( Australasian

Number 118 July/August 1888 30 cents Massive Black Strike Under Ap-artheid Reign of Terror • I rica own

Reuters offices of. the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) as Forge a well as those of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) were ransacked. Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned Boishevi,k Party! ANC leader Nelson Mandela, was barred from speaking to journalists Australian Prime Ministers, past and restricted to her house from 6pm and present, have been shooting their to Sam daily. Reporters were completely barred from the black mouths off a lot lately about South townships and prohibited from re­ African apartheid. Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser as co­ porting any "subversive" statements (such as a strike call), any actions by chairman of the Commonwealth the police or army, or the names of Eminent Persons Group (EPG) and detainees. On the 16th telephones present Labor PM Robert Hawke have were cut off for most of the day in the been piously extolling the virtues of townships around Johannesburg, economic sanctions to pressure Cape Town, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth Pretoria into anti-apartheid reforms. and Durban. Both are provetr. Cold War union Pretoria geared up for repression on . busters and enemies of the Soviet a massive, bloody scale. In. an inter- . Union and Vietnam. Both have admin­ view on ABC News, T J Swanepoel, istered the institutionalised murder of the police commander who ordered the Australian Aboriginals through cop first shot fired in the massacre of over terror, ghettoisation, unemployment 1,000 black youth during the 1976 and the grinding poverty, disease and Soweto rebellion, said he would do it death in the bantustan-like Aboriginal again: "I will kill a thousand people if reserves. Both have proved them­ I can stop the violence .... " On June selves worthy of the vicious whites­ 15, police fired tear gas into a only tradition of this white imperialist Apartheid terror rumbles through Crossroads as black settlement burns, gathering of nearly 1,000 commemor­ enclave in Asia. So what's going oil? leaving more than 70,000 homeless. Quite simply they're trying desper­ ating Soweto at the St Athans Road Moslem Mosque in Athlone, a mixed­ ately to avoid the revolution that South Soweto commemorations and under Botha declared the "state of emerg­ draconian nationwide "state of emerg­ ency" June 12 after the bogus "parlia­ race suburb of Cape Town. Africa so desperately needs. Hawke According to the UPI: "Terrified recently worried openly about moder­ ency" conditions. As we go to press, ments" of coloured and Indian the near-total blackout of information representatives balked at giving Law worshippers broke doors and windows ate black South African "leaders" attempting to escape and several older like Bishop Desmond Tutu losing from South Africa leaves only scraps of and Order Minister Louis Le Grange . iriformation gleaned from dispatches martial law powers. In the early hours people and children fainted and had to control of the anti-apartheid struggle be dragged from the building, and said: "If we have any interest in self-censored by the media to conform ofthe 12th, security forces rounded up to apartheid baas P W Botha's emerg­ at least 1,200 anti-apartheid militants, witnesses said. Police waiting outside seeing a South Africa that is not going the mosque beat fleeing worshippers to depend on the weapons and support ency" restrictions. In Paris, African including leaders of the United National Congress (ANC) leader Oliver Democratic Front (UDF), the president with whips." At St Nicholas Anglican of the Soviets rather than the West, Church in the Cape township of Elsie's then we've got to be associated now Tambo said that, contrary to official of the Azanian People's Organisation reports of "only" eleven killed on (AZAPO) Saths Cooper, Piroshaw River, 250 were arrested (including with the process of change"(Age, many children) by police who called 5 June). Fraser, Hawke and Foreign Monday, there were "unconfirmed Camay of the Council of Unions of reports of massive slaughter" . South Africa (CUSA), and clergymen. the service a "subversive" meeting. Minister Bill Hayden are the enemies Despite Botha's reign of terror, the . of South African black workers, Film footage that has gotten through During the next days. over 4,000 were shows the streets of Johannesburg "detained", including many lower and massive strike was carried off. In the Australian workers, Asian workers, 20-month-Iong confrontation between Soviet workers. They're worried virtually deserted, as were the trains middle-level officials of black unions and buses that normally bring and anti-apartheid groups, as well as the racist regime and deepening solely about "stabilising" the anti-apartheid revolt, police-state southern hemispere for white imperi­ hundreds of thousands from Soweto to the secretary general of the South work in the factories, shops and African Catholic Bishops Conference measures have failed to cow the alism and anti-Sovietism. We reprint oppressed into submission. Import­ below the article "South African offices. Reportedly the strike was and members of the End Conscription completely effective in the Eastern Campaign, a white group that opposes antly, repression could not prevent the Showdown" from Workers Vanguard two previous general strikes, in the no 406, 20 June 1986 with a program Cape region, including blacks, the draft. coloureds (mixed race) and Indians. Under the regulations, detainees Transvaal in November 1984 and for black-centred workers revolution nationally in the recent heroic May in South Africa and international One business source reported that up may be held incommunicado indefi­ to 90 percent of the nation's black nitely, and no security official can be Day strike. But as the prospect for proletarian action to ensure that the bloody one-sided civil war looms ever imperialists fail in their aim. workers participated in the strike. In tried for any actions under the Durban, 40 percent of the workers "emergency", including murder. The Contmued on page two JUNE 17 - South Africa's black reportedly stayed away today as well. masses observed the tenth anniversary However, mass demonstrations and of the Soweto rebellion, which was the insurrectionary actions Botha bloodily repressed by the apartheid claimed were being prepared by state, with a general strike on June 16. "radical and revolutionary elements" The largest ever "stayaway", involv­ apparently did not materialize. In the ing millions of black workers and June 16 test of strength between the shutting down major urban centers, Pretoria regime and the combative was carried out in defiance of the black masses, it appears that there has regime's banning of any and all been a cold standoff, for now. Registered by Australia Post - Publication no NBF0710 It spawned reactionary black vigilantes South Africa ••• -< in Crossroads, called "witdoekies" for the white armbands they wear, Contmued from page one consisting primarily of black cops, common criminals and some shop larger, the question of power - who owners, to be used against the .shall rule the country - is posed militant township youth, the "com­ starkly. In confrOntations such as this, rades". the need for revolutionary leadership Between mid-May and mid-June, is more urgent than ever. the police and army have backed up South Africa today.has the smell of a several thousand vigilantes in system­ revolutionary situation. In Lenin's atically destroying sections of Cross­ classic definition, it's not enough that Black unionists roads occupied by the "comrades", the masses can no longer live in the old cheer founding killing at least 6S with machetes and way - their rulers must also be ofCOSATU, guns, torching thousands Qf shacks unable to rule in the old way. The November 1985. and leaving 70.000 homeless in Cape government's actions are losing Town's winter rain and near-freezing coherence, going in different direc­ 7." temperatures. Pretoria's game here is tions at the same time, trying for .'j...... hio" clear, of portraying the events at .,., .. piecemeal "reform" of apartheid, Crossroads as "black on black viol­ ordering brutal repression of anti­ ence". And Ronald Reagan joins in apartheid revolt, fantasizing about a ". .1& this pretext for terror, claiming, "It . separate Afrikaner state. Meanwhile is blacks fighting against blacks" the open fascists are growing in first installment" (New York Times, to hell" (Times [London], 23 May). (New York Times, 14 June). As has strength. There appears to be a loss of 22 May). At the Crossroads squatter settle­ been evident since the outset of the nerve at the top, the inability of the A genuinely fascist far right has ments near Cape Town, the regime is anti-apartheid revolt, Washington state to act as the general staff of a srown, largely at the expense of giving a taste of what it is prepared to stands with its anti-Soviet ally in united ruling class. Which doesn't Botha's National Party (especially unleash on the black population. For Pretoria, charged with policing the mean they're not ready for blood - among the police). Hitlerite Eugene years Crossroads has stood as a continent for the "free world" . on the contrary, genocide can be the Terre 'Blanche led his Afrikaner symbol of resistance to the apartheid This simple fact has not dissuaded result. Hitler came to power in part Weerstandsbeweging (A WB - Afri­ "influx control" which makes it illegal the proponents of imperialist "sanc­ because of a loss of nerve of the kaner Resistance Moyement) thugs for the majority of blacks to move to tions" - who run the gamut from German bourgeoisie. But rather than in storming a National Party the cities. The government has Bishop Desmond Tutu to the ANC and uniting around a bonaparte, the South meeting just days after the bombing of unsuccessfully been trying to force out· its "left" supporters. Newsweek (23 African rulers seem to be thrashing the black states. From the shoulders most of the Crossroads population into June) reported that "Tutu met with around in wild factionalism. of his stormtroopers, as the AWB's a new black "township" ten miles Botha for 90 minutes and appealed to The enormous potential power of the three-legged swastika flags ruled the further out of town - a deathtrap him - in the name of Christianity and six-million-strong South African black hall, Terre'Blanche ranted: "I want to with only one access road and military anticommunism - to lift the ban." proletariat has once again been tell the ANC: if you mess with the Boer bases on two sides. As they have Tutu emerged from the meeting with demonstrated. "A general strike could Volk (people), we will blow you all throughout the country, the cops Contmued on page eight bring the country to its knees in a couple of weeks", womed the chief labor specialist for the huge Anglo American mining and industrial conglomerate (New York Times Magazine. 