Newspaper of the Spartacist League US/British/UN/NATO troops out of Afghanistan and Central Asia now!

Independent

Royal Marine commandos (above) will be sent to Afghanistan as part of imperialist "stabilisation" force, following devastation of Afghanistan through US/British bombing (left). Shah Maral DECEMBER 22-We reprint on page At home, the Labour government on civil liberties, meant to regiment and of the British National Party (BNP). On 6 a leaflet issued by the Spartacist continues to ratchet up the level of racist intimidate the entire population and to the BBC World at One programme, Nick League for distribution at the 100,000- state repression. On 19 December, eight severely restrict the right and means to Griffin, leader of the BNP, said of strong anti-war demonstration in London people, of mainly Arab origin were protest. It is so draconian that even the Blunkett: "he's .trying to shore up the on 18 November. Since then the military arrested under the Anti-terrorism, Crime archaic House of Lords rejected the Bill white working-<,:lass vote. He is using the onslaught led by the US imperialists has and Security Act, which came into law a several times before the government got things that we've been saying for the last led to the destruction of the Taliban week earlier. Labour had declared a it through. In the first instance it is aimed few years and he is now jumping on the regime throughout Mghanistan. Now the "state of public emergency" and rushed at immigrants and minorities, but ulti­ bandwagon". Blair government, which has been a the law through Parliament at breakneck matelyat all opponents of British imperi­ In case anyone missed the point, the front-runner in raining devastation on speed. It means that immigrants who are alism, the entire workers movement and norms that Asians can expect under La­ that country, has announced that 1500 suspected of "terrorism" can be interned the left. bour's racist reign are starkly revealed in British ground forces will form part of an indefinitely without trial; those charged In the same week that the Terrorism the five-year jail sentence dished out to international "stabilisation" force which would be tried in secret courts, denied Act passed into law, home secretary Shazad Ashraf, one of over 100 young Britain will lead initially. the right to see the "evidence" against David Blunkett attacked British Asians Asians arrested for defending their com­ At the end of November, before the them and denied virtually any means of of Muslim origin for failing to adopt munities from intense attack by fascists Taliban's last stronghold of Kandahar appeal. In addition the new Act legalises British cultural norms, saying "We have protected by the police. This was in stark was taken, the US and British imperial­ police powers to track personal data such norms of acceptability and those who contrast to the treatment of Leeds United ists gave full vent to their bloodlust when as bank account transactions, websites come into our home - for that is what it soccer stars Lee Bowyer and Jonathan they massacred hundreds of Taliban visited, phone calls and e-mail traffic. is - should accept those norms" and for Woodgate who walked free from court Prisoners of War at a fortress near This law comes on top of anti-"terrorist" not learning "a modest grasp of the Eng­ following a farce of a trial for their part Mazar-i-Sharif, raining bombs on the legislation enacted earlier this year that lish tongue so they can feel and become in a vicious racist attack on a young prison and pouring buming oil into base­ restricted the right of asylum and out­ English". A report commissioned by the Asian student, Sarfraz Najeib, which left ments where prisoners were hiding. lawed nearly two dozen mainly refugee government on race relations even calls him severely injured. Free Shazad Ash­ Reports show that many of the dead and immigrant political groups - threat­ for immigrants to take an oath of alle­ raf! Drop the charges against arrested prisoners had their arms tied behind their ening anyone who financially supported giance, to declare their "clear primary Asian youth and anti-racist protesters! backs. Video footage of the blood-bath these groups with imprisonment. loyalty to this nation". Blunkett's racist Full citizenship rights for all immi­ show British SAS forces directing the The new law is a fundamental attack rants were endorsed by the fascist scum grants - down with the Terrorism Act! bombardment alongside their US coun­ terparts and firing at prisoners from the walls of the fortress. The Labour govern­ ment is blocking an inquiry demanded by Amnesty International and other groups. The question now being debated among imperialist powers is which coun­ try is to be bombed as "Phase Two" of this war of terror, especially in view of the fact that Osama bin Laden has eluded the world's mightiest power. Bush wants to target Iraq; the European imperialists are less keen, but the Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and North Korea are under threat. -.. Jamal death sentence reversed Urgent need for protest to free Mumia now!

Ill' /!lIhlish helow a statement issued Although Yohn rejected the mountains literally screaming bloody murder. ,)1/ IS Dcccmher hy the Partisan Defense of evidence demonstrating Jamal's inno­ Maureen Faulkner, who has headed this , {)uIIJli!'ec. cence - including the sworn confession campaign on behalf of the Philadelphia I eLk Cll district court judge William of Arnold Beverly testifying that he had Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.), con­ \ (I"n :oday reversed the death sentence been hired to kill Faulkner-this ruling demned Y ohn as a "sick and twisted ':'.. 1111.1, heen hanging over the head of represents the first crack in the state's person." Democratic Party District Attor­ \\11l1ll;' \hu-Jamal since his 1982 frame­ 20-year legal vendetta against Jamal. ney Lynne Abraham, who has done more lip (u!.vlction for the killing of Phila­ And the forces that have worked over­ than her share to see that more black COC Productions delphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. time to ensure Jamal's execution are people are sentenced to death in Phila­ delphia than any other city in the U.S., immediately convened a press confer­ in which dozens of Black Panthers were Marxism v bourgeois pacifism ence to announce that the prosecution assassinated and hundreds more sent to will be appealing Yohn's ruling. prison. Among them was Geronimo ji The reformist and pacifist organisers of The F.O.P. and the Philly D.A.'s Jaga (Pratt), who was finally released in protests against the bombing of Afghan­ office fear that the explosive new evi­ 1997 after 27 years in prison hell for a istan push the illusion that the imperialist dence of Jamal's innocence, which the crime the state knew he did not commit. system can be pressured into being capitalist state and the press have worked Jamal's case is a demonstration of the "peaceful". Writing as the storm clouds of hard to bury, could finally be heard in a machinery of repression wielded by the World WarI were gathering in 1911, Rosa court of law. Prosecutor Hugh Bums capitalist rulers against any perceived Luxemburg, then a leader of the revo­ made that clear when he declaimed to­ threat to a system based on the exploita­ lutionary-internationalist wing of the day, "If there was a new sentencing tion of the many by the few, which in German Social Democracy, outlined the TROTSKY LENIN hearing, it would probably entail the America is rooted in the forcible subju­ Marxist understanding that imperialist empaneling of a jury ... and whatever gation of the black population at the militarism and wars of depredation and evidence the defendant wanted to review bottom of society. plul/der are an inherent feature of the capitalist profit system. The following again would be presented to the jury." As ever more death row and other trans/atioll appeared under the title "The Road to Peace" in Young Socialist (October Yohn has also worked assiduously to prisoners are exonerated of false convic­ /958). organ of what became the youth group of the then-Trotskyist US Socialist ensure that the overwhelming evidence tions through DNA evidence, popular Workers Party. of Jamal's innocence is buried. His deci­ support for the death penalty has waned sion affirms the original frame-up mur­ and America's imperialist rulers have First and foremost, our task is to make clear to the masses of people the nature of der conviction, which was secured on the faced growing diplomatic embarrassment militarism and to bring out, sharply and clearly, the difference in principle between the basis of "eyewitness" testimony coerced around the wurld. And Jamal's case standpoint of social-democracy and that of the bourgeois peace enthusiasts. by the police through the promise of shows what the racist, barbaric death In what does this difference consist? Certainly not merely in the fact that bourgeois favors and outright terror, a manufac­ penalty in the U.S. is all about. On De­ apostles of peace rely on the influence of fine words, while we do not depend on tured "confession" and completely con­ cember 2, the Paris city council voted to words alone. Our very point of departure is diametrically opposed: the friends of peace cocted ballistics "evidence." Yohn's make Mumia an honorary citizen of the in bourgeois circles helieve that world peace and disarmament can be realized within ruling only allows for a new sentencing city, an indication of the breadth of sup­ the framework uf the present social order, whereas we who base ourselves on the hearing within 180 days which would at port for his cause around the world. This materialist conception of history and on scientific socialism, are convinced that best consign Jamal to life behind bars. new court ruling comes even as the right­ militarism can be abolished unly with the destruction of the capitalist state. From this As Mumia himself said of life impris­ wing Bush administration, invoking the follows the essential difference in our tactics in spreading the idea of peace .... onment in one of his writings from death need for "war measures" as it bombs the The nations of today, if they are really serious and honest in their wish to call a halt row: '''Life' is thus but a grim metaphor people of Afghanistan, is gearing up a to competitive armaments, would have to begin by disarming in the commercial and for death, for only death releases one new COINTELPRO-style campaign of political field, by giving up predatory colonial campaigns, by abandoning the from its shackles. 'Life,' it might be said, terror and provocation. Targeting people international politics of spheres of influence in all parts of the world - in a word, in is merely slow death." Mumia Abu­ of Near Eastern descent in the first in­ their foreign as well as domestic politics, they would have to do the exact opposite of Jamal is an innocent man! An award­ stance, the government's "war on terror" everything which the nature of the present politics of a capitalist state demands .... winning journalist, former Black Panther is aimed at all immigrants, minorities, Only those who believe in the mitigation and blunting of class antagonism and in and MOVE supporter, Mumia's only labor, leftists and all perceived oppo­ the reduction of the economic anarchy of capitalism can believe that these "crime" is that he is an outspoken cham­ nents of the government. international conflicts will permit of slackening, mitigation and elimination. pion of the oppressed and exploited. And What is needed is a massive struggle For the international antagonisms of the capitalist state are but complements of he has continued to speak out, unbowed class antagonisms and world-political anarchy, but the reverse side of the anarchic and unbroken, from his death row cell. centered on the social power of the multiracial working class to fight for system of capitalist production. Both grow together and must be overcome together. Don't let them bury Mumia alive! "A little order and peace" is, therefore, just as impossible, just as much a petty­ Workers, minorities and all opponents of Jamal's freedom! Based on the only significant integration in racist Amer­ bourgeois utopia, with regard to world politics as it is with regard to the capitalist racist capitalist repression must now world market, with regard to the limitation of armaments as it is with regard to the redouble their efforts to mobilize mass ica - the workplace and the factory restriction of crises. ' protest centered on the social power of floor-the trade unions have the social power and the potential to become bat­ - Rosa Luxemburg, "Peace Utopias" (May 1911) the labor movement to demand Jamal's immediate freedom. talions in the struggle against capitalist exploitation and racial oppression, to From the time the Partisan Defense shake the foundations of this decaying Committee took up Jamal's case 15 capitalist system and ultimately topple it. years ago, we have insisted that the fight If undertaken with a mobilization of the WOBKEBS HAMMER to save this innocent man cannot rely on union movement at the forefront, the ~ the capitalist courts but must be based on fight to free Mumia and to abolish the social struggle. What has kept him out of racist death penalty would be a first, For a federation of workers republics in the British Islesl the clutches of the executioner is mass For a Socialist United States of Europe! giant step in that direction and would protest and publicity, in this country and strike a significant blow against the Published by the Central Committee of the Spartacist League, British section of the internationally, especially by trade un­ draconian new repressive measures International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). ions representing millions of workers. being implemented by the Bush adminis­ EDITOR: Jo Watt Now more than ever the PDC says: No tration with bipartisan support. To that PRODUCTION MANAGER: Kate Kelsey confidence in the capitalist courts, all end, labor must break the chains with CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mick Connor confidence in the power of the working which the trade-union misleaders have people and oppressed! Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU shackled the unions to the political par­ E-mail: [email protected] Jamal's case throws into stark relief ties - centrally the Democrats - and Subscriptions: £3 for 1 year, Europe outside Britain & Ireland £4, overseas airmail £7 the whole nature of racist American the state agencies of the enemy class. No

Opinions expressed in signed articles do nol necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. capitalism. His prosecution and convic­ illusions in the capitalist courts! Free The closing date for news in this issue is 22 December 2001. tion were an extension of the CO­ Mumia now! Abolish the racist death Printed by trade union labour ISSN 0267·8721 INTELPRO terror campaign by the FBI penalty!.

