Thatcher's Britain Burns, Racist Cops Rampage

No35 August/September 1981 20p BRITAIN Thatcher's Britain burns, racist cops rampage e' roo es' come ome In the aftermath of the hot July days-and nights that ripped the mask of social peace from the face of Thatcher's Britain, the guardians of this decaying capitalist order wasted no time in strengthening the machinery of state re pression. While the con flict on th~ streets still raged, Home Secretary William Whitelaw was giv ing his go-ahead to chief constables to stock up with the hardware of mili tary/police repression familiar to the residents of Northern Ireland. And even as Thatcher and Whitelaw gave their assur ances of offiCial support, the thugs in blue took matters into their own hands to exact revenge for every brick and firebomb hurled at them. In an hour of unbridled vandalism at 2am on 15 July, Assistant Com missioner Powis unleashed continued on page 2 Thatcher's Britain means cop terror and dole queue misery for blacks and youth. Workers revolution the only road out of capitalist despair. Not Green against Ora. but class against class! • I Free Republ- • Nine Republican prisoners have now died on FitzGerald. On 11 July only the brutal interven in response to the hunger strike, the Spartacist hunger strike in the H Blocks of Belfast's Maze tion of the Gardai stopped over 10,000 marchers League (SL) has maintained its insistence that prison. And the Westminster butchers continue to from reaching the British emhassy. At least 100 the elementary task facing British revolution deny the hunger strikers' five basic demands for were clubbed down and many hospitalised as aries is to fight for the immediate and uncon improved prison conditions. Both the Tory baton-wielding cops cleared the streets to pre ditional withdrawal of British troops. Virtually government and the Labour lackeys of Her Maj vent repetition of the February 1972 torching of every other tendency -- historically capitu esty's Loyal Opposition see no road out of the the Dublin embassy after the British a-rmy's lating to the social democracy at home and to Bloody Sunday massacre of thirteen civilians in the Republicans in Ireland -- seeks to restrict Derry. The Times (31 July) captured the mood: slogans on demonstrations to support for the No to forced reunification! 'The black flags are flying in Dublin'. prisoners' five demands. Thus they fall in line For an Irish workers republic in a Even if, as is now being mooted, the Repub with the Republicans' attempt to appeal to lib licans call off the fast to the death in favour eral 'humanitarian' sentiments and pressure socialist federation of the British Isles! of another tactic, this will not defuse the imperialism into negotiations. highly charged situation brought to a head by Communists understand that the imperialist military presence in Ireland in any form can impasse -- only more of the attrition that cul the hunger strike. The frustration of the minates centuries of oppression and bloodshed. British ruling class with the intractable situ only reinforce the oppression of the Catholic Since 1 March, when the current hunger ation in the North is exemplified by the sharp minority and act as an obstacle to proletarian strike campaign began, a wave of outrage against increase in talk even among right-wing Labour class mobilisation. But unlike much of the murderous British imperialism has swept across leaders of an end to Tory/Labour bipartisanship. British left, we foster no illusions that a Ireland. According to official figures released Much of the debate at the upcoming Labour Party troop withdrawal in and of itself will resolve on 6 August, 51 people -- almost half of them conference promises to centre around the Irish the national question in Ireland or end the nat cops and soldiers -- have died in 'terrorist question, with over fifty resolutions submitted ional oppression of the Northern Catholic minor attacks' in the North. Over 1000 have been in for discussion. But whether it be 'federal coun ity. In attacking ex-prime minister James jured in a five-month period marked by 1000 cils', or Tony Benn's call to replace British Callaghan's call in the Commons for the estab demonstrations, 1700 arrests and the firing of imperialist troops with Unit-ed Nations imper lishment of a 'broadly independent state' in the 7000 plastic bullets by the army. Just the day ialist troops, or the current Labour Party idi North, the fake-Trotskyist International Marxist before the figures appeared a new wave of ex ocy of an Ulster referendum on the subject of a Group (IMG) declares that the Orange state, plosions signalled the possibility of a new 'united Ireland', -class-conscious militants must ' ... has maintained its existence because Republican bombing campaign. intransigently oppose all the 'liberal' imper ultimately the British have safeguarded that In the South an upsurge of anti-British, ialist schemes. Free the Republican prisoners! existence by military might. If Britain was nationalist feeling has confronted the fragile, Troops out now! nd longer prepared to do so, the state would incoming Fine Gael/Labour coalition of Dr Garret Throughout the mobilisations in Britain continued on page 6 cognise, much less prevent, the sharp rise in So concerned were the reformists to maintain The 'troubles'. racialist murders .... their constitutional respectability that when (Continued from page 1) • • 'And as the flames ignited on Toxteth's Upper the Tory press latched on to the timid propa Parliament Street spread from slum to slum his shock troops upon the black inhabitants of gan~a.of the Labour Party's tame left house op as the number of skulls cracked by police ' b~ixton's Railton Road in an orgy of racist POSl.t10n, the Militant group, which simply put truncheons climbed, as the number of arrests terror. Claiming the existence of a mysterious forward the elementary demand for the dropping skyrocketed to the pOint where the government 'pe7rol bomb factory' as the pretext for their of charges against those arrested by the police was compelled to improvise concentration the Labourites, headed by erstwhile 'left' EriC' searc~ and destroy rampage, they tore apart one camps, it was clear that the mythologised residence after another in the early morning Heffer, leapt into the forefront to condemn the Britain of the orderly bus queue and hours. While Tory 'golden wonder boy' Michael propaganda. But the Militant propaganda was mild "unarmed" bobby was a thing of the past.' ~eseltine was busying himself with his 'inquiry' indeed. Centring as it did around the absurd , . .. The labour movement must act now -- to 1nto the problems of inner city Liverpool, Chief reformist demand for 'community control' of the demand the dropping of charges against all Constable Kenneth Oxford gave his men the nod to police, it was in fact but an extension of the those arrested in the massive police dragnet; launch a campaign of motorised terror. On Labour leaders' Dixon of Dock Green fair-play that the cop invasions of the ghettos stop; Monday, 27 July, Paul Conroy was rammed against mentality. that the new repressive measures and weaponry a wall by a hit-and-run police vehicle, to be be withdrawn. ' While the Labour leaders made much of their left with a broken back. The following day, a 'Britain is coming apart at the seams', we campaign to force various Tory ministers to police van mounted a grass verge at high speed said, in describing the sense of social polar admit the obvious fact that unemployment was aiming for a group of youths walking along the isation and the SOCial decomposition which is part of the root cause of the conflict, their footpath. They hit David Hoore, unemployed, aged economic strate~v of caoitalist reflation is a the corollary of Britain's economic decay. That 22, crippled since childhood. Murdered by the platform of no hope to the chronically unem the fury and anger is expressed in directionless cops. The van dragged his crumpled body for 25 ployed of the cities. With cities like Coventry, and often anti-social street outbursts instead yards -- and sped on. Oxford warned the public ten years ago the industrial boom town of full of organised class struggle is the crime of the to stay off the streets or face the conse employment now rapidly on the road to becoming working-class misleaders. The crisis of leader quences: 'we are not conducting a Roman carni another ghost town of deserted factories and ship which debilitates the labour movement is val'. We demand: Jail the killer cops~ empty shops, only senile social democracy could symbolised by the fate of BL's huge Rover If Britain's police forces lack the weaponry imagine that the long term decay of the British of their continental or North American counter Solihull SDI operation, about to become yet an economy could be halted by a little bit of cap parts, they clearly have the will to make up for other in the seemingly endless series of plant italist reflation. The truth is that British it with sheer brutality. A local white doctor Closures. Self-proclaimed revolutionaries in the capitalism is down the drain. And just about who attended some of the victims of James leadership made no attempt to mobilise serious everyone knows it! When Chancellor Howe blurted Anderton's r1an<:hester constabulary expressed his struggle, but offer Bennism as an answer to out some nonsense about the recession being horror: 'In the pa.3t week I have seen and wi t everything. over, everyone from the Labour front bench to nessed injuries that I never expected to see in Meanwhile the fabcists push themselves to the the CBI and other Tory ministers joined eagerly England.' Other residents described scenes of fore, capitalising on the passivity of the to pOint out how foolish this was. Anderton's snatch squads indiscriminately at labour traitors to recruit lumpen white youth to taCking and beating passers-by. One victim of their 'programme' of race war and genocide. In Oxford's murderous sadists reported that the Liverpool British ~ovement thugs hit the left For labour/black defence against fascists cops had attempted to castrate him with a ma wing 'News from NOwhere' bookshop five times in The choice posed today is more concrete and chete. And the CS gas cannisters which they had two weeks at the end of July, and attacked left immediate than at any time since the 1930s: used were suddenly discovered to be labelled by paper sellers in the city centre -- and fascist either socialist revolution or fascist reaction. their manufacturers as potentially lethal if activity was relatively insignificant in Liver Last year's thirteen-week steel strike came fired directly at their targets. That is exactly pool until recently. The escalation in faSCist close to triggering a general strike which could what the cops did, wounding at least five activity is underscored by the near permanent have given a lead to the working class, drawn blacks. ban on street marches, a dangerous attack on democratic rights which will not stop the behind it the despairing middle classes. gal fascists. vanised the outrage of the youth around a pro Thatcher's 'long hot summer' As the month came to an end, the bourgeoisie gramme of class war and not race war, and turned The mood of outrage and despair, the elemen looked to the obscene pomp of the royal wedding around the Tory/employer austerity drive. Only tal hatred for the police, which impelled thou in the hope that the institution of the monarchy the treachery of the trade union leadership pre sands of Britain's youth into street battles would fulfil its task of refurbishing a frayed vented that eventuality. The railwaymen are now for two weeks in July was captured by one and fragile sense of 'national purpose'. A threatening to strike over their wage claim and 'the possibility of a powerful miners strike Toxteth youth who declared, 'My aim was to kill leader in the Times (29 July) summed up the looms in the autumn. If they combined their a policeman.' Britain's rotting capitalist hopes of the bourgeoisie: forces in a joint strike now -- not simply for social order oozes decay from every pore. Faced 'The shocking and mysterious outbreaks of their justified wage claims, but around demands with no future except life on the dole queue, street violence this summer have shown how fragile the civil order is .... But today's aimed at the cuts in social services. the mass barely kept alive by sta~vation-level welfare ive job losses and the entire gamut of Tory/ benefits, kept in liDe by truncheon-wielding ceremonies ... are capable of refreshing the employer attacks -- they could point a way out cops, working class youth took to the streets to spirits of a people depressed by persistent of the despair that provides fertile ground for give vent to their pent-up fury and frustration. economic malfunctioning and with new grounds the fascists. That black youth were in the forefront came for self-doubt presented to them.' as no surprise to anybody. Imported from the The Tories, aware that their Britain has But the fascists cannot be ignored even today. We salute the Southall colonies to be cheap labour and left to rot now nothing to offer its victims save more poverty youth who gave them a taste of the treatment they deserve. But that their labour isn't needed, hounded by the and deprivation, prepared for more to come. what is needed is a mobilisation of the social cops, denied their rights by the state and set ~ecognising that the extent of decay of British power of the trade unions to smash the fascists up for the kill by emboldened fascist thugs, capitalism rules out the methods of urban aid to wherever they rear their heads. Many Southall Britain's blacks have increasingly been made to 'restore the decaying inner cities', the Tory residents work at Heathrow Airport, and London feel like they have nothing to lose. Indeed the response was wholeheartedly for the strengthen Transport and Ford Dagenham are other examples first 'riot' was no riot at all -- as Asian ing of the repressive capabilities of the state. of integrated workforces which concretely pose youth in Southall defended their community A delegation of senior police officers was des the possiblity of launching labour/black de against an invasion of fascist thugs and clashed patched to Belfast to study the methods and fence guards to defend minority communities and with the cops who protected them. In a special weaponry of the RUC. And if the point was not crush the fascist danger. Spartacist Britain supplement (17 July) we clear enough, Whitelaw announced a 13.2 per cent wrote: pay rise for the cops, breaking massively the It is only the undying support of the Labour 'It's been a long time coming. The first government's 'cash limits' level being enforced and trade union leaders for the shabby circus of tremor rocked Bristol more than a year ago, with determination against civil servants. bourgeois democracy that condemns the working when the black ghetto of St Pauls exploded And with thousands of jobless youth being class and minority communities to a future of in fury against a virtual cop occupation. A rounded up in massive police dragnets, Labour progressive degradation. No matter how deter was concerned only that the r.apitalist order be mined the street resistance to the police en year late~ it was Brixton, with the fury ag gravated by the official racism of the enforced 'fairly'. In response to the Railton forcers of that degradation may be from time to Nationality Bill and police refusal to re- Road raid, Michael Foot rose in the House to ex time, it is only the working class that can press the fears of Her Majesty's Loyal Oppo mobilise all the oppressed behind it in a sition. As the Times reported (15 July 1981): struggle for the only antidote to capitalist CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: 'The opposition, he said, was as determined decay -- a workers state and a socialist planned Birmingham ...... (021) 4599748 to stamp out illegality as anyone el~e, but economy. If the reformist blight that infects London ...... (01) 278 2232 he wanted that to be done by fair methods the British workers movement is not to give way Sheffield ...... (0742) 686427 which would be supported by the population, to a fascist plague what is urgently required and not by methods that would drive a wedge is the construction of a communist leadership, between the police and the community.' a Trotskyist vanguard party .•