15 June). And the black Congratulations to participants in this year's Austral­ unions have discovered that they can't class-struggle defence of the BLF in the face of Labor's asian Spartacist subscription drive. The five-week drive was scabherding. Our reformist opponents (as opposed to damn avoid politics. It all points to a revol­ extended into the sixth week to accommodate the Melb­ near everyone else) thoroughly hated our slogan "Hawke is utionary crisis brewing, but the key ourne local's trip to Adelaide, -netting 106 of their 511 Thatcher in Drag''', but interestingly quite a few sub­ element for victory is missing. Unless points. Combined with the Sydney local's 376 points and scribed. Comrades returning from our most successful the anti-apartheid revolt is organized 45 points at large, the national total reached an impressive regional trip to Canberra (126 points) reported that students along class lines, with the black 932 points for 186 percent of the quota. These totals include were htmgry for Jeftist politic~.,On the, campuses where we proletariat led by a multiracial 68 points for subs to the Marxist working-class biweekly of are active the most productive sub drive work was done at Bolshevik party, forged on the the Spartacist League of the US (SLlUS), and America's the Uni of New South Wales with 53 points. An exceptional program of permanent revolution premier leftist paper, Workers Vanguard, 102 points for 40 points in subs was sold to maritime workers in Melb­ and leading the rest of the oppressed subs to the SLiUS journal Women and Revolution (W&R), ourne, testimony in large part to our aggressive defence of and disenfranchised in a fight for state and 48 points for subs to other international Spartacist the Vietnamese Revolution. Several ASp subs were sold on power, the possibility of smashing the tendency pUblications. The popularity of W&R amongst our the BLF Footscray pool picket line in Melbourne. Among power of the white supremacist readers and friends here in Australia points to the question Sydney area unionists Fairfax metal workers who wanted to capitalist regime will be squandered, of women's oppression and special oppression generally in fight to defend the BLF bought the most subs. with hideous consequences. this brutally male chauvinist and Laborite nationalist country as an integral part of a revolutionary and inter­ Special congratulations go to our sub drive winner White Laager Digs In nationalist perspective. Lynne T from Melbourne with a spectacular 195.5 points. By far the biggest drawing cards for new subs were our Runners up were Jenne K from Sydney and Toni S from While the nationalists of the main powerful line against Reagan's anti-Soviet war provo­ Melbourne with 82.5 and 80 points respectively. anti-apartheid grouping, the ANC, cations, particularly the terror bombings of Libya, and our Welcome to our new readers and resubscribers. pursue a strategy of "pressure" on the regime (from without through imperi­ alist economic sanctions, from within WfJlINllIS III1NGfJlIlIIJ , through the "policy of chaos", of ~-=----==--===----=------=-:--=--=--:::;: ------forge I Bolshevik party in South Africa making the townships "ungovern­ (jPAiT~T ft.] South Africa: FO!1le a Bolshevik PartVl able"), Botha has increasingly re­ Black Labor 'Can sponded to pressure from the right. ~Strikes at I,L~!IJ!!, Afg~ Avenge Soweto­ Thus the South African bombing raids Break Apartheid Chains on the capitals of three black African flasbPoints tor...•.• War-' ...... '<.;.u.~·:~ Workers to power! border states, ostensibly aimed at ANC installations, in late May. Said Botha afterward: "South Africa has the capacity and the will to break the ANC .... We have only delivered the

Australasian Front line of Ant,·Sov,et. . WDr D·riVe I!-o~::;::~:- 10Liberal Party as documenting the history of a number head of the "uglies" faction. Another of Nazi and Fascist war criminals who was Constantine Untaru who was a found a "free world" haven in Aus­ member of the Rumanian fascist Iron tralia. The program produced by Mark Guard whose members participated in Aarons, the son of former Communist murderous attacks on the Jewish Party leader Laurie Aarons, and John community in Bucharest in 1941 HOP paper Loftus, a former investigator of the during an abortive coup. Untaru Hrvatskl Office of Special Investigations (OSI) became the long-time head of the Tjednlk into Nazi war criminals in the US, was Australian branch of the Assembly of (April 19, met by a thunder of pro-fascist apolo­ Captive Nations. Yet another was getics from Kerry Packer's Bulletin Laszlo Megay, known as the "mass 1983) glori­ magazine, BA Santamaria's National murderer of Ungvar", after the Hun­ fies Ustasha Civic Council and the Captive Nations garian town from which, as mayor, butcher Jure Francetlc, crowd. For them the program was an he oversaw and personally helped example of some sort of •• communist leader of the carry out the brutal deportation of· Black Legion. plot" against "decent" Australians. thousands of Jews to Auschwitz. For them the real enemy is the USSR Before his death in the late 1950s he against which the imperialist bour­ rose to a high position in the Lib­ geoisies around the world are fever­ eral Party. ishly gearing up for war. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Labor Welcomed who over the last four years have dis­ Hitler's Killers fascist monsters into the country and new, to take their place in Reagan and tinguished themselves as publicists in These are only the most well-known then frequently encouraged and Hawke's crusade against what Wald­ the labour movement for Croatian of Nazi flotsam and jetsam from the patronised their continued organising heim himself called in 1944 "the ... fascist Ustasha elements, chimed in defeated wreckage of Hitler's Oper- efforts amongst their followers in the danger from the East" . emigre communities. We demand that The SWP's pious claims about ., ~51 Rover and Urbancic in particular­ "non-existent" Ustasha activities are i whose return has long been demanded blatant and dangerous lies. Fascist 2: by the Yugoslav government - be war criminals in Australia are not only immediately deported to Yugoslavia to figureheads for fascist rejuvenation ! get swift justice. All other fascistic war but active components of fascist criminals still resident should also be terrorist activity. The history of despatched forthwith to Eastern Ustasha terror in Australia is well Europe and· the Soviet Union to be documented, including repeated tried by the surviving victims of their bombings and other attaCks on Yugo­ heinous crimes. We note that the Nazi slav consulates, embassies, travel mass murderers who fell into Soviet agencies, community functions, hands at the end of the war had all Serbian churches as well as political been hanged by 1946. oppOnents. In the 1960s Ustasha ter­ SWPand HOP Cold W~ Prime M'mister Hawke rorists even got caught out carrying members initially 'dismissed the whole affair out training sessions with the Aus­ seiling papers before reluctantly setting a "one man, tralian army. And in 1964 and 1972, together outside three month enquiry", a transparent Australia was the base for Ustasha Croatian soccer cover up of Australian imperialism's terrorist missions inside Yugoslavia. match. complicity. His Labor government's ASIO's collaboration with and protec­ imperialist big brother Reagan last tion of these Ustasha terrorists was year decided to re-cement the anti­ exposed after Whitlam's Attorney­ Soviet alliance with resurgent West General Lionel Murphy's famous 1973 German imperialism over the graves of raid on ASIO headquarters. They've the SS murderers at Bitburg. For it never forgotten - behind the current that the Ustasha is today a dead letter ation Barbarossa against the USSR must be understood by the working political vendetta against Murphy is which "disintegrated in the early which finally washed up on Australian class internationally - and indeed by undoubtedly ASIO and their CIA 195Os" , and despite some "Mickey shores. Their arrival after screening by all decent humanity - that Reagan's masters' 'thirst for revenge. Mouse" attempts at terrorist training Australian intelligence/immigration insane drive to obliterate that world The "Nazis In Australia" program have "fizzled out" (Direct Action officers, and subsequent protection by power that issued out of the October coincided with the mid-May trial of 7 May). The SWP are providing ASIO, was part of a world-wide oper­ Revolution of 1917 leads inevitably to Andrija Artukovic, the notorious Nazi credentials for Ustasha fascist vermin ation run by US intelligence agencies the rehabilitation of Nazism. The sight "Butcher of the Balkans" who was in labour movement circles. The to save and shelter these mass mur­ of a certified war criminal like Kurt sentenced to death in Zagreb after , fascist scum from Eastern Europe who derers for anti-Soviet purposes. Waldheim elected president of sup­ finally being deported from the US. came to Australia found not only a Successive governments, first Labor posedly neutral "democratic" Austria safe, white-racist home to escape the and then Liberal, welcomed these can only embolden the fascist, old and Continued on page eight justice of their victims but an oper­ ating base to plan and run their terror­ ist activities. 'l(ij1l::'··:·ii' .~"...... :,~.,..",.:::. Who are some of these scum? "'" Srecko Rover was a member of the "mobile court martials" of the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, under Ustasha Fuhrer Ante Pavelic. These death squads took part in the mass siaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Lt. Kurt Wald­ Gypsies, Serbs, Croats and Partisans helm (In centre, carried out by the Nazis and Ustasha left photo) with quislings. For three decades Rover has Waften SS In been a central and well-known leader Yugoslavia, of the Ustasha in Australia in its 1945. Yugoslav various manifestations. Lyenko partisans Urbancic was a leading fascist pub­ hanged by licist on behalf of the Slovenian puppet Nazis, 1942

government which deported thousands .*.~\.. (right). July/August 1988 3 For a Federated Workers Re~ublic of Lanka and Eelam! Sri Lanka Army Invades Tamil North JUNE 1 - Vowing to "exterminate" hostile encirclement of the Soviet the Tamil militants in the North of Sri Union and its allies. Lanka, on May 17 the rightist govern­ In a pitch to his anti-Soviet allies, ment of JR Jayewardene mounted its Jayewardene paints the Tamil insur­ largest military offensive ever against gents as Marxists: "Terrorism is no . the Jaffna peninsula, stronghold of longer ethnic but an attempt to install Tamil guerrillas fighting for a national a communist dictatorship by force and homeland ("Eelam") in the Eastern destroy Sri Lanka's democratic form and Northern provinces of the island. of government" (London Times, The Tamil people of Sri Lanka are a 19 May). Unfortunately, the Tamil national minority, distinguished from militants, however just their struggle the majority Sinhalese by language against genocide and for national self­ and religion (Tamils are mainly determination, are far from being Hindus while Sinhalese are mostly Marxists. The logic of petty-bourgeois Buddhists). Some 9,000 troops of nationalism has led them increasingly the mainly Sinhalese army advanced into acts of pointless slaughter of on Jaffna from three directions while innocent civilians and bloody fratrici­ army forces holed up in the old Dutch dal warfare between rival Tamil fort shelled the city. Aerial bombard­ groupings. The massacre of over a ment, strafing from helicopters and hundred Sinhalese pilgrims at Anurad­ naval shelling of coastal villages have hapura, a historic Buddhist site, last been going on for weeks, leaving J R Jayewardene's army tries to "exterminate" Tamil militants In Jaffna. May marked a clear tum toward hundreds of civilian casualties. targeting Sinhalese civilians for But JR's offensive ground to a to its Tamil citizens. In the summer exports for foreign currency. Accord­ indiscriminate attack. humiliating halt as the troops encoun­ of 1983 many hundreds of Tamils ing to human rights workers, in the On May 3 an Air Lanka aircraft was tered fierce resistance from well­ were killed in Sinhalese communalist North and East there were 2,578 blown up on the runway at Katunayake equipped Tamil guerrillas. The roads pogroms instigated and led by govern­ confirmed killings of civilians in the International Airport in Colombo, into J affna were mined and a key ment thugs, which brought massive ten months up to February of this killing 16, mainly foreign tourists on bridge blown up; the government murder and destruction of Tamil­ year; in the same period 12,105 their way to the Maldive Islands, and forces, stopped at Elephant Pass, owned (and Indian-owned) property Tamils were reported arrested and 547 including the wife of a PLO ambassa­ retreated into their fortified enclaves in Colombo. This was a calculated "disappeared". It is the Sinhalese dor. Probably only a delay in the and launched another wave of bomb­ attack by the Sinhalese chauvinists chauvinist state which has dragged the ,scheduled departure time prevented ing attacks to terrorize the Tamil on the economic interpenetration of country to the brink of civil war. the plane from exploding in midair. population. As one Sinhalese com- the island's peoples, intended to Jayewardene, having devoted Tourism was meant to be one of the Sandro Tucci months under a fictitious ' 'cease­ pillars of the capitalist prosperity fire" to pacifying the Eastern region promised by Jayewardene's UNP and building up the military, moved on government, and the airport bombing the North with the intention of finally is clearly a devastating blow to tour­ crushing the Tamil resistance and ism, logical from the indefensible wiping out their cadres. The openly nationalist standpoint as an effective Tamil nationalist" pro-US regime appeals to "the Eng­ act of economic warfare. group now lish-speaking world" to help "sup­ Soon after, a bomb exploded in the claims "credit" press the alarm and rebellion here" Central Telegraph Office, killing at for blowing up (London Sunday Times, 11 May) least eleven and injuring over 100. Air Lanka Jet and the imperialists have obliged. The Situated in downtown Colombo, in a filled with Sri Lankan army is now equipped with country where only the rich can afford tourists. 