2 WORKERS HAMMER ..••.••..••••• ~...... • C7 ...••.•..• / •..••• ···•.• .• ·•• ·•• i .. ·...i ...... ·...... -- ...... <.••.•..••••.••. ····...... i> >.••.•••• > ••.•.•••...... ·1--1__ Aga.i·nst.··.""CI.S~.i.n.gtQ.II·'§··.···.g.r.fJe.n •••.••.1·.i.g.ht •••.• t.g .•.••• ~i.On.i~* •••• ·.Q.Qt(:.~.e.r§ ••••••.•• Defend the Palestinian people!

immigrant witch hunt. Significantly, despite the growth of anti-immigrant and anti-Arab chauvinism fuelled by the "war on terror", there is also consider­ able sympathy for the Palestinian cause among black people. Defend the Pales­ tinian people! Down with Zionist/PA repression of Palestinian opposition groups! All Israeli troops and settlers out of the Occupied Territories! Hands

In the first two weeks of December, from the standpoint of the proletariat. A the government of Ariel Sharon devas­ week later, Hamas attacked a bus load of tated what remained of an "autono­ West Bank "settlers", even gunning mous" Palestinian Authority (PA) estab­ down Israeli children as they fled. Such lished in the Occupied Territories by the terrorist attacks only add grist to the mill US-sponsored 1993 Oslo accord. Israeli of the Israeli rulers to wield their far bombs and missiles have slanuned into . more massive arsenal of terror against P A government buildings, police posts Arab men, women and children. and radio transmitters. Israeli troops and Beyond the immediate pretext lies US tanks have stormed into one West Bank imperialism's unexpectedly rapid and and Ga/.a town after another, ruthlessly easy victory in Afghanistan. Intent on in­ mowing down any Palestinian perceived cluding many of the Arab regimes, and to be standing in their way. The Zionist even Arafat's PA, in its "global coalition butchers' trail of death and destruction against terrorism", the Bush adminis­ includes hundreds of demolished homes tration had sought to restrain Sharon. In and do/cns of Palestinian corpses. And early October, Bush even voiced support \ irtually cvery funcral results in yet for a Palestinian state. But as the US­ another, as mourners are subjected to backed Northern Alliance forces began gunfire by Israeli occupation forces. seizing Taliban positions in Afghanistan, Ilaving assured its patrons in Wash­ a mood of imperialist triumphalism IIlh>1on that it is not (for now) seeking the swept over the American ruling class and physical elimination of Palestinian Au­ especially the Bush White House, with Nati Shohat thority leader Yasir Arafat, the Sharon administration spokesmen again openly Over 100,000 Palestinian residents of Hebron are subjected to military gmernment is nonetheless - in a blood­ threatening a military assault on Saddam repression while fascistic Zionist settlers are given free rein to rampage. drenched tradition dating back to the Hussein's Iraq, among other alleged "ter­ original Zionist colonisation and the rorist" states. US policy shift that the liberal New York offIraq - US/British imperialism out of 194X expulsion of 700,000 Palestin- Washington also extended its "war on Times (14 December 2001) carried an Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Persian editorial headlined "Looking Beyond Gulf and the Near East! Yasir Arafat". Arafat's vow on 16 Deceember to From the Oslo "peace" accord outlaw Hamas and other groups that to the new Intifada continue the Intifada may have won him a bit of a lease on life. The US might yet The backdrop to the ominous situation try to restrain Israel if Sharon carries out now confronting the Palestinians lies in a blood-bath of Palestinians that pro­ the counterrevolutionary destruction of vokes upheaval among the neighbouring the Soviet Union in 1991-92. Seeking to Arab masses and threatens to plunge the strengthen their own position vis-a-vis Near East into chaos. Even then, Israel's Western imperialism, the Kremlin Stalin­ rulers have repeatedly demonstrated that ists provided a certain amount of mili­ they do not simply bow to Washington in tary, diplomatrc and financial support to pursuing their bloody ambitions for a Arab bourgeois regimes and petty-bour­ "Greater Israel". The Israeli regime geois nationalist movements like the Pal­ could well move to reimpose direct mili­ estine Liberation Organization (PLO). tary occupation in Gaza and the West Bereft of such Soviet support, in 1993 Bank or to formally annex broad swathes Arafat accepted the US-brokered Oslo of territory inclUding Zionist settlements "peace" accord, which gave the PLO a and the network of "strategic highways" few trappings of "sovereignty". But, as connecting them, leaving the Arab popu­ journalist David Hirst noted, "For the lation to starve in ghettoised enclaves. Israelis, security - theirs, not the :,~~ Months before the current US-led "war Palestinians' - was the be-all and end­ ,-:.,/.;!t on terror", we warned in "Zionist Butch­ all of Oslo. His [Arafat's] job was to Nasser Nasser/AP ers Escalate War on Palestinians" (Work­ supply it on their behalf' (Al-Ahram December 2001: Israeli army bulldozer completes destruction of Palestinian ers Vanguard no 760, 8 June 200 I): Weekly, 13 December 2001). Palestinian Authority's radio station in Ramallah. police, trained and overseen by the CIA "After eight months of Palestinian defi­ and Israeli security forces, would carry ians - "creating facts" on the ground. terror" to include Hamas. On the home ance and an escalating war of terror by the out the day-to-day policing of the subju­ As Arafat and his immediate coterie are front, federal agents seized the assets of Israeli military and its 'settler' auxiliaries, gated Palestinian masses while all Israeli confined to an office surrounded by the Holy Land Foundation, the largest the ultra-chauvinist Zionist rulers could settlements remained in place pending an Israeli tanks, little is left of the PA infra­ Muslim charity in the United States, well be moving toward a bloodbath of indefinite "final status" agreement. This catastrophic proportions." structure or the trappings of Palestinian claiming it was channelling money to ignominious deal served to fuel the "so\'ereignty" proclaimed with much Hamas. While not explicitly endorsing Powerful international protest, centred growth of the forces of Islamic reaction, t:1nfarc on thc White House lawn eight Sharon's line that the PAis a "terrorist on the proletariat not only of the Near centrally Hamas, in the West Bank and ycars ago. entity" and "irrelevant", the White East but of the imperialist centres, in Gaza, as the PLO (especially Arafat's The pretext for thc latest escalation in House has given him the green light to defence of the Palestinian people is Fatah) became increasingly discredited. Zionist butchery is Arafat's alleged fail­ move into the Occupied Territories with urgently necessary. In France, large num­ Various Western reformists, notably ure to crack down on the Islamic funda­ US-supplied warplanes and tanks to root bers of workers of North African origin the US International Socialist Organiza­ mcntalist Hamas after a number of sui­ out "terrorists". Bush administration are integrated into key sectors of indus­ tion (ISO), enthuse over the growth of cide bombings in Haifa and Jerusalcm in "soft cop" Colin Powell cautions that try. There is a significant component of such Islamic "radicals". An article in the early December. These indiscriminate Arafat retains the "mantle of leadership" Arab workers as well in the US auto ISO's Socialist Worker (14 December terror attacks, aimed at killing as many and the US "will continue to work with industry, many of whom are themselves 200 I) conspicuously fails to condemn Israeli civilians as possible, were a crime him". But it is a measure of the current threatened by the government's anti- continued on page 4