BRITAIN Spartacist Class Series Binningham : Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League. British section of the The Crown international Spartacist tendency. Broad Street 7:30 pn EDITORIAL BOARD: Len Michelson (editor), Caroline Carne (production DESTROY CAPITALISM manager), Mark Hyde, John Masters, Charles Silver, David Strachan Thursday 13,20. August CIRCULATION MANAGER: Arnold Michaels Sheffield: OR CAPITALISM Prince of Wales (Small Roam) Published monthly. except in January and September. by Spartacist Publications, 26 Harrison St. London WCI. Address all letters and Division Street subscription requests to: Spartacist Publications. PO Box 185. 7:00 pn London WCHt 8JE. Subscriptions: 10 issues for £2.00; international Thursday 13, 20, 27 August air mail rates: Europe £3.00. outside Europe £4.00. Printed by DESTROYS US! Anvil Printers Ltd. London (TUI.

Opinions expressed in signed artic/(!s or letters do not necessarily Phone for more information or to obtain readings express the editorial viewpoint. Birmingham [0211459 9748, Sheffield £0742] 686 427

2 SPARTACIST BRITAIN SWP's 'alternative' to Labourism Bennites Some 1000 trade unionists turned out to spending but saying 'nothing about cutting the that the SWP was seeking to ignore, not polit pledge their support to Tony Benn's bid for arms budget' (Socialist Worker, 18 July 1981, ically combat, the Bennite tide because it has deputy leadership of the Labour Party at the 18 their emphasis). Cutting the arms budget means no strategy for dealing with the Labour Party. July conference of the Labour Co-ordinating Com supporting an arms budget; revolutionaries de (Socialist Organiser's 'strategy' of course is mittee (LCC) in London. With Benn still on his mand 'Not a penny, not a man, for the capital to champion 'left' bureaucrats and try to trans sickbed Yorkshire miners leader Arthur Scargill ist army:' form Labour into an instrument for socialism.) stole the spotlight, ranting against the Tories, Import controls and the Alternative Economic And the IMG journal International (May 1981) threatening massive class battles ahead (if only Strategy (AES)? The SWP points out that Benn's managed to ask one correct question: 'A furious someone else got them started!) and raving about vague promises of national is at ions are to the fight is going on in the Labour Party. Does this the socialist future which a Labour government right of Labour's commitments in 1950 and 1951 have no impact on workers' struggles?' Once the committed to 'socialist' policies could usher (and even 1973), and rails against the protect ever impressionistic SWP saw that the Bennite in. Benn's campaign, waxed King Arthur, was 'a ionist AES as 'not particularly radical', let phenomenon was having an 'impact', if not on fight for the soul of the party itself'. alone revolutionary. But when the workers are 'workers struggles' then at least on the con-· And the delegates concurred. Following some fighting for protectionist quotas, the SWP too sciousness of the militant trade unionists and significant successes for Benn at the summer supports the demand, as it did when South Wales workerist petty-bourgeois intellectuals who are round of trade union conferences, the LCC gath miners picketed the docks against US coal im its norma] constituency, it had no alternative ering showed the kind of machine which is being ports in December 1979. but to come out for Benn. built for the 'new Labour left' inside the And what about industrial struggle? For all The SWP was able to do some anti-Labour pos unions. Alongside several hundred lower- and its militant rhetoric, in the last analysiS the turing so long as they perceived the new Labour middle-level union officials, a large chunk of the LCC delegates were ostensible revolution aries who have climbed upon the Bennwagon in droves -- including most notably a substantial contingent from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Boasting that 150 delegates were SWP members and another 200-300 supporters of its Right to Work Campaign, Socialist Worker's (25 July) con ference report could only moan that more union activists were not present: 'Given the spread of Benn's ideas amongst workers we are bound to ask why so few turned up.' The more pertinent ques tion, given the SWP's favoured posture as a 'militant' alternative to the betrayals of Labour, is why so many SWPers turned up. After trying for months to keep some distance from the Bennite tide, the SWP too cannot resist playing election broker and political adviser for the left Labour reformists.