150 armored personnel carriers from telephones, the CTO is usually South Africa, 21 US-built helicopters, crowded with ordinary people. These six Marchetti planes from Italy, as well bombings were acts of indefensible as 50 patrol boats and some 40,000 indiscriminate terrorism, which can land mines (Asiaweek, 1 June). British only deepen the communal divisions and Israeli commandos are training and provoke bloody anti-Tamil po­ counterinsurgency teams, while groms. In fact the ,Eelam Revolu­ mander put it, admitting they were obliterate the significant layer of Tamil thousands of officers are sent to tionary Organisation of Students unwilling to take the massive casual­ merchants in the capital. In the East, Pakistan for training; British and claimed responsibility for both the ties required to crush the rebels, the government has combined army South African mercenaries are piloting airport bombing and the telegraph "You cannot win a guerrilla war when atrocities with intensification of long­ the bombing runs over the North. And office attack. Another group took re­ your enemy is fighting on home standing schemes to settle poor Jayewardene can no doubt rely on the sponsibility for a dam collapse in April territory with the backing of the Sinhalese there in order to shift the backing of his pal Reagan, holding out which killed 40 people. During a people. The Americans lost in Viet­ ethnic balance. as bait the strategic naval base at Buddhist religious festival (May nam" (London Guardian, 21 May). In the overwhelmingly Tamil Trincomalee for US warships in their 24-25), 20 Sinhalese villagers, in· And JR's ferocity is no doubt tem­ North, where growing separatist tl pered by the fear of provoking a sentiment had forced the mainstream 'u military intervention. on the part of Tamil politicians to espouse the India, where Rajiv Gandhi faces "Eelam" demand, the regime de­ substantial pressure from the SO prived even these moderate parli­ ias million Tamils in the southern state mentarians of a voice in the system of Tamil Nadu. by making explicit disavowal of Eelam !f11 a condition for them taking the seats to which they were elected. Thereby I" State Terror Against the Tamils the Jayewardene government ousted the largest single Opposition from Coinciding with the army invasion Parliament and in effect disenfran­ of the North, a government decree put chised the entire northern population, Tamil employees of state-run institu­ which it then subjected to military tions in Colombo and the South on occupation. And in recent years an involuntary "leave" from their jobs. ominous pattern has emerged of This blatantly racialist move, which in sporadic organized Sinhalese thug effect convicts Colombo Tamils of violence against the hill country being a fifth column of potential Tamil plantation workers, who for terrorists, underlines the regime's decades have 'kept the economy Colombo, July 1983: Government-Instigated pogroms slaughtered hun­ deprivation of civil and national rights afloat by providing most of Sri Lanka's dreds, burned Tamll-owned shops to the ground. 4 Australasian Spartaclst c1uding women and children, were :J ness and capacity for struggle. Mili­ massacred allegedly by Tamils at ~ tant class-conscious women can and Siripura, near Trincomalee, and ~ will be won to cotiilnunism and will be another 12 were killed in nearby 1:1 among its best fighters. villages (Le Monde, 27 May). An ~ The bonapartist JR regime faces explosion at a food and soda pro- ~ pressures from all quarters. In Jaffna cessing plant in Colombo on May 30 ~ Tamil prior to the army invasion of the North, killed ten workers and injured 50. demonstrators Muslims protested the terror-bombing All the Tamil armed struggle In London of Libya by JR's friend Reagan in a groups, with their nationalist politics, appeal to 2,OOO-strong demonstration. More countenance such attacks on innocent capitalist recently fighting in the Slave Island civilians, lending credence to the India. quarter of Colombo left seven dead, as regime's attribution to them of any local inhabitants, mainly Muslims and and every atrocity. Thus the massacre Tamils, resisted the riotous soldiers at Siripura, which presents some from a neighboring army camp. The unusual features - mainly, the im­ p regime continues to imprison Sinhal­ mediate presence on the scene of ese leftists accused of having ties reporters and photographers, who communalist slaughter in the Punjab rolled rocks down from hilltops to with Tamil groups, as well as countless have been kept out of the Trinco and Assam - to save the Lankan block the movement of police and army Tamils held under the draconian area for many months, and the prompt Tamils from JR's genocidal terror. convoys. An SLFP leader lamented "Prevention of Terrorism" laws. The appearance of a detailed article on it And the Tamil groups have remained that the police were afraid to go onto imperialist bloodsuckers of the in­ in the New York Times, which has indifferent to the struggles of key the tea estates to make arrests. ternational Monetary Fund have been virtually silent on recent. events potential allies among the exploited Fearing a "third front" the threatened to cut off "aid" and loans in Lanka - is attributed to Tamil Sinhalese workers in the South and government made an effort to cool the unless the government demonstrates it militants by the government which in particularly the plantation Tamils situation by appearing even-handed. can find a "solution" to the ethnic this context can expect to have its on the upcountry tea estates, struggles problem and get back to the orderly version widely believed. which point toward the possibility of When the new citizenship law was business of making money for dom­ a progressive class-struggle alterna­ enacted on February 1, the SLFP estic and multinational capitalists Fratricidal Warfare tive to the current spiral of bloody representatives stomped out of Parlia­ and their world bankers. Meanwhile communal violence. ment in protest. But the blatant the army seethes with mutinous Some of the ugliest incidents have Sinhala chauvinism of the SLFP­ occurred in the course of the bloody elements and Jayewardene's own Plantation Tamils Key to which first gained prominence in the party is itself rent with factions internecine warfare among the Tamil Revolution In Lanka '50s with their "Sinhala only" cam­ organizations themselves. As many as including an ultra-racialist wing which paign against Tamil language rights sees JR as "soft" on the Tamils. 300 Tamils were killed in recent Under pressure from the plantation - has never prevented the fake­ And the regime has succeeded in fighting between the Liberation Tigers workers, their main organization, the left parties of Ceylonese parliamentary deeply antagonizing anew its power­ (LITE) and the Tamil EeIam Liber­ Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) reformism from joining wholeheart­ ation Organisation (TELO), said to led by S Thondaman - trade-union ful neighbor India, which could swat edly in SLFP popular front coalitions. away Jayewardene's forces with have been sparked by the kidnapping boss, big landowner and cabinet The cravenly reformist Communist by TELO of two of the Tiger minister in Jayewardene's govern­ minimal effort. Party and the stinking corpse of the But Tamil Eelam achieved on the commanders. In three days, the ment - called a three-month "prayer Lanka Samasamaja Party (LSSP), better-organized Tigers wiped out all campaign". Plantation workers were bayonets of the Indian army could be sometimes falsely characterized as at best a pathetic client of capitalist 24 of TELO's camps and assassinated to "pray" for five hours a day, a "Trotskyist" , were thoroughly the TELO commander, Mohan Sri threat to utterly disrupt tea pro­ India, itself a prisonhouse of peoples discredited when they joined Mrs with its own Sabaratnam. Le Monde (14 May) duction. Two days after this thinly bitter communal divisions B's popular front government and and murderous suppression of min­ cites an eyewitness report by a journal­ disguised strike began on January 14, hailed the 1971 massacre of Sinhalese ist orities. A socialist Eel am is conceiv­ of the United News of India, who it was called off as the government youth who rose up against it. describes how "fifty young Tamils promised to grant citizenship to 94,000 able only in the framework of prolet­ belonging to the Tamil Eelam Libera­ "stateless" Tamils and their Today, as the SLFP aims to renew arian revolutionary struggles of the tion Organisation, some of them 13 or dependents who had been disen­ its popular front of Sinhala racialism in key plantation Tamils and Sinhalese 14 years old, were burned alive in franchised since independence in the form of a "National Front" with workers to overthrow capitalist public after being doused with gaso­ 1948. Despite the wretched slave-labor the Buddhist religious hierarchy, rule in the South as well, and the line by their adversaries" . conditions and' communalist terror the reformist left is dutifully tagging extension of revolutionary confla­ Noting the ominous shift among the they continue to face, wresting from along behind. The NSSP, the "New" gration to the oppressed masses Tamil groups from attacking legit­ the state a promise of citizenship LSSP formed by a split in the 1970s of the Indian subcontinent. imate targets of military occupation to rights is a victory for the plantation after the old LSSP had thoroughly Indeed any perspective for revol­ victimizing innocent Sinhalese civ­ Tamils and a demonstration of the discredited itself by slavish subord­ ution in Lanka makes little sense ilians, and the rise of violent clashes power of working-class action. And ination to Mrs Bandaranaike, showed unless the island is seen as a staging among the Tamil nationalists them­ whatever the CWC's claims that itself wedded to the same popular area for proletarian revolutionary selves, we wrote last December: "problems can be resolved through front perspective as its parent when it struggle throughout the Indian sub­ "The petty-bourgeois nationalist peaceful dialogue and prayer without hailed the SLMP, a thoroughly bourg­ continent. Ceylon has always been an Tamil organizations have come to resort to conflict and confrontation" eois split-off from the SLFP, as a organic cultural component of India; mirror the worst Sinhala chauvinism (Sun, 21 January), it was not neo­ "working-class formation". On the the island's history has always been of the traditional Ceylonese left Gandhian prayer but strike action question of rights for plantation linked to that of the mainland except parties with their own murderous logic Tamils, the SLMP has declared that when the English made Ceylon a of racialism and nationalist commu­ which achieved it. Predictably, the promise to grant the new citizens would be "an ad­ separate administrative unit for their nalism. Marxist revolutionists, who ditional burden which the economy own convenience. The best traditions base themselves on the morality citizenship unleashed paroxysms of (Sun, of the old Ceylonese Trotskyist move­ of internationalist class struggle, anti-Tamil chauvinism among Sinhala cannot bear" 27 January). And abhor racialism in all its forms, and communalists. Leading the pack was the Communist Party paper Aththa ment date back to World War II find deeply repugnant the terror the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) of worried: "There is the possibility of when the Ceylonese communists methods of gangsterism employed by former prime minister Mrs Bandara­ Indians and people from Tamil Nadu were united with their Indian com­ those who fight in the name of social naike, who told the Sinhalese to "get inftItrating the plantations. It will be rades in one party of common struggle justice. " ready for a war with the estate the Sinhalese people who will be in against British colonialism and - "Bloody Communal Terror workers". And on the weekend of danger" (quoted in the Island, capitalism .. in Sri Lanka", WV No 393, January 25-26, Sinhala communalist 6 February). In the period since independence in 13 December 19~ thugs attacked the Tamils in the Against the wretched popular front­ 1948, the policy of Sinhalese racialist The nationalist perspective of the Nuwara Eliya hill country district. But ism and pandering to Sinhala chauvin­ exclusivity sought to make external to Tamil insurgent organizations has led this time the plantation workers ism of the reformist Lankan left, the "our people" first the