinists, Teamsters and Steelworkers. lin~_ While on the picket line in Klan-infested San These brothers know that the attack on Ray and told a story about one of the monitors: 'A Leandro, Lauren was called a 'black nigger Lauren is an attack on the right to have real black steward in a Teamsters bottlers local bitch' and hit in the face by racist scab assis­ picket lines -- and if you've got no picket took 15 leaflets from one of our people on the tant manager Michelle Rose Hansen. Because lines, you've got no union. As the marchers pro­ street, handed them out, then he xeroxed 700 Lauren defended herself against this violent ceeded from the Oakland City Hall to the Alameda on his union machine and took them to the work company assault, because her companion Ray came County Courthouse, they passed a small picket locations represented by his local. Then he to her assistance, the two are facing multiple line of striking bookstore workers. 'Picket called us up and asked for 200 more for friends.' felony assault charges. They have been fired lines mean don't cross!' chanted the demon­ At the demonstration, the disciplined pro­ from their jobs a:nd denied unemployment benefits. strators in solidarity. testers were not cowed by the Oakland cops' The phone company, the cops and the DA are About 50 phone workers participated in the attempts to harass and provoke them. As the using this gross frame-up to send a message to demonstration. We spoke with Darlene, a young march arrived at the Fallon Street entrance to the population: black people don't have the black member of CWA Local 9415 who began work­ the courthouse, some six motorcycle cops right to defend themselves against racist attack, ing together with Lauren and Ray in the Militant zoomed through crowds of demonstrators on the workers don't have the right to defend their Action Caucus during the recent strike and wit­ street. This attempt to 'clear' the street picket lines. nessed Hansen's attack on Lauren. She told us: contravened a prior agreement between march Ma Bell and the DA may have thought the work­ 'A lot of young people today don't realise the organisers and police officials. After the ing people of Oakland would quietly stay 'in struggles their forefathers went through to demonstration, we learned that the cop sergeant their place' while two left-wing activists in in charge there, one Nolan Darnell, was the the union were picked off. But this blatant act first cop to open fire the night Panther Bobby of politicised racism in the service of union­ Hutton was blown away! busting is being opposed by a vigorous public Union speakers included Willie Lee Bell campaign of protest and exposure. The Phone r;t::N·:HEF:!~S from lAM Local 739, a close friend of slain Strikers Defense Committee has marshalled an im­ Machinists officer Briscoe. Alameda Supervisors pressive united-front defence effort which has '" nMUS~OZF~. ~ '~ chairman John George termed the racist slur been endorsed by labour organisations represent­ against Lauren 'fighting words': 'If we don't ing many thousands of workers, prominent. public fight back for somebody saying something like officials, numerous left-wing and community ac­ that, then that's an assault, an insult to all tivists. Among unionists and students, and in black women. We ought to slap that person in the neighbourhoods where supporters of Ray and the face.' Among other endorsers of the demon­ Lauren went to get the word out about the de­ stration were Congressman Ron Dellums; Angela monstration, the victimisation of Mozee and Davis, S Deacon Alexander and Rose Chernin, Palmiero has become widely known and broadly National Alliance Against Racist and Political opposed. It is because the victimised militants ~epression; Nelson Johnson, Communist Workers are determined to fight this vendetta not just Party; and Muhammad Ali. in court but through labour/black protest action Speaking for the Spartacist League, Diana that the DA has backed off from one of the phony Coleman received a warm reception from the charges and the phone company has distanced it­ demonstrators when she explained: self from scab Hansen. 'Reagan and his millionaire cronies, they From the steps of the Alameda County Court- hate black America and they hate the unions. house, Lauren Mozee explained the stakes: But I will tell you, you cannot fight 'As everyone knows, I'm a victim of a racist, Reagan with Democrats. We need labour action anti-labor frame-up. Why? One, I'm a black to bring down Reagan .... We of the Spartacist woman. Two, Ray and I are an interracial League intend to build a mass~ class­ couple. Three, I'm a militant -- I said mili­ struggle workers party. Not the kind that tant -- trade unionist. A former member of simply participates in elections but a the Black Panther Party for many years. And fighting workers party .... The working people I'm a firm believer -- I said firm believer .. ~ produced everything in this country and -- in socialism. I've always been a fighter Oakland, 29 October: 400 demonstrators demand: Lauren that's what we want. We want everything! and Ray must not go to jail! against racism and cop terror, and a fighter We want our own workers government and you for unity of the working class against the get unions -- the deaths, the arrests, just to need a workers party to get it.' bosses. Now- for these things and for dOing have a picket line.' Darlene emphasised that Nothing is fair or democratic about this my duty on the picket lines ... I've been defending Lauren and Ray is integral to fight~ sick, decaying system: that's why killer cops victimised. ing continuing company harassment and victim­ walk the streets and a black five-year-old lies ' .. _ It's not Ray and myself who are the isation. in the grave. That's why Michelle 'Scab' Hansen criminals here. The criminals are Ma Bell, Supporters of Lauren and Ray organised na­ has her job today while Ray and Lauren, with the San Leandro Police Department and the tionwide. A busload of supporters, including three children to support, have virtually no District Attorney.' several phone workers, rode up from LA to par­ income and are being dragged through the The demonstration brought out a serious hard ticipate in the march and rally. Backers of the bosses' courts, forced to wage a staggeringly core of people who know who the real criminals defence effort in more distant areas collected costly legal defence campaign to stay out of in this country are. Prominently displayed from signatures for telegrams of support and funds jail. the podium were large portraits to honour the for the Phone Strikers Defense Committee. In The October 29 demonstration is an example in memory of two black victims of racist killer Chicago, 150 striking school workers and 56 action of the Spartacist League perspective of cops: Patrick Mason, the five-year-old child phone workers (CWA Local 5050) signed statements forging a multi-racial vanguard party to lead shot to death by an Orange County cop last March, in solidarity with the demonstration's demands; the working class not only in effective and Charles Briscoe, the 37-year-old Machinists 96 Detroit workers, many from the giant Ford struggle to defend the rights of labour and the union official brutally gunned down in 1979 by River Rouge plant, sent a telegram and $305.05; oppressed but to fight for what we really need Oakland cops. in New York City, 156 transit workers and 71 -- a workers government to put the bosses and phone workers (CWA Locals 1101 and 1150) signed their state apparatus of repression out of bus­ The demonstration was a point of intersection iness once and for all. Or, as Victor Pamiroyan th~ir names for support telegrams; 152 Howard for deep and desperate concerns cf militant of I-LWU Local 6 said at the rally, 'Maybe one blacks and unionists. Striking workers came out, University students also sent a solidarity mes­ sage to the demonstration. day as workers we'll put companies on trial, in~egrated couples came anJ brought their kids. and we'll be the jury and ~he judge!' Many participants were people who have had dir':" Locally, campaign volunteers were excited Abridged from Workers Vanguard no 342, ect or close family acquaintance with cop about the way the case has become a real issue violence. in the unions and neighbourhoods. One comrade 18 November 1983

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN Spartacist, Britain: When the Broad Left took over in the POEU, many of our fake-left op­ Interview with POEU militant ponents hailed it as a victory for militant class struggle. It hasn't shaped up that way, has it? Reply: The rest of the left press tries to make it sound like the Broad Left capitulated to the right wing. But that's ridiculous, the Broad 'Shut down the City!' Left had a majority on the NEC, they had con­ trol. Militant has four supporters on the NEC. Spartacist Britain: What's the background to 'selective action' say that it's okay to cross They voted against obeying the injunction and this dispute? picket lines if you're not going to do blacked called it a 'setback' in their paper. But they Reply: Obviously it's part and parcel of the work. Well I say you shouldn't because picket did nothing to fight against it, because at Tories' union bashing attacks on the working lines mean don't cross! They're the battle line bottom they have the same line. A few weeks be­ class. They've been planning the privatisation of the class struggle, you're on one side or the fore that, we went to a public meeting organ­ of British Telecom since they came to power in other. ised by the British Telecom Unions Committee, 1979. Basically, privatisation is an excuse for where Phil Holt, who's a prominent Militant sup­ ripping up every agreement with the union, Spartacist Britain: You were one of the,fifty porter on the union exec, was a main s·peaker. every gain the union has made. They're commonly POEU members BT threatened to sack. How did After the meet'ing a couple of blokes who were that come about? talking about a figure o~ between 40 and 50 angry about having to sign the statement to re­ thousand redundancies. And you can bet the new Reply: Okay, on the Monday morning' after the turn to work came up to him. His answer was that companies being set up, like Mercury, will try lockout management gave us an ultimatum: either you had to sign it under the Tebbit Law. back the union and risk being sacked or agree to to be like most of the micro-electronics and What was. also interesting about that meeting work normally and be a scab. Me and the vast computer industry -- non-union. Just look at was the way that when I said we couldn't put any majority backed the union. Three days later, the who's running Mercury -- Michael Edwardes, the faith in the Labour Party, a number of Broad union leadership sent us back to work. They told great friend of Leyland workers. And it means Left supporters got up to say Labour was the us to sign a statement that we would work nor­ the telephone service will worsen for most answer. You know, you had 'left' MP Jeremy Corbyn mally, which was the very thing people had come ordinary people. Over the last few years, BT's talking about how great it was that the Kinnock/ out over. resources -- with the help of our pension funds Hattersley NEC backed the campaign against A couple of weeks later I was suspended for -- have been directed into the business centres. privatisation. But a lot of the unionists in the refusing to work on a piece of equipment which So while the ordinary customer uses an ancient audience clapped when I said the attacks didn't the union had blacked. Management said that I phone and gets crossed lines, dealers in the start with the Tories and the answer was a real had agreed to work normally. So I said that my City are using equipment which is more advanced class struggle strategy. than anything in the US or Japan. idea of working normally was obeying union Look, the whole campaign against privati sa­ Well, for ages the POEU was simply producing instructions. So they suspended me again. And tion has been focussed on the idea of 'Hands off propaganda about what a bad thing this would be I've been out ever since. BT', 'save BT', save 'our' nationalised industry and relying on parliamentary pressure. Tradi­ as though it was a step to-ward socialism. Of tionally the POEU has been what the press calls course we're in favour of essential public ser­ 'moderate', you know, supporting government .