No support to Benn SWP joins with Bennite reformism in the streets and on the shop floor. Against the fake revolutionaries who have SWP is just as much a staunch defender of the left's influence to be restricted to the con joined the Benn crusade, the Spartacist League bourgeois order as the Labour lefts. It clearly stituencies. But today wherever the SWP turns it has consistently pointed out that his programme demonstrated this last year when, despite a mas finds the Bennites encroaching heavily on its of capitalist reflation, economic protectionism sive upsurge of sentiment at the base, it turf. Thus a major article in Socialist Review and 'little England' chauvinism is not simply actively opposed the fight for a general strike (July-September 1981) contains a 'case for keep 'insufficient' but positively counterposed to in the midst of the mammoth steel strike. Heav ing out of the Labour Party' which is based on working class interests. In the absence of a de ily influencing several strike committees and simple organisational self-preservation. 'Some cisive break from pro-capitalist Labourism on having a small but significant base in the steel thing is happening in and around the Labour any key issue there is absolutely no basis for union, an organisation the size of the SWP could Party the like of which has not been seen for at supporting this left reformist against the have had a big impact in turning this struggle least a generation', says the SWP, adding, 'Any right-winger Healey. We counterpose to both pre into the urgently necessary counteroffensive to socialist who ignor~s Benn's strengths is on a sent wings of the Labour Party a fighting pro smash the Tory government's attacks. Instead they rapid journey to sectarian irrelevance.' The SWP gramme including such key demands as: No imper hid behind the 'dangerous consequences involved' frankly admits that Benn's political positions ialist schemes for Ireland -- Troops out now!, to argue for limiting the struggle, since 'a are not among his 'strengths'. Down with NATO -- Defend the Soviet Union!, For General Strike, by its very nature, raises the trade union/black defence guards to smash the But all this is secondary for Cliff & Co. question of power. It is a bomb that you cannot fascists! Against all import and wage con Worried by the downturn in industrial struggle, play with' (Socialist Worker, 1 ~.larch 1980). The trols! Don't wait for '84 -- MObilise the indus lest a whole layer of potential recruits pass SWP's attacks on Benn for rejecting industrial trial strength of the working class to get the them by in favour of left Labourism (and indeed action to bring down the Tories ring more than a Iron Lady! Our strategy -- to which all tactics lest its membership begin to bleed away towards little hollow under the circumstances! like critical support, entrism etc are subordin the Labour left), the SWP must po·int to the ate -- is to split Labour's working-class base 'resonance that Bennism has among many thousands away from their treacherous misleaders by build Shopfloor minimalism meets of actiVists, particularly trade union acti ing a revolutionary opposition to all wings of parliamentary cretinism vists' and its support among 'full time offic- putrescent British social democracy. What dislodged the SWP's forerunners from ials' ... and capitulate. After all, it's either In contrast, the SWP's pseudo-syndicalist their Labour Party nest in the mid-sixties was tail Benn or face 'sectarian irrelevance'. anti-Labour stance has always been more myth not a sharp programmatic break with Labour but They have no political basis to do otherwise. than reality. Over the past dozen years they an appetite to attract a layer of militant union Indeed the SWP's primary attack on Labourism is have carved themselves a sort of niche to activists and others disenchanted with the the correct but completely insufficient under Labour's left based centrally on economist trade party's betrayalS. Ever since, when it counts standing that 'politics' is not the exclusive union militancy and taking single~issue 'move the SWP inevitably swings into line behind domain of Parliament. ment' politics (like the Anti Nazi League) onto Labour -- as in the 1979 election when Callaghan SWP/Right to Work spokesman John Deason put the shopfloor and/or the streets. But as left & Co stood so proudly on a platform of Social their strategy at the LCC: 'We need to unite reformists themselves, the SWP really doesn't Contract strikebreaking. Moreover they have a politics and trade unionism. The idea that pol have many significant programmatic differences consistent record of support to 'lesser evil' itics is in Parliament and trade unionism in the with the now resurgent Bennites. Labour lefts. branch is fundamentally wrong and weakens the Ireland? Like the pro-imperialist Labour Yet only a few months ago the SWP was posing movement.' The conception that Labourite reform traitors, the SWP has done a good bit of chau as far more of an opponent of Benn and Labour in ism is defined by parliamentarism is exploited vinist bleating about IRA 'terrorism' against general than today. But their reasons for this by the SWP (and implicitly accepted by the rest the army, like in the aftermath of the 1972 were telling. In a Socialist Worker (7 February) of the fake-revolutionary left), who foster the Aldershot barracks bombing. If Benn today calls piece, Paul Foot could do little more than de illusion that 'politicising the unions' is in for UN troops, it must be remembered that in ride the view 'that all the action is taking ~rinsically a break towards class-struggle. 1969 the SWP joined him in supporting British place in the Labour Party' and fall back on a politics. troops to Ireland. And more recently it has been feeble call 'to seek to rebuild the indUstrial But this is absurd. Social-democratic poli all too willing to drop the elementary 'Troops confidence of ten years ago' inside the unions. tics on the shopfloor or in the streets is no out now' demand at the behest of Republican na The problem was not the Bennites' programme, but more 'revolutionary' than in Westminster. And tionalists or liberal imperialists. where they operated. Labour in opposition is quite willing to take The Cold War? The SWP is, if anything, more Various fak~ revolutionaries, notably the to the streets as an adjunct to parliamentarism, virulently anti-Soviet than the Bennites. After International Marxist Group (IMG) and Socialist as in the recent anti-unemployment protests. The all, Benn doesn't talk about the need to 'hate Organiser shrieked (and still shriek) about SWP Labour Party/TUC's willingness to channel the bloody Russia' like the SWP leadership! On the 'sectarianism', 'syndicalism', even 'ultraleft anger and frustration of the unemployed into question of the capitalist armed forces, the SWP ism'. This reflects only their own gross Labour such impotent protest has stolen the thunder attacks a Bennite pamphlet, 'Trade Unions and cretinism -- but they have been able to score Socialism', for being against increased arms some points. Socialist Organiser pOinted out continued on page 6

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1981 3 defencists were expelled when they became an ob stacle to the IMG's liquidation into Bennite social democracy, as other USec sections today stand poised to liquidate into the parties of Schmidt, Mitterrand et al. But the warning re mains for those USec supporters who have not yet 1MB silent on grown comfortable with the prospect of 'deep entry' into the Second International: there is no middle ground in the Cold War. For Trotskyists, support to the Red Army in USee 'third camp' line shift Afghanistan should be an elementary political reflex. The Soviet army and its left-nationalist PDPA allies are fighting an imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary melange of landlords, money lenders, tribal chiefs and bandits committed to serfdom, usury, the bride price, the veil and mass illiteracy. US imperialism's exploitation • of Afghanistan as a pretext for a renewed Cold War offensive against the USSR posed point blank a defence of the Soviet workers state, which • rests on the historic social gains of the Octob er Revolution despite its subsequent Stalinist degeneration. The international Spartacist tend ency (iSt) said: Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! But when the Red Army moved in, the USec pulled out. Having hailed the beleaguered PDPA regime, they denounced the Red Army when it rolled across the .border to rescue it from a feudal-reactionary onslaught, or else they op posed it outright, or (like the American SWP) they simply defied credibility by denying that the Soviet intervention was an issue. With every conceivable rationale they closed their eyes to the fact that US imperialism had chosen to make the war in Afghanistan a test of the relation ship of class forces and of the balance of mili tary power in the region. But there was no mid dle ground. The new position is not a line reversal, but a line shift -- carrying to its logical con clusion the capitulation to imperialist anti Sovietism expressed in the USec's refusal to forthrightly defend and support the Soviet intervention in the first place. First announced in the Swedish KAF's Internationalen (18 June), the new line has since been reported in the French edition of Inprecor (6 July), which re prints (in typical USec style) majority and minority resolutions, which received respective ly 20 and 9 votes, with a number of absten tions. The minority roughly upholds the pre vious majority position. The only substantial difference between the two is that the major ity has found its 'third camp' while the min orlty has not.