plantation them into reliance on capitalist India fought back: tens of thousands went on international Spartacist tendency Tamils and Burghers (mixed-race and the regime of Rajiv Gandhi strike, many estate workers armed and its section on the island, the descendants of European settlers) - itself stained with the blood of themselves, they felled trees and Spartacist League/Lanka, have fought and now the Muslims and Tamils. As the island today is tom apart by ',,' ," ' ... consistently in defense of the Tamils .wa~ ,...:orke~Hammer and for the right of Tamil national Sinhalese state terror and retaliatory self-determination, in the framework Tamil terrorism against innocent SMASH IIH rrM 1\6"1 Dr , .... ££L'" of a Leninist/Trotskyist program of civilians, it seems clear that the cycle fORI fEDEMTED SOCIII ~'~T internationalist class struggle. of bloodbaths will not easily be broken. The plantation workers are not the The pressure on India to step in to REPUBLIC ar [ELRM ANn only section of the working class to restore order is rapidly becoming SP~RT ~CtST show combativity. In March nurses irresistible. Rajiv Gandhi is perhaps went on strike for almost a month. impeded from action by his evident desire for a rapprochement with US t.',' " The government banned their union and seized its funds under the emerg­ imperialism, ana by the precarious .;. ency regulations. Notably, like the condition of bloody national antag­ plantation strikes and the militant onisms inside India; But if he permits strikes at textile factories like Polytex the Sri Lanka government to ac­ and Magnum, these struggles cen­ complish the genocidal slaughter of trally involve women workers. Deeply Tamil Hindus, it would mean his oppressed, and all too often treated undoing as surely as his mother's ill'$' with disdain and indifference by falling out with the Sikhs meant Spartaclst League' Britain protests anti-Tamil terror In Sri Lanka, London Lankan and Eelamist leftists alike, hers. Sooner or later, and likely soon- 1984. these women have shown their willing- Continued on page ulne July / August 1988 5 erno - • e own on ussla

MAY 5 - It is a sign of the war mania ~ impossible if a holocaust had rampant in the US ruling class that a z just occurred in the suburbs. tragic industrial accident in the Soviet As the chief spokesman for the Soviet . Union is turned into anti-Soviet Foreign Ministry, Vladimir Lomeiko, hysteria. Lacking any hard information rightfully complained at a New York when the accident developed at the conference on US-Soviet press re-· Chernobyl nuclear power plant near lations this week: "The Soviet Govern­ Kiev, the American "news" media ment gave the information, which is simply conjured up the wildest stories true and reliable, that two died. imaginable. Typical of the "Killer But you· didn't like that. So you talked Cloud Heads West" headlines were about 2,000 deaths.... It's a lie" this week's crop from the New York (New York Times, 3 May). But as the Post: "The World Trembles - 2,000 Reaganites learned from Joe dead, 25,000 flee, N-cloud is spread­ McCarthy and Josef Goebbels, mud ing", "Out of Control - 2nd melt­ sticks if you throw enough of it. down spews new death cloud' , , Lie No 2: "Mass Grave for 15,000 "Winds of Death", "Mass Grave for N-Victims". This wildly incredible 15,000 N-Victims" and so on ad claim also came from the Ukranian nauseum. Then, after shamelessly "community" in the US. There are conjuring up a "Red Nukemare", they indeed mass graves in the Ukraine - have the gall to denounce the Russians they contain mostly Jews, such for covering up I as the one at Babi Yar - but they And it wasn't just the sensationalist Chernobyl power plant In the Ukraine, site of tragic nuclear accident. were made by Nazis, not Russians, tabloids going beserk. Howdy Doody with the help of Ukrainian fascists Koppel on ABC-TV's Nightline asked in World War II. endless "what if " questions of "nu­ and Nagasaki, with a toll of more than The real nuclear danger is from the Lie No 3: "This time we apparently clear experts" who knew nothing 90,000 dead immediately and another White House. have the real thing, the core meltdown about the accident. Local TV weather 110,000 from the aftereffects I And Manipulated Media Panic that Three Mile Island was not" reports showed satellite photos of don't forget those innocent civilians (Washington Post, 30 April). To begin cloud movements over the European repeatedly irradiated over the years by Here are only some of the Big Lies with, Three Mile Island involved a regions of the Soviet Union. The staid fallout from US nuclear tests in the that have been strewn over the air­ partial meltdown, which came within New York Times spread scare stories Pacific. Recent evidence suggests that waves and published in millions of an hour of being total. As for the about "2,000 dead", Pacifica radio Marshall Islanders may have been copies by the US media in the last Chernobyl accident, physicists are played end-of-the-world music while deliberately exposed to the fallout so week. The purpose: to create anti­ divided over whether there was any reporting the nuke news. It was an that they could be guinea pigs to study Soviet panic. kind of a meltdown - an uncon­ across-the-board media panic, from the effects of radiation on humans Lie No 1: "2,000 dead". This came trolled nuclear reaction. According to ultra-right Reaganites to rad-lib eco­ (London Guardian, 2 May). from a phone conversation with an the New York Times (30 April), Yale freaks. The only thing we were spared So in the midst of this media melt­ "unidentified Kiev resident", accord­ physicist Allan Bromley, a government was those Long Island high school kids down, what did happen at the Cher­ ing to UPI. It was later stated by the adviser on nuclear policy, pointed out kissing the ground, Grenada-style, nobyl power plant? The Russians UPI night editor in Washington that that the Chernobyl accident "was when their parents rushed them back clearly want to minimize it, and they this was "an unconfirmed report" almost certainly not a classic melt­ from tours ofthe Soviet Union to check have their story. The Americans which "came out of US intelligence" down". Given the" design and physics them for "contamination". (The clearly want to maximize it, and they (from column by Hunter Thompson in of the Soviet reactor", he noted. "the amounts were so minute one tech­ have lots of stories '" which are the 5 May San Francisco Examiner). fuel temperatures could not soar high nician quipped it would only be all now collapsing on each other. All When the Soviets issued their state­ enough for this to occur". harmful if they ate off the soles of their the satellite photos and other para­ ment reporting only two dead, 197 hos­ Apparently what happened was that shoes.) phernalia available to the US "intelli­ pitalized, with 18 in "serious graphite blocks, used in Soviet gence community" have not come up condition", US Arms Control Agency reactors to "moderate" the nuclear It was, moreover, a manipulated with anything to contradict the head Kenneth Adelman claimed this reaction, overheated and caught fire. media panic. At the imperialist sum­ assertions in Soviet press statements. mit in Tokyo, Reagan tried to deny the .§? There was a serious nuclear accident, Eo< US was engaged in "Soviet bashing" two people reportedly died immedi­ while one key official said, "the last ately, about 20 are said to be in serious ~ thing we want to seem to be doing is condition and around 200 were ~ any gloating". Gloating isn't the half hospitalized. Several towns were of it. The Reaganites were having an evacuated. Certainly there will be It has happened anti-Soviet field day. Add to the usual many more deaths in the weeks and here. The near "Russians eat babies for breakfast" years to come among the Soviet meltdown at Cold War rhetoric quite a dose of citizens exposed to the Chernobyl Three Mile Ukranian malice, as the media inter­ accident. And there will be an Island nuclear viewed expatriates filled with hatred increased incidence of cancer in that power plant In for the October Revolution, who all region. But most everything else in the 1979 could have seem to have left in 1944 (ie, with the capitalist media has been a Big Lie. devastated retreating Wehrmacht). And a special Reagan's accusations of Soviet "dis­ densely popu­ contribution from that coterie of social regard" for international welfare are lated area of democratic Cold Warriors around not only lies but the height of hypoc­ Pennsylvania. Jeane Kirkpatrick, notably Kenneth risy, coming from the gang that wants Adelman, the man who wouldn't call to nuke Russia with a first strike. Far nuclear war "horrible" until it was more dangerous than the Chernobyl clear his appointment by Congress as incident was the deliberately provoc­ head of the "arms control" agency ative US invasion of Soviet territorial was "frankly preposterous" (he At some point, a chemical explosion depended on it. waters in the Black Sea in March. That wanted more). But Dr Richard Reba, apparently blew open the reactor, The "evil empire" propaganda was might have triggered a nuclear show­ director of nuclear medicine at George releasing a cloud of radioactive coming not only from Reagan but also down. From Nicaragua to Angola to Washington University Medical particles into the atmosphere. "The liberals like the Washington Post (30 Afghanistan, the Pentagon is trying to Center, said the Moscow statement reactor was turned off immediately April), who claimed in an editorial escalate its "low intensity conflicts" "makes sense", since anyone immedi­ after the accident", said Boris Yeltsin, ("The Russian Syndrome") that the with "Soviet surrogates" into confron­ ately killed by radiation would have ~oscow Communist Party leader, in a Soviets don't put "the same value on tation with the Russian bear. And now had to be •'in the reactor facility or West German TV interview. The 30 civilian lives ... as does the demo­ CBS News (5 May) reports that the US very close to it" . April TASS statement noted specifi­ cratic West". That's quite a mouthful is planning yet another attack on Western media also noted with cally that "no chain reaction fission of coming from the only country to ever Libya, this time with cruise missiles: bewilderment that life was "normal" nuclear fuel is taking place". The big use nuclear weapons. .. against "The administration is currently in nearby Kiev, where May Day problem was putting out the graph­ the civilian populations of Hiroshima debating which targets should be hit" . celebrations went on as scheduled - ite fire. 8 Australasian Spartaclst Lie No 4: "It'll Bum for Weeks" Europe this week is a sinister amal­ (Daily News, 1 May). This widely pub­ gamation of hysterias, cleverly ma­ licized assertion was based on the US war criminals nipulated into anti-Soviet panic. In offhand comment of Harold Denton, A-bombed the wake of the Three Mile Island an official of the US Nuclear Regu­ Hiroshima and near-meltdown in March 1979, we latory Commission - hardly a para­ Nagasaki (right). wrote, "Of course nuclear energy is gon of technical truth. The day after, far from completely safe and is fraught the Americans' "interagency panel" with unsolved problems .. .. But the