- vices ~ike telecommunications being national­ wage freezes, productivity deals and so on. The ised. The working class had to fight to get the general secretary, Bryan Stanley, began his National Health Service, crummy as it is. But climb to the top as part of a right-wing group basically I'm not interested in whether my boss called the 'Bloc' who were dedicated to pre­ is Sir George Jefferson or somebody from pri­ venting 'communist infiltration' of the union vate industry. What matters is that through during the last Cold War. I guess by last privatisation jobs, working conditions and the spring, with the bill to sell off BT due to be power to fight against attacks on them are being passed in June, even Bryan Stanley must have destroyed. realised that they'd better look like they were doing something. And the BTUC propaganda has increasingly be­ So there were two selective strikes called, come patriotic, nationalist rubbish. So they but these were called off as soon as the general poeu put out leaflets and newsletters which say, oh, election was announced. I mean Michael Foot Picket British Telecom could fall into the hands of didn't want to have the Labour Party associated Japanese and American investors and shock, hor­ with workers actually taking strike action. And ror, this would be' a threat to Britain's at the same time the Broad Left got a majority national security. In other words, we're better on the NEC for the first time ever -- basically at saving this system than Margaret Thatcher. on a promise of carrying out a real fight. Well, it's true that BT is essential for The new leadership did step up the action a Britain's 'national security', you know, stuff little after the election. They blacked work like being part of the NATO communication net­ for the backers of Project Mercury. Later the work and Special Branch phone tapping. Bloody NEC called a work-to-rule in the three London hell, these are things the working class must international exchanges. This was pretty suc­ oppose! cessful in terms of disrupting international Spartacist Britain: Where do you think it should traffic and within days, half the lines weren't go from here? functioning. POEU strikers picket Telecom. Reply: Well, the union leadership are telling So management reacted in the most provocative Picket lines mean don't cross! all the strikers to go back tq work. The NEC way imaginable -- and this really shows how they put out a statement a couple of weeks ago about were out to break the union. They seized each Spartacist Britain: What do you think should 'rededicating' itself to the struggle against of the exchanges in military style raids in the have happened after the lockout? privatisation, blah, blah, blah, and a 'shift of early hours of the morning. When members of the Reply: At the next union branch meeting, I tactics', but what it really means is that NEC tried phoning each other, a lot of them argued for a motion for a strategy of militant everything is being channeled back into a pub­ found their phones were 'out of order'. action. Here we were faced with a threat not licity and parliamentary campaign" BT management Spartacist Britain: How did the union respond to just to our jobs, but even to the existence of are making it clear that if we go back on their this provocation? our union. The first point I,made was this lock­ terms they're going to make the union eat shit, Reply: Well, the response of the membership has out at the international exchanges -- it and especially go after the militants. Instead been pretty solid. Almost everyone refused to shouldn't have been BT who locked us out, we of going back to work, we should be coming all­ cross picket lines. On the other hand, the should have bloody well locked them out and oc­ out alongside the NGA and organise a powerful leadership has been at best pathetic. and most of cupied! The union leaderShip talked about sel~c­ counteroffensive against the Tory union-bashing. the time downright treacherous. Their tactics of tive action. Well, for a start we should have selected the City for some real strike action, Spartacist Britain: As you know it's not just pulled out every Telecom worker in the area and here that there are ~ttacks on the unions. In from there extended the strike nationally. So my the US, our comrades are heavily involved in the motion said, Shut down the City! Boy, imagine defence of two phone workers, Lauren Mozee and the screams from the ruling class when the com­ Ray Palmiero, (see article in this issue). munications networks of the stock exchange, the Reply: So, Ray and Lauren were picked on for a banks and insurance companies began to crash. whole number of reasons, not least because they It'd be incredible. And with the POEU being want to turn their union into one which really threatened with use of the Tebbit Act, I said we fights. I know they're members of the Militant should in no way comply, we had to smash this Action Caucus in the American phone workers reactionary piece of legislation and calIon the union, which is fighting for a class-struggle rest of the trade union movement to join us. leadership. And, that is just the type of leadership the POEU needs. One which says picket Spartacist Britain: That's obviously not what lines mean don't cross, full stop. One which happened. fights for an industrial union, including the Reply: No, a couple of weeks after that the women operators who are treated as second class national union leadership capitulated to the citizens. One that fights for jobs for all and­ court injunction which ordered the union to lift work sharing on full pay. One which is inter­ the blacking of Project Mercury. The TUC's been nationalist, which fights like' hell when right­ promising to fight the Tebbit Bill since it wingers like Losinska and Duffy try to get our first came up. First they said they would fight unions to e~dorse Reagan's Korean jet provoca­ it when it became law. Then they said they'd tion against the Soviet Union or witchhunt fight it when it was first used. Now it was Arthur Scargill for saying the truth about used, against us, and all they said was we had Solidarnosc and the warmongering of Maggie no choice but to obey the law. And the POEU Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. So I think we need leadership just said if we didn't go along with to build a leadership in the union which is com­ the court decision our union would be destroyed. mitted to winning the fights of today and show­ POEU's 'Broad Left' leadership pushes social-democratic In fact the opposite is true -- if we go along ing workers that the only decent future lies in nationalism - no answer to Tory attacks. with these laws the unions will be destroyed. the working class taking'power._

DECEMBER 1983/ JANUARY 1984 5 Bringing 'democracy' at bayonet pOint to Grenada is a replay of the colonialists' 'white man's burden'. And what 'democracy'! The gov­ Don't mess with the Russians. •• ernor-general, Sir Paul Scoon, representative (Continued from page 12) of the Queen, promptly banned all public as­ Times, 30 September). This thinly disguised sighted way to divide the West European imper­ semblies and meetings, instituted searches call for capitalist counterrevolution in the ialists from Reagan's America. While the Reagan­ wi.thout warrants and announced plans for press DDR (East Germany) is really a call for a ites are certainly consumed with first-strike censorship! Now it is revealed that prisoners 'Fourth Reich' to dominate Europe, this time madness, the notion that Margaret Thatcher, were held for 'interrogation' in tiny isolation under the rule of 'democratic' German capital­ Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl are 'peace­ booths, wooden crates with a few slits and tiny ism. As in two previous world wars, the funda­ loving' is a dangerous illusion indeed. Defend­ holes for ventilation: 'a new version of the mental military obstacle will be Russia. ing his nuclear arsenal before the UN, social­ Vietnam 'tiger cages' for suspected Viet Congo German imperialism is no more pacific than democratic Cold Warrior Mitterrand proclaimed The Wall Street Journal (28 October) pro­ ,its American, British and French allies. It that 'my country is independent', that France claimed that Grenada had buried the 'lesson of merely has a rather different strategy than the would 'not be exposed to the risk of seeing the Vietnam' and proved its opposite: that the US Reaganite first-strikers for reconquering the modernisation of its defence come under the should 'use military power to achieve its poli­ Soviet bloc bureaucratically degenerated/ control of the two superpowers'. Yet there is tical goals'. It's an open secret that the no doubt that it is the Reagan gang is now preparing an invasion of Russians who would be the Sandinista Nicaragua to follow up their Grenada target of France's 'in­ 'win~. The New York Times (11 November) re­ dependent' force de ported a secret meeting last month of the frappe! As for the Amer­ military chiefs of Panama, El Salvador, Hondur­ icans, Reagan has made it as and Guatemala to study 'the legality of clear that it is not the joint military action against Nicaragua'. Asked policies of the Soviet, if the US would 'aid' an invasion by its pup­ Vietnamese, Cuban and pets, National Security Council head Robert Polish deformed workers McFarlane replied, 'Yes, we support them.' But states and the Nicaraguan Nicaragua could be the political graveyard for Sandinista petty-bour­ Ronald Reagan, as well as the physical grave­ geois nationalist regime yard for his contras. Unlike the Grenadian New that the US opposes, but Jewel Movement, which took power through a thei~ very existence. military coup, the radical-nationalist Sandin­ istas toppled the hated Somoza regime through a , From Grenada to the mass insurrection and civil war. The Nicaraguan . shores of Tripoli people will fight like hell to prevent the The tiny island of Somozaist butchers from returning. And next Grenada, with an army door in El Salvador, the leftist insurgents are good only for shooting wiping up the puppet army which seems close to collapse. Faced with the CIA war against its strategic industrial facilities, Nicaragua's military arsenal to defend its airspace and coastlines is pitifully inadequate. The Sandinistas are now asking foreign governments for anti-aircraft defences as well as combat airplanes. The chance of Washington's allies, like 'socialist' Mitterrand's France, providing this aid is nil. The Soviet Union is the only real possibility. We say: send advanced weaponry to Nicaragua! When the Spartacist tendency first raised the slogan, 'Nicaragua needs Soviet MIGS', the German movement' pushes re­ reformist 'left' scoffed at this as bizarre. surgent German nation­ But who today will deny that the Sandinistas alism; Trotskyists of TLD desperately need these weapons to defend the fight for revolutionary revolution against the CIA and contras? Defence internationalism, defence of Cuba/USSR begins in Central America! of Soviet Union. Even in an impoverished country like Nicaragua, oil is the lifeblood of the economy. deformed workers states. Meanwhile, equally or more ominously, Exxon, As the Trotzkistische which owns the country's only oil refinery, has Liga Deutschlands (TLD) , said it will not transport oil to Nicaraguan German section of the in­ ports due to 'safety considerations'. The state­ ternational Spartacist owned Mexican oil company, PEMEX, has for now tendency, wrote last agreed to continue supplying Nicaragua with year: crude oil but only if the Sandinista government 'The German bankers arranges transport. And the contras have pub­ not want a third world licly threatened to blow 'lfp tankers delivering war now, whether Mexican oil to Nicaragua. Mexican workers must fought with nuclear or conventional weapons, down its own unarmed citizens, was supposed to demand that the De la Madrid regime continue because they would lose it now. Thus, the be a quick, tidy military operation for the deliveries of oil to Managua. And Soviet/Cuban German bourgeoisie is striving to undermine American war machine. 'Operation Urgent Fury' naval forces must convoy the urgently needed the planned economies through credits, was a diversion to draw attention away from the fuel to Nicaragua. commodities and joint projects and at the bloody mess in Lebanon, where US military head­ The efforts of the soft cops of the Contadora same time to penetrate these with bourgeois quarters were blown away and some 240 Marines group (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama) ideology in social-democrat'ic colors with the killed. Maybe it would give Reagan a 'Falklands support of the corrupt Stalinist bureauc­ factor' to get himself re-elected as well. to mediate a negotiated settlement in Central America is an attempt to avoid the domestic racy.' ('The Ominous Resurgence of German "Grenada did manage to drive Lebanon off the Nationalism', Spartacist [English Edition] front pages for a few days, but when reporters repercussions of either direct Yankee interven­ no 35, Autumn 1983) were finally permitted on the island they found tion or social revolution. The Contadora call, which Castro endorses and the Sandinistas have But the legitimate fear of nuclear annihilation the fighting neither quick nor tidy: it took accepted, for a halt to all arms deliveries in and national sentiments of the German masses can 6000 'crack' American troops, 20 naval warships the region (including aid to Salvadoran left­ be mobilised on a communist programme. The TLD and several squadrons of Air Force fighters and ist insurgents), the withdrawal of military calls for the revolutionary reunification of helicopter gunships almost a week to take advisers (including Cubans) and early elections, Germany as the motor for a United Socialist Grenada in the face of heroic resistance by 700 is a formula for the prostration of Sandinista States of Europe. While the 'peace movement' is Cuban construction workers. Nicaragua before the US war machine and the going through the motions with impotent mass All the talk of Cuban troops was a lie: the demonstrations againit the Pershing and Cruise US just couldn't accept that older Cuban volun­ strengthening of the internal fifth column. Even a 'compromise' settlement such as a government missiles, the German Trotskyists demand: 'Stop teer militarily-trained construction workers of 'national unity', no doubt involving reac­ NATO first-strike weapons with workers' would fight like hell. As Fidel Castro pointed tionaries like Archbishop Obando y Bravo, would strikes!' (Spartakist, October 1983) The call out in a press conference in the early morning only be a brief transition to bloody counter­ for labour action against the missiles is not a hours of October 26, 'Proof of the fact that revolution. cry in the wilderness, moreover. Thus at the they are ·construction workers is the excellent recent congress of the Metal Workers Union, airport tpey built in such a short time, where To be successful, the answer to the CIA and some 58 resolutions were proposed on the issue dozens of US planes landed, even though it is the contras is to wage a revolutionary war of the new missiles, including several advocat­ not finished yet.' Told by their leaders to for workers revolution throughout Central ing work stoppages. (The union tops' response defend their camps with energy and courage if America and extending north to Mexico with its was for a 5-minute 'warning strike'!) In response fired upon, they did so. Indeed, the Reagan several millions ,of proletarians. And meanwhile the TLD raised the demand for a two-day gen­ administration ought to be mindful that the there must be sh'arp class struggle in the Uni ted eral strike against the deployment of Pershing Cubans only defended themselves. As one reporter States to bring Reagan down. This is the pro­ and Cruise missiles. Linked to the recent wave put it: gramme of the Trotskyists, of permanent revol­ of strikes, this could prepare a really hot 'But many of the Cubans make a single force­ ution requiring the construction of authentic time for the German bourgeoisie and bring down ful point. If they had intended to be ag­ Leninist-Bolshevik internationalist parties. the Kohl government through strike action. gressors, they would have shot a great Even more imminent than direct US invasion of number of the first wave of US troops as Central America is the prospect of Reagan touch­ No detente illusions but work9rs revolution! they dangled from their parachutes in the ing off a major war in the Near East. Despite sky. Their positions would have been chosen all their talk of Syria as a "Soviet proxy' , Stalin's successors in the Kremlin are once with that in mind, and they would have made much of the US ruling class knows that Damascus again seeking a deal with resurgent German a better job of holding off the invasion' strongman Assad is just as treacherous as was nationalism, hoping in their usual short- (Times, 7 November 1983). Egypt's Sadat, who dumped the Soviet alliance a

6 SPARTACIST BRITAIN decade ago in exchange by the heroic Vietnamese peasants and workers. for US weapons and Saudi In raping Grenada Reagan sought to retaliate petrodollars. Washington for the American humiliation -- not only in is threatening a puni- . Beirut but in Cuba, Nicaragua, and above all tive attack on Syria in Vietnam. A revolutionary war throughout order to force Assad to Central America would threaten Yankee imperial­ do Washington's bidding ism with a new Vietnam-type defeat, this time (pull his troops out of in its own backyard. Lebanon, recognise an Behind America's bullying arrogance is the Israeli protectorate cowardice of a reactionary social class. The south of the Awali insane warmonger Reagan, like Hitler, is the River, etc) or else face personification of the deeply irrational capi­ the consequences. But talist system in its death agony. Private whatever Washington's war property and the nation-state, the cradle of plans and scenarios, a the bourgeois revolution, are now shackles which US/Israeli attack on strangle and deform the productive forces. Syria, now Russia's main The crisis of American capitalism tOday is military client in the not the crisis of a single country but of the region, can easily and entire imperialist system. The US is the number quickly escalate into a one enemy of the world's working peoples. But nuclear World War III. Syria is the Krem­ lin's most important client state in the Near "t East. Several thousand 1f! Soviet military advisers , are now with Syrian 1 !Ie,_ ~orces, and many of i these would certainly be killed in any major US Reagan ordered US or Israeli attack. Facing American war provoca­ imperialist rape of tions and war moves around the globe (above all, Grenada (top) as diver­ sion from bloody mess in the deployment of first-strike Pershing 2 mis­ Lebanon. siles in West Europe), Soviet leaders may well not allow their Syrian ally to be humiliated Syria drawing in the and defeated at the hands of Reagan and his Soviet Union, then for Zionist henchmen. Even Washington's staunchest all class-conscious anti-Soviet NATO allies -- Thatcher's Britain proletarians, the duty and Mitterrand's France -- are worried that of unconditional mili­ Reagan is playing a dangerous game on the tary defence of the Lebanon/Syria front. London warned the US not to USSR against imperial­ retaliate against Syrian-backed forces in Leb­ ism would be posed. anon for the bombing of the Marines' Beirut . Especially aft~r headquarters. Likewise Paris expressed concern that truck bomb de­ about the 'risks of an escalation in the Middle molished Mart'ne head­ East' . quarters at Beirut In the 1973 October War between Israel and airport, US rulers the Arab states, Nixon resorted to nuclear were furious with brinkmanship to warn off the Soviets from in­ their Israeli allies tervening on Egypt's behalf. That was during the for precipitously heyday of 'detente'. Now the Russians are in pulling their forces the out of central Lebanon. The Israeli army is sup- for revolutionaries in the other imperialist Syria in a big way, and Reagan is 'going for posed to police the N~ar East for US imperial- powers, especially Britain where Yank-baiting is big one' against the Soviets' 'evil empire'. ism, not ·the other way around. So Reagan is now the calling card of left-Labouri te and Stalinist pressuring Israel to step up its involvement chauvinism, it must be underlined: the main Reforging the Washington/Jerusalem axis across the board. enemy is at home! 