Jack Barnes led the way

The character of the capitulation was mani fested in a chemically pure form by Jack Barnes' American SWP, which swung over to a line in favour of Soviet withdrawal almost a year ago. Somewhat surprisingly the shamelessly reformist SWP initially supported the Soviet intervention, but it did not take long to work out that back ing the 'Afghan revolution' was not quite the same as backing 'revolutionary Grenada'. The • bourgeois liberals and social-democratic trade union bureaucrats whom these 'respectable socialists' seek to ingratiate are all for 'a I woman's right to choose' -- except when that In right is enforced by Soviet tanks and helicopter • gunships! And what would backing the Red Army do to the SWP's 'socialist Watersuit'? Indeed, in his document 'Correcting Some Errors on Afgha nistan', Barnes credited the iSt with bringing him to his reformist senses. Having read our Last month we reported that the rotten-bloc the USec majority position until recently: viru article 'Hail Red Army!' it made 'me think about United Secretar.~at (USee) which now and again lent condemnation of the Soviet intervention the devastating political logic that could be still mutters something about being 'Trotskyist' laced with concern for the welfare of the 'Af- drawn from some of the assumptions we were adopted an openly 'third camp' position in ghan revolution' in the event of Soviet with starting from' (see 'SWP's About-Face on Afgha favour of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and drawal. The IMG's youth paper, Revolution (Feb nistan'·, Spartacist no 31-32, Summer 1981). support to CIA-backed anti-Soviet forces at a ruary 1980), recognised 'a global conflict be- With shameless gall, the USec resolution meeting of its International Executive Committee tween Imperialism and the USSR' in Afghanistan. offers up the Kremlin bureaucracy's treacherous in May (see 'USee calls for Soviet defeat', And the Trotskyist line of welcoming the Red policy of 'peaceful coexistence' to excuse its Spartacist Britain no 34, July 1981). Afghani Army intervention advanced in a document by Har own treachery: stan is hardly a secondary question in internat ney ('So you thought defence of the Soviet Union 'The military occupation of Afghanistan can ional politics. Yet three months after the fact, was not a central issue?'), which laid the basis not be suppo~ted in the name of defence of the USee's British affiliate, the International for the CF struggle, garnered one-sixth of the the USSR .... The politics of the Kremlin past Marxist Group (IMG), has yet to break a stony delegate vote at the February 1980 national con and present towards the worst capitalist re silence on the line shift, and many IMG members ference despite the fact that all four competing gimes and dictatorships on its borders have come to know of it only via a polemical factions opposed it. But what loomed larger for (Daoud's Afghanistan, the Shah's Iran or statement distributed by the expelled Communist the IMG majority than formal Trotskyist prin- Turkey) and, in return, the attitude of these Faction (CF), which was forged centrally in a ciples was the Labour NEC's unanimous condemn latter to the USSR confirms this assessment.' struggle against the IMG's deepening capitula ation of the Soviet intervention and dreams of Against such woolly-minded detente Realpolitik a tion to anti-Sovietism in the wake of the Soviet 'fusion' with Tony Cliff's British Socialist Trotskyist opposition in the USSR would far intervention. Workers Party (SWP). prefer the current Moscow joke that the Red Army The IMG has cause to tread softly. When the is about to withdraw from Afghanistan in two Afghanistan crisis broke, it threw the IMG into No middle ground columns -- one through Pakistan, the other a maelstrom of conflicting appetites, impulses through Iran. Only those who share the Kremlin's and pressures. There still remain IMG cadres who 'Contrary to the illusions of the so-called blind faith in the possibilities of 'peaceful have not forgotten that they were won to the "third camp", there is no middle ground: the de- coexistence' with imperialism -- without sitting organisation in counterposition to the Cliffite featist position crosses class lines', warned a in the Kremlin hot seat -- could say that the 'state caps'. ~he initial 'Soviet troops out' second document submitted by Harney and seven victory of a CIA-backed rightist movement in line authored by Tariq ('I remain unrepentant') others ('Afghanistan and the defence of the Afghanistan would pose no threat to the USSR. Ali led to an explosion of furious denunciations Trotskyist programme'). 'The growth of Soviet- The Guardian (3 August) reports that: in the letters page of Socialist Challenge. defeatism in our ranks must be halted and re- 'A year and a half after Soviet troops After two weeks it was altered to what was to be versed.' It was not halted; rather the Soviet- marched into Afghanistan, the US Central