on the nuclear emergency was back- ~ ;;:..:.~~ .:"~ (~~~.i(.:~ alternatives under capitalism are just tracking, saying that "the latest Air ti t~.~:~ as, if not more, unsafe" ("No-Nuke ~~·4 Syndrome", WV No 229, 13 April Force reconnaissance photos made it ~ ~{~.,»:~ 'plausible' that the Soviet Union had %$ 1979). A nuclear power i,ndustry put out the ftre, as Moscow con­ spokesman on CBS-TV's Nightwatch tended" (New York Times, 2 May). recently stated that 300 lives are lost Lie No 5: "Thousands Flee Nuke yearly in "conventional" (non-nu­ Nightmare - Help Us, USSR Pleads" clear) power plant operations, not to (Daily News, 30 April). This is mention the many thousands of coal intended to make the Soviet govern­ miners who have died horrible deaths ment look like helpless idiots, sup­ from black lung disease over the years. posedly pleading for allegedly superior And don't forget the Union Carbide American technical aid while a leader­ disaster in Bhopal, India in December less population panics. Wouldn't the 1984: 2,000 people died immediately, Pentagon's ftrst-strike war planners and another 200,000 suffered injuries love that? But it's pure fantasy. The which will remain with many of them Soviets did carry out an organized for the rest of their lives. But nobody evacuation of four settlements near the seriously proposed abandoning the USAAF petrochemical industry. plant, reportedly 49,000 people­ Today Pentagon without upsetting May Day cele­ A New York Times (5 May) news brations in Kiev. This was hardly pan­ targets Soviet Union analysis noted: icky "fleeing". By way of comparison, for nuclear annihilation. , 'People carry in their minds images of when a test of evacuation plans for the mushroom cloud of Hiroshima, communities around Long Island's and leakage of radioactivity. Contrary and so atomic bombs and nuclear Shoreham nuclear plant was scheduled fulfill "unrealistic quotas" (Newsday, power plants become to them inter­ a while ago, it was called off because to scare stories about "death clouds" 2 May). A thoroughly plausible changeable in their potential for 1) local authorities considered evacu­ spreading across Europe, the radiation scenario printed in the same paper death and destruction. ' , ation impossible, and 2) they feared levels outside the Soviet Union were ascribes the accident to a sudden the chaos of a test evacuation could minuscule and quickly dissipated. cutoff of electrical power to the coolant The reformist left has tried to turn lead to deaths. Danish scientists measured radiation system. Naturally, the emergency these fears into an anti-nuclear While White House spokesmen at 0.02 millirems per hour on May 1, backups also failed. Why shouldn't movement, by making a false equation made a big pUblicity point of offering or lIS00th of the amount of one chest they? No time-serving bureaucrat between nuclear energy and nuclear US "help", they never did have any x-ray. In Sweden, the peak was re­ would have checked it out - he weapons. "Shut 'em down!" demand­ suggestions about how to put the ftre corded at 2 millirems. "By com­ ftgures he'll be gone in three years. It ed the rad-lib Guardian (7 May) out - the Russians did that all by parison", the New York Times (2 May) sounds all too true. regarding nuclear power plants, themselves, apparently by dumping noted, "a passenger flying from Los The Washington Post called Soviet echoing panicky bourgeois media wet sand on it. The Soviets did take up Angeles to New York receives a dose society "accident-prone". Certainly stories about "millions" contaminated the offer of help from the International of 2.5 millirems from cosmic rays". workers democracy would clear up a by dangerous radiation from the Bone Marrow Transplant Registry at There was a series of successively lot of snafus .in this degenerated Chernobyl plant. Similarly, the UCLA. The need for bone marrow more detailed Soviet news releases as workers state. But talk about throwing Militant (9 May) chimed in with a call transplants to treat severe radiation information was verifted - and so far stones in glass houses: so far this year to "shut down all nuclear power cases requires precise matches of they have proven to be true, unlike the the US has managed to blow up a plants immediately" . So the eco­ tissue types, and hence a large pool to hysterical Western reports. The New billion-dollar space shuttle with seven freaks have joined the anti-Soviet war draw from. York Times (1 May), attempting to people on board; explode a $500- drive. With their logic, you might as Lie No 6: "Experts: By Design, It draw parallels about "Soviet Se­ million spy satellite atop a Titan well shut down all industry, for good. Can't Happen Here" (Newsday, 30 crecy", noted that the Soviet news rocket; spend $70 million on an under­ The New York Times (1 May) April). After Three Mile Island? US release process "recalled the defens­ ground nuclear test which failed when airily dismissed the Soviet govern­ reactors, they say, use "containment" ive Soviet coverage of the South the blast destroyed the test equip­ ment's complaints about panic­ buildings to prevent release of radio­ Korean [KAL 007] airliner incident, ment; run two nuclear subs aground; mongering coverage in the Western active material (they don't mention when Moscow took six days to concede and this week they blow up a weather press, and recalled Gromyko's that the containment wouldn't help that it had shot down the plane, and satellite atop a Delta rocket at Cape statement when he nominated Mikhail much in a total meltdown) and they then gradually increased the doses of Canaveral. So much for the "magic Gorbachev head of the CPSU a year don't use graphite-moderated reac­ information while it built its case that of the marketplace" . When one ago, that "We live in a world in which, tors. This is not true for military 1 the plane had been on an espionage Congressman tried to taunt Soviet ftguratively speaking, various tele­ research reactors run by the Energy mission". But in the sequel, all embassy spokesman Vitaly Churkin at scopes are aimed at the Soviet Union". Department, which believes contain­ evidence points to the fact that the a House hearing by asking him to They're' 'just waiting for some sort of ment buildings "are not cost KAL jetliner was on a US spy mission explain "in laymen's terms" the crack to appear", he opined. This is effective" (New York Times, 3 May). (see"KAL 007 Was US Spy Plane", Chernobyl accident, Churkin shot not "paranoia" but entirely accurate, The Hanford facility in Washington WVNo 379, 17 May 1985). back: "Can you tell me in those same as the Chernobyl incident graphically state, which uses a graphite moderator If this process seems slow by layman terms why the Challenger demonstrated. The monstrous in­ like the Chernobyl reactor, is Western standards, it's not a Kremlin disaster happened?" (New York efficiencies and loss of life caused by "designed to produce weapon-grade . plot of secrecy but reflects the slow­ Times, 2 May). Behind this hoary old the Stalinist bureaucracy's stifling of plutonium", unlike the Chernobyl ness of the ponderous Stalinist evasion stands a grim reality, the workers democracy are all too real. plant which is a civilian utility. bureaucracy. If the Soviets can be results ofthe market. They only pale in comparison to the Lie No 7: The reports of a Soviet faulted, it's that they did not inform If you want to talk about genuinely deliberate mass murder carried out electricity "Shutdown" (News day , 2 their own people fast enough or with sinister governmental cover-up and by the imperialists. Militarily defend­ May) turned out to be a gross enough detail, leaving them suscep­ silence, what about the incident near ing the Soviet Union against imperial­ exaggeration. Only nuclear plants tible to capitalist panic-mongering. Palomares, Spain in January 1966, ist attack, the Soviet workers must similar to the one at Chernobyl were And the decision-making levels of the where a US B-S2 crashed, losing four take back political power and restore shut down - a wise move under the apparatus may indeed not have known 20-megaton H-bombs. For 44 days the the banner of the Bolshevik October circumstances - amounting to a what happened. The cumbersome US would not even acknowledge that it Revolution. temporary loss of less than 5 percent of bureaucracy has built-in buffers had lost anything, even while Ameri­ The real threat to the world comes total Soviet electric power production. against the impact of reality. Consider can troops scoured the Spanish from those nuclear nuts in Washing­ the illusions implied by the statement countryside with Geiger counters. ton. You can bet that the nuke plan­ Antl-SOvlet Chain Reaction of Vitali Sklyarov, minister of power Eventually the US admitted that two of ners in the Pentagon were carefully and electriftcation of the Ukraine, in an the bombs had broken open, spraying tracking that radioactive cloud this The sequence of events as described interview in the February f986 issue of the region with deadly radioactive week - not out of humanitarian by Soviet spokesmen appears utterly Soviet Life featuring the nuclear power plutonium and enriched uranium. concern, but to calculate the effects plausible. The accident reportedly plant at Chernobyl: "The odds of a The radiation was "hasically harm­ of their planned nuclear tirst strike . happened on the night of Friday 1 meltdown are one in 10,000 years. The less", the US insisted, even as they against the Soviet Union. For them, Saturday, April 25/26; the ftrst public plants have safe and reliable controls secretly scooped up 1,500 tons of the Chernobyl accident was merely an announcement came on Monday, April that are protected from any break­ topsoil and shipped it back to the out-of-town tryout for nuking Russia. 28. Soviet foreign ministry spokesman down .... " US for -burial. But there was no From the MX to the Pershing 2s to Lomeiko told Western reporters: There is no doubt that Soviet safety outcry about the "madmen" in the Trident submarines to Reagan's "An event arose there [at Chemobyl], standards have been undermined by Washington from the US media or the "Star Wars" madness, the US govern­ and its consequences were not known the bureaucratic degeneration of the "European community" of NATO - ment - Republicans and Democrats to us. It was a leak of radiation. But Bolshevik Revolution. Prophetically, a that rhetoric is reserved for the Soviet alike - are driving us headlong when it became known that it was not March 27 article in the Soviet journal Union only. toward a nuclear World War III, and an event with just local repercussions, Literatuma Ukraina, by a woman only a proletarian revolution can we informed you." described as a senior manager at the Chernobyl and the stop them. The Vienna-based International Chernobyl plant, complained of "deti­ Antl-SOvlet War Drive Atomic Energy Agency was informed ciencies" in the building of the plant - Reprinted from Workers Vanguanl of the partial destruction of a reactor due to bureaucratic attempts to What's going on in the US and West no 403, 9 May 1986 July/August 1988 7 :a l ...'r hordes". White fascistic . refugees Nazis ... ~I from the East European social revolu­ Continued from page three ~ \ tions were welcome: reds and Asians were not. Today Australia is a fav­ ~4~'f oured destination for Polish anti­ Artukovic's son is now in Australia communists and South African white campaigning amongst the likes of the racists. It was official policy that 2000 pro-Ustasha Croatians who "under no circumstances are refugee demonstrated in defence of Artukovic Spaniards from the Franco regime to outside Parliament House in Canberra be included in the immigration pro­ in March. Artukovic's son is also gram" (quoted in J Playford, "The campaigning against any investigation Truth Behind Captive Nations Week", into Nazis in Australia. In May hun­ .... April 1968). Arthur Calwell, immi­ dreds of Croatian ultra-rightists pro­ gration minister of the Chifley Labor tested ouside ABC offices in four cities . government and later leader of the against the Aarons/Loftus program. - ALP, coined the despicable racist These sinister proto-fascist mobilis­ slogan of the day "Two Wongs don't ations, coming exactly a year after the .'" .