'Anti-Americanism' does not At bottom the present fighting in Lebanon is However, Washington's current policy equal anti-imperialism. In the mouths of the a continuation of the centuries-old communal/ of pushing Israel into a war with Syria is a reformists anti-American rhetoric only serves to sectarian conflicts between Muslims and Christ­ dangerous game, for it threatens to further de- amnesty one's own bourgoisie. For example, op­ ians, Sunnis and Shi'ites, Druze and others. A stabilise the Zionist fortress internally. The position to US policy in Central America is victory of the 'other side' (whoever that is at invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 deeply polar- fully compatible with the social-democratic line any given moment) against the US and the ised Israeli society, including its armed of 'political solution' to cheat the Salvadoran Phalange would simply lead to new conflicts and forces. Had Begin/Sharon ordered the Israeli masses of victory and pave the way for more deals among the myriad feudalist warlords of army to take Beirut, staggering casualties would slaughter at the hands of the military. Lebanon. likely have caused an explosion on the home Whatever their tactical differences Britain, Trotskyists demand the immediate withdrawal front and in the army as well. The Zionist France and Germany along with the US believe of all imperialist troops from the Lebanon: butchers did not withdraw from the Shuf Moun- that the only way out is through reconquering British, French and Italian as well as Amer- tains because they suddenly lost their taste the one-third of the world which has been liber- ican. The slogan 'Marines out of Lebanon, now, for Arab blood. The occupation of central ated from the grip of capitalism. Reagan and alive!' raised by our American comrades evokes Lebanon was bleeding Israel, not least Thatcher see the hand of Moscow behind every the widespread anti-government outrage felt by economically. struggle for national emancipation and social the American masses at Reagan's squandering of If the Lebanese adventure has proved to be a justice because these struggles can only be ful­ life in the Lebanon 'quagmire', reviving Memories Pyrrhic victory for the Zionists, it did achieve ly victorious through the revolutionary ex- of Vietnam. We recognise a fundamental differ- its main aim: the destruction of the Palestine propriation of capital and the establishment of ence between American intervention in Lebanon Liberation Organisation (PLO) as an independent proletarian property forms as in the 1917 and in Vietnam. In Vietnam,' US imperialism in­ military force. Yasir Arafat (and unfortunately Russian October Revolution. Defend the Soviet tervened to suppress a social revolution. In not he alone) is now paying the price for with- Union! that war, the defeat of the US expeditionary drawing PLO fighters from Beirut and inviting Adapted from Workers Vanguard. nos 341. 342. force and the Saigon puppet army was key to vic­ in the US Marines and othe'r imperialist 'peace- 4 and 18 November 1983 tory of the social revolution. However, if US keepers'. The PLO commandos were dispersed in military intervention escalates to a war with concentration camps across the Arab world, while those remaining in Lebanon increasingly came under the control of the Syrian army. Assad has moved to take over the Palestinian movement, in part by exploiting justified hostility to Arafat's sellouts among many PLO militants. We are witnessing the destruction of the PLO as its remnants become clients of various mutually hostile reactionary Arab regimes. The simultaneous crisis of Zionism and the Palestine national liberation movement offers a crucial opportuni t·y to crystallise an Arab/ Hebrew communist vanguard. A Trotskyist party must be based on this fundamental under­ standing: that there will be no future for the Hebrew-speaking people in the Near East with­ out the destruction of the Zionist state; and there can be no national liberation for the Palestinian people without breaking from Arab nationalism. The only road to peace and justice for both peoples is through a binational Arab/ Hebrew workers state, in the framework of a socialist federation of the Near East.

Sp'n,,,,,p"b",","g c' ! -,~\, Smash the anti-Soviet war drive! 0.,80.11 1377, GPO. New YOrk NY 10116 ..>~ ., 45p inc p&p .~~ It will take more than a 'Grenada high' to Make payable/post to: Spartacist Publications. restore the 'American century' which ended in ~~" PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE Detroit. 25 October: SLiUS protests against US war the swamps of Indochina as the most powerful moves in Near East. rape of Grenada. imperialist war machine in history was defeated

DECEMBER 1983/JANUARY 1984 7 might provide the basis for selective critical Withdrawal' grouping including the Liberal support. In counterposition to my initial posi­ Party and sections of the Labour Party, I Reapplication. • • tion this gives the possibility of intervention thought that it would be principled to bloc for into the base of the Labour Party to raise the a demonstration on the basis of political status (Continued from page 2) central political questions facing the working alone, which would have obliterated the class class, and therefore to address the increasingly line represented by the call for Troops Out Now, said of Central America, where the iSt's unique subterranean split in the LP in the concrete which the whole left wanted to drop, so that a perspective of workers revolution, expressed situation. more palatable imperialist 'solution' could be in what ought to be the obvious position of What a nationally-limited stance becomes in imposed. Again l~st summer over the Lebanon I military victory to the leftists in El this period was glaringly revealed in the posi­ wanted to drop opposition to imperialist troops Salvador, flows from the understanding that tion I took on the Falklands war .... The posi­ so as to get in on the demonstration being or­ Reagan is pursuing class war with ulterior mo­ tion of 'Withdraw the Fleet' was a position of ganised by local PLO supporters. And if acqui­ t~ves in the region, and that nothing can be defending the imperialist armed forces from de­ escence to imperialist intervention is one won or defended with a line that bases itself struction by another anti-Soviet military. The option if you abandon a proletarian perspective, on a denial that the real targets are first Falklands war tested every tendency on the so tailing the nationalist fighters is the Cuba, then Russia, ie there is no such thing as British left in the clearest way, because war other, irrespective that their 'armed struggle' a 'negotiated settlement' with the US and its is the period of the greatest nationalist pres­ is an integral part of an anti-proletarian juntas. The US will stop at nothing to regain sures. This Bennite position was a clear capitu­ perspective of extorting from imperialism the what it has lost in the Caribbean and to lation to the 'socialist' chauvinism of the basis for an independent capitalist state, strengthen its position for conflict with Labour Party, and shows how the acceptance of which in the case of interpenetrated communi­ Moscow. the Labour Party as the framework for all poli­ ties will inevitably be accompanied by an orgy tical activity ('looking at everything through Cold War split in Labour Party of communalism. That is what the INLA repre­ the grimy spectacles of the Labour Party') is sent, just as much as the IRA, and when I Without this understanding, it becomes im­ fatal to an independent revolutionary programme. tried to paint them up as less communalist, it possible to either understand the particular National chauvinism breeds racism, and the amounted to a backhanded nullifying of'my ac­ situation in any given country or to fight for domestic concomitant of the war arive in every ceptance of the SL's position that the Droppin an independent programme. With me this emerged country has been the escalating racist attacks, Well bombing was indefensible. There is another very clearly in relation to the Labour Party. often state-sponsored, on the rights, living subordinate element to the Ireland/Lebanon In my resignation letter I' said that 'a struggle conditions and lives of minorities. Equally this demonstration incidents, which is a lightminded against coalitionism is central to the struggle period is one of rising reactionary values which attitude towards the question of the united against Labourism in the present period.' This bear down hardest on women. Women are excluded front and the mingling of banners. This in position stands in implicit counterposition to from work, every day in t~e papers there is a turn means softness on the party question, the SL's correct position that the central is­ fresh campaign against contraception rights and sliding back from the paramount importance of sue in the Labour Party is the Russian ques­ abortion, the 'liberal' Guardian bemoans the the party as an independent force with a uni­ tion". Groups like Socialist Action and Socialist effects of divorce, everybody from Mary quely correct programme as its reason for Organiser, whose declared aim is to rebuild the Whitehouse to the feminists campaigns against existence. Labour Party, have adopted the 'struggle against pornography. The insidious"ingrained 'planter' That kind of lightmindedness raises the coalitionism' as a weekly refrain. Far from mentality of the British bourgeoisie, middle question that goes beyond the narrowly pro­ wanting to pursue opportunities when they arise class and labour bureaucracy who treat immi­ grammatic issues: the question of overall to deepen and exploit the cold split between grants and minorities like officers of the commitment to the cause of working class rev- NATO/CIA-loving Cold Warriors like Healey and the little-England 'left' these groups have raised the unity Of the Labour Party to a prem­ ium. They want to save the old (ie loyal prop of NATO) Labour Party, in conditions where, whatever the conjunctural balance of forces, the BLP is still not a reliable prospect for bourgeois government in the period of Cold War. I also advocated dropping the slogan of 'Drive out the CIA/NATO-loving right wing', which a) mirrors the Bennite retreat from con­ frontation with the right and b) indicates how I saw the division in the Labour Party as epi­ sodic, an inheritance from the record of the Callaghan government, rather than understand­ ing its roots in the international political situation, and the role played by British im­ perialism in the NATO war drive, along with the long-term decline of Britain into a third or fourth rate power. This has very important general programmatic and methodological impli­ cations for my position on the Labour Party. Without firmly basing the perspective of deep­ ening the Cold War split in the Labour Party on the analysis of a distorted and uneven class line being drawn, you end up with a WSL­ type position of Make the Lefts Fight. If the events in the Labour Party are really about refurbishing credentials ~fter 1979 then criti­ cal support to Benn against Healey in 1981, for example, is simply to lapse into the customary Labouri te lesser-evi'l -approach of the British SL/US leads thousands in struggle against Klu Klux Klan terror, Washington, 27 November 1982. left. The alternatives reallv are to 'rebuild , ' " the Labour Party' or to fight to split and de­ British Raj treated the Indian colonial slaves, olution. As Cannon put it in Struggle for a stroy it. and the allied spirit of male