WINTER 2001- 2002 3 imprisoned 300 Hamas leaders and cadre cistic religious zealots who act as auxil­ tacks, the Foreign Secretary said that Near East ... and dismantled much of its military iaries to the military occupation forces Britain's position has changed because (Continuedfrom page 3) network. But five years ago Arafat stilI and idolise the likes of Baruch the Israeli government is under "unbe­ had considerable credibility among the Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born Zionist lievable pressure" from Palestinian sui­ the recent indiscriminate terror attacks in Palestinian masses, who maintained ilIu­ who slaughtered some 30 Palestinian cide bombings. Reflecting the more sym­ Haifa and Jerusalem carried out by sions in his strategy of relying on the worshippers in Hebron in 1994. The con­ pathetic posture of the EU imperialists Hamas; more generalIy, in recent years good graces of American imperialism to struction of new Jewish settlements is towards the Palestinians, the French the ISO and the British Socialist Work­ bring about an independent Palestinian accompanied by the expulsion of the Pal­ Ligue communiste revolutionnaire (LCR) ers Party have glorified Islamic funda­ state. estinians who formerly lived on the land. issued a declaration denouncing "the bel­ mentalism as an expression of "anti-im­ But these illusions were rapidly evap­ Even more Palestinian land has been licose logic in which the Sharon govern­ perialism". orating, as conditions of life went from confiscated in order to build a network ment has been engaged" and calling "for In fact, Hamas is a vile group of anti­ bad to worse. Withdrawal of Israeli of fortified "bypass roads" which are the setting up of an international force for Semitic and anti-woman religious fanat­ troops from small parts of the Occupied open only to Jews and encircle those peace and protection of the popu lation" ics which originated as an offshoot of the Territories was accompanied by the con- enclaves under nominal P A control. We (Rouge, 13 December 200 I). Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood fol­ lowing the outbreak of the first Palestin­ ~ ian Intifada in the late 1980s. As the Times (6 December 2001) pointed out: "At the time Israeli intelIigence saw the movement as a potential rival to Mr Arafat's Fatah group, the dominant fac­ tion in the Palestine Liberation Organisa­ tion, which was fomenting the first inti­ fada. The Israelis encouraged Hamas and its smalI group of religious zealots." In seeking to create an Islamic regime in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas mirrors the fascistic religious Jewish reactionaries who strive for a fulIy fledged Old Testament theocracy in Israel and who have themselves perpe­ trated repeated terrorist atrocities and pogroms against Palestinian Arabs. Indiscriminate terror against Israeli Jews, Getty Images whether carried out by Islamic funda­ Hamas supporter in Gaza. Indiscriminate terror by Hamas mirrors genocidal chauvinism of Zionist rulers. mentalists or secular Palestinian nation­ alists, mirrors on a smalI scale the geno­ struction of ever more checkpoints and demand the removal ofall anti-Arab for­ These fake leftists are simply lining cidallogic of Zionism. In their own way, fences, now augmented by trenches sur­ tifications in the Occupied Territo­ up behind the particular imperialist such outfits subscribe to the same basic rounding many villages. Along the bor­ ries-the settlements and the apartheid ambitions of Washington's European position as Sharon: that alI Jews, includ­ der between Israel and the West Bank highway network! rivals, who are competing for influence ing schoolchildren or teenagers at a disco north of Tel Aviv, there is now a multi­ These conditions finally exploded into among the oil-rich Arab regimes of the or shopping malI, are soldiers of the ple barrier of razor wire, high-voltage a new Intifada last autumn - sparked by Near East. Even were Israel or the US to Zionist state. fence and a ten-foot-high concrete wall Sharon's provocative "visit" with hun­ allow it to happen, any imperialist Terror attacks against the Israeli popu­ that extends for more than a mile, block­ dreds of cops to a Muslim holy site in "peacekeeping" force, whether under the lation serve to strengthen the intense ing off the adjacent Palestinian town of Jerusalem in September 2000 - which auspices of the EU or the UN, could only chauvinism which binds the Hebrew­ Tulkarem. As Palestinian day labourers was initialIy led primarily by elements of be oppressive to the Palestinian people. speaking workers - including impover­ were increasingly denied entry to Israel, Fatah in defiance of Arafat. As Arafat, It was under a UN partition plan that the ished and oppressed Sephardic Jews - to per capita income in the West Bank and under pressure from Washington, tried to Zionist state was created in 1948, and it their capitalist exploiters. Some Arab Gaza plunged to half what it had been suppress the uprising, he has lost what is through a UN-sponsored starvation nationalists initialIy maintained that the before 1993, and less than one-tenth that remained of his base of support. The lat­ blockade that over one and a half million attack on the World Trade Center was in Israel. est opinion poll indicates that support for Iraqis have died since 1991. actualIy carried out by the Israelis in order At the same time, the number of Zion­ Islamist groups has risen to 30 per cent The only salvation for the Palestinian to tum the outrage of the American peo­ ist settlers doubled. East Jerusalem has while support for Fatah has fallen to 20 people lies through proletarian revolu­ ple against the Arab/Islamic world. By been increasingly "cleansed" of Palestin­ per cent. Though many Palestinians have tion and a socialist federation of the Near the same logic, Hamas' attacks against ians as Arab homes are razed while turned to Hamas because of its seeming East. As revolutionary Marxists, we seek Israeli civilians could just as welI have Jewish-only housing is vastly expanded, intransigence against the Zionist occupa­ to smash the Zionist garrison state from been instigated by the Israeli Mossad particularly in response to the demand tion forces, there has nonetheless been a within, through Arab/Hebrew workers sharp rise in the influence of religious revolution. Only through the overthrow fundamentalism among the Palestinian of the Israeli bourgeoisie as well as the people. Arab ruling classes can the right of na­ This, in tum, is mirrored by growing tional self-determination of both the Pal­ support among the Hebrew-speaking estinian Arab and Hebrew-speaking peo­ population for ultra-chauvinist and Jew­ ples and the many other peoples of the ish fundamentalist parties. Half of all region be equitably realised. We have no Israelis surveyed in a recent poll support illusions that it will be easy to shatter the the "transfer" - ie forcible expul­ intense anti-Arab chauvinism of the sion - of Palestinians in the West Bank Hebrew-speaking working class. But it is and Gaza to Arab countries, a position the task of revolutionaries to utilise ev­ once espoused by only a tiny handful on ery opportunity, every strike, every ac­ the fascistic right. The growing rightism tion that pits the working class against of Israeli politics also targets the more the Zionist capitalist rulers to emphasise than a million Palestinian Arabs who are the necessity for joint struggle by the nominally citizens of Israel. Prominent Palestinian Arab and Hebrew-speaking Arab Israeli parliamentarian Azmi workers. In the course of such struggles Bishara now awaits trial on treason will be forged the internationalist Trots­ charges after being stripped of parlia­ kyist party which champions the national mentary immunity because he made a rights of the Palestinians as part of the speech in Syria calling for Palestinian fight to place the proletariat in power. resistance. Faced with Sharon's onslaught and American imperialism and the Reuters Mourners at 12 December funeral in Gaza for Palestinian killed by Israeli Washington'S hostility, Arafat has again demonisation of the Islamic occupation forces. looked to the United Nations or the Euro­ world pean Union (EU) to broker some kind of secret police, for they serve the aims of that East Jerusalem become the capital of deal. The EU has simultaneously echoed Early this month, the Jerusalem Post the Zionist state. In the early '50s, the a future Palestinian state. While many the American line demanding that Arafat wrote: "The US is not in a diplomatic Mossad engineered synagogue bombings who live in the settlements are either crack down on Palestinian opposition mode with respect to Islamism; it recog­ and other provocations in Near Eastern new immigrants forced to move there by groups while arguing against any "at­ nizes that it is at war and Islamism must countries (eg Egypt) with the aim of scar­ the government or attracted by artifi­ tempts to weaken or discredit" the P A be defeated. Accordingly, the Taliban ing the Jewish populations there to mi­ cially low housing costs, large numbers leader (Financial Times, 15-16 December were given an ultimatum to either give grate to Israel. of those who are not fanatical Zionists 2001). On 20 December, Jack Straw up Osama bin Laden or give up power. In now demanding that Arafat crack have concluded that cheap housing isn't issued an ultimatum to Yasir Arafat to The Palestinian Authority must be given down on Hamas, American ruling circles much good if you're dead and have left crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad a similar ultimatum with respect to point out that he did so effectively in the settlements. The political core of the and that the Intifada must end. With no Hamas and Islamic Jihad." It is not only 1996, when his police rounded up and settler movement consists of armed fas- mention of the Zionists' murderous at- the rabidly Zionist Jerusalem Post that 4 WORKERS HAMMER proclaims a war on Islamism. Bush religious obscurantism internationally, administration spokesmen initially in­ especially following the demise of the voked the Christian Crusades to justify USSR. The Christian fundamentalist their "war on terrorism". right in the US has become a staunch During the Cold War, American impe­ supporter of Israel as a representative of rialism also utilised and mobilised the the "Judeo-Christian" tradition in the forces of Islamic reaction against the Near East. Communist parties and Soviet-backed Huntington arrogantly asserts that the nationalist movements and regimes in peoples of the Islamic East are "con­ traditionally Muslim countries. The vinced of the superiority of their culture, Saudi monarchy-the font of Islamic and obsessed with the inferiority of their fundamentalism in the Near East - was power". In reality, American imperialism and remains protected by the American has sought to demonstrate its global military. Washington instigated the 1965 superiority by military attacks against the military coup by the Muslim generals in neocolonial peoples of the Islamic East Indonesia in which half a million work­ precisely because they are powerless to ers, leftists and others were massacred, resist effectively. Bush Sr proclaimed a effectively destroying the Indonesian "New World Order" for US imperial­ Workers Hammer Communist Party, then the largest in the ism - as the Soviet Union neared col­ December 1998: Spartacist League demonstrate in London against US and world not holding state power. Bin lapse - while US and British warplanes British imperialist attack on Iraq. Laden and his fellow "holy warriors" carpet-bombed Iraq in the 1991 Gulf were originally the creatures of the War. And America's capitalist rulers the Iraqi army in the Gulf War. How­ Taliban. More generally, the fanatically CIA - using the Pakistani military and have continued to vilify Iraqi strongman ever, the factors arguing against an in va- reactionary and repressive nature of the Saudi money - to fight the Soviet Army Saddam Hussein as an enemy of the US • sion of Iraq then are still operating today. Taliban regime deprived it of broad sup­ in Afghanistan in the 1980s. and, indeed, the world: There is no armed oppositional group port in the Arab/Islamic world even in However, the destruction of the Soviet Saddam Hussein is not, in fact, an in Iraq (analogous to the Northern Alli­ the face of direct US imperialist attack. Union through capitalist counterrevolu­ Islamic fundamentalist. He is an Arab ance in Afghanistan) that could over­ But there is broad-based and deeply tion in 1991-92 posed a certain public bourgeois nationalist oLthe kind hated throw Saddam Hussein given sufficient felt support for the oppressed Palestinian relations problem for the US ruling class: and despised by pan-Islamic fundamen­ US air support. The US army would people among the masses of the Arab how to motivate continued public sup­ talists like Osama bin Laden. The have to go into Iraq in force. And what world and, indeed, among other op­ port for the huge and even increasing Ba'athist movement was originally then? If the Americans just pulled out, pressed peoples throughout the world. Pentagon budget and imperialist military formed by Christian as well as Muslim Iraq would almost certainly descend into To translate the widespread sympathy for chaos and ethnic/religious warfare, the Palestinians among the Arab masses destabilising the entire oil-rich Persian into an effective struggle for their na­ Gulf region and perhaps toppling the tionalliberation requires proletarian rev­ increasingly fragile Saudi monarchy. olutions to overthrow the neocolonial Alternatively, to install and maintain a capitalist regimes in the Near East­ US puppet regime in Baghdad would whether bourgeois-nationalist or Islamic require a large-scale, indefinite military traditionalist - which serve as the politi­ occupation of Iraq. A New York Times cal agents of Wall Street, the City of (26 November 2001) editorial, "The London, Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo. A Wrong Time to Fight Iraq", marshals the workers revolution in one of the Arab compelling military and political argu­ countries, proclaiming the international­ ments against such a course. However, ist unity of all working people, would the American ruling class is not rational, have an enormous impact on the political and the anti-Iraq hawks could prevail. consciousness of the Hebrew-speaking Indeed, such an editorial by the premier workers in Israel. mouthpiece of the American bourgeoisie The Near East is a region of deep, a11- indicates that the imperialists are debat­ sided oppression - of women, of na­ ing whether to invade Iraq today, and tional, ethnic and religious minorities. At may do so tomorrow. the same time, the last half century has AFP seen the considerable growth of a prole­ 1998: Devastation in Baghdad from British/US terror bombing. For a Socialist Federation of the tariat in the urban centres and oil fields Near Eastl throughout the region. This industrial adventures in the absence of the Soviet Arab nationalist intellectuals, and Iraq's working class has the social power to "threat". Since 11 September, the Israeli rulers foreign minister is likewise from a Chris­ lead the oppressed masses in struggle to Harvard's Samuel P Huntington, a tian Arab family. However, the ideo­ have pressed to extend Bush's "war on terrorism" to the destruction of the Pales­ overturn the capitalist order and open the prominent Cold War academic, provided logues of American imperialism have road to socialism, which would necessar­ a new ideology for American imperial­ tinian national movement. However, that linked together Saddam Hussein and bin ily entail extending the revolution to the ism in the post-Soviet world. That world, would have political repercussions in the Laden, Hamas and the left-nationalist imperialist centres of North America, he argued, still contained enemies of the Near East of a far greater magnitude than Popular Front for the Liberation of Pal­ Western Europe and Japan. The key is American state, and, indeed, of Western estine in order to demonise the Islamic the destruction of the Taliban by the US and its Northern Alliance henchmen. forging a revolutionary leadership of the civilisation, but now they were based on East as an enemy of the West repre­ proletariat, on the model of the Bolshe­ The Taliban (which was basically a deeply rooted nationaUreligious cultures. sented by its American "superpower". vik Party of VI Lenin and Leon Trotsky creation of the Pakistani military) turned Huntington's 1993 article "The Clash of In putting together a "grand coalition" that led the multinational proletariat of out to have many more enemies than Civilizations?", published in Foreign for the war against the Taliban and Al the tsarist empire to power in the Octo­ friends in the Islamic world. Indeed, the Affairs, became a kind offoreign policy Qaeda, Bush declared this was "not a ber Revolution of 1917. manifesto for a significant section of the war against Islam". The conservative Shi'ite Islamic theocratic regime in Iran American bourgeois right, whose views Economist (6 October 2001) commented has been among the chief backers of the Adapted from Workers Vanguard are heavily represented in the Bush ad­ in this regard: Northern Alliance against the Sunni no 771, 28 December 2001. ministration. The core of Huntington's "America may have an even bigger prob­ position is: lem in winning the propaganda war: those "The great divisions among humankind Americans, largely on the right, who think Available in Chinese! and the dominating source of conflict will the country will indl,ed eventually have to .e~1!;" !SPARTACJSTI~,; be cultural. Nation states will remain the wage war on Islam - or, at least, various most powerful actors in world affairs, but chunks of the Muslim world. These voices "Market Socialism" and the principal conflicts of global politics say that you cannot defeat terror without ";piitt*~Sl" ®iE~*tI9i1f= will occur between nations and groups of confronting its backers in Iraq, Iran and to the Legacy of Mao different civilizations. The clash of civil­ some extent Saudi Arabia and Syria." q:r~fl1RJ~~? izations will dominate global politics. The For the moment Bush rejected those Whither China? fault lines between civilizations will be (including his deputy defence secretary the battle lines of the future." Paul Wolfowitz) who wanted to wage Defend China Against Imperialism, For Huntington, the battle lines of the war then and there against half the states Counterrevolution! future would pit the United States of in the Near East. In effect, he said, first For Workers Political Revolution! America, as the exemplar and champion we'll destroy the Taliban and then we'll of Western civilisation, against Eastern see. But then has become now. Orthodox Russia, "Confucian" China As one Afghan city after another fell £0.75 and the Islamic states of the Near East. to the American-backed forces, members (24 pages) ~JItj:ljJEi~~jJ~Sl.taEi¥:tri ! Such views were espoused by a grow­ of the Bush gang began talking about "IAiI!l)&¥:$ilIi4. ! ing Christian right which had become getting rid of Saddam Hussein. In fact, Make cheques payable/post to: .Af'.t:.II.".'CL,Bn>:7.... gGPO,_'IbI1!, NY 10' IS." "~ M ... increasingly influential in the Republican significant elements of the American 'M Spartacist Publications ~ ... Party. The growth of a nativist, anti­ right have been harshly critical of Bush PO Box 1041 - - --~ woman Christian right in the US is itself Sr for allowing Saddam Hussein to re­ London NW5 3EU an expression of the rise of all manner of main in power after the US forces routed