# '~ make a white". Laborite white racism terror campaign launched by emigre Tlto (third from left) with Partisan leaders. All-Yugoslav resistance tri­ was the key to the door for such as Vietnamese fascists with Hawke's umphed over Ustasha and their Nazi overlords through social revolution. Urbancic and Rover - a fact that blessing, pose a potentially deadly "Nazis in Australia" producers threat to the working class. What is Baresic, imprisoned in Sweden for 1945 anti-capitalist revolution led by Aarons and Loftus cannot admit. needed is some solid mass proletarian murdering the Yugoslav ambassador Tito's Partisans brought for workers Eli Rosenbaum (an Office of Special. action which will drive these scum Rolovic in 1971. and peasants of all nationalities. The Investigations staffer) described the back into their ratholes. Since then the SWP's collaboration communists' fight for national equality response of dozens of nations to OSI The Australian ruling class keeps with the Ustasha lovers has deepened. made it possible for a predominantly requests for help in tracing war crimi­ the emigre fascistic groupings in The HDP's Hrvatski Tjednik carried Serbian party to mobilise partisans nals or witnesses: "Every nation on reserve for use against the labour SWP election material in its 4 Feb­ from all nationalities, including the planet, on both sides of the Iron movement. Last year on the 10th anni­ ruary '86 edition alongside articles Croatians, and for the first time lay the Curtain helped us enthusiastically, ex­ versary of the heroic Vietnamese defending Artukovic and other basis for a united South Slavic state. cept for Australia" (Sydney Morning victory over US and Australian imperi­ Ustasha war criminals. Hrvatski In conjunction with the defeat of the Herald 13 May). A recent issue of the alism, Hawke unleashed fascist Viet­ Vjesnik, produced by the Croatian Nazis in Eastern Europe by the Red Australian Jewish Times (26 June) namese elements against left and Students Association. of Victoria Army, the partisans swept away the reported that the Australian war-time labour meetings celebrating the Viet­ printed a DA article, "Yugoslavia: Nazi occupiers and their puppets like government discriminated against namese revolution. This counter­ Heads for an explosion?" alongside Pavelic in a historic victory which Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi revolutionary refuse mounted deadly material defending the "Butcher of created the Socialist Federal Republic holocaust because in the words of then attacks on a number of meetings often the Balkans" on 18 March; in May it of Yugoslavia. If today national interior minister John McEwen for with cop connivance, causing serious carried an article lauding the fascistic tensions are again on the rise, it is "fear that they would swamp British injury. We of the Spartacist League mobilisations against the ABC over the because Yugoslavia is a bureaucrat­ migration" . stood alone in fighting for a solid "Nazis in Aus~alia" program. In ically deformed workers state. This reactionary white imperialist The "Nazis in Australia" exposures working class defence of our own and return the SWP continues to defend country is both a haven and breeding all celebration meetings - the fascist the HDP as simply a "diverse group" highlight the SWP's degeneracy and ground for racism, anti communism vermin needed (and still do) a lesson of "Croatian nationalists" and has naturally rival reformists like Denis and national chauvinism. Today the Freney of the plO-Hawke, anti-Soviet in the power of the working class. The maintained complete and totally SWP's promotion of the Ustasha Communist Party of Australia (CPA) union bureaucracy and fake left damning silence on the Artukovic trial represents a direct threat to the (prominently Meredith Burgmann) and the demonstrations against the have used them for maximum political working class and the left. Victorious universally opposed our class struggle ABC and on the program itself. mileage. For the CPA, such Nazi war international workers revolution will campaign and viciously slandered us The SWP's earlier efforts to gain criminals are an unfortunate sweep the fascist murderers from the as "racist" for fighting back against respectability for the HDP foundered blemish on Australian "democ­ face of the earth and prevent a future these fascists, the same twisted logic as Labor Party doors across the politi­ racy", an aberration. In fact they're holocaust which is even now being of the SWP - in whose eyes opposing cal spectrum began slamming in their here precisely because Australia is a prepared using the services of the white racist imperialist outpost. World Ustasha genocide equals anti-Croatian face. So lo-and-behold in late 1984 a technicians and executioners of the War II was not the "peoples war" of "racism" I new organisation appeared: the last one .• Croatian Socialist Party (SPH, Social­ "democracy" versus "fascism" of SWP Fronts for the Ustasha isticka Partija Hrvatski) with "former" CPA myth, but an inter-imperialist HDP leader and SWP member Yure slaughter which the Trotskyist Fourth The Spartacist League was the first Lasic as its spokesman. Lasic's latest International fought to tum into a civil on the left to extensively document the outfit has nowhere distanced itself war for the overthrow of the bourgeois South Africa ... SWP's obscene and in every sense from the HDP or the Ustasha "trad­ rulers in both camps, while defending Continued from page two sinister collaboration with and defence ition" on the central question of the the USSR against Hitler. And for white of the Croatian Movement for State­ defence of the genocidal Nazi puppet Australian imperialism the Pacific war the complaint that the draconian hood (HDP - Hrvatski Drzavotvorni regime of Ante Pavelic. Lasic and the was above all a racialist war against measures would "not likely help Pokret) and the Ustasha background of SPH is just the Ustasha connection at the Asian "yellow hordes" in defence restore law and order" , ie, they this organisation (see "SWP White­ one remove, a snow job designed to of its share in the "democratic" might backfire. And in an 9p Ed washes Sinister Croatian Nationalists" help the SWP leadership peddle imperialists' colonial exploitation of piece in the New York Times (16 June) and "SWP Defends Ustasha" in Aus­ reactionary Croatian nationalism (with the Asian region (Papua New Guinea) he spelled out the anti-Soviet "logic" tralasian ·Spartacist nos 101 and 103). its organic Ustasha connection) in the against Japanese imperialism. The of his call for sanctions, noting that The SWP defence of the Ustasha is the labour movement. CPA's full support of its "own" ruling the US used sanctions against Poland, logical conclusion of their long and Ominously, this time the SWP and class, like outright strikebreaking, Nicaragua and Libya and stiII main­ positive orientation toward all oppo­ their sinister Croatian friends have backing the racist internment of tains a blockade of Cuba. But the sitional groupings, even the most had some success within the labour "enemy aliens" , and hailing the ultimate absurdity and imperialist openly pro-imperialist and anti­ movement. The earlier attempts to A-bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki hypocrisy behind the call on racist communist in the Eastern bloc win support for the freeing of the was a massive crime against the mass murderers like the United deformed workers states. In 1981 the murderer Miro Baresic from his international working class. Its pivotal States rulers to impose sanctions on SWP did not hesitate to join a demon­ Swedish jail flopped (though Lasic is role in Australian imperialism's vic­ their South African junior partners was stration of reactionary and fascistic still pushing his defence). The SWP's tory helped consolidate chauvinist Captive Nations elements in support of latest service for the Croatian ultra­ national unity and thus prepare the counterrevolutionary Polish Solidar­ rightists has been to initiate a cam­ Cold Warwitchhunt, the Vietnam war, nosc. They soon discovered the paign to free six members of the and making the country safe for Croatian "liberation" movement and rightist Croatian Republican Party ANZUS, the spy bases and ... Nazi became the defenders of grotesque jailed in Sydney for aIlegedly war criminals. Then a Stalinist party, fascist Ustasha mass murderers attempting to blow up the Sydney the CPA has now broken from Moscow arguing that the Ustasha was not a water supply and for attempted and now defends Hawke and his Cold fascist movement and that the scale of murder. A meeting to defend those War Accord. But if you love Hawke, Ustasha crimes was "massively committed last October featured as you get Urbancic, Rover and the rest exaggerated". Croatian Nazi puppet guest speakers George Crawford, Vic­ as part ofthe deal. and mass murderer Ante Pavelic torian Socialist Left ALP parliamentar­ Welcoming fascist war criminals became for the SWP a national­ ian, and Bobby Dalton, a Victorian was more than just an early Cold War liberation figure whose only crime was organiser of the BLF. More recently, favor for the big brother in Washing­ that he "subordinated" the Croatian Lasic has been carefuIly cultivating an ton, for those who fled westward with cause to the "interests of German and image of himself as a BLF militant, the retreating Wehrmacht in 1944-5 Italian imperialism". In other words, taking a leaf from exposed fascist possessed not only the virtue of being Pavelic and his butchers like the Black criminal Srecko Rover who tried to fanatic anti-communists: they were .~.•.... :; Legion, whose atrocities even the pass himself off as a leftist and join the also white. The slogan of the post-war .! chifley ALP government's immigration i Germans had to curb, should have ALP and CPA over a decade ago. .d done it all on their own. The SWP even It didn't work for Rover, but this time scheme - including the Displaced denounced the Yugoslav deformed the SWP is supplying credentials for Persons Program through which the workers state for "terrorism" in these dangerous Nazi-lovers. fascists initially gained entry - was defending itself against the fascist The SWP stands for bloody counter­ "populate or perish". It meant pop­ Doing Botha's work: black swine. Direct Action also praised revolution in Yugoslavia, for destruc­ ulate Australia with white immigrants vigilantes torch shanties In present day terrorists such as Miro tion ofthe historic gains that the heroic or perish at the hands of the "Asian Crossroads settlement. 8 Australasian Spartaclst exposed by the rePort that Israel, a its knees". But the ANC calls for - which was sealed off to whites. The The question of power is posed point. major military supplier of the Pretoria "armed struggle" and "people's flowers were seized by the apartheid blank - and beginning the work of regime, was considering a trade banI war" as part of its thoroughly reform­ authorities; apparently they too were constructing a Leninist-Trotskyist Similarly, the Commonwealth Emi­ ist strategy of pressuring apartheid "subversive" . Later, some were party for the conquest of power, the nent Persons Group supports sanc­ into a "power-sharing" scheme. Are dropped into the township by plane. urgent internationalist duty of all tions and pressure on Pretoria to unarmed black masses to go up Attached to one bouquet was a revolutionists, is long overdue. negotiate with the ANC in order to against the massively armed racist message that read: - Reprinted from Worken VIIIIIUAId forestall the coming to power of a, ruling class and die by the thousands "Many white South Africans feel a DO 406, 20 JUDe 1986 "radical black government 'totally just so that Oliver Tambo can be South profound sense of sadness and shame antipathetic' to Western interests" Africa's counterp~to Robert Mugabe at what happened in Soweto in 1976, (New York Times, 13 June). Botha's of Zimbabwe, so Nelson Mandela's and what continues to happen in 1986, reply to "the Commonwealth" was picture will be printed on Rand notes and would like to express this in some Sri Lanka ... way. Normal avenues of communi­ the bombing raid on three while Anglo American, Wall Street Continued from page five and the City of London continue to cation have been closed and so we black African member states while the search for a gesture to show black EPG was in South Africa. American control the wealth of South Africa? er, the Indian army will be forced to South Africans that we care, and that intervene in Lanka, the Sinhalese will leftists, meanwhile, are calling on the To liberate the oppressed masses from we too would like to see the creation US to "Boycott South Africa, Not apartheid slavery those who labor "get theirs" and the Tamils won't like of a just and open society in this it very much either. Nicaragua" . But KKK-endorsed must rule. This can be accomplished country." Reagan, who alibied the March 1985 only through, the construction of a - New York Times, 17 June As against the despairing perspec­ Uitenhage massacre and told the world Leninist proletarian vanguard forged Such gestures are all too rare in this tive of nationalists, for whom guerrilla that racial segregation had been in struggle against petty-bourgeois racist police state. But a Bolshevik counter-terrorism and eventual Indian abolished in South Africa, is in a nationalism and its pressure schemes. party can seize upon such openings invasion represent the only logical strategic alliqnce with apartheid (even Pretoria, spurred on by the Af­ while struggling tirelessly to overcome program, we fight for the perspective if an occasionally strained one) rikaner ultraright, is gearing up to ethnic and tribalist divisions among of revolutionary class struggle across whereas it is committed to over­ drown the black revolt in blood. But the exploited and oppressed, es­ national lines. The bloody horror of throwing Nicaragua's Sandinista there are notable cracks within the pecially among the strategic "mi­ communal slaughter, in India no less regime. white population, as demonstrated by grant" workers who come from' the than in Lanka, will be ended only by thousands of white youth who are bantustans and neighboring black international class struggle, uniting Smash Apartheid! refusing conscription and the hun­ states. The vision of a "just and open the toiling masses across all ethnic, Workers to Power! dreds who defy police sjamboks and society" for all the oppressed - in national and religious divisions bullets to demonstrate alongside which anti-racist whites must have a under the leadership of a world party Backing the Soweto Day general blacks. One of the stories to filter out place as well - can only be realized of socialist revolution, a reborn Fourth strike in a May 21 radio broadcast from of South Africa is that ip the e~ly in a black-centered workers govern­ International. For a federated workers his headquarters in Zambia, ANC morning hours of June 16, some 30 ment that turns the tremendous republic of Eelam and Lanka, part of a president Tambo called for a total carloads of flowers collected the day mineral and industrial resources of socialist federation of South Asial shutdown as part of a "death-defying" before in liberal white churches were South·· Africa into a powerhouse for Reprinted from Worken Vanguard campaign to "bring the ruling class to deposited on the outskirts of Soweto the liberation of the entire continent. no 405, 6 JUDe 1986