chauvinist super­ Proletarian Party, 'We judge all people coming The article in Spartacist Britain no 50 iority have to be vehemently combatted through to us from another class by the extent of their on the election confirmed the strength of the the fight for working class power, led by a real identification with our class, and the SL's position. When I first thought about the party reflecting in its ranks and its leader­ contributions which they can make which aid the question of the Labour Party in the election ship the most oppressed parts of the working proletariat in its struggle against the capi­ I tended not very enthusiastically towards giv­ class and standing as the tribune of all op­ talist class.' Speaking of proletarian leaders ing critical support to the LP, on the basis pressed groups in society .... The point is, how­ like Lenin and Trotsky who had middle-class that with Thatcher on the rampage and with ever, not simply to be guilty, but to struggle origins he said 'they had to desert their own Labour running independently there was a 'nor­ as part of the party for the programme and ac­ class and join "the revolutionary class, the mal' counterposition of the bourgeois party and tivity of Bolshevik internationalism, in order class that holds the future in its hands." the bourgeois workers party. This view was a to safeguard the party as the tribune of the They made this transfer of class allegiance continuation of the British-centred, lesser-evil oppressed; to participate in the patient, long­ unconditionally and without any reservations. method. The reality was very different. If this term task of recruiting and training minority Only so could they become genuine representa­ election was one thing it was not normal. The and women cadres such that the organisation tives of their adopted class, and merge them­ central feature was the disarray of the Labour genuinely reflects the working class and not a sel ves completely with it and eliminate, every Party, which was the product of the impossible group of declassed petty-bourgeois. shadow of conflict between them and revolu­ task of supporting the war drive and offering Given the systematic way in which I began to tionists of proletarian origin.' ... The whole­ reforms when nobody believes the LP can deliver reflect ~he pressure of the bourgeoisie it is hearted rejection of and fight against the on reforms and when the pro-NATO leaders were not surprising that I had wrong positions on values of the British petty-bourgeoisie is a firmly identified with the austerity of the last Ireland (which the SL has repeatedly pointed particularly important break for me to make if Labour government. However weakly, the right was out as with the Labour Party, an acid test for I am going to be a genuinely committed member in the saddle for this election, and the Labour British revolutionaries), and on the Middle of the party ... ~ Party was therefore running on the basis of East. In each case what I advocated stemmed Cold War social contract austerity. This was the from the implicit standpoint that the only I believe I do have basic programmatic agree­ product of the state of play in the internal 'practical' solution to the national question ment with the iSt, but obviously this has to be situation in the LP, with Benn well out of in these areas would come through the bourgeoi­ tested .. ' .. When I was still in the organisation sight by his own choice. The SL's position was Sie, ie not believing that the proletariat could I said once that the worst punishment a commun­ to address the question of the Cold War Labour actually break through the entangled national ist, could suffer was to be outside the party. I Party and the fight to split it and win working and communal antag~nisms. I manifested the typi- didn't really feel that then, and in my case the class supporters to communis~ through standing cal centrist impatience to 'do' something. In punishment is self-inflicted. But I do believe against a vote for a British Bob Hawke whilst Sheffield during the hunger strike, when the it now. making the point that if there were LP candi­ Sinn Fein/IRSP and their admirers on the Brit- Comradely, dates who broke ranks and counterposed them­ ish left were trying to pressure the 'humanitar- A Gilchrist selves to the war drive leadership that this ian' wing of imperialism, ie the 'Voices for 29 August 1983

8 SPARTACIST BRITAIN andel: Europacifism in the service of Cold War EDITOR'S NOTE: Particularly with the onset of Picquet in Rouge and International Viewpoint on Portugal'. The Mandelites offer the social Cold War II, the impressionist Mandelite wing the South Korean Boeing. In the face of an ut­ democrats a programme for counterrevolution in of the United Secretariat has galloped rapidly terly flagrant imperialist provocation" Picquet Eastern Europe, an extension of their enthusi­ to the right. Its British section, the ex­ launched a particularly disgusting attack astic support to the clerical-nationalists of International Marxist Group, came out of the against the USSR, accusing it of corr~itting an Solidarnosc, by focussing on the pacifist move­ Labour Party over Vietnam and has since dived 'unjustifiable act' which 'even gave aid and ments (once again, dominated by the Ghurch). back in over Poland, reflecting the Mandelites' comfort to the imperialists' in their war drive. passage into the camp of the social democracy. Picquet's disgusting article merely applied Anti-Soviet 'democratic socialism' As one of our comrades said at a recent the real line set forth by Mandel's article: Today hund eds of thousands of Europeans, Mandelite conference in London (from which the 'Everything that helps the biggest and most particularly Germans, are mobilising, rightly Groganite pro-American SWP wing was conspicu­ unified mobilisation for unilateral disarma­ terrified by the NATO decision to make Europe ously absent), these days they're pushing the ment in imperialist Europe is a blow a thous­ (and especially Germany) the 'theatre' of a 'pope as chief shop steward in Poland'. True to and times harder against imperialism, and 'limited nuclear war'. British and German social form, featured speaker Ernest Mandel treated the thus a thousand times more effective to the democrats are exploiting this sentiment to dismal audience of less than 200 to a ringing defence of the USSR and the workers' states, mobilise not against an anti-Soviet war as such, defence of counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc' than a few more rockets, or a few less but on a nationalist basis against the war 'fight for socialism', counterposing 'unilater­ disciplinary conflicts in the army of this Reagan projects -- which would 'sacrifice' alist' third-camp pacifism to Trotskyist Soviet­ or that workers' state.' Europe. They cherish the 'nationalist' dream of defencism -- questions taken up in the polemic reprinted below. And British Mandelite guru John Ross sharply expressed their dive into Labourism by proudly identifying himself as a 'democratic socialist', in the image of Karl Kautsky & Co.

'Thus, the fact that the Soviet Union has built and stockpiled nuclear weapons has saved humanity up till now from a nuclear holocaust. Without this "balance of terror" it is practically certain thdt imperialism would already have used nuclear weapons against the "Chinese volunteers" during the Korean war, against the Indochinese revol­ utions during the second Indochinese war and, indeed, against other revolutions. Of course the dictatorship of the bureaucracy is to a great extent responsible for the survival of world imperialism, and thus, indirectly, for the presence of the nuclear threat. But the existence of the Soviet workers' state as a state of a different social nature from the imperialist states, a state that is not pro­ pelled down the road to a nuclear holocaust Victorious NLF entering Saigon, 1975. USec says 'No more Vietnams', Trotskyists say '2, 3 many defeats for by its own deadly logic, reveals again its imperialism!' Maurice Bishop (left) with Fidel Castro. USec hailed Bishop's New Jewel Movement as 'revolutionary leadership', refused to raise defence of Cuba over US invasion of Grenada. contradictory significance in the world today. That Soviet nuclear strength affords So the USSR is supposed to disarm in the a war between the two 'superpowers', exchanging a measure of protection to anti-imperialist face of the imperialist revanchists in return bombs above the heads of the Europeans -- as revolutions confirms the correctness of our for a promise that the bourgeoisie will be dis­ absurd as a war 'limited' to Europe. Marxist characterization, and displeases all armed not by proletarian revolution, but by a The Reagans and the Mitterrands accuse the those inconsistent and superficial detractors pacifists of wanting 'another Munich' and of who consider that the USSR is or the same 'Europacifist' movement based on bourgeois na­ 'playing the Russians' game'. But just look, say social nature as the United States or a like tionalism and led to a large extent by social the Mandelites, not only do we call for uni­ "superpower". ' democracy! lateral disarmament by the USSR, but in addition These convincing arguments in favour of the This is absurd, as Mandel well knows. Trotskyist position of military defence of the Clearly, in practice Mandel rejects the derence 'We support the struggle by independent paCi­ Soviet Union are not drawn from some inter­ of the Soviet degenerated workers state. His fist groups [in the East] against the bu­ national Spartacist tendency publication. It is 'theoretical' cover lies in denying the dual reaucracy's military policies, against the by none other than Ernest Mandel in the Sept­ nature of the bureaucracy -- and the fact that secret choices in allocating resources for ember-October issue of New Left Review. it is based on collectivised property and at the arms, against stationing Soviet troops in Look out, though. These fine words, the last same time it undermines collectivisation with several Eastern European countries, against gasp of Mandel's 'Trotskyism', are but Sunday its policy of 'detente'. The Mandelites might the threat of deploying SS-20s, against the 'socialism'. Today Pershing missiles have ar­ well adopt the slogan of those who believe the militarisation of SOCiety' (Rouge, 21-27 rived in Europe and can hit Moscow in eight min­ USSR to be capi talist: 'Neither Washington nor October 1983). utes. No longer can anyone claim that the im­ Moscow! ' That concretely is what Krivine & Co mean by perialists' monstrous nuclear arsenal is aimed The Mandelites oppose the gurus of gut-level 'the right of the USSR to arm itself'! They at the 'colonial revolution'. But far from pacifism by fighting tor a strategy of pressure have launched a campaign for the withdrawal of rallying to the Trotskyist fight for defence of on social democracy. When confronted with anti­ 'foreign occupation' troops from East and West the USSR, the United Secretariat hurriedly dis­ communist attacks by E P Thompson, guru of the Germany as an integral component of. their pro­ covered a 'third camp' in the 'peace