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Issue No. 80, Summer, 1980/81

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Issue No. 80, Summer, 1980/81 ~ Australasian . ~ Number 80 Summer 1980/81 30 cents A workers Poland, yesl :. ~ The PODe's Poland, nol In the'months since the signing of the much-heralded Gdansk and threats in an attempt to ride it out. One settlement seems settlement on 31 August, everyone senses Polish society has lost only to sow the seeds of the next crisis. Claiming government it,s moorings. The state of trade-union organisation has become footdragging on agreed wage increases and 'other concessions, utterly chaotic and confused. The regime is paralysed, with the the Solidarity leadership called a successful nationwide one-hour top leaders frantically scapegoating one another. The leadership work stoppage on 3 October. Kania charged Walesa & Co had of the new "free unions" and the Catholic hierarchy reneged on a pledge to recognise the "leading role" of the ruling consort more brazenly. Meanwhile, the Kremlin and its Polish United Workers Party (PUWP); when the courts finally hard-line satellites, especially East Germany, speak registered the union, they inserted the contentious clause in the incessantly of the growing threat of "anti-socialist Solidarity charter. Kania stonewalled for weeks before agreeing forces" in Poland, increasingly drawing a direct parallel with the to put it in an "annex" to the charter instead, under pressure of 1968 }»rague Spring. And everyone in Poland, indeed through­ a general strike deadline. out Europe, knows how that ended. Despite Kania's claims that they cl!D "work together", the At the time of the Gdansk agreement both the Polish bureau­ Polish Stalinists instinctively must feel the "new, self-governing· cratsand the leaders of the new "free trade unions" proclaimed unions" as a grave threat to their power. At the time of the 31 it as a genuine compromise, a step from confrontation toward August settlement, the strike committee published an apparent­ collaboration. We said no, the settlement is only on paper: "The ly authentic document by a high party commission which compromise creates an impossible situation economically and maintained: "Such unions would fulfill the role of a political politically; it cannot last". No Stalinist bureaucratic caste, we . opposition party inspired by anti-Communist forces. They would pointed out, which must monopolise political power to preserve create a division of.power" (New York Times, 1 September). itse.1f,can tolerate any genuinely independent wOrking-class This unquestionably expresses social reality from the standpoint organisation .. And the striJre leadership around Lech Walesa, .of t~ Polish Stalinist bureaucracy. ' . which strongly· identifies with the powerful Catholic church When the strike leaders initially conceded to recognise the opposition, would increasingly challenge the damaged and dis­ PUWP's "leading role", it was not without sharp dispute and credited regime. through clenched teeth. Of course, the PUWP is not a revol­ utionary (Leninist) vanguard; on the contrary, it is the instru­ Cold Dual Power '. ment of a parasitic bureaucracy. In struggling for proletarian As the new union federation dubbed Solidarnosc ("Soli­ political revolution to free the deformed workers states Qf this Walesa looks to god and pope against darity") grows more aggressive, the regime headed by Gierek's internal obstacle, Trotskyists support independent trade unions Stalinist bureaucracy. replaeement Stanislaw Kania alternates between concessions Continued on page six Reagan's America - court licence for ,fascist murder killers freed in Greensboro They staged the massacre on TV. A taken on the government now on their Nazi/Ku Klux Klan motorcade of death home ground, right in their own court­ drove up to the black housing project room and we beat them." But the Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina one sunny didn't have to beat the government. morning in November 1979. Millions of They were on the same side. US workers watched in living colour They were all there together in the .' as the fascists calmly openeCi the trunks motorcade. A "former" FBI informer of their cars, pulled out pistols and rifles rode in the first car, a Greensboro cop . and opened fire on the small gathering brought up the rear. Even the Alcohol, of left-wing and black demonstrators. Tobacco and Firearms division of the Then they packed their weapons back into "Justice" DepQ.rtment got into the act: the trunks and drove off. their agent told the fascist killers how to It was cold-blooded murder for all legally transport the guns. At the trial to see. But on 17 November last an everyone agreed it was the FBI testimony all-white jury in Greensboro let the that clinched it for the defence. KKK killers go free - acquitted on five From the outset, the American ruling counts of first-degree murder, felonious class has maintained a remarkably rioting and all other charges. Now the disciplined line on the Greensboro courts can get down to their real aim - massacre. For over a year they unani­ pe~uting the fascists' victims in the mously