trial muscle to improve the wages and Hawke... conditions of the BLF membership through his site-by-site "guerrilla" Continued from page twelve > strategy. Though this. strategy was strike as the way to respond to Hawkel simply a pressure device geared Cain/Wran and their cops and completely within the Arbitration framework and though Gallagher .l~ scab herders . Caruso and Neal got a 'good hearing never actually threatened to burst at this meeting, but BLF general the boundaries of the Accord, it was secretary Norm Gallagher personally still too much for Hawke and the took the floor against them. Gallagher conservative ACTU/TLC bureaucrats. decried their resolution as a "joke" For his part Gallagher, long-time leading light of the Peking-loyal motion and in effect baited them as tools of the bosses, claiming that an CPA(M-L), foreshadowed his capitu­ industry-wide strike was just what the lation to this government onslaught at bosses wanted. Gallagher boasted that the 1983 ACTU Congress. Here he "this union has never had a general found common ground with the strike and as long as I am around it Reagan/Hawke-loyal right wing by never will have". The BLF leadership endorsing the Accord and joining the '9 m dismissed the example of the British Cold Warriors' anti-Soviet furore on "Anti-Accord" reformist, Jim Percy (SWP), George Petersen (ALP), miners strike saying "look what behalf of Reagan's KAL-007 Big Lie author Frank Hardy: "But The Dead Are Many". happened to them". True, after over a campaign. This won him a (very briefly year of hard class battle the heroic occupied) seat on the ACTU executive. strategy won his members some gains solidarity we think the union move­ miners strike was defeated basically But the Maoist Gallagher still qualifies when things were fat, but this is Cold ment in this country should undertake because of the treachery of the rest of as a "red" for Hawke and his CIA War n and only an all-out class­ a militant defense of Gallagher, de­ mentors. the union bureaucracy and Scargill' s struggle counteroffensive could have manding . that all the charges be refusal to break from Labourism. But The BLF in Hawke's eyes has also smashed Hawke's attack, forged a dropped and the witchhunt stopped. the miners strike polarised British been a union he'd love to crush not militant industrial union throughout And we don't care if he then retires to society along class lines and they went least because of its composition. It the building industry, cut through the enjoy the beach house. But the fate of back with heads held high and as an is a labourers' union made up of craftist, racial and ethnic divisions Norm Gallagher demonstrates that if army capable of fighting another day. unskilled workers who at least at some and shown the way forward to busting you play by the bosses' rules you lose. In contrast, the BLF has been liqui­ gut level understand that they have Hawke's Accord. In the end Gallagher What is desperately necessary in the dated virtually without resistance, the nothing to sell but their labour power. was a militant business unionist who workers movement here is to forge a worst, most demoralising kind of Amongst these "troublesome" fought that strategy when raised by class-struggle leadership, a Trotskyist defeat for the proletariat. elements are a fair percentage of Tony Caruso and Martin Neal in his party which defends the workers migrants and racial minorities, union. unions and the workers states and has Hawke (and Fraser before him) has including Pacific Islanders and Abor­ Gallagher's had his union blown out the program and resolve to carry the been trying to get the BLF and Norm iginals - the first targets of Cold War from under him, he's an aging diabetic struggle through to the end - the Gallagher for years and has finally austerity. Hawke was surely counting and now the government's re-trying overthrow of capitalism and the estab­ succeeded. Gallagher had a reputation on and feeding the rampant craftism him on 22 "corruption" counts over lishment of a workers government and fC?r militancy, for occasionally flexing and white racism in the labour move­ his Victorian beach house. As an ele­ a planned economy based on collec­ some of the BLF's substantial indus- ment here. Gallagher's "guerrilla". ementary principle of working class .tivised property forms. , ~ Sharkey, Cambourn, McDonald - Remember the Traitors! ~g. Hawke could not have destroyed ;11(: BLF without the active collaboration ot the so-called "left" leaderships of the ~ it LWmff@£&~ BWIU and FEDFA like Tom McDonald and Stan Sharkey of the BWlU and Jack Cambourn of the FEDFA in Cold War alliance with the CIA lovers running the FlA. McDonald and Sharkey, associated with Pat Clancy' s pro-Moscow Association for Commu­ ~ nist Unity (ACU) , and Cam bourn of the Communist Party of Australia ~ (CPA), the initial architects of the g. Accord, had worked out in advance Under Hawkel ACTU I Arbitration hammer, BlF tops with Hawke's Industrial Relations Black (left) and Gallagher (above) caved In wlthQut a Minister Willis the carve up of the I fight. Continued on page ten JulyI August 1888 8 left in the 1955 split) are trying to forge "The intensification of class contra­ political revolution restores the USSR Hawke... the ALP into a reliable instrument of dictions within each country. the to the road of Lenin and Trotsky, Cold War and austerity. Hawke intensification of antagonisms be­ these treacherous "friends of the ContIDaed from page .....e promised in advance to make the tween one country and another. Soviet Union" won't be seen within a workers pay for the deregulation of the produce a situation in which imperi­ million miles of it, and still less would BLF membership and went into action alist capitalism can tolerate (ie up to a like a well-oiled machine. Sharkey, economy and the scaling down of its certain time) a reformist bureaucracy they be welcome. The CPA and its McDonald and Cambourn and their massive protectionist barriers for the only if the latter serves directly as a friends responded to our campaign supporters will be remembered by all better political and economic "en­ petty but active stockholder of its by circulating slanders that we were working class militants for what they meshing" of Australian imperialism imperialist enterprises, of its plans "racist", in order to prevent what are - scabherding quislings. in Asia. The "lefts" on the other hand, and programs within the country as was, and still is necessary: powerful In 1983 the entire reformist left from Victorian Socialist Left types like well as on the world arena. Social union-based defence guards to drive hailed J:lawke's election as a "victory" George Crawford and Joan Coxsedge reformism must become transformed these fascistic enemies of the for the working class. But since then to the pro-Accord John Halfpenny and into social imperialism in order to Vietnamese Revolution off the streets Hawke has caused those same "lefts" George Campbell of the AMWU, are prolong its existence, but only prolong for good. That in the end the maritime considerable anxiety. Hawke promised little-Australia nationalists who favour it, and nothing more. Because along union bureaucrats were forced to the massively protected, regulated this road there is no way out mobilise a show of union power in slavish subordination to Reagan, in general. " ANZUS and the "free world" drive for economy of days gone by and who -"Trade Unions in the Epoch of the 17 May Sydney "Vietnam Soli­ World War m against the Soviet want to walk the halls of power but not Imperialist Decay" darity" meeting was due solely to the Union. He guaranteed the future of the under the strict tutelage of George anger and class solidarity with the strategic US communication bases at Shultz and the CIA. Hawke's onslaught against the BLF Vietnamese Revolution catalysed Pine Gap, Nurrungar and Northwest But a period like this of Cold War was a test of the usefulness of the largely by the Spartacist campaign. Cape. He has brought the CIA-loving and capitalist economic crisis leaves trade union and ALP "lefts" to A graphic example of the role these NCC unions back into the Labor Party the "lefts" no room for manoeuvre. As Hawke's imperialist "strong state" "left" union bureaucrats· have come to who, together with Paul Keating's Leon Trotsky said almost half a and its objectives. Some, like George NSW right-wing base (which never century ago: Crawford and NSW State MP play was captured neatly by the April George Petersen, voiced objections to Pacific Defence Reporter. This semi­ the deregistration bills in ALP caucus, official mouthpiece of the Defence but as usual bowed to its discipline in Department frankly and fulsomely the parliamentary votes. Only Senator praised an "avowed communist", t Georges, in a final gesture before his Newcastle Trades Hall Council sec­ ~ retary and CPA member Peter Barrack -< impending retirement, risked ex­ pulsion by voting against. Bill Hartley, for his active role in the Newcastle though a little-Australia nationalist. State Dockyard's bid for a share of the Navy's 52600 million new submarine if and a pro-capitalist reformist like Crawford, to his credit denounced contract: Hawke and Cain's deregistration­ "He is a key figure both in New­ and was summarily chucked out of the castle's defence contract drive and in ALP. But for Hawke to achieve his the attack on Newcastle's former aims in the building industry the strike-prone reputation. He is a director of the Hunter Development "lefts" who run the BWIU and Board, a NSW Government-backed FEDFA had to participate actively in body. . .. He had a big role in ham­ l the destruction of the BLF and so they mering out an industrial agreement did, acting in close unison with CIA­ that has transformed industrial loving NCC types like Harry Hurrell relations at Newcastle State Dockyard Fairfax Metal Unions of the FIA and Ernie Ecob of the and has virtually ended demarcation AWU. disputes that brought the undertaking to its knees in 1982." The BLF, the RUlllan Question Defend BLF and the Left The union lefts' collaboration in the FIA militants Bret Stebbing from John Fairfax & Sons (at microphone) capitalist state's destruction of the and Neil Florrimell from Cockatoo Island dockyard (left) addressed the 28 Trotskyists stand for unconditional BLF is an indictment of the whole his­ May mass meeting of over 5000 members of mainly metal trades unions at military defence of the USSR and tory of state-dominated trade unionism Redfern Oval in Sydney. They spoke in support of the Fairfax metal unions' in this region Vietnam, starting with in this country. The examples of class struggle motion in defence of the BLF. The motion, summarily class struggle against the anti­ Peter Barrack, Sharkey, McDonald squashed by Hawke's labour lieutenants, was distributed to the meeting in Soviet US bases and the ANZUS and Cambourn throw into relief the leaflet form by Fairfax workers and their supporters as follows: military alliance. The Russian question utter bankruptcy of reliance on the draws a sharp class line through conciliation and arbitration system - Having voted to join today's strike the 27 May meeting of Fairfax metal politics internationally and those who which works in a thousand ways to trades unions, attended by around 60 members, voted overwhelmingly to cannot defend the gains of the October integrate the unions into the bourgeois "attend the mass meeting and fight for the following motion": 1917 Russian Revolution or the gains state apparatus. won by the heroic decades-long Whereas, the attempt to crush the BLF being