movement' CND (and with the witchhunt against 'leftists' gramme for 'the reunification of Germany in the in the West and in the East which supposedly within the CND), Mandel, accused of being a perspective [!] of a·Socialist United States of fights against both the Russian bureaucrats and 'neanderthal Trotskyist', is obliged to explain Europe' (ibid). This is a crime -- the perfect (they say) imperialism. that imperialism is responsible for war, etc. programme of 'left' revanchist nationalism But this 'third camp' is in fact anti-Soviet, But only in order to take up Thompson's slogan spread by the German social democracy, which as is demonstrated by an article by Christian 'For a nuclear-free Europe from Poland to whines about 'our occupied Germany' and demands a 'neutral reunified Germany' under social democratic leadership. That is, capitalist! Even a simultaneous withdrawal of NATO and Warsaw Pact troops from both sides of Germany would leave the East German deformed workers state defenceless against West Germany, one of the main Western economic powers, which also has one of the most modern armies in the world. It would be an open door to the capitalist reconquest of the entire Soviet bloc. Anti-Americanism from the mouths of the social democrats and Stalinists is just a means of whitewashing their own imperialism. The social democratic lackeys of German imperialism (which does not, today, have the means to defeat the USSR militarily) prefer -- as opposed to Reagan -- to undermine the Soviet bloc economi­ cally and further its disintegration from 35p inc p&p Make nal,able August/September 1983 no 103 within by encouraging the nationalists in the Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, 20p deformed workers states. That is why they London We1 H 8JE noisily support the East German 'pacifists', continued on page _11

DECEMBER 1983/JANUARY 1984 9 Anti-union.· .. -Spartacist leaflet, 30 November 1983------(Cor.tinued from page 1) leadership, there could have been a much better relationship of forces and disciplined organised Defend the NOl! union defence squads. As Trotsky's Transitional Programme says: 'strike pickets are the basic nuclei of the proletarian army. This is our Defeat the Tory union-bashers! point of departure. In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is impera­ Tuesday night Maggie Thatcher's helmeted and down the country. The POEU still has a fight to tive to propagate the necessity of creating visored boot boys rampaged. against union pick­ win after the craven capitulation to the courts wqrkers' group~ for self defense.' In their ab­ eters in Warrington, injuring and arresting dozens of their 'leadership'. The powerful TGWU has sence, when the cops moved i'n for a punch-up, and destroying the NGA van and sound system. The promised full support -- but the only real sup­ supporters of the Socialist Workers Party leapt fist of Tory hatred for the working class is com­ port is to join the NGA in strike action right to the bait, substituting individual bravura for ing down. The whole union movement must re­ now! The ruling class freed the Pentonville Five a revolutionary programme. Particularly since spond in kind. Remember Saltley Gates -- flying eleven years ago when faced with the threat of the onset of Cold War II, the third-campist pickets from every union should be pouring in to a general strike. A general strike is what's on SWP's constant refrain has been 'downturn! down­ Warrington right no~ to build the mass pickets! the agenda now. No TUC sellout -- The TUC must turn!' They blame the workers for passivity, and Attempts to smash the picket lines must be met back the NGA all the way, up to and including a substitute their bodies. Not surprisingly, with with determination -- for disciplined trade­ general strike! no programme to counterpose to the reformist bu­ union-organised defence squads! The lockouts and All the important battles of the working reaucracy, the SWP joined an impotent and provocations against the NGA's Fleet Street bas­ class have been won outside the bosses' courts dangerous sit-down which the NGA bureaucrats or­ tion show the bosses want to smash the NGA, one -- and outside the bosses' Parliament. But the ganised the next night to show that all the of Britain's strongest unions, built on the Labour Party leadership is telling you to crawl violence came from the cops. The task of workers' closed shop and the union hiring list. Its Fleet before the decisions of the bosses' courts and leaders is not to offer themselves up for mar­ Street chapels were in the forefront of the their laws. No way! The Labour Party wants con­ tyrdom, but to provide a way forward. Our com­ Pentonville Five strike that forced Heath to stitutional windbaggery in Westminster. We want rades on the picket argued hard for the neces­ free the dockers' leaders in 1972. Answer lock­ to win on the picket lines! sity to defend the closed shop, particularly outs and the juridical theft of NGA assets with The Fleet Street vultures carryon about against a motley crew from the Revolutionary mass occupations. What is pos~d is not Simply 'union privileges'. What a filthy joke! The Communist Party, whose line against closed shops the defence of the NGA but of the entire trade British working class -- privileged? The only should have put them on the other side of the union movement. If they beat the NGA, who will privileges workers in this country have are to barri~ade alongside Eddie Shah. And at a Man­ be next? Not a penny of union money to the capi­ live in the shadow of the dole in crumbling chester support rally the following night, we talist courts -- no reliance on the dead-end of cities in the most decaying economy in Europe. led militants in chants of 'Fleet Street freed arbitration. Reinstate all sacked workers! Drop Every gain of union organisation, every small the Pentonville Five -- Return the favour now! ' all charges against arrested picketers! Smash protection has been fought for over and over. and 'Shut down Fleet Street!' Our leaflet (sec all the Tory anti-union laws -- Picket lines It's vital to defend the workers' fighting or­ box) was eagerly received by many picketers. mean don't cross! Take on the bosses' union ganisations. Victory now can give a lead to all bashing-provocation -- All out.on Fleet Street! workers and oppressed and, with the construction Defend the NGA - Bring down Thatcher! For a national all-union print strike! of a revolutionary leadership, open the road to The government attacks on the unions are part workers power. Heath's laws were turned into scraps of paper of a political drive to smash the gains of the *Buil.d the Warrington mass pickets! Flying by the near general strike spearheaded by the working class everywhere. The Iron Lady and her pickets from every union to shut Messenger down! Fleet Street printworkers to free the Penton­ NATO allies are driving for nuclear war against *All out on Fleet Street! For a national all­ ville Five. The TUC's criminal capitulation be­ the Soviet workers state. At home she sends union print strike! fore the Tebbit Act as 'fact', after a million the police out to crack the heads of workers and empty vows to fight it, and the Labour leader­ minorities, while she lauds Solidarnosc, the CIA *TUC must back the NGA all the way, up to and ship's vile denunciations of the NGA strikers as company union for counterrevolution in Poland. including a general strike! 'lawbreakers' is what props up this reactionary Thatcher hates the NGA, Thatcher hates the USSR *Give Thatcher the Heath treatment -- mass ac­ 'law'. Thatcher picked up the message loud and -- Defend the workers unions, defend the workers tion to bring down the Tories! Jobs for all, clear that the TUC beamed out of Blackpool: the states! worksharing on full pay! Take the economy out 'new realism' consolidated in a Cold War witch­ Miners are already on overtime ban. Ford of the bosses' hands -- for socialist planning hunt against Arthur Scargill. She was given a workers are voting to .strike in meetings up and and a workers soviet government! green light to go after the NGA by the POEU leadership's decision to bow down to the court political strike offensive against the Tory face of the NGA: denunciations of illegality, injunction against the blacking of Mercury a union-bashing. The question of general strike and violence and calls for inquiries and con­ month earlier -- the first major use of the a is on the agenda this winter. It's time to make ciliation. The NGA events underline the correct­ Tebbit Law. And now the NGA bureaucracy has ness of the SL's call to exacerbate Labour's agreed to call off the mass pickets at Warring­ Arthur Scargill put some money where his mouth is; it wasn't mailbags full of letters asking Cold War split: Drive out the SDP fifth column ton to allow the pro-employer ACAS (created by -- the better to expose the empty rhetoric of a Labour government) to broker a sellout deal. 'can we help?' that stopped Salt ley coke depot, but a mass picket of organised contingents of the left-talkers, who have moved only the The POEU is still faced with a union-busting, tens of thousands of miners and engineers. The muscles in their mouths as far as.support for job-slashing privatisation threat. The NUJ's T&G has promised 'full support' -- let them be­ the NGA goes. They complain about Tory law and treasury is on the chopping block for its action gin by blacking all transport of scab print order but remember how these 'lefts' loyally against the Dimbleby newspaper firm. Shipyard work. This could be the opportunity to give supported the last Labour government through workers have just voted for strike action in Thatcher the Heath treatment! Defend the closed the social contract, the Grunwick struggle and January. A majority of Ford workers voted to shop! Extend the union hiring system to all in­ the use of troops against the firemen's strike. throw back the company's miserable wage offer. dustries! Forge industrial unionism through And Arthur Scargill's powerful NUM has been­ And the Communist Party's Morning Star, class struggle unity! Strike for jobs for all playing around for weeks with an overtime ban under the byline of Mick Costello no less, says through worksharing on full pay! that loses NUM members· pay and saves the NCB black is white: as the TUC denounces printers money. Miners' contingents from Sheffield, for violating Tory law, the Morning Star pro­ Defend the workers unions, defend the workers Barnsley and as far as Edinburgh trekked to claims, 'TUC throws weight behind printworkers'! Warrington to stand shoulder to shoulder with states! With a line like this, is i~ any wonder that CP supporters, who exercise strong decisive influ­ the printers. NGA members at mass meetings are . This year's TUC Congress at Blackpool saw ence in the Fleet Street chapels, had no lead demanding a national print strike, but their the ultra-anti-communist Cold Warriors of the to give at a London Regional NGA conference two 'leaders' are reminiscent of the German Social right, personified by Frank Chapple, calling days after the cop riot at Warrington? They Democracy, whose