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN When some elements in and around the internat ~onal Left Opposition, notably the French syndicalist Robert Louzon, supported Chiang Kai shek's demand that Moscow give up tqe Chinese Eastern Railroad in 1929 in the name of national self-determination, Trotsky replied: 'The highest duty of the proletarian revolu tion, it appears, is to carefully dip its banners before national frontiers. Herein, according to Louzon, is the gist of Lenin's anti-imperialist policy! One blushes with shame to read this philosophy of "revolution in one country." The Red Army halted at the frontier of China because it was not strong enough to cross this frontier and meet the inescapable onslaught of Japanese imperial ism. If the Red Army were strong enough to assume such an offensive, it would have been duty-bou~d to launch it.' ('Defence of the Soviet Republic and the Opposition', Writings 1929) Even more so is this the case in a country as backward as Afghanistan, where the benefits of First women parachutists in Afghan army (above). USec line would return them to the veil. Soviet the socialist revolution -- and for that matter, intervention opens possibility for liberating Afghan the bourgeois-democratic revolution -- can only women from hideous oppression. be introduced with the aid of the Soviet prolet arian dictatorship and its armed forces. That is Intelligence Agency is coordinating a com reported that it is 'very rare to find anyone in why Trotsky wrote in The Revolution Betrayed plex, far-flung programme, involving five Afghanistan who has actually seen a dead Russian that 'the Soviet bureaucracy still earries out a countries and more than $100 million, to pro soldier'. A recent TV Eye programme which fea certain part of the progressive work' : vide the Afghan resistance with the weaponry tured the first Western newsfilm to come out of 'This is especially true of the backward of modern guerrilla warfare.' Afghanistan since the Soviet intervention elo nationalities of the Union .... The bureau But the USec tries to have it both ways. It quently cut through some of the more transparent cracy is laying down a bridge for them to the argues detente to deny the Soviet Union is Cold War lies that come out of Pakistan's elementary benefits of bourgeOis, and in part threatened and then turns around and blames the Peshawar spy nest under the name of 'military even pre-bourgeOis culture.' Soviet bureaucracy for provoking the imperial communiques'. The TV Eye cameras filmed a And that is why the iSt today raises the slogan: ists into warlike behaviour: Russian convoy peacefully making its way, with Extend the gains of October to the Afghan 'The [invasion of Afghanistan] also facili out need of air cover, at a spot where the peoples! tated the anti-Marxist and anti-communist insurgents' radio claimed they were inflicting campaign of the bourgeoisie. It served as a heavy casualties and destroying Soviet tanks! us SWP calls on Soviet Union to disarm pretext for imperialism to justify its poli Indeed the only thing that can account for the tics of rearmament and to seek to dissipate ridiculously inflated body counts put out by the Barnes (and advocates of a 'troops out' line a mass opposition to military spending. It anti-Soviet rabble is that they are killing each inside the IMG) also claimed an 'orthodox' pre enabled it to reclaim legitimacy for its other. The 24 July Guardian reported that 'two cedent for his position in a 1946 Fourth Inter interventionist projects in the Middle East, bands of anti-Marxist rebels' started slaughter national resolution calling for the withdrawal in Iran and in Central America.' ing each other when they could not reach agree of Soviet troops from East Europe. It was one This is the real position of the USec: if ment on tactics for a Joint attack on a Soviet thing for the Trotskyists in 1946-47, severely only the Soviet bureaucrats would desist from air base. Right on, rebels! weakened by the loss of cadre in the war, to be defending their borders against imperialist disoriented by the extension of the Soviet military power. They saw imminent proletarian intrigues, we could go about our 'butter not Extend the gains of October to Afghan peoples! guns' pacifist campaigns and vicarious support revolutions sweeping across Europe destroying for 'colonial revolutions' in peace -- at least The closest the USec comes to a 'Marxist' both capitalist-imperialism and the Stalinist until the first H-bomb fell on Moscow. Are we to justification for its position is to invent the bureaucracy. Thus they believed that the Red presume that the Soviet Union was wrong to send 'principle' of inviolability of 'political Army in East Europe, like the Stalinist CPs in aid to the NLF in Vietnam, that we should have sovereignty'. Not only did Trotsky reject this West Europe, could only playa counterrevolu opposed Cuban troops to Angola and that today when the revolutionary Red Army marched success tionary role in the face of European-wide the Soviet bureaucracy is correct when it refus fully on Georgia and unsuccessfully on Warsaw, proletarian revolution. Aa the ensuing Cold War es to give aid to the left-wing insurgents in El he also rejected it for the Red Army of Stalin. continued on page 6 Salvador? As a fig leaf for its support to the reac tionary anti-Soviet jihad, the USec claims opposition to 'undifferentiated support to the "Afghan resistance"'. On the contrary, it has IMG 'class struggle left wing' discovered a 'progressive wing' -- in particular the 'Popular Organisation for the Liberation of the Afghan Peoples' and the 'Front of Hodjahed Fighters', both creatures of Maoist-oriented groupings: 'These organisations maintain a programme A V gar betrayal whose social content is at least as advanced as the programme of the PDPA. They could On Wednesday, 8 July, a mass meeting of the man who sold them out; who for months argued become an active pole of opposition to the Rover Solihull SDI workforce voted 2-to-l against every single proposal for militant ac integrationist Islamic or pro-imperialist against a shop stewards' motion to prevent the tion, who counselled patience in the face of forces. ' movement of machinery to the Cowley plant in management provocation, who lobbied Tory coun Leave aside that these 'socially advanced' Oxford. Two months after the 12 May closure cillors while workers pleaded with·him to or organisations were fighting the PDPA regime when announcement by Leyland management -- part of ganise an occupation, also had the evident it attempted to introduce social reforms well the latest phase of Michael Edwardes' scandal capacity to twist the knife he had thrust into before the Soviet intervention, if the PDPA ously misnamed 'recovery plan' which has already their backs. regime were toppled through Soviet defeat/with destroyed over 60,000 jobs -- the death knell He didn't do it all by himself, of course. drawal it would necessarily mean the imposition was sounded on yet another BL plant, on yet He had the assistance of his convenor, Hick of a pro-imperialist regime of feudal reaction. another 2000 jobs in the r.1idlands. For months Clarke, and the TGWU tops who, Hickey whines, This is at best a classic 'third camp' position, militants in the plant, and the neighbouring did not offer a 'clear lead'. It's true, they and as always it is a flimsy cover for support Four-by-Four plant, had argued for occupation. didn't -- from the day Derek Robinson got vic to the camp of reaction. Even the minority reso Supporters of the Spartacist League (SL), in timised, through to the imposition of Edwardes' lutjm ridicules the view that the 'Maoist ori particular, had emphasised the necessity of a redundancy plan and last year's strike betrayal, gin of certain groups' implies 'that their op dramatiC, militant stand which could mobilise the union tops sold BL workers down the river position to the regime has a revolutionary not only the entire BL workforce, but galvanise at every available opportunity. No surprise. orientation'. Peking today is an integral com support throughout the British proletariat (see They are reformists, committed lieutenants of ponent -- and by far the most trigger-happy - Spartacist Britain no 34, July 1981). What the capitalist class within the labour movement. of the anti-Soviet military alliance (see better place to trigger a fight against the jobs Hickey is supposed to be a 'revolutionary 'US/China anti-Soviet war axis', this issue). slaughter than in this once militant combine re socialist' a supporter of the so-called Inter One of the five countries involved in the CIA's duced to cap-in-hand beggary? But the weight of national Marxist Group (lUG), a 'Trotskyist'. 'complex, far-flung programme' is ... China. treachery, the disorientation of misleadership Socialist Challenge hailed his 'resistance' week As the Guardian notes: hung too heavily on the SDI workers. Pat Hickey, after week. Where was his 'clear lead'? He led 'The Chinese agreed to permit overflights of SDI deputy convenor and Socialist Challenge the workers only to the slaughter. And in the their territory for planes carrying arms supporter recorded the final decision: time-worn tradition of class traitors, he turned bound eventually for Afghanistan. The Chinese '''The recommendation is defeated; the plant around and blamed the men he was elected to lead would also help supply the SAM-7s and RPG will close." I add, although I had promised for. his cowardice. With a less 'civilised' work antitank rockets. And if the border between myself I would not, "You can now join the force, he would have been lucky to have walked Pakistan and Afghanistan were closed, the dole queue. I hope you enjoy it.'" (Social out on his own two legs. A few might well have Chinese would take over the trans-shipment of ist Challenge, 15 July) remembered that a year ago this 'militant' dis weapons .... ' He 'promised' himself he wouldn't say it! tinguished himself by arrogantly prancing across Fortunately for the Afghan masses, the US and But you couldn't resist, could you, Brother the picket lines of Four-by-Four workers who its allies are having little success. Though the Hickey? While they stand on the dole queues were prepared to fight. USec will take little heart from the news, there waiting for the miserly payments which will keep Having stabbed and spat upon his men, then, is little evidence that the Red Army has run in their families ever one step removed from star Hickey tells us, he resigned as deputy convenor, to major difficulties in containing the reac vation, they will be able to remember that the continued on page 7 tionary insurgency. The Sunday Times (26 July)