WINTER 2001· 2002 5 Fake left crawl to war-crazed Blair For class struggle against British capitalism and its Labour government! Defend Afghanistan against imperialist attack!

Blair and Bush's bombing of Afghani­ so much about. stan, a hideously poor, famine-stricken The SUB statement of 15 September country, has already claimed more than said: a thousand victims and seen hundreds of "Labour's draconian Terrorism Act will thousands of people flee; B52s and undoubtedly be invoked. The Act bans a "daisycutter" bombers have relentlessly whole swathe of mainly immigrant and pounded the country. The bombing has Islamic organisations but ultimately it is cleared the way for the Northern Alli­ aimed at all opponents of British imperial­ ance to put the Taliban on the run, and ism, the entire workers movement and the the imperialists, who created both the left. The government is setting up British Muslims as targets but all Asians and Northern Alliance and Taliban as bloody anyone of Near Eastern origin are under anti-woman butchers in the 1980s, are threat: already a number of Sikhs have now threatening to send troops to the been attacked .... region, cynically presented as "peace­ "These police-state measures against keepers", possibly under UN auspices. immigrants and minorities are the domes­ The UN is the fig-leaf for the terror and tic reflection of the impending murderous destruction of US imperialism and its NATO retaliatory war measures .... allies worldwide, from Iraq, to Somalia "Ethnic and national minorities are not the only domestic targets in the sights of the to the Balkans. All imperialist troops capitalist state. It would be very conven­ -UN, NATO, US, British-out of Workers Hammer Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Group contingent at 18 November 2001 ient for the bosses and the Labour govern­ Afghanistan/Central Asia and out of the anti-war demonstration in London. ment if working-class anger over attacks Balkans now! on working conditions, health and educa­ Tony Blair has been circling the world tion were to be displaced by a racist orgy drumming up support for the bloody US­ of patriotic gore." led war against Afghanistan. This is the As well as detention without trial, new naked face of British imperialism, ad­ proposals include ID cards for asylum ministered by "Her Majesty's Labour seekers, speeding up deportations, in­ Party", stripped of its veneer of parlia­ creased use of detention centres and mentary "democracy". While playing the compulsory English tests for immigrants. role of junior partners and cheerleaders These measures add fuel to the anti­ for US imperialism, Labour ministers are lim world and in Europe. Imperialism is armed Zionist madmen threaten to "elim­ immigrant crusade that has been an abid­ also representing the interests of British not a rational system, and the bombing inate" Yasir Arafat and have re-occupied ing feature of Labour's racist reign. The imperialism - the City of London, the poses any number of "what ifs" among the West Bank and Gaza. Defend the ruling class always seek to divide work­ fmancial centre of Europe and centre for capitalist powers. What if the war desta­ Palestinians against Zionist terror! All ers along race lines to deflect the anger exploitation of the whole world. Social bilises Pakistan, putting its nuclear capa­ Israeli troops and settlers out- of the away from their own doorstep. Never Democratic chancellor Gerhard ShrOder bility up for grabs? What if it triggers a Occupied Territories! more so than when the world is entering is pushing for Germany's military inter- further war between India and Pakistan, Immediately following the 11 Septem­ a global capitalist recession and hun­ ber attack on the World Trade Cen­ dreds of thousands of workers are being ter - an indefensible act of criminal laid off. Down with Labour's Terrorism terror that incinerated thousands of civil­ Act! Down with the Asylum Act! For full ians - each section of the ICL issued citizenship rights for all immigrants! statements introducing the SUUS Politi­ Workers and minorities must defend the cal Bureau statement of 12 September. Muslim population and all victims of We said the attack was being used by US Labour's racist witch hunt! and British imperialism - themselves a The US, Britain and their imperialist major force for international terror­ rivals have declared that they will make ism - for military action in revenge and a bloc with those who are "against terror­ for state repression at home. The Labour ism". They are increasing attacks on the government has seized the opportunity to working class at home, which are de­ ram through drastic measures under signed to sharpen the competitiveness of cover of the so-called "war on terror­ their capitalist trusts on the world mar­ ism". Jack Straw promised increased ket, in the context of an increasingly "security of a kind people in Northern dramatic economic recession. This com­ Ireland have had to live with for petition between capitalist powers ulti­ decades". We said that, for workers and mately threatens world war. minorities, this would mean "the bloody In Europe, no less than in America, police-state repression that oppressed the working class has been subjected to Catholics suffer from the British Army a continuous attack on jobs, wages and and the RUC". Home Secretary David benefits, in large measure from govern­ Blunkett is about to introduce internment ments led by social-democratic parties. for "terrorist suspects", which was used Throughout Europe there is widespread

Owen HumphriesiPA to round up and imprison Catholics in revulsion as children are massacred in Bradford, July 2001: Police attacked Asian youth, defended the fascists. Free Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Labour the bombings and at the imperialists' jailed anti-racist protesters I has declared a "state of public cynicism in parachuting peanut butter emergency" to allow them to suspend between fragmentation bombs. At the vention because he says it is an opportu­ plunging the region into chaos? What if part of the European convention on end of October, the giant IG Metall un­ nity to legitimise the commitment of access to oil is disrupted? What if these human rights and instigate indefinite ion in Germany called for a halt to the German soldiers in combat for the first powers are inexorably drawn from their detention without trial. This is a funda­ bombing, only to be reprimanded by time since 1945. current status as cheerleaders into a mental attack on civil liberties, particu­ "their" Social Democratic chancellor, There are signs of dissension in the shooting war in which they have no larly threatening irnmigrants and refu­ Schroder, who lectured: "Concern your­ ranks of Britain and America's bloc direct interest? In the Near East powder gees, which also shows the true face of self with the living conditions of your partners among those in the ArablMus- keg the stakes are very high. Nuclear- British "democracy" which Blair brags members, but keep your fingers out of