well-organised, seemingly solid the shots. The likes of AUEW leader Terry Duffy together with Militant supporters backed an and powerful edifice of bureaucratic routine have flaunted their respect for the 'law of the 'emergency' motion which did nothing more than collapsed without a fight before Hitler's land' at every turn in the NGA struggle, making rubber-stamp the leadership's role -- and this onslaught. no pretence of defending the NGA. The TUC 'left' after the Warrington pickets had been called off The NGA can provide a lead, as it has in the has given its customary loquacious verbal sup­ in favour of arbitration. past, by reversing the capitulationist course of port, with no action. Arthur Scargill, all the This is what the CP's 'left unity' and the its leadership and spearheading an explicitly while pushing his real programme of racist im­ 'Broad Left' tailed by every fake-revolutionary port controls, announced at a Birmingham Triple outfit from the SWP down to the small centrist Alliance rally on 1 December 'Now is the time Workers Power are all about: covering up treach­ to stop talking and start fighting'. Just as in ery with a veneer of 'left' rhetoric. The Broad I English language the 1980 steel strike he had no proposals for Left brings together the Labour Party and the journal of the concrete action by the miners in defence of the Communist Party (and the 'r'ank-and-file international NGA. militant' SWP!) in a coalition designed to chan­ Spartacist A simil~r spectrum exists in the Parliamen­ nel the working class away from militant class tendency tary Labour Party. The Labour Party today is struggle. confronted with a fundamental contradiction: to rule as the government party for capitalism it The plea raised by Militant, Socialist Action must prosecute the Cold War at home and abroad, and Socialist Organiser is that theTUC call a lockstep with the US in NATO, ruthless attacks one-day general strike. Certainly were even a on the unions in Britain. But in attacking the one-day general strike to take place it would unions it would be destroying its own base as a pose an explosive confrontation between the or­ bourgeois workers party. The Guardian summed it ganised working class and the bourgeoisie. But up after 'left' Heffer's statement of support their seemingly militant call is counterposed to for the NGA, an attitude 'in marked contrast to concrete proposals to build and extend the Single issues: most of his colleagues on the Labour front 45p inc p&p strike. These groups want to turn the actual and bench .... Mr Neil Kinnock, the party leader, potential struggles of the working class into was silent and Mr Roy Hattersley, the deputy the dead-end of Labour electoralism, as happened leader, emphasised ... that he believed the NGA Make payable/post to: Spartacist Publications. with the 1974 miners strike. PO Box 185. London We1 H 8JE should obey the law.' Class SOCiety in this country has been in a The Atlanticists of the right spit in the state of Cold War for many years: an intact,

10 SPARTACIST BRITAIN well-organised and potentially powerful and combative proletariat; a capitalist class whose decline was marked by the outcome of World War II and which has no more imperial fat to eke out its semi-retirement.'The Tories' dream is to Defend the Trafalgar, Nine! have a computer-based, hi-tech, no-union rentier The Trafalgar Nine were arrested for partici­ of the three heroic ANC militants last June. economy, parasitically funnelling the super­ pating in a united-front protest, which included With this action racist British imperialism profits of world imperialism into the gin-and­ a sizeable Spartacist League contingent, outside again demonstrates how it stands behind the tonic belts, while pauperised workers and min­ South Africa House in London the evening before apartheid butchers of South Africa, which is orities subsist in squalid inner cities.' Should the apartheid regime's 'legal' murder of three today part and parcel of an anti-Soviet war axis this grotesque 'utopia' be realised, it will not ANC militants last June 9. Their trial is sched­ stretching from Washington to London to be simply as a result of Tory parliamentary ma­ uled to begin on December 5. The labour movement Pretoria. We know what that means here: the jority. Indeed the question of victory or defeat must demand that all charges against these nine Trafalgar Nine, racist deportations and attacks for the NGA foreshadows the broader question victims of Thatcher's cops be dropped immedi­ on the trade unions. And at this very moment in which confronts the British body politic: ately. After their arrest the nine were held the US, the government of California is trying socialism or barbarism. overnight to prevent them returning to the dem­ to mete out its own South Africa-style justice The old question that Stanley Baldwin posed onstration while subjected to typical ra~ist to two trade union militants -- Lauren Mozee, a to the TUC in the 1926 General Strike -- 'Well police treatment, including the strip searching black woman and former member of the Black gentlemen, you have the power, are you prepared of three of the women. We reprint below a soli­ Panther Party, and her companion, Ray Palmiero to take it?' -- still awaits an answer. All that darity statement made by a Spartacist League -- for daring to defend their picket lines and has changed is the degree of urgency. As imperi­ spokesman at a 23 November defence rally organ­ their union. against a racist scab in the recent alist war preparations proceed apace at home and ised by the Trafalgar 9 Defence Campaign. We telephone strike there. For this Lauren and Ray abroad, the Spartacist League says: Thatcher urge all our readers to support their defence. are threatened with eight years in jail. hates the British workers, Thatcher hates the Donations can be sent to Trafalgar 9 DC, BM An injury to one is an injury to all! The Russian workers -- Defend the workers unions, City AA, London WC1N 3XX. Defend the Trafalgar labour movement must mobilise in defence of the defend the workers states! A party must be built Nine! Drop the charges now! Trafalgar Nine. We must mobilise in solidarity which is prepared to lead the workers to take with all the heroic fighters against the the power. That is the party which we are fight­ vicious apartheid regime in South Africa. We ing to build! Defend the NGA! Smash the Tory The Spartacist* League * * stands shoulder to must fight for the day when a revolutionary vic­ anti-union offensive! Give Thatcher the Heath shoulder with the Trafalgar Nine. These comrades tory of the powerful black working class of treatment! Forward to a workers government to face victimisation by the Thatcher government South Africa will bring the torturers and hang­ expropriate the capitalist class as part of a for daring to protest against the brutal murder men of apartheid to justice. Socialist United States of Europe! •

interests. To that extent we wage mortal (Rouge, 28 October-3 November). struggle against it, but in the final The proponents o.f the 'third camp' are as Mandel ... analysis, through the interests of the bur­ incapable of drawing a class line in' the de­ (Continued from page 9) eaucracy, in a very distorted form the in­ veloping class confrontatiQll on an international terests of the workers' state are reflected. scale as they are in their own country. The re­ just as they aided and financed the nationalists These interests we defend -- with our own fusal t~ defend the USSR is ultimately only the of Solidarnosc. methods. Thus we do not at all wage a strug­ expression of the refusal to fight one's own The Mandelites' support to Solidarnosc rep­ gle against the fact that the bureaucracy imperialism. In short, 'jobs not bombs' is a resented their definitive passage to the camp safeguards (in its own way!) state property, plea for imperialism with a human face! At a of social democracy. And today 'che model they the monopoly of foreign trade ... ' (In De­ time when the imperialists in their anti- offer the 'pacifists' in the East is clearly fense of Marxism, p127). Soviet rage are preparing to blow up the world, those pro-capitalist counterrevolutionaries who And Trotsky adds: such reformist utopias are merely a way to side­ deride Western pacifists 'manipulated by Moscow' , . .. in a war between the USSR and the capi tal­ track the masses' natural feelings for peace as much as do Reagan and Mitterrand. Mandel et ist world -- independently of the incidents away from the only way to disarm the imperial­ al have generalised their support to Polish na­ leading up to that war or the "aims" of this ist warmongers: to arm the proletariat and for tionalists against the Stalinist bureaucracy or that government -- what is involved is a socialist revolution to take power away from into a conception of so-called 'political revol­ the fate af precisely those historical con­ the capitalists! In order to do that, the ution' under the banner of nationalism -- the quests which we defend unconditionally, ie, social chauvinist leaders of the proletariat and vehicle for capitalist restoration in the East. despite the reactionary policy of the bur­ their 'far left' lackeys have to be unmasked and Including, as did their Australian comrades of eaucracy. The question consequently boils swept away in the fight to reforge the Fourth the SWP, going so far as to support the HDP, the down -- in the last and decisive instance International the world party of socialist rev­ pro-Ustasha Croatian nationalist movement in -- to the class nature of the USSR' (ibid). olution, uniting workers of all countries in a its fight against the Yugoslav bureaucracy. The A 'third camp' policy leads precisely to fight for the defence and extension of workers HDP reveres the 'Independant Croation state', a abandoning the Trotskyist analysis of the USSR. gains, in a fight against imperialism. Nazi satellite from 1941 to 1945 led by Ante We see the apprentice Shachtmanites of the LCR Pavelic, a fascist guilty of particularly explain that of course, 'imperialism ... is in­ Adapted from Bolchevik no 43, December 1983 atrocious genocide in Yugoslavia! Le deed the main one responsible for the arms Proletarian internationalists obviously must race', but that 'the crime of the bureaucrats is not ignore the German masses'national senti­ to follow in its steps .... The accumulation of memts and legitimate fears of a ho"locaust. But nuclear stocks which goes far beyond the nec­ the question is of mobilising them on a commu­ essary capacity for dissuasion against imperial­ nist programme against nationalism and anti­ ism even reinforces the propaganda of Atlantic­ sovietism. This is what our German comrades of ist circles' (Supplement to Rouge, 14 October). The Trotskyist League of Germany do by calling Taking up the traditional stupid pacifist argu­ for revolutionary reunification of Germany ment about 'excess arms' is particularly dis­ through socialist revolution in the West to gusting today, since it aims at furthering the overthrow capitalism and workers political rev­ anti-communist argument that the USSR, by arming olution in the East to throw