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER ~ 1981 5 about an 'Irish people as a whole'. Last May's Afghanistan ... Prisoners ... local elections swept Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party into well-nigh unchallenged lead (Continued from page 5) (Continued from page 1) ership of the Loyalist camp. Amid growing un demonstrated, the 1945-47 period was but a collapse and the Irish majority would be in a certainty about the intention of Westminster to respite in which the victorious 'democratic' position to assert itself.' (Socialist wards the long-term status of the Orange state, imperialists under US leadership rebuilt their Challenge, 9 July) forces for new assaults against the USSR - and against the growing strength of the The existence of the Orange state is necessarily Provisional IRA, Paisley recalls the traditions facilitated in no small measure not by Stalin's oppressive of the Catholic minority. But North of Sir Edward Carson's armed resistance to the march westward, but by his assistance in the ern Ireland is not a nationally homogeneous area 1912 Home Rule Bill -- and demonstrates in the reconstruction of capitalism in Western Europe. seeking liberation from imperialism. The Workers process that 'Loyalists' have interests diver To call for Red Army withdrawal from East Europe Power (WP) group and its sister Irish Workers gent from those of their British imperialist in this situation was objectively tantamount to Group (IWG) put forward the position that it is allies. calling for the disarmament of the USSR. even more explicitly than the IMG, and make it a And today that is precisely what the USec To the mass of Protestants this reactionary central foundation of their proto-Stalinist bigot looks like the only promise of salvation does call for -- from Barnes' open criminal ap strategy of an 'anti-imperialist united front'. peal for unilateral Soviet disarmament (calling from 'Papist' rule. On 3 July the Irish National This is the WP/IWG rationale in calling for Liberation Army fired at the police car taking on Brezhnev to 'announce that the USSR is de Paisley home from BBC studios in Belfast. And stroying a big part of its nuclear arsenal') to the furore against the 'workers bomb' in the IHG Paisley's explanation of the assassination attempt was all too cogent and true: last year to leading IMGer Brian Grogan's call 'I think probably what has happened is that for Soviet arms reduction. When US imperialism, the republicans realize that I am in a posi playing for time while furiously building up its tion, because of being elected leader of the anti-Soviet arsenal, was prepared to talk 'de Ulster people, to mobilize men -- men who tente', these charlatans denied that defence of will defend themselves and their families. the Soviet Union was an issue. Today they call The fact that they felt they must attack me on the Soviet bureaucracy to forsake any defence and try and kill me shows that I am being in order to appease the imperialist warmongers. effective.' (Times, 4 July) And in order to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with And at a 1000-strong rally at Sixmilecross on 'NATO socialists' like Benn and Mitterrand, they 2 July, Paisley raised the spectre of pogroms will find themselves increasingly, and of neces and inter-communal slaughter that haunts the sity, disowning struggles against imperialist North: 'Shall we allow ourselves to be murdered exploitation and oppression, as they today re or shall we go out and kill the killers?' pudiate the possibility for social emancipation The palpable threat of Loyalist terror and for the Afghan peoples. When a Trotskyist party inter-communal slaughter, and the Republican leads the Soviet workers in a political revolu strategy which consists not only of defensible tion to sweep out the bureaucracy, it will be military acts against imperialism, but also for the purpose of restoring the revolutionary allows for (and has at times carried out) indis internationalist policy which guided Trotsky's criminate terror against Protestants, sharply Red Army, not for further emasculating the So underscores the demand for integrated, anti viet power. Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! sectarian workers militias to combat Orange and Forward to the rebirth of the Fourth Green terror and imperialist rampage. The actual International! • arming of the workers is hardly the problem in the North. What is key is providing such mili Bennites ... tias with a broad and strong programmatic basis, fundamentally requiring the existence of an (Continued from pace 3) authoritative revolutionary cadre. from the SWP's own oft-repeated and equally impotent Right to Work marches. The national question and the class question The People's March in particular illustrated Paisley's 'kill the killer' rhetoric should how slim are the political differences that sep put paid to hare-brained ideas that the Protes arate the SWP from the Labourites. The bureau tant workers can be written off without risk of cracy were able to congratulate themselves on a a genocidal bloodbath. One of the central successful, more-or-less apolitical popular~ 'theoretical' rationalisations for this by H Block protest in South. frontist campaign which covered for their com ostensible Marxists is that these workers repre plete failure to mObilise the class against the sent a 'labour aristocracy' based on the margin Tory (not to mention past Labour) onslaught on votes to Republican candidates, as they did when al privileges they 'enjoy'. Again WP expresses workers' jobs and conditions. But the only sub Bobby Sands stood in Fermanagh. But far from it most explicitly: stantial criticism Socialist Worker had was that representing a stand against imperialism, let 'The way in which the Protestant working there should be more of the same! Thus the Right alone a stand of class against class, such a class will be mObilised will be by showing to Work march to the Tory conference in Black vote represents political support to petty them that their privileges are worthless in pool is presented as a continuation of the bourgeois Republican nationalism -- and in the comparison with the possibility of a SOCial People's March initiative; like all such SWP case of communally divided Northern Ireland, a ist united Ireland. To come near to achieving marches it dovetails neatly with Labourism. vote of Catholic against Protestant! that the Orange state will have to be smashed A June Socialist Review editorial summed up Self-determination first, with the help of the protestant work the SWP's current position: ers if possible, against them if necessary.' 'We urge the Labour left to help us initiate for the Irish people as a whole? (Workers Power, September 1980) jOint action against redundancies, the six Intrinsic in this position is the call raised The WP schema falls into a classical theory per cent limit, the cuts, the decline of by the IMG, WP/IWG et al for 'self-determination of stages: first bourgeois unification through trade union membership and the dangers of of the Irish people as a whole'. But there is no smashing the Orange state, then socialism. WP's working-class demoralisation.' such thing as the 'Irish people as a whole'! The strategy is explicitly based on the hope that This is what the SWP is reduced to today. With Protestants constitute two-thirds of the popula 'the Green Tories in the south would be forced Labour on the streets, with the ANL no longer tion in the North and a quarter of the whole .. , to render assistance' in bringing such a drawing the crowds, and with other 'movements' island and are a distinct community. The 1974 unification about. But even if it were genuinely like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Ulster Workers Council strike, which smashed the a perspective for a 32-county united workers re creasingly under Labour's sway as well, they 'power-sharing' schemes of Westminster, was only public it would still break apart on the shoals can only come up with the most feeble mimicry the most graphic example of the Protestants' de of conflicting communal claims. Possibly the of, and overtures to, the Labour left. termination to resist anything seen as even a Ulster Protestant workers can be won to the The Labour Party, left as much as right, is step towards forcible incorporation into the programme of a unified Irish workers state - the biggest political obstacle for the workers Irish Catholic state. Northern Ireland is a case which would necessarily have a secular charac of this country in the struggle £or proletarian of interpenetrated peoples, like Cyprus or Leba ter -- but such a workers state cannot be crea power. Bennery today occupies political centre non, where the will of the Protestant community ted through the forced incorporation of the stage in the minds of many militant workers - must be taken into account in any genuinely Protestant community. ground down by capitalist attacks and decay, democratic solution. Otherwise the likely alter Communists would have opposed the 1921 imper betrayed by their misleaders, perceiving no r,en native is the inter-communal civil war that tore ialist partition in favour of seeking to cement uinely revolutionary alternative -- as a hid Cyprus and the Lebanon apart. revolutionary unity in the struggle for indepen eously pale reflection of the class struggle. The IMG's seemingly innocuous call for 'the dence, but we are not nationalist irredentists. With its undignified prostration before the new majority asserting itself' is nothing but a As we explained in 'Theses on Ireland': Labour left, the SWP once again demonstrates veiled call for genocide and forced population 'We struggle for an Irish workers republic as that it too, in its own smaller way, is an ob transfers. All that is uncertain is who the main part of a socialist federation of the British stacle to the building of a revolutionary party victims will be. With 100,000 legal guns in the Isles. While the establishment of a united and the emancipation of the working class .• North, 'most of them owned by the Protestant como. workers state of the whole island may be pre munity, any attempt by the oppressed Catholics ferable, the above demand is algebraic, of the North to 'assert themselves', even with leaving open the question of where the Pro Documents of the Communist Faction southern aid, could well be drowned in blood. As testants fall. This recognises that the na of the IMG the Spartacist tendency noted in its major docu ture of the Protestant community has not yet Documents of the struggle for ment on the Irish question, 'Theses on Ireland', been determined in history .... Placing the the Trotskyist position on 'the social organisation, weaponry, military demand in the context of a socialist feder Afghanistan inside the IMG: expertise and alliances of the Protestants, make ation has the additional advantage of high 'So you thought defence of the a "Zionist" solution entirely conceivable' lighting the essential relationship of the Soviet Union was not a central (Spartacist no 24, Autumn 1977). issue?' And the closer the Republicans come to unit 'Afghanistan and the defence of ing the Catholic nation into one state, the Theses 111 Ireland the Trotgkyist programme' harder the Loyalists will fight back. Today, Ian 7Sp Paisley sees leading that fight as his destiny. Spartacist no 24 Single issue: 30p r;;ake cheques payable to Communist Indeed, the escalating communal polarisation in Make payable/post to the North is ample testimony to that, as well as Faction, BM CF, London WClN 3XX Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1H 8JE underscoring the ludicrous character of talking