6 WORKERS HAMMER foreign policy, because you understand nothing about it" (Spiegel Online, 31 October). An IG Metall spokesman re­ plied, "We're not about to let even SchrOder shut us up." In Italy, the COBAS (rank and file committees) un­ ions called a one-day general strike on 9 November against the war on Afghan­ istan and the Italian government's assault on social benefits. There is huge opposition in Britain to the war. On 13 October, 50,000 marched in London against the war. The Fire Brigades Union and the rail union RMT backed the protest, and the Scottish ruc, the CWU and ASLEF have called for a halt to the bombing. Dissenting

voices in the trade union bureaucracy Chin/NY Times reflect discontent at the base of the un­ Islamic reaction enslaves Afghan women (left); Soviet intervention opened the road to liberation. ions. Those union bureaucrats who op­ pose the war do so from the perspective oppression is integrally liriked to the bounds of bourgeois parliamentar­ "Extend the social gains of the October' that running point for America does not defence of Afghanistan against imperial­ ism - ie preserving the dictatorship of Revolution to the Afghan peoples!" serve the best interests of British imperi­ ist attack. And that requires breaking the the bourgeoisie. Although administered by a nationalist alism. Thus a letter from trade union allegiance of the workers to their • At the centre of any socialist opposi­ Stalinist bureaucracy, the Soviet Union general secretaries condemned the Labourite, social-chauvinist leaders and tion to British imperialism has to be the was a workers state based on proletarian bombing but appealed to British workers mobilising class-struggle opposition to demand for the British Army to get out property forms. We defended it uncondi­ to oppose war by lining up behind the war. Only the Leninist commitment of Northern Ireland now. But you will tionally against imperialism and domes­ "their" government, ie their capitalist to combat Labourism and to win workers not hear a peep of this from the Stop the tic counterrevolution, as we still do to­ exploiters, pleading: "We therefore call to a revolutionary programme and party War Coalition. Catholic schoolgirls in day for China as well as Cuba, Vietnam upon the British government to pull back can prepare the way for the long overdue Belfast's Ardoyne are running a gauntlet and North Korea. from the course of war." These Labour and increasingly urgent socialist over­ of Loyalist thugs on their way to school Opposition to the Soviet Army in lieutenants of British capitalism seek to turns necessary in Britain and elsewhere. every day. The role of the British Army Afghanistan was a quintessential expres­ channel workers' anger into "little Eng­ Only workers revolution can end imperi­ in Northern Ireland - shoring up the sion of social-patriotism, on what was a land" nationalism and anti-Americanism. alist war and we fight to build the multi­ sectarian Orange statelet, backing the defining question of opposition to the Strikes against the bosses would chal­ ethnic revolutionary workers party nec­ RUC and Loyalist death squads, gives imperialist rulers. At the time of the lenge the "national unity" used to cement essary to succeed in this task. the lie to the "democratic" credentials of Soviet intervention, the Labour Party, workers behind the Labour government. British imperialism. Against the chauvin­ which had just been thrown out of gov­ This requires implacable opposition to Labourites plead: "Stop the ist and divisive poison of the capitalist ernment, swiftly organised a delegation Labour and its pro-capitalist trade union War" rulers, we seek to mobilise the working to the Soviet Embassy to demand the bureaucracy. During the TUC confer­ class to take up this fight for troops out withdrawal of the Red Army. Heading We oppose the strategy of the Stop the ence they seized on the 11 September now and for workers revolution on both up the delegation was one Tony Benn, War Coalition, an umbrella group formed attacks to abandon their "battle" sides of the Irish border and both sides so-called Labour left and darling of by a host of fake socialists who helped - which only amounted to a war of of the Irish Sea. British fake socialists. The thoroughly Labourite SWP also screamed for words - with the Labour government At a Stop the War Coalition confer­ over privatisation of public services. But ence on 27 October in London's School "Troops out of Afghanistan!" Leading SWPer Paul Foot even used his weekly the fact that they were even raising their of Oriental and African Studies, a state­ column in the Daily Mirror to denounce heads above the parapet at all is because ment was adopted which called to "stop Margaret Thatcher from the right for of the growing anger and militancy the war currently declared by the United allowing beef exports to the Soviet amongst workers. When London Under­ States and its allies against 'terrorism'" Army, asking "Are we putting beef into ground workers held one-day strikes - without even mentioning British Russia's invasion?" Foot's "exposes" earlier this year, the financial losses to imperialism, or the Labour government's the City of London were considerable. role. Our comrades scandalised the or­ succeeded in provoking an anti-Commu­ When Tube workers planned a one-day ganisers for inviting warmongers from nist clamour in Parliament for an all-out strike in October to defend their liveli­ NATO and the Foreign Office to "de­ trade embargo on the Soviet Union. hoods, they were met by an onslaught bate" the bombing of Afghanistan. In The centrist Workers Power (WP) from the bourgeois press and the CBI, response to our interventions, leading used the intervention of the Red Army accusing them of siding with terrorism, SWP member Alex Callinicos confirmed into Afghanistan to announce its repudi­ and the union bureaucrats called it off. that the Coalition's perspective is to ation of the anti-Soviet "third camp" Sustained strike action by all transport pressure Labour, and sneered at our position inherited from the SWP, from workers in the capital-train, bus and statement that "only socialist revolution which Workers Power had split five Tube - could bring the City grinding to can stop imperialist war". By denying years earlier. Yet in practice they never a halt. Break with the Labour mislead­ this basic fact, the Stop the War Coali­ drew the programmatic conclusions of ers! The working class needs a revolu­ tion is a barrier to mobilising the work­ Trotsky'S analysis: unconditional mili­ tionary party! ing class in a struggle for its own inde­ tary defence of the Soviet Union and the The Spartacist League and Spartacus pendent class interests, which means other deformed workers states against Youth Group have intervened in demon­ bringing an end to the system of capital­ imperialist attack and internal counter­ strations and meetings against the war ist exploitation. revolution. WP joined the imperialists centred on our demand: For class strug­ and their Labour lieutenants in opposing gle against the British capitalist rulers! Workers Hammer the Soviet military intervention as "coun­ Defend Afghanistan against imperialist London, 18 November 2001: Stop the Bin Laden and the Taliban: terrevolutionary". They wrote at the attack! At the 13 October demonstration War Coalition pleads to Labour. bitter fruit of the Cold War time: "We have no hesitation in con­ our chants included: "Troops out of against the Soviet Union demning the Soviet invasion of Afghani­ Ireland! Hands offIraq!" and "Crawling elect this Labour government. Nestled In December 1979 Red Army troops stan. . .. The Soviet invasion can only to Labour won't stop war, workers comfortably with their Right Honourable moved into Afghanistan to aid a pro­ further strengthen the hold of reactionary revolution is what we're for!" Our signs friends from the Labour Party and the Moscow, left-nationalist regime besieged forces over large sections of the said: "Trotskyists hailed Red Army likes of Monsignor Bruce Kent and the by a CIA-backed Islamic insurgency. In oppressed masses" while they also against CIA-backed woman-hating Af­ Greens you will find Workers Power, the biggest covert CIA operation in his­ claimed that it would be "tactically ghan reactionaries!" and "Defend China along with the Socialist Workers Party tory, the US funnelled billions of dollars wrong ... to demand the immediate with­ against imperialism, counterrevolution! (SWP), the Socialist Party and the Alli­ to the Islamic "holy warriors" in Afghan­ drawal of Soviet troops" (Workers For workers political revolution!" as well ance for Workers Liberty, forming this istan, with the aim of using the Afghan Power, February 1980). This is exactly as "Anti-'terror' witch hunt: Danger to outfit whose main slogan - Stop the conflict as a launching pad for the de­ what Trotsky described as the "crystal­ minorities, workers, left!" Intervening in War-dovetails with bourgeois opposi­ struction of the Soviet Union. Noting lised confusion" of centrism. meetings against the war, our comrades tion to the war. Notably absent is any call that what was posed was not only de­ When Soviet forces were pulled out in have stressed that the fight against war to defend Afghanistan against imperialist fence of the Soviet degenerated workers 1988-89, paving the way for a bloody has to be linked to the fight against capi­ attack. The Coalition's strategy is simple: state but also the possibility of extending onslaught against the Afghan peoples, talism and "national unity" patriotism. pressure the war-crazed Labour govern­ the social gains of the October Revolu­ we denounced this enormous betrayal by This means destroying the illusions ped­ ment, which is raining bombs on the tion to the hideously oppressed peoples the Stalinist bureaucracy. We pointed out dled by the fake left that imperialist war Afghan peoples. By spreading illusions of Afghanistan, particularly women, we that, "If the mujahedin succeed in butch­ can be stopped by pressuring Labour. that the evils and "excesses" of capital­ forthrightly declared, "Hail Red Army in ering every leftist, teacher and unveiled The task of revolutionaries is to edu­ ism can be curbed by mass pressure on Afghanistan!" It was only the Soviet woman in Afghanistan, their blood will cate and mobilise the proletariat in the Labour, they aim to keep the anger and intervention that opened the way to so­ be on the hands not only of the Bushes, Uflderstanding that defence of workers opposition building in this country, par­ cial progress for women and for Afghan Thatchers and Kohls, but also on their here against increasing exploitation and ticularly amongst youth, firmly within the peasants. That's why we raised the call, continued on page 8

WINTER 2001· 2002 7 'E.. "C> -" NO TO THE VEIL' War ••• I'ARTISAN IJm'ENCF. COMMITTEE c: FUNDRAISIN~ SOCIAL ~ DEFEND AFGHAN WOMEN I (Continued from page 7) SUPPORT JALAlABAO VICTIMS 'left' camp followers." We said clearly OF CIA CUTTHROATS' that: "At stake in the battle for Afghani­ PARTISAN DEFENSE COtttTTEE stan is far more than the fate of this hideously backward land" (Workers Hammer no 105, March 1989). We wamed that it was far better to fight and defeat the forces of counterrevolution in Following 1989 Soviet withdrawal, Spar­ Afghanistan than be forced to take them lo. tacists launched on inside the Soviet Union itself. And in Support Jalalabad Victims international campaign 1998 the ICL's "Declaration of Princi­ to aid embattled city of ples and Some Elements of Program" of CIA's Cutthroats! Jalalabad against pointed to the bitter reality that: "The .... p'oc::oMKISlO~CM .... ~AocIfun:l mujahedin cut-throats . E...... U.....-Lr'~ 1979 'Iranian Revolution' opened up a ,~~ 1... 0IY- period of ascendant political Islam in the l'8f...... '-, '--...... Ee'