labelled the fascist murder a Communist Workers Party (CWP). "shootout" between two "hate groups", Some commented the verdict was a equating the murderers and their victims. licence to kill. It was more - it was Now they greet the verdict with sighs of an invitation to racist murder. "who can ever know what really hap­ pened?" Not a peep of liberal protest but It was all done under the stars and studied agnosticism, again serving to stripes. The Klan murderers claimed victimise the left and embolden the ultra­ they were just doing their patriotic duty right terrorists. For the bourgeoisie in the war against communism. The racist understands that it is now necessary to courts set them free in the name of stand with fascists against communists. "evenhanded" American (capitalist) communists. "justice". Harold COv1ngton, head of the . Public reaetion to the Greensboro National Socialist (Nazi) party cnlwed, Fascists routed In Evanston, Illinois, 19 October 1980. Protesters Joined "It's a victory for white America. We've Continued on page nine Spartaclst chant "Sweep the Nazis off the streets!" _:c Hunger strikers demand political rights ~,'~'" Free Long IRA prisoners I On 27 October seven Irish Republican international embarrassment for a Tory prisoners in the notorious "H-Blocks" of government which wants to march in step Northern Ireland's' Long Kesh prison with the US anti-Soviet' war drive. Iron launched a hunger strike against their Maiden Margaret Thatcher attempted to British imperialist jailers. They are de­ head off the hunger strike by having her manding no more than the status of politi­ secretary of state for Northern Ireland. cal prisoners and the rights taken away Humphrey Atkins, make the cosmetic from them by a Labour government in concession of agreeing to issue "civilian­ March 1976 under the slogan "U1steris­ style" uniforms. When rebuffed by the ation, Criminalisation, Normalisation". Long 'Kesh prisoners, Atkin's response Since then the prisoners have refused to was: "If they die, so be it". wear the uniforms issued by Her The Thatcher government has also met Majesty's jailers and have had only with ruthless terror the substantial sup­ blankets to cover themselves. port the "blanket" protests have evoked In an attempt to break the blanket outside the prison walls. In the past five protest, the vicious administration which months, four prominent leaders in- the runs Long Kesh forbade going to the campaign on behalf of the a-Block pris­ toilet except in uniform, and "Loyalist" oners have been assassinated either by prison guards refused to empty chamber Protestant extremists or the British pots or dumped them in the cells. The counterinsurgency force, _the SAS. But "blanket-men" are thus forced literally these attacks did not deter the thousands to live in their own shit. Female national­ who took to the streets in Belfast, publin ist supporters are incarcerated in equally and the south Armagh border village of horrendous conditions at the women's Crossmaglen in support of the hunger prison in Armagh. Hamilton Fish,. a con­ strikers'demands. servative US Republican representative The international Spartacist tendency from New York who visited Long Kesh as (iSt) calls for abolishing the Emergency part of an American Congressional del­ Powers Act and the Prevention of ASp photo SL contingent counterposes Trotskyist program for Ireland to IS' green egation, said he found the H-Blocks to be Terrorism Act, terror measures aimed at nationalism at Sydney "Stop Paisley" rally. worse than the Saigon "Tiger Cages" in intimidating the oppressed Catholic min­ which captured DRV INLF fighters were ority, and for freeing all their victims. In barbarically confined. ' Sydney on 21 November, Spartacist fascist. But as we pointed out in' our inate terror such as the murderous attack The. Irish nationalist prisoners at Long League (SL) members raised the slogan article "Protest reactionary bigot on the La Mon House hotel in 1978, in Kesh. and Armagh are victims of "Free Long Kesh IRA Prisoners! Smash Paisley!" (Australasian Spartacist no 79, which -twelve Protestant workers died, draconian laws which have been con­ H-Block!" at a small rally in Martin Place November 1980), Paisley "is no Adolf and call for programmatically based demned by such bourgeois institutions as called by the International Socialists-' Hitler and the IS know it. They insist on workers militias to combat sectarian and Amnesty International and the European dominated "Stop Paisley Committee". In the characterisation for a purpose: if imperialist terror. The ptogram raised by Court on Human Rights. Embodied in the New York, SLiUS comrades were'among Paisley is a fascist. then his followers are the iSt at the rallies in Sydney and New Emergency Powers Act and the Preven­ 800 protesters who chanted "Smash presumably fascists too. By extension York alone indicates the way ahead: tion of Terrorism Act, these laws provide H-Block! Smash Long Kesh!" outside the they must be crushed." In short, the "British Troops out of Ireland now! " , for the arrest and holding incommunicado British consulate on 22 November.
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