6 SPARTACIST BRITAIN proletarian revolution in the whole area and should it be forgotten that the Socialist Organ liberalisation in Poland and possibly push ahead the virtual impossibility of the resolution iser Alliance includes one Alan Thornett, the with military intervention despite the upheaval of the Irish question on a working-class fake-Trotskyist Cowley shop steward who has his that is likely to ensue.' When liberals like basis outside this framework. This, and the own history of scabbing and has been happily co- Cyrus Vance wail that Reagan has misplayed his strong representation of Irish workers in the existing with Hicke'y in the misnamed 'Leyland fore~gn policy hand, that he has too early and working class in Britain, points to the de- Action Committee' . too provocatively 'played the China card', they mand for a British Isles-wide trade-union So patently treacherous was Hickey's role assume that he is engaged in a game of diplo federation as a method of promoting joint in defusing any struggle at SDI that, as he matic pressure tactics. In fact it is a big step struggle and cutting across the divisions in recorded in the next-to-last instalment of his toward war. the working class in Ireland.' 'diary of resistance' (sic): 'Rumours start that Even in the absence of national/communal bar- the convenor, Mick Clarke, and I have been of- Defend the Soviet Union! riers, workers are divided by sectional inter- fered full-time jobs with the TGWU' (Socialist ests which can only betray the struggle for Challenge, 9 July). Don't worry, Pat, you're Where does the US anti-Communist war strategy revolutionary programme. And the lack of such a probably not good enough for Moss Evans -- but leave its 'Chicom' ally? 'You can't say that programme is what compels the fake lefts to tail don't hang around the picket lines when your China will be Marxist forever', an American Republicanism or counterpose 'anti-nationalist' former workmates do start fighting .• offical recently told nervous Southeast Asian pro-imperialist economism. Those who adapt to ministers at Manila. Indeed, any 'security' reformist/nationalist consciousness among the China imagines it can purchase with a US mili workforce today will find themselves counter US/China ... tary alliance will backfire. American imperial posed to class unity on the morrow. Just as (Continued from page 8) ism is hostile to the expropriation of capital the Orange Order deliberately pOisoned the pos ism everywhere. The Reagan government sibility of class unity in the Belfast shipyards overall anti-Soviet containment strategy. particularly is anxious to see the eventual in 1919, so the Republicans actively sought to Reagan/Haig are looking to demonstrate American restoration of capitalism in China. And their disrupt it when it began to bloom during the military power. The targets are Afghanistan, handling of the issue of Taiwan is the tip-off. unemployed workers movement in the early thir- Vietnam, El Salvador, and perhaps Angola/ The 'sellout of Taiwan' has long been a hot ties. In Cyprus -- where the terms of oppression Namibia. issue between US bourgeois liberals and the far have been reversed four times between the inter So when Haig went from Peking to a meeting of right. So far the Reagan administration, sensi penetrated Greek and Turkish communities in ASEAN in Manila it was Vietnam in his gunsights. tive to the Taiwan issue with its natural con several centuries -- there was one such example A State Department official said the US 'will stituency, and Deng & Co who for internal in 1974. When a reactionary Greek Cypriot coup seek, if we can, to find ways to increase the political reasons cannot appear to be 'soft on attempt endangered the lives of Greek leftists, political, economic, and yes, military pressure Taiwan' have submerged the issue of Taiwan to Turks came to their assistance. Unlike the on Vietnam' (New York Times, 18 June). Given the their overriding anti-Sovietism. Despite Stalinists who had been compromised by their recent rise of attacks against the Vietnamese on wrangling among US liberals and conservatives, consistent support to Greek communalism, a revo their borders, the US/China war axis may be the anti-Soviet war drive is a bipartisan con lutionary party could have intersected this op planning another attempt at a 'bloody lesson'. sensus in the bourgeoisie. The US/China axis was portunity to lead a combined working class re The 1979 invasion of Vietnam by China should developed steadily from Nixon/Kissinger through sponse to the reactionary threat which could have been a watershed for Maoists who had been Carter/Brzezinski to Reagan/Haig. have gone on to smash the s·tate. born into political life as supporters of the This administration remembers the maps from The instances of class unity -- though infre Viet Cong against US imperialism. But those the 1950s with rings of containment around the quent in a situation poisoned by sectarian hat pseudo-leftists who didn't back China outright USSR and they are out to make it real. From reds -- indicate that the opportunity can arise wailed over the spectacle of two 'socialist Japan, through Asia and the Middle East and into for a Leninist vanguard org~nisation, even if countries' at war with each other. At the time Europe, Reagan is surrounding Russia with fire hitherto isolated and small, to intervene with a the Spartacist League emphasised that China was power meant to contain, isolate and ultimately programme to alter the course of the conflict acting de facto with US complicity, demanding destroy the USSR. In this conflict there can be towards a class determination and proletarian 'China Don't Be Cat's Paw for US Imperialism', no neutrals. Trotskyists unconditionally defend revolution. Today Republican prisoners demon and calling on the Soviet Union to honor its against imperialism the Soviet bureaucratically strate their self-sacrifice and commitment by treaty with Vietnam. Now the overt US/China degenerated workers state and the remaining their readiness to die an agonising death. But alliance has confirmed that analysis. Thus a social/economic conquests of the October Trotskyists look forward to the day when the future attempt to 'teach Vietnam a bloody Revolution! martyrs are avenged by the establishment of pro- lesson' will more likely be a combined imperial- In 1969, the SL noted the 'objective letarian dictatorship throughout the British ist and Chinese attack on a deformed workers possibility -- given the tremendous industrial Isles. Then it will be fitting to recall the ap- state, part of a wider US military thrust and military capacity of the Soviet Union -- of peal made by the Northern Region Congress of against the Soviet Union. a US deal with China' ('Development and Tactics Soviets, on the eve of the Russian October If Vietnam is the immediate target, it is of the Spartacist League'). All of the Stalinist Revolution, to the political prisoners held in Poland which casts the darkest shadow over the bureaucracies, whether Russian, Chinese -- Mao the Crosses prison in Petrograd: 'Halt your China arms deal. The precise military results or Deng -- or Vietnamese share the anti hunger strike and marshal your strength because for China cannot be known until the weapons are international conception of 'socialism in one the hour of your liberation is close at hand. '. actually in Peking's hands. Thus more than one country'. In its name they stab one another in commentator has treated the announcement as a the back seeking deals with imperialism for mystery while some speculate that it might be a illusory national 'advantages'. The Russian Betrayal ... mistake which could get Haig into trouble with Stalinist bureaucracy is one of the most con the White House. But the announcement was in- ciliatory outfits imaginable. But there are (Continued from page 5) tended as a political provocation precisely limits, as Hitler found out. 'because I can't be part of implementing the calculated and of global proportion. Socialist revolution in the capitalist West closure agreement' -- ever the moral gentleman! Consider the timing and effect of the an- is indispensable in order to destroy imperialist But just in case anyone was worried he would be nouncement. Since April when Caspar Weinberger militarism -- and to sweep away the Haigs, 'resigning from the labour movement', Hickey re- spoke about the 'linkage' between China arms Weinbergers and Reagans who would incinerate the assures us: sales and a possible Russian invasion of Poland, world in their anti-Soviet crusade. And in the 'I was more determined than ever to take up US liberals have talked about holding up arms degenerated/deformed workers states not simply the fight in the TGWU on the question of the to China as a 'deterrent' and 'bargaining chip' economic advancement but survival itself demands bloc (siC) vote and the deputy leadership.' with the Soviets. That is why Vance is screaming that the workers, led by a Trotskyist vanguard That sums up the alternatives pretty succinctly: about the China arms deal as playing all the US' party, oust the Stalinist betrayers who bind revolutionary class struggle or Labourite re China high cards in 'no trump'. He means that them to the class enemy. As the US/China war formism. A proletariat which finds itself suf now the US has nothing more to offer the Soviets axis threatens to turn the Cold War nuclear hot, focating in the faces of a moribund capitalism in the way of a deal. one had better believe that the very existence is offered the perspective of Tony Benn's But he mistakes the Reagan purpose com of the planet depends on this .• social-democratic deodorant. And in the unions pletely, which is not to deter the Russians, but Hickey has twice demonstrated the end logic of to provoke them. The announcement is thus finely the IMG's search for a 'class struggle left tuned and calculated to urge the Russians tOviard