-'- ~-- ... ___O'OI;. ___ historically Muslim world, a develop­ -- ... ,-,. ment which contributed to and was pow­ erfully reinforced by the counterrevolu­ tionary destruction of the Soviet Union." ghanistan in the 1980s as part of its have issued a refreshing critique which nism - an Infantile Disorder in 1920 The pro-imperialist, anti-Communist decades-long drive to smash the Soviet well and truly gored Workers Power's ox. largely to win left-wing anarchists and Cliffites cheered: "Just as socialists Union. In its crusape against "godless Citing the following quote from syndicalists to Bolshevism. He noted welcomed the defeat of the US in Viet­ Communism", Washington readily ac­ NWBCW, WP dismiss as "ridiculous" the that: "Anarchism was not infrequently nam, we welcome the defeat of the Rus­ cepted the re-enslavement of Afghan statement that the struggle against war a kind of penalty for the opportunist sians in Afghanistan. It will give heart to women as "collateral damage". A few should be linked to the struggle against sins of the working-class movement." all those inside the USSR and in Eastern years ago, Madeleine Albright also made capitalism: No War But The Class War is superfi­ "The response of the left to the war is cially more radical than pleading to to drag out the tired old discredited Labour. However, anarchists don't formula of anti-imperialism in which the stand for military defence of Afghani­ USA is the imperial power to be op­ stan, using their opposition in principle posed. This in tum means giving sup­ to "all states" (as well as a healthy port (conditional or critical, it matters revulsion against Islamic fundamental­ not) to the barbarous misogynist pro­ ism) to justify a neutral posture be­ capitalist regime of the Taliban. Not tween the biggest imperialist terrorists surprisingly this quickly develops into on the planet and devastated Afghani­ anti-Americanism, which writes off an important section of the working class stan. Likewise, anarchists opposed the as irredeemably reactionary." Red Army in Afghanistan during the Cold War because they refused to Workers Power responds: "Anti-imperi­ defend the USSR, which put them in alism that falls into anti-Americanism the camp of imperialism alongside the couldn't be consistently anti-imperial­ Labourite fake socialists. Today, anar­ ist". But isn't that.the point-and how chism is attractive to youth who do not does this refute the simple truth that see the proletariat as an instrument for the Coalition's politics are based on social revolution. But the working class anti-Americanism, which has been the alone has the social power to lead the stock-in-trade of Labour "lefts" such as oppressed and exploited to a revolu­ Tony Benn for decades? WP continues: tionary assault on the capitalist order. "But what is really startling is the sec­ Anarchism rejects the dictatorship of tarianism of NWBTCW towards the the proletariat-the necessary first step Stop the War movement, and the ridicu­ towards the withering away of the state Smolan/Conlacl lous alternative they propose: that the Kabul parade greets Soviet troops arriving to aid left-nationalist PDPA regime, through the creation of a classless struggle against the war and the struggle commur.ist society. 1980. We said "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!" against capitalism are one. "In one sense it is true, if a bit abstract. On their home turf, Workers Power Europe who want to break the rule of clear that the death by starvation and But if this truth means refusing to unite are happy as pigs in muck in the Stop Stalin's heirs" (Socialist Worker [US], disease of over a million Iraqis in the with all those [who] are not (yet) anti­ the War Coalition, as they are in the May 1988). Siding with the mujahedin as defence of US imperial interests in the capitalist to defeat the government's war Socialist Alliance. Voting Labour is the SWP did, means that they bear a Near East was acceptable collateral effort and. win hundreds of thousands of just about the only ''principle'' Workers share of responsibility for the barbarous damage. Using that brutal calculus, it is people to anti-capitalism in the process Power adheres to. In Workers Power anti-woman butchery of the Taliban and fair to ask if the thousands killed in the then it is just sectarianism." (November 2001) they write: the Northern Alliance. Socialist Worker World Trade Center were also "accept­ - Workers Power, November 2001 (6 October) continues to alibi the heirs of able collateral damage" for US imperial­ "In Britain, the Socialist Alliance - which the mujahedin. They go so far as to ism's victory in the Cold War. The NWBCW statement illustrates why has been struggling to break out of a pro­ anarchism today appeals to those who tracted phase of small-scale unity between whitewash the Taliban's imposition of Afghanistan today is one of the most left groups, union activists and a few La­ the veil, grotesquely implying they did it genuinely seek to end the rule of the backward countries on earth, with no bourgeoisie and who have a healthy bour dissidents - now faces a much big­ to protect women from rape: "The ger prospect. It can become the socialist proletariat, which means social progress rejection of the parliamentary reform­ Taliban's treatment of women reflects can only come from without. Socialist pole of attraction for the much wider mass ism of the social democrats and their movement - including left-wing Greens, both the under-development of the vil­ revolution, the liberation of the lages the Taliban had come from and the hangers on such as Workers Power. Tribunite Labour Party members and peace oppressed Afghan peoples, can come Lenin wrote "Left-Wing" Commu- activists. " trauma of the war years.... Taliban about only through socialist overturns in leaders feared that their soldiers would neighbouring countries such as Iran, behave as some previous Mujahadeen Pakistan and India, where there are sig­ groups had on taking a city. The war nificant proletarian concentrations. Cen­ Socialist Worker years had seen repeated abuse and rape tral to a revolutionary perspective in 12 January 1980 ofwomen. They said that forcing women these countries is the fight against the Socialist into seclusion was a means of protecting age-old subjugation of women. Indeed, Worker Troops out of Afghanlstanl them." the Afghan conflict in the 1980s was the ,..~~------While denouncing the Soviet betrayal, only war in modem history fought cen­ 5 october 1996 we did not give up in 1989; when the trally over the status of women. Today thLBut Taliban's success comes ti~ ~iii\~ ~J ~rlf~ Afghan government declined our offer to we defend Afghanistan against imperial­ from popular disenchantment with r.. : organise an international brigade to go ist attack, without giving any political the leaders who oppose it-tIle ~ and fight to the death against the bin support to the Taliban reactionaries. forces guarding Kabul melted ~ Socialist Ladens, Masouds and others, we made away last week. ~ Class struggle in the imperialist centres Tragically, the Taliban has no an international financial campaign against the war on Afghanistan will have answer to the terrible crisis of the ""'_ ..Worker __1 ...... 151 which raised over £27,000 for the vic­ reverberations across the world. country either. May 1988 tims of the city of Jalalabad enslaved by ..l.t sbes the mujahedin of Bush Senior and , Just as socialists welcomed the Thatcher. Workers Power: "Defeat 'defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam, we ;welcome the defeat of the Russians i Bin Laden is a Frankenstein's monster imperialism" in Kabul ... LOBBY PARLIAMENT in London :in Afghanistan. It will give heart to that turned on his creator, American SWP and US ISO embraced im­ 'all those inside the USSR and in imperialism, which unleashed him and The Stop the War Coalition is so perialist anti-Soviet crusade in : Eastern Europe who want to break other Islamic reactionaries, like the wretchedly Labourite that the anarchists Afghanistan, welcomed anti-woman ithe rule of Stalin's heirs. Taliban, against the Red Army in Af- ofNo War But The Class War (NWBCW) Islamic fundamentalist victory. i Ro!!..1bk: nnes

8 WORKERS HAMMER « 0- alists' proxy war in Afghanistan at the W time! We fervently desired that Soviet commandos would crush the Islamic fanatics who threw acid in the faces of unveiled women. Not so Workers Power, which condemned the Soviet presence while stopping short of echoing the impe­ rialist cry for a Red Army withdrawal. As a left cover for its opposition to the Soviet military presence, Workers Power at the Refugees in Makaki camp time concocted an Afghan proletariat as where an independent "revolutionary force". thousands have The current LRCI joint statement raises fled devastation the demand for a "workers' and peasants' of US/British govemment" in Afghanistan, where there war on is no working class and not much of a Afghanistan. peasantry. 1 ~'(\Ietarian opposition to the imperial­ ist depredations of the exploiters around the world needs to be based on the un­ derstanding that, in the words of Leon "Socialist pole''') The Socialist Alliance group) compared with their positIOn who might read it, from the psycholog­ Trotsky: "To condemn war is easy; to was the left's chosen vehicle for get­ during the 1999 NATO war against ically disturbed to youth in search of overcome it is difficult. The struggle ting out the vote for Labour. (As the Serbia. Workers Power marched in an alternative to pacifism and reform­ against war is a struggle against the SWP put it, "Vote Socialist where you demonstrations shot through with plac­ ism. The red rhetoric is bombast, as classes which rule society and which can. vote Labour where you must.") ards reading "NATO Good Luck" and c~ptured in the call on "soldiers to hold in their hands both its productive Wc said: "Nu vute tu Labour: imperial­ sponsored speakers from the KLA, organise resistance in the armed forces and its destructive weapons. It is ist butchers I No vote to Socialist Alli­ which was the pawn of imperialism forces ... to rebel against the imperial­ not possible to prevent war by moral ance: lackcys of Labourl" and in 1997 during the bombing. Their left postur­ ists and their mass-murdering Gener­ indignation, by meetings, by resolutions, II e also said no vote tu Labour. We ing over Afghanistan is a function both als" and on "workers in the munitions by newspaper articles, and by con­ gal'e critical support to Arthur of the growing unpopularity of the factories t6 boycott and sabotage impe­ gresses. As long as the bourgeoisie has at Scargill's Socialist Labuur Pal1y (SLP) bombing and the peripheral nature of rialist war production". For these op­ its command the banks, the factories, the 11110 slood in opposition to Labour and Afghanistan from the standpoint of the portunists. words are meant not for the land, the press, and the state apparatus, it tu the 'ioclalist Alliance. We pointed European imperialists. class struggle but for Greek tavernas, out that the SLP's programme is re­ On 9 October the LRCI issued a joint English pubs and Latin American formist. which is confirmed by the statement with the Morenoite Fraccion cantinas. ~LI"s role today as part of the Stop Trotskista in Mexico and the Communist As to the preposterous, there is the the W,lr Cualition. League-Workers Power (CL-WP) in call for "united action of all Afghan Workers Power' s newspaper raises Greece. In their British paper, Workers forces - including Islamist forces - to repel the imperialist assault", a task of the ~I()gan "I kti:nd Afghanistan - De­ Power condemn the WTC attack, but in interest to those who believe in al­ kat ill1periali~1Tl". But this is hot air the joint statement they omit any condem­ Illr international consumption. In Lon­ nation of it. This illustrates how shame­ chemy. The only time there was unity don. where they are, they can be found lessl y the LRCI talks out of different sides of all the reactionary forces in Afghan­ leal1ctlllg to "LOBBY PARLIAMENT of its mouth for different audiences. istan was when they united against the as It dcbate, the war". In Kabul, where Marxists draw a distinction between Red Army, which posed the "spectre of theY' arc Ilot. the), strongly urge the random terror against innocent civilians, communism" by undercutting the mul­ lahs' stranglehold on Afghan society . .\I~l!all peuple that: "Workers, peas­ as in the case of the World Trade Center, ant>, and socialists, must not only which we condemn, and attacks on insti­ The notion that there can be any but mobilise independently but they should tutions such as the Pentagon. As we wrote the most ephemeral unity among the at!V(h.:ate a united front against imperi­ in "On the Pentagon Attack" (Workers various tribes within Afghanistan'S alism and could actually unite in action Vanguard no 766, 12 October): borders is belied by a history of con­ \Iith Islamist forces if the latter allow stant internecine conflict. These peo­ "The Pentagon is the command and admin­ ples have no coherent national interest for the independent democratic partici­ istrative center of the U.S. imperialist pation by workers organisations" because Afghanistan is not a nation. Australasian Spartacist military, and rather quintessentially repre­ The "Afghan forces" are today, as in ("Ilow should we defend Afghan­ sents the military might of U.S. imperial­ Melbourne, 13 October 2001: Aus­ the past, engaged in shooting at each istan'?" Workers Powcr Glohal [un­ ism, the main enemy of the working people tralian Workers Power pushes dated intell1ct posting]). Who are these and oppressed of the world. That recogni­ other; the Taliban, based on the domi­ reformist pacifism on the ground; centrists' "revolutionary" hot air is "Islamist forces" anyway? We thought tion does not translate this attack into an nant Pashtun people, is arrayed against strictly for cyberspace. they were the people who skinned 'anti-imperialist' act, nor do we think the the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern communists alive. This is not just planeload of innocent passengers which Alliance, which is currently acting as a fanciful, it's absurd, not to say gro­ was used as the massive bomb 'deserved to puppet of US imperialism. will always be able to drive the people to die' (or the janitors and secretaries who Declaring, "Afghanistan has suffered war when its interests demand it" tesque. To paint the Islamists in such were employed at the Pentagon)." pretty colours is simply a gross adapta­ over 20 years of war", the LRCI joint ("Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at tion to ultra reactionary social forces. The use of terrorism as a strategy by statement lumps together the CIA-backed Amsterdam", 1932). Our perspective is Workers Power are boot-lickers for individuals or small groups - even mujahcdin war against the Red Army based on the programme of the Bolshe­ Blair's Labour Party who write off the against a military target - is counter­ intervention in Afghanistan with the later vik Party which led the workers to vic­ perspective of revolution at home and posed to mobilising the proletariat in war among the rival mujahedin groups, tory in the October Revolution of 1917, for whom "military support" is simply class struggle against the imperialist the Taliban and the components of the which triumphed amid the slaughter of a formula for glorifying reactionary rulers. In the case of the LRCI et ai, Northem Alliance. In other words the World War I, creating the world's first anti-proletarian forces. anti-Americanism is intermingled with LRCI and its current bloc partner~ are workers state, expropriating the bour­ They also call for "independent preposterous slogans and some very united in hoping that no one will look too geoisie as a class and establishing a \Iorkers and peasants' militias to defeat red rhetoric to appeal to any and all closely at where they stood on the imperi- planned socialist economy. _ the imperialist attack and to defend the masses against Taliban repression" - the same Taliban they're urging a common front Ivith. Defeat the imperi­ Subscribe! WORKERS HAMMER alist attack') Maybe Afghanistan's air o 1-year subscription to Workers Hammerfor £3.00 inc! udes force is supposed to fight the US and Results of Autumn 200 1 Spartacist, organ of the International Communist League (Fourth British bombers to a standstill and Internationalist) (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £7.00; Europe establish supremacy in the air? How­ sllbscriptiondri,,~ outside Britain & Ireland £4.00). ever, even backward Afghanistan could 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer PLUS 22 issues of become a quagmire for NATO or the o Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US US, but only if the imperialist forces Spaqa<:istl~agUe/Britain ....• •i·· . for £8.00. Subscription includes Spartacist, organ of the ICL and invade in strength which they have no B/ack History and the Class Struggle. current plans to do. Instead they are ······.~~~1gflt>vfg~nl~d·.···.··············· ...... ," ...... pounding the country with bombs and Name using their Northem Alliance proxies Address to take the casualties. Even though it's only rhetoric, call­ Postcode Phone ing for defeat of imperialism in Af­ ~~~ttt~p ghanistan today is quite an about-face Make cheques payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, for the League for a Revolutionary PO Box 1041, London NWS lEU Communist International (LRCI, cen­ tred on the British Workers Power