out the usurping itself, shares responsibility for the coming and conservative bureaucracy, putting forward war, whereas in fact it is merely defending it­ the preservation and extension of the prolet­ self against imperialist aggressors and has ariat's social gains. The revolutionary re­ accumulated nuclear stocks because it has, unification of Germany is not just a perspec­ fortunately, found a way to counter each tech­ tive for German workers. A reunified German nological innovation the imperialists have come workers state which instituted the rule of the .up ~ith to acquire mil~tary superiority. soviets in the industrial powerhouse of Europe We condemn Stalinism not because it does not would be a spark to ignite a revolutionary disarm, but for its utopian policy of 'peaceful workers uprising on the entire European con­ coexistence' with imperialism which undermines tinent, and will be key for the Socialist the military defence of the USSR and endangers United States of Europe. working class gains. That is why we are for the It is not by accident that Krivine and Mandel proletarian political revolution to sweep away draw on th~ capitulationist arguments by rene­ the conservative Stalinist bureaucracy and re­ gades like Shachtman and Burnham against whom establish the power of the workers councils Trotsky fought at the beginning of World War II. carrying out a policy of proletarian interna­ Like the Shachtmanites of the time, they swear tionalism. by all that is holy that they still favour de­ Mandel's last argument: the 'anti-capitalist fence of the USSR, but that they will call for dynamic' of the peace movement is derived by Spartacist Britain: £2 for 10 issues plus Spartacist it only when the USSR is the victim of concrete o linking austerity and military expenditures. But (international Spartacist tendency aggression by the imperialists, and that the the rhetoric of 'Jobs not Bombs' is low-level journal) current deployment of the entire imperialist reformism. It amounts either to calling for an arsenal of death 'does not mean that Ronald illusory 'reconVersion' of capitalism or to [1 Women & Revolution: £1.50 for 4 issues Reagan has decided to prepare in detail a forth­ 'getting the ;fat out' of the imperialist war [j Joint subscription: £6.00 for 10 issues of Spartacist coming nuclear war .:.' (Inprecor no 152, 6 machine to make it more efficient! Britain PLUS 24 issues of Workers June). Indeed, it may be a bit late to mobilise It is not surprising to see the LCR criti­ Vanguard (Marxist fortnightly of the proletariat to defend the USSR if you wait cise the French nuclear force with social the Spartacist League/US) PLUS until the Pershings, which will be eight min­ chauvinist arguments: 'a ruinous and useless Spartacist utes from the Soviet Union, have reduced Moscow arsenal' (Rouge, 7-13 October). Of course, and Leningrad to a pile of radioactive ruins! French imperialism cannot claim to conquer the Name Mandel also takes an 'orthodox' sounding USSR by itself, but the French nuclear arsenal argument from Shachtman: we can't support the is not a toy! The LCR calls for the withdrawal Address military policy of the USSR because the bureauc­ of French troops from l,ebanon wi th the same racy has a conservative policy of preserving the scandalous arguments: ' ... it is very expensive. ______Postcode ______status quo with imperialism. Trotsky answered: Every month, the equivalent of dozens of school~ 'In its present foreign as well as domestic rooms, hundreds of hospital beds, goes up in Make payable/post to: policy, the bureaucracy places first and smoke. All for the profits of a few French arms Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1H 8JE foremost for defense of its own parasitic merchants. And at the cost of useless deaths'

DECEMBER 1983/JANUARY 1984 11 BRITAIN Down with Reagan/Thatcher anti-Soviet war drive! , III I ,

First came the Americans' KAL 007 anti-Soviet to destroy the unity of the NATO alliance with war provocation, sending a civilian airliner 'adventures' is expressed more fully by the SDP directly over the Russians' most sensitive mili­ and the Healey wing of the Labour Party. The tary installations. Now on a 'Grenada high' SDP's David Owen called for a 'firm European after their 'big win' in the Caribbean, the identity with NATO' because 'the postwar absol­ US imperialists who head NATO's war drive have ute European confidence in the United States escalated from one anti-Soviet war provocation has gone'. In Parliament, Labour's 'MP for to another. Meanwhile a giant US battle fleet NATO' Denis Healey railed against Reagan's is arrayed against supposed 'Soviet surrogates' 'quite unpardonable humiliation of an ally'. in the Near East. And they have begun deploy­ And in Washington, he warned 'The Alliance will ment of new first-strike Euromissiles which will survive on one condition. Those in charge of put them only eight minutes from Moscow '" and its affairs must be more sensitive to public World War III. 'Will the world survive until opinion.' Meanwhile the little-England 'left' 1984?' is sudderily a question on everyone's social democrats and their fake-Trotskyist camp lips. followers demanded Britain keep its hands clean. In the Atlantic, some 500 miles off the Socialist Action proclaimed 'No British Com­ coast of South Caroljna, an American sub-hunting plicity' in the US invasion, epitomising the destroyer hit and disabled a Soviet nuclear left-Labour nationalist utopia of a democratic submarine. In the Caribbean the US is staging a British imperialism. The Tories' dignity may be 'no-notice' naval war manoeuvre off Guantanamo offended, but they ploughed ahead with instal­ to threaten the Cubans. And in the eastern lation of Cruise. Neither Labour's huffing and Mediterranean Reagan's admirals have concen­ puffing nor the Greenham Common women's efforts trated an armada of more than 40 ships, includ­ stopped the arrival of the first missiles, nor ing three carrier battle groups and the battle­ are they capable of stopping nuclear war. ship New Jersey, plus 300 attack planes. Their The acute danger of World War III is not guns are trained on Soviet-backed Syria. Less caused, as American liberal 'freezers' and noticed by the press is another carrier group in European anti-missile protesters believe, by an the Arabian Sea along with an entire invasion 'insane arms race' of the 'two superpowers'. flotilla of the Rapid Deployment Force -- total­ The drive toward nuclear war is the drive of ling some 35 vessels -- poised to strike at Iran capitalist imperialism to destroy the land of and 'secure' the Persian Gulf. From Grenada to the October Revolution, the greatest victory the Strait of Hormuz, Washington's brinkmen of Reagan on Cold War frontline in Korea. for the world working class in history. Six the nuclear apocalypse are dOing their best to control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which decades of Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration provoke a showdown with the Soviets. So far, passes much of the capitalist world's oil, in have certainly dimmed the glow of October; the Moscow has been laid back, but someone in the transit from the Persian Gulf to West Europe. USSR today is a far cry from the international Kremlin is certainly ~dding it all up. Washington is now uSing the Beirut bombing to revolutionary beacon it was under Lenin and The Americans' high-seas attack on the Soviet whip up war fren-zy against Khomeini' s Iran as Trotsky. But the historic conquests of the submarine couldn't have been more provocative. well as Syria. 'Dizzy with success' over tiny Bolshevik Revolution still remain -- the First they cripple the boat, evidently ripping Grenada, the Reagan gang are set to plunge into socialised property and planned economy -- and its props off by dragging the cable of a sonar the Near East quagmire on a broad front. these must be defended! It is the Soviet nuclear sled across them, then they laugh about it being Reagan invaded Grenada in pursuit of arsenal which up to now has kept US imperialism disabled. A Navy spokesman blandly announced Thatcher's dearest cause of anti-Communism. at bay, which kept it from invading-Cuba and that the US destroyer was conducting 'anti­ Just one month before in September Thatcher was overthrowing Castro, from using nuclear weapons submarine warfare' (in peacetime). Thank your standing on the White House lawn basking in in Vietnam. Soviet military strength, even in lucky 8tars for the cool temperament of that Reagan's praise as the staunchest and most re­ the hands of a nationalistic bureaucratic Soviet commander. World War I was started over liable ally. The British bourgeoisie might like caste, has bought the world proletariat less than this. to pretend otherwise, but the so-called precious time to resolve the question of In the Near East, Lebanon is but a beachhead 'special relationship' is not some glorious socialism or nuclear annihilation. for US imperialism. The real strategic prize is partnership but testimony to the decline of British imperialism and its subordination to Stop first-strike missiles in Germany! US imperialism. It is Suez not the Falklands The 1979 NATO decision to place a new gener­ that defines Britain's role. And Grenada was ation of medium-range missiles had two not the first time that the Queen's governor­ purposes: 1) the Pershing 2s are intended to general turned out to be more interested in the increase the imperialists' first-strike advice of the CIA than the English monarch capability against Russia; and 2) they are part witness ~ir John Kerr and the overthrow of the of the Pentagon's strategy for an anti-Soviet Whitlam government in Australia. war to be fought out in the European 'theatre' But more importantly, Thatcher's tiff with The fear of being sacrificed as pawns in a Reagan indicates the British bourgeoisie's war between the 'superpowers' has fed into concern, which they share with the other resurgent German- nation,alism, this time European NATO powers, at Reagan's high risk clothed in 'left' colours. Naturally, the strategy, in particular in the face of wide­ German masses don't want to be annihilated. But spread popular opposition to the installation behind the nationalism of the 'peace movement' of Cruise and Pershing missiles. The Sun's (11 stands tne revanchist appetites of German im­ November) farfetched story (immediately denied perialism to reconquer East Europe. Thus by the ministry of defence) that contingency Rudolf Bahro, former East German Stalinist plans existed to shoot American troops in a turned- anti-Communist Green, actually welcomes 'worst case scenario' -- if the US decided to Reagan's unrestrained warmongering because 'it fire Cruise missiles unilaterally -- is an can only advance our aims --'to withdraw both indication of the atmosphere, though the paper parts of Germany and Europe from the two mili­ saw this as an explanation for Mrs Thatcher's Thatcher's cops drag away Greenham Common tary blocs and to neutralise Europe' (New York anti-Cruise protesters. opposition to dual key control. This concern not continued on page 6

12 O'ECEMBER 1983/JANUARY 1984