~PARTACJStJ~-~~.- wing' counterposed to the hard fight for a an invasion of Poland. Reagan, and Haig want " "= Of,-, Trotskyist programme: scabbing and betrayal. So nothing more than to see Russian tanks roll into Defense of Cuba. USSR Begins the gentle rap on the knuckles for Hickey's Warsaw and Gdansk. They want to see the Russians In EI Salvador! Military Victory to Leftist 'softly, softly approach' by the Labour-loyal dragged into a massive bloodbath in Poland while Insurgents! Socialist Organiser (30 July) does not cut much their troops are tied down at the Chinese OUT ice. They can think of no greater glory than to border. So go ahead, says Reagan. There js no boost Benn all the way into Downing Street. Nor SALT. No bargains over Chinese guns. Nothing. Reagan's goading of Russia over China is part NOW! of a strategy of global confrontation. He is now Subscribe! talking openly of the 'end' of Communism, while Spartacist no 31 -32 pushing for nuclear end-game. Last week, against the background of the China arms deal, multi (Summer 1981) I :WP S,.nO." James P Cannon 28'" million-dollar weapons packages for Pakistan SRUliAClST '3 ~~~-,:'.q aloOd ',ud BRITAIN ('non-proliferation' be damned), the Rapid NAME Deployment Force, the build-up of strategic and ADDRESS ______conventional forces in Europe and a projected Stepping stone toward South Asian trillion-dollar war budget, Reagan made the revolution! general case. 'Communism', he said, is an Spartacist League formed in Sri Lanka o Splrtlcist Britlin: £2.00 for 10 issues 'aberration ... not a normal way of living for human beings'. We are seeing 'the beginning of Other contents include: the end' (Washington Post, 19 June). o Joint subscription: • Iran/Iraq blood feud £6.00 for 24 issues WORKERS While the talks were going on in China, VANGUARD (fortnightly Marxist paper Reagan spoke of Poland as the 'first beginning • US SWP's about-face on Afghanistan of SL/US) plus SPARTACIST BRITAIN cracks' in Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. for duration of subscription plus The comment was supposed to be 'off the cuff', Single issues: 40p17Sc SPARTACI8-T (iSt journal) but it was quite calculated. As bourgeois Make payable/write to: Russia-expert Hedrick Smith wrote in the New Spartacist Publishing Co, Box 1377, GPO Make payable/write to: York Times (18 June): 'That kind of remark from New York, New York 10116 Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1 H SJE an American official is likely to harden the USA Kremlin's resolve to curb the movement for

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1981 7 BRITAIN Defend Vietnam and the Soviet Union!

- • waruis

General Haig's announcement at the end of his tary can absorb and pay for in the immediate China trip in June that the US will arm Peking future is not now known. But next month, their with 'lethal weapons' is the most dangerous generals will be taking the short march to the provocation against the USSR since this most Pentagon with a considerable shopping list. provocative Reagan regime took office six months Even Cyrus Vance, Carter's hapless Secretary ago. It is not merely another finesse of 'China of State, called the deal 'needlessly provoca card' diplomacy. The deepening US/China alliance tive and smack[ing] of bear-baiting' (New York has now become an openly declared anti-Soviet Times, 24 June). But the baited RUssian bear military axis -- a deal for action against the responded with deliberately measured language in Soviets and to 'increase the political, econ a Pravda article under official signature, omic, and, yes, military pressures on Vietnam' calling the arms agreement 'highly dangerous', (New York Times, 18 JUne). Like the Japanese and 'an escalation of reckless policy' (N o w York invasion of Manchuria in 1931, now recognised as Times, 28 June). The Russians have warned many the very first shots of World War II, the US/ times of the consequences of the US arming China China arms deal may well be the direct prelude with strategic weapons. And [the following] week to WWIII. again Russia warned simply and without bluster Joint American/Chinese military support to that 'nobody should doubt that the Soviet anti-Russian Afghans and anti-Vietnamese people, who have good nerves and powerful means Cambodians is envisioned. The Chinese bless the of curbing aggression, will not yield to provo Americans to deepen their military commitment in cations and will be able to stand up for them and Deng seal anti-Soviet military alliance El Salvador and against Nicaragua and Cuba. selves, to defend the interests of their friends towards World War III. Surely an attempted military 'roll-back' in and allies'. Angola and Namibia, to be fronted by South The Russian perception of the US/China axis It was Carter and Brzezinski who launched the is well known. Few things this side of an actual present thrust toward war with the Soviets, and US military adventure against the Soviet Union, Reagan has escalated it dangerously. There are Reprinted from Workers Vanguard Cuba or the Eastern bloc could be as provocative some things the Russians cannot abide, and as the arming of China. The view from the Reagan knows it. When Harold Brown, Carter's no 284, 3 July 1981 Kremlin is that China is even more likely than defense secretary, went to China to point the the US to squeeze the nuclear trigger in a bout way toward overt military collaboration, we of fanatical anti-Soviet frenzy and miscalcu wrote: Africa, is foreseen. But the one-family-run lated geo-political.strategy. And the Soviets 'It is simply too dangerous for the Russians Saudi Arabia and the hated Zia of Pakistan are may well be right. It is more than their tra if the US doomsday machinery is placed in the less than slender reeds. And as for Begin's ditional fear of encirclement by hostile powers hands of the Chinese. For the Russians Israel: whom the gods would destroy, they first that accounts for their obsession with China. playing the China card is no diplomatic game; make mad. Considerable arm~twisting of West Mao and his heirs have ~emed quite crazed in it is a matter of life and death.' ('RUssians European allies and increasingly of an uneasy their view of nuclear war. The most recent Fed Up', Workers Vanguard no 249, 8 February Japan are also in the cards if an effective Pravda article, for instance, notes that 'Peking 1980) Chinese/American bloc is to be consummated -- at has its own interests to pursue, namely to set For the Russians, taking out the Chinese stra a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars from the United States and the Soviet Union against tegic weapons is not at all unthinkable. Last an economically weakened United States. And for each other so as to be able to dominate the January, Leonid Brezhnev pounded a desk in Paris what? It's a lot easier to hunt down and forc world after a nuclear conflict'. And this view and laid out the Chinese tripwire for World War ibly abort black welfare mothers ('Right to of China is not new. Khrushchev recalled a con III. He was quoted by the president of the Life' not withstanding) than to try the same on versation with Mao Tse-tung as they sunbathed at French national assembly as saying: the Red Army. poolside in Peking in 1954: 'Believe me, after the destruction of Chinese Now Haig shouts in the face of the Soviets 'Mao replied by trying to assure me that the nuclear sites by our missiles, there won't be that two years ago -- when Washington lost its AtGmic bomb was a paper tiger! "Listen Com much time for the Americans to choose between 'listening stations' in Iran with the mullah rade Khrushchev, " he said. "All you have to the defense of their Chinese allies and victory over the US-backed shah -- the US built do is provoke the Americans into military ac peaceful co-existence with us.' (New York a super spy station embedded in the Sinkiang tion and I'll give you as many military div Times, 30 January 1980) mountains near the Soviet border. The Chinese isions as you need to crush them -- a hun spy station is the one place where US imperial dred, two hundred, one thousand divisions." ism can monitor Soviet missile tests from launch Vietnam, Poland ... the world I tried to explain to him that one or two through flight over Siberia to dispersion of missiles could turn all the divisions in When China gets the guns, China intends to warheads. Together the Chinese Stalinists and China to dust. But he wouldn't even listen. use them. As Haig and the Peking leaders ex their CIA 'advisers' gather the most sensitive And obviously regarded me as a coward.' changed smiles, toasts and condemnations of the military intelligence to use against the (Khrushchev Remembers, 1970) 'main enemy', Soviet 'expansionism', they also Russians: missile range, accuracy, payload, com agreed on the regional 'danger'. Russia's ally munications guidance. The UR/China war axis is certainly a sinister Vietnam is the more immediate target in the The shift to an announced military alliance and strangely complementary affair. Reagan and global war against 'Soviet hegemonism'. The US Haig dream of being the victorious survivors of opens the ~ay for Peking to modernize its imperialists long to punish Vietnam not only a nuclear war against Russia due to high-tech arsenal with US guidance systems for strategic because of the Vietnamese military victory - 'Star Wars' weapons superiority, while their weapons, anti-tank missiles, fighter planes, a historic evidence of US decline -- but also Russian-hating allies in Peking nurture survival delivery system for its primitive nuclear because an attack on Vietnam fits into Reagan's weapons and every kind of combat hardware. Just fantasies based on technological underdevelop- how much of this war machinery the Chinese mili- ment -- sheer numbers. continued on page 7

8 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1981