WINTER 2001- 2002 9 and the RUC/PSNI and British Army, Sinn Fein and the PLO have had much and there's no "breathing space" for less room to manoeuvre and have in­ N Ireland ... creasingly sought to make deals with (Continued from page 12) anyone who tries to expose this to the outside world. Thus on 28 September, imperialism. Sinn Fein played up illu­ conflict in Northern Ireland short of Martin O'Hagan, a journalist with the sions that by involving US imperialism proletarian rule in all of Ireland and in Dublin-based Sunday World, who re­ and the Dublin government they would Britain. searched the collusion between the Brit­ secure a better deal from British imperi­ ish Army, the RUC, leading Unionist alism for the Catholics. This overlooks Labourite "socialists" push politicians and Loyalist death squads, the fact that US imperialism is the most imperialist "peace" was murdered by the L VF. Rosemary powerful enemy of the workers and The Labour-loyal fake left have Nelson, a prominent Catholic lawyer oppressed of the world, as can be seen in shamelessly touted British imperialism, who reported to the UN that she received the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in the guise of Blair and the Labour death threats from the RUC was also or the dirty colonial wars against Korea government, as the agency to bring peace murdered in 1999; ten years earlier Pat and Vietnam; the bedrock of the system and equality to the North. In the last Finucane, another well-known Catholic of exploitation of American workers British election, the Socialist Al­ lawyer was also murdered by Loyalists rests on racist oppression of black peo­ liance - which at the time consisted of in collusion with the state. The current ple. The imperialist "peace" deal was the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), So­ Labour government is withholding docu­ brokered under Democratic President cialist Party, Workers Power and oth­ ments on the 1974 bombings in Dublin Clinton, who preferred to pass off impe­ ers - supported the re-election of La­ and Monaghan which killed 33 people rialist marauding as "human rights" Independent bour and removed the call for troops out and British state involvement is widely imperialism, something Bush and Co Martin O'Hagan, journalist murdered of Northem Ireland from their manifesto suspected. don't bother with. British imperialism is by Loyalists in Lurgan, September before launching it to the bourgeois The Labourite left even advocate a junior partner of US imperialism - the 2001. press. We said "No vote to Labour, im­ "peace" with Loyalist thugs such as Billy City of London has close ties with Wall American workers to the ruling class just perialist butchers" and "No vote to So­ Hutchinson. Irish secretary of the trans­ Street and British imperialism is also the as Irish nationalist atrocities against cialist Alliance, lackeys of Labour". port union ATGWU, Mick O'Reilly foremost military ally of US imperialism Protestants push Protestant workers The SWP is silent about the British in Europe. The Irish capitalist govern­ towards Loyalist reactionaries. Viewed Army, but gushing about the "tremen­ ment is certainly no better. It supported from the interests of the working class, dous hopes for peace in Northern Ireland the US and Britain's military adventures, nationalist terror ranges from crimi­ following the IRA's announcement that 'JUSllCE including offering facilities for NATO nal- such as Omagh - to merely stu­ it will destroy its weapons". They cra­ warplanes at Shannon airport, and is for the pid. Even when the IRA hits a military venly claim Labour's "peace" process viciously repressive of workers, women, provides "space" for united struggle of Travellers and Republicans at home. target these acts are carried out as part of a programme, which writes off the Pro­ the working class. Socialist Worker (3 Petty-bourgeois nationalism is a politi­ FORCOTfEN testant - and Catholic - working class November 200 I) says: cal dead-end which cannot further the and also the British proletariat, which interests of the Catholic minority. It is "That process is about reaching an accom­ has an important Irish component. premised on the world being divided into modation between politicians representing In 1993, on the eve of the "peace" good and bad peoples. Whether through Catholic and Protestant 'communities'. negotiations, the mainly Protestant work­ "It can reproduce the sectarian division armed struggle ("the Armalite") or the force at Short Brothers in Belfast walked that is built into the Northern Ireland parliamentary road ("the ballot box") the off the job in protest against the murder state. But it does provide a space for perspective of the Irish nationalists is to of a Catholic co-worker by Loyalist working class people, Catholic and Pro­ pressure imperialism. testant, to fight for their interests and paramilitaries; very shortly afterwards against sectarianism." Actions such as the Omagh bombing the IRA placed a bomb in Belfast's by the "Real IRA", which killed and This is almost exactly what the SWP said Shankill Road, which killed nine maimed both Protestant and Catholic when they supported British troops being working-class Protestant shoppers. This civilians in a shopping area, was a hid­ sent to Northern Ireland in 1969 (by a led to anti-Catholic demonstrations by eous crime from the standpoint of the Labour government, of course), which Protestant workers in Belfast. working class and in no way a blow they claimed would provide a "breathing A revolutionary party would struggle against imperialism. Marxists oppose the space" for the Catholics. They wrote: for an integrated, programmatically­ tactic of individual terror because it is based workers militia to defend both "The breathing space provided by the antithetical to the necessary task of mo­ Catholics and Protestants against sectar­ presence of British troops is short but bilising the working class against the ian attacks. As we said in our Theses on vital. Those who call for the immediate imperialist and capitalist oppressors. Ireland this must be based on the de­ withdrawal of the troops before the men Morning Star Rather it expresses the aims of its practi­ mand for the immediate withdrawal of behind the barricades can defend them­ tioners to be the leaders of "their" peo­ selves are inviting a pogrom which will November 2001: Dublin protest the British Army and our Marxist analy­ hit first and hardest at socialists." against Blair government cover-up ple. When Irish nationalist groups strike sis of terrorism: a blow against the forces of British impe­ --- Socialist Worker, II September over 1974 bombings in the South. "Such militias will need a broad and 1969 rialism, the RUC or Loyalist fascistic strong programmatic basis if they are not recruited the UVF's Hutchinson and Less than three years later "their" British killers, we defend the perpetrators of to be derailed or coopted. They cannot David Ervine into the ATGWU. The Army shot down 14 defenceless Catho­ such acts against state retribution. But develop just out of trade unionism but wretched Socialist Party has sponsored lics in cold blood in Derry on Bloody we have a fundamentally different atti­ fundamentally require the existence of a Hutchinson in public meetings and the Sunday. tude to indiscriminate terror directed strong and authoritative revolutionary SWP jumped on the bandwagon by tak­ against civilians. From a proletarian cadre. Each militia unit would need at The sectarian Orange statelet was ing part in a 1999 "debate" with him standpoint, bombings such as Omagh or least one member of each community and created by British imperialism's partition organised by the Scottish Socialist Party. the bombings of British shopping centres the presence and strong influence of of Ireland as a police state based on and pubs, are criminal acts which serve trained revolutionary cadre. Consequently, subjugation of the Catholic minority. Its the demand for an anti-sectarian workers backbone is the RUC and, since 1969, Not Orange against Green, but only to deepen hatred between Protestant militia is closely linked to the growth of a the army; both work in tandem with the class against class! and Catholic, English and Irish workers. Leninist party based on a developed revo­ Loyalist paramilitary killers. Recent Following capitalist counterrevolution The attack on the World Trade Center, lutionary program." history· is littered with scandals about in the Soviet Union in 1991-92, petty­ an atrocity designed to kill as many - Spartaeist no 24, Autumn 1977 collusion between Loyalist murderers bourgeois nationalist movements like civilians as possible, has served to weld We also explained there that:

An Phoblacht Alan Lewis/Photopress Portadown: RUC forced a path for Loyalist marchers 1996 (left); Belfast: 15,000 UDA paramilitaries march in ominous display of anti-Catholic terror, August 2001.

10 WORKERS HAMMER "Leninism and nationalism are fundamen­ The DSG has actively intervened in '"g' tally counterposed political viewpoints. support of struggles of the combative I Thus, while revolutionists struggle against Irish working class, fighting for abortion ~ all forms of national oppression, they are rights and counterposing our programme also opposed to all forms of nationalist to that of the Labourite bureaucrats. We ideology. It is a revision of Leninism to claim that the 'nationalism of the op­ said in a leaflet for the 1999 Irish nurses pressed' is progressive and can be sup­ strike: ported by communist internationalists. In one of his major works on the national "It is this anti-woman Church which runs question Lenin stressed: 'Marxism cannot the hospitals. We call for: complete sepa­ be reconciled with nationalism, be it even ration of church and state! We need free, of the "most just," "purest," most refined quality healthcare for all. For free abor­ and civilised brand. In place of all forms tion and free contraception on demand! For free 24-hour childcare! To achieve of nationalism Marxism advances inter­ Queens nationalism ... .' 'Critical Remarks on the these basic needs of women and the work­ ing class requires a revolutionary struggle Square, National Question,' Collected Works, Belfast, Vol. 20". against the entire capitalist system ~ and its labour lieutenants within the working 1907: class." meeting Workers revolution both sides during of the border and both sides of ~ reprinted in Workers Hammer no 171, Winter 1999/2000 strike led the Irish Seal byJim Loyalist bigot Ian Paisley howls that With elections pending in the South, Larkin. the Good Friday Agreement is the slip­ Sinn Fein is poised to gain support at the pery slope to being ruled by Dublin. expense of Fianna Fail, and also trying to Partition meant that Catholics in the re-brand itself as a "left" alternative to North constituted an oppressed minority Labour. Labour is rightly hated by (although they are over 40 per cent of the workers for having dished out capitalist population) but an overwhelming major­ attacks as partners in coalition govern­ nage of World War I. This did come the Belfast strike led to massive purges ity in the South. In the North, we oppose ments, most notoriously in 1994 by re­ about, with the Russian October Revolu­ of Catholics and trade union militants all discrimination against the Catholic fusing to support striking TEAM Aer tion of 1917, but by that time Connolly from the shipyards (including Protestant minority. We also recognise that the Lingus workers at Dublin airport. The had been executed. Nonetheless the shop stewards), which paved the way for Protestants are a distinct community, Irish Labour Party, like its British name­ Rising was the catalyst for the end of partition. Lord French, the British over­ largely defined in opposition to the Irish sake, is a bourgeois workers party­ British colonial rule in Ireland. Connolly lord in Ireland, released Sinn Fein lead­ Catholic nation. As Leninists we uphold having a working-class base but a bour­ was a revolutionary socialist and an ers such as Arthur Griffith from prison in the right of self-determination for all geois programme. They are loyal serv­ internationalist who, together with Jim Dublin in recognition of Sinn Fein oppo­ nations, which means the right to set up ants of the Irish capitalist class. Larkin, led significant class battles of the sition to working-class struggle. He told an independent state, but where peoples Sinn Fein can be scathing in their Irish working class in Dublin, and in the Cabinet: are geographically interpenetrated "self­ press about Labour's rotten record. One Belfast they made huge strides to unite "I did not however, consider that the time determination" for one can only be of their articles on Labour concludes: Catholic and Protestant workers. Con- was ripe for an actual move in the direc- achieved by denying it to the other. Un­ der capitalism this leads to inter­ communal slaughter. We oppose the perspective of a capitalist "united Ire­ land" proffered by Sinn Fein nationalists, a prospect which is used to heighten genuine fears among Protestants of a reversal of the terms of oppression. Fear of being incorporated into the clericalist state serves to compact Protestants be­ hind the Loyalist bigots, precluding a polarisation along class lines and instead laying the basis for a communal blood­ bath and forced population transfers. The fact that the bourgeois state in the South is a Catholic clericalist state is grist to the mill of the Loyalist bigots. The struggle for separation of church and Irish Times state and for free abortion on demand is Tony Blair poses with Parachute Regiment, butchers of 14 key not only for social progress in the Catholics in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972 (right). South but as a way to undermine com­ Peress/Magnum munalism in the North. Sinn Fein shares "Sinn Fein is well on its way to overtak­ nolly's success in overcoming sectarian tion of an immediate release of prisoners the clerical-nationalist outlook of Fianna ing the Labour Party, to cementing its bigotry was achieved because as a so­ until the strikes in the North occurred Fail. Sinn Fein no longer flatly opposes position as the voice of the Irish left, but cialist he fought against the state, the and a very dangerous crisis was at hand which might plunge the whole country in abortion rights, but only concedes that it in doing so the party must be careful that Orange Order and, to the best of his disaster." , should be legally available in extreme it does not lose sight of one of Con­ ability, against Catholic nationalism. ~ quoted in Revolution in Ireland, circumstances, specifically: "where a nolly'S most fundamental truths. 'The Like most socialists of his time outside C Kostick (J 996) woman's mental and physical well-being cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, Russia, he was not acquainted with Len­ Today with the growing economic or life is at risk or in grave danger" (Irish the cause of Ireland is the cause of inism, which alone hammered out a recession throughout Britain and Ireland, Times on the Web, 6 December 2001). labour'" (An Phoblacht, 30 August Marxist perspective on the national ques­ the capitalists will seek to increasingly The struggle for abortion rights strikes at 2001). But the idea that Sinn Fein could tion. Connolly fought trenchantly against pit one section of the working class backward Protestant fundamentalists as become the "voice of the Irish left" is the Labourite trade union bureaucracy in against another. This could lead to in­ well. Significantly, although SF's absurd - they are a petty-bourgeois Britain and in Ireland; as a true labour creased communalism in Northern ire­ Bairbre de Brun is health minister in the capitalist party. lieutenant of British imperialism, La­ land or, as happened during the struggles Stormont Assembly, SF was conspicu­ It is disingenuous in the extreme for bour's Arthur Henderson led the ap­ of unemployed workers in Belfast in the ously absent from a crucial debate there Sinn Fein to claim the tradition of James plause in the House of Commons when 1930s, it could lead to united struggles of on legalising abortion in Northern ire­ Connolly. Connolly initiated and led the the announcement was made that Con­ Protestant and Catholic workers. When 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, hoping it land which was opposed by Ian Paisley's nolly had been executed by a British instances of integrated working-class DUP, David Trimble's UUP, the Alli­ would ignite workers struggles against firing squad. struggle do arise, intervention by a com­ ance Party and the SDLP. capitalist rule in Europe amid the car- The kind of consciousness Connolly munist vanguard will make a decisive had instilled among workers was once difference to the outcome. again in evidence among the Belfast We seek to awaken the working class Contact Addresses workers in the 1919 engineering strike, of England, Scotland and Wales to so­ the most significant class battle to take cialist consciousness and mobilise them Spartacist League/Britain place during the independence struggle. around opposition to the monarchy, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU. Tel: 0207281 5504 Charles McKay, a socialist of Catholic House of Lords and all other archaic Dublin Spartacist Group background, led a strike of mainly Pro­ institutions of British bourgeois rule testant workers that shut all heavy indus­ including the "Mother of all Par­ PO Box 2944, Dublin 1, Ireland. Tel: 01 8558409 try and most of the city. It was part of a liaments". We fight for an Irish workers International Communist League wave of tumultuous strikes in engineer­ republic, part of a voluntary federation Box 7429 GPO, New York, New York 10116, USA. ing centres, including Glasgow. The of workers republics in the British Isles. Web address army was deployed in Belfast (and later Our purpose is to forge revolutionary in Glasgow) but the strike lost because it internationalist parties, sections of a www.icl-fi .org was betrayed by the Labour bureaucrats reforged Fourth International, in Britain in Britain and in Ireland. The defeat of and Ireland .•

WINTER 2001· 2002 11 Labour's imperialist "peace" fraud and Orange state terror against Catholics

The 11 September attack on the World gunmen who mistook him for a Catholic. But, with or without decommissioning, measures in Northern Ireland, which are Trade Center was a gift to Tony Blair in On 28 October Colin Foy was killed in Sinn Fein manifestly can not offer a way often subsequently imposed on workers several ways, not least that the IRA Tyrone by a member of the British forward to the beleaguered Catholics. and minorities in Britain. After 11 Sep­ announced on 23 October that they had Army's Royal Irish Regiment. Sinn Fein has been organising protests tember, Jack Straw pledged Britain begun to decommission their weapons. The Catholics are an oppressed minor­ against particular military installations would see "security of a kind people in The British government claims to be ity living under permanent siege. The and complaining that the imperialists Northern Ireland have had to live with waging a "war against terrorism" in the plight of working-class Catholic families interests of "democracy" and the "civil­ hit international headlines this summer ised world" against religious fanatics. as schoolgirls in Ardoyne, North Belfast Terrorism anyone? How about the terror­ trying to walk to Holy Cross school with ism of the British state, such as the mas­ their parents were shown daily on televi­ sive bombing of Afghanistan, and before sion confronting a Loyalist mob howling this Serbia, in which this bloodthirsty vile anti-Catholic and anti-woman slurs Labour government took centre stage? and throwing pipebombs, bags of excre­ What about British imperialism's domi­ ment and balloons filled with urine. The nation of Ireland, which lasted for centu­ British Army and RUC - now re-named ries and created a militarised garrison the Police Service of Northern Ireland state in the North where the facade of (PSNI) -lined the streets and tried to democracy was never much in evidence look as if they were making an honest and where no-one had any reason to effort to "keep the peace". On the day of believe in such myths as "unarmed Bob­ their name change, the PSNI escorted bies". As for religious zealots, there are leaders of the Orange Order down the very few Muslims in Northern Ireland Catholic Garvaghy Road. Catholics but British rule there rests on collabora­ know they have as much to fear from the tion with a gang of crazed fundamental­ police and army as they do from the Paul McErlane ist Protestant bigots. Loyalist death squads; indeed IRA de­ We said in 1993 that: "Any imperialist commissioning leaves sections of the September 2001: Blair's "peace" is a lie for Catholic families in Belfast who 'deal' will be bloody and brutal and will Catholic population feeling defenceless faced Loyalist blockade and RUC while taking children to school. necessarily be at the expense of the against these forces. oppressed Catholic minority. And it The scenes at Holy Cross school are a have not lived up to the "'programme for for decades". Sure enough, immigrants would not do any good for working-class microcosm of Northern Ireland which demilitarisation' that was promised in suspected of "terrorism" are being Protestants either" (Workers Hammer no show the bitter reality of Labour's impe­ the Good Friday Agreement" An rounded up and interned without trial. 138, NovemberlDecember 1993). This rialist "peace" deal. The fact that Catho­ Phoblacht (1 November 2001). But Withdrawal of the British Army does has been borne out: Loyalist violence lic parents refused to meekly accept their while the British may agree to scale not in itself automatically ensure ad­ against Catholics has continued, fire- status as second-class citizens brought down the army presence to cut their vance in a revolutionary direction, but it is the necessary starting point for a prole­ l ~ "'~~ tarian revolutionary perspective. We l seek to break workers from illusions in II'ill ••• Labour, which has loyally served racist, N.IRElnttV: 1111·· II ~ ,,~i chauvinist British imperialism and the ,) . II ~ IM,~[l