carried out by the Hawke/Cain struggle of the Vietnamese .workers For a Revolutionary /Wran Labor governments, backed by the courts and armed police and with and peasants against first French Workers Party the active collaboration of the scab leaderships of the BWIU, FEDFA, FIA, and then US and Australian imperi­ and AWU, is an attack on the fundamental right of workers to organise and alism cannot defend the unions at Hawke's smashing of the BLF hit fight for our interests against the employers and their government; and horne. If the liquidation of the BLF was the reformists hard, and they've polar­ Whereas, tens of thousands of BLF members have been confronted with the a sharp test of the Accord on the ised along the lines of the haves (the ultimatum of either signing a government/employer scab contract which trade union front, the events of last "Broad Left") and have-nots (the repudiates their BLF membership and sets up a government theft of BLF year in connection with the 10th "anti-Accord left"), those in trade union funds or be sacked and blacklisted in the building industry; and anniversary of the Vietnamese Revol­ union office like the CPA/ ACU and Whereas, the leaderships of the ACTU and TLCs have stabbed the BLF and ution were a dress rehearsal. those on the outs like the anti­ all unions in the back by refusing to defend the BLF and joining the govern­ The April-May 1985 rampage by Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party ment hysteria about alleged BLF "violence" while condoning the very real Vietnamese fascists against cele­ (SWP). The other components of the police violence - including the use of MACE gas - against BLF militants. brations of the anniversary of the SWP-dominated lash-up are: the Therefore, be It resoivecJa This mass meeting condemns the union-busting revolution was an acid test for the rabidly Stalinophobic little ALP faction attacks on the BLF by the Labor governments which are acting as open reformist left. Unleashed by Hawke to of Bob Gould (erstwhile Healyite) enemies of the union movement and the leaderships of the BWIU, FEDFA, cure his left-wing of any uppity and George Petersen in NSW; the far FIA, and AWU as their quislings, and we condemn their attack on the BLF post-MX ideas on the Cold War and more significant "Hard Left" wing of as an attack on all workers. We declare our full solidarity with show he was no softy on Vietnam, the the Victorian ALP Socialist Left; the the BLF in this fight and urge the BLF to initiate strike action throughout fascist rampage posed defence of the Maoist BLF leadership and Com­ the building industry backed by mass pickets to shut the industry down tight Vietnamese Revolution and the munist Party (Marxist-Leninist); and and drive back this attack, achieve full union rights for the BLF and re­ Australian labour movement point an "anti-Accord" wing of the CPA instate all sacked BLF members with full back pay. We further call on the blank in the streets. The Spartacist around writer Frank Hardy which memberships of all building trades unions to join and support this strike League threw all our forces into aims to "save" the CPA. Also orbiting and picket effort in defiance and repudiation of their scabherding leader­ mobilising the power of the working at a distance are the SPA and the ships. class to rout these fascistic losers, identical-twin Russia-hating groups, Be It further resolvecJ: That this mass meeting pledges that we will support tapping an enthusiastic response International Socialists (IS) and its and build such mass pickets with official union contingents and support such especially from angry waterfront split-off, Socialist Action (SA). strike action in every possible way. workers. The C1ancyite ACU through What defines this bloc is its lowest ADd be It fIaaIIy resoivecJa That this mass meeting declares that Hawke's their offshoot MUSAA in the Sydney common denominator: anti-Sovietism Accord is the bosses' tool to chain the unions and that we reject it and all waterfront unions pulled out, all (the IS/SA consider the USSR "im­ reliance on the bosses' courts and arbitration system and assert the need to stops to prevent the ranks being perialist" and "state capitalist"); anti­ rely on our own organised strength to defend our organisations in this water­ mobilised in union-based workers American "little-Australia" national­ shed battle of the workers unions against the bosses and their government. defence guards. They may have half ism; and reformist hostility to the AD attack on one Is an attack against all. of the Moscow franchise, but the ACU, class struggle; reliance on the im­ which includes the now infamous perialist state, and more deeply, This motion must be discussed and voted at today's meeting. All union 'Sharkey and McDonald, want above , identification with the ruling class of brothers and sisters should support this motion. all their workaday unity with the ALP this "democratic" white bastion of reaction in the region. If the "Broad MovecJa Bret Stebbing and that means with its CIA-loving (FIA Member, John Fairfax & Sons) right wing. Pro-Soviet in words, in Left" types of the ACU/CPA have 28/5/86 action the C1ancyites do the worst shown themselves good only for . Cold War dirty work. When workers facilitating the torpedoing of Aus- 10 Australasian Spartaclst tralian unions and Russian shipping, > for a Labor government with' 'socialist the "anti-Accord left" isn't any more ~ policies". attractive. They have "defended" Hawke has publicly noted that the the BLF by campaigning to tum the I "good old days are gone" and whole thing into a "civil liberties" asserted that he will risk electoral pressure tactic directed at... the defeat to ram his program of austerity imperialists. In a May Day statement and anti-Sovietism down the throats entitled "It's Time to Draw the Line" of the working class. Both the "Broad they appealed against Hawke's anti­ Lefts" and the "anti-Accord lefts", despite the rhetoric, have demon­ BLF attack in the name of "human BLF militants rights" to the International Labour strated that they will strive with might Tony Caru80 and main to see Labor stays in govern­ Organisation - an arm of the United and Martin Nations - and the International ment - the "Broad Lefts" from the Neal fought for "heights" of their Accord offices Confederation of Free Trade Unions Industry-wide - an anti -communist union centre run and sinecures, and the "anti-Accord" strike and crowd from the depths of their. parlia­ by the CIA! They defended Gal­ mass pickets lagher's order to sign Hawke's scab mentary cretinist despair and con­ to defend the fusion. Hawke has nailed the BLF but contracts, and backed his pathetic union. court strategy. And when Tony Caruso the heavy battalions of the prole­ and Martin Neal fought in the BLF tariat in this country on the wharves, for class-struggle action to smash in Sydney they called for •• Aus­ covering for example that it is capi­ in the mines, in transport can bring Hawke's attacks, an SWP supporter tralian government action to support talist. But their program is still down this anti-worker/anti-Soviet present voted against. self-determination for the peoples of nakedly Laborite. Their "Socialist Labor government through a hard East Timor and West Papua and the Policy Statement" is crowned with the class-struggle counteroffensive. What -The "anti-Accord lefts" are regular Philippines", assigning the racist call to ,. campaign for the Labor is missing is a class-struggle leader­ little social patriots.' Thus their ruling class of this privileged white movement's - traditional socialist ship to oust the treacherous union April "Left Consultation" conference imperialist enclave the role of "lib­ objective - nationalisation of private bureaucracy, to split the Labor Party's attacked ANZUS and the bases as a erators" of the oppressed of Asia and industry under workers control". proletarian base from its pro-capitalist "threat" to "Australia's security and the Pacific. This is nothing more than a call for tops. A Trotskyist party must be independence", a direct appeal to "lemon socialism", to nationalise the forged to fight for a workers nationalist anti-Sovietism. And in their The "anti-Accord" left groups have losers in the capitalist rat-race and republic of Australia in socialist Asia. "Socialist Policy Statement" issued to taken a harder line rhetorically toward make the workers pay, as well as a That is the only alternative to the last Easter's Broad Left conference the Hawke/Keating government, dis- warmed-over version of the old call madness of Reagan/Hawke Cold War. Socialist Labour League Scabs on BLF

In the last issue of Australasian An article in Workers News (13 resolution but hardly even mentioned Lenin's Bolsheviks, conscripts like the Spartacist we exposed the Healyites May) by former builders labourer Rod­ theBLF! mass of Russian workers and without Healy of the Socialist Labour ney Robinson claimed: "Only the SLL Further evidence that the SLL's peasants, were in the trenches organ­ League (SLL) for their anti-working has fought consistently for the mobil­ "national strike" line was empty ising communist cells to destroy the class crime of printing the fascistic isation of the BLs through strike posturing aimed at pressuring the Tsarist army, to tum the imperialist Vietnamese-language paper Bell of action, as the way of gaining support Gallagher leadership and the ALP / war into a civil war to smash the Saigon in their party printshop. Well, from the entire working class". As ACTU scabherders is the fact that bourgeois state. The SLL's scabbing these unregenerate political bandits usual with the SLL the reality behind SLL supporters signed Hawke/Cain/ and counselling capitulation on the have been at it again - this time the bombast is pretty sordid. The SLL Wian's scab contracts. After weeks of issue of signing the government/ scabbing on BLF picket lines! did call for "national strike" action by denouncing' Gallagher for telling his employer scab contract aids the Since mid-May SLL-supporter Bruce the BLF - and linked it to a call on membership to "sign over", the 31 bourgeois state in smashing a workers Cameron, a Plumbers Union member, the ACTU/nC scabherders who were May Workers News describes its union. We doubt it but the difference has been crossing the BLF picket line may be clear even to you. at the Footscray pool site in Mel­ In short, all the hype in the recent bourne, while outside sacked BLF SLL forum tour celebrating 1000 issues militants, including Spartacist sup­ of the Workers News and calling to porter Martin Neal, have battled "Defend the BLF" amounts only to a vicious cop onslaughts. The photo cover for SLL lies, opportunism, and above of Cameron crossing the line scabbing. And what of the recent split under police protection tens the story. off from Nick Beams' travelling scab Picket lines - the battle lines of the show? The hapless Communist class struggle - mean don't cross! League. (CL) emerged from their The SLL's scabbing explodes its confusion to march at May Day in pretence to "defend" the BLF. When Melbourne and Sydney. We pointed it comes to deeds they've ended up out in Australasian Spartacist no 115 again on the side of the bosses. the in the article "The Communist League cops, union-busting Labor govern­ and the Russian Question" that unless ments and scab herding bureaucrats they broke decisively from their against the working class, this time Stalinophobia and workerism, in the against the BLF in the biggest assault direction of revolutionary Trotskyism on the working class here in decades. SLL supporter Bruce Cameron (centre) croulng picket line at cop­ that the CL would quickly go the way When confronted by Spartacists SLL protected Footscray pool site. of the rest of the reformist left, members have brazened out their including the SLL, into the dead end of scabbing. And with colossal cynicism Laborite tailing of the trade union and a contempt for their readers smashing the BLs to break with the supporter Alan Hardy as "a BLF bureaucracy. Sure enough their worthy of Rupert Murdoch, the SLL's Labor government (Workers News, member forced to join the BWIU". Melbourne branch's May Day state­ twice-weekly rag Workers News 10 May). In the same article the SLL Elementary trade union principle ment praises the BLF tops for "cor­ (1 July) ran a photo of Cameron equated the - pre-Accord state-run, demanded a refusal to sign this out­ rectly adopting tactics appropriate to standing on the Footscray picket line Arbitration-controlled unionism which rageous document and any serious illegality: striving to stay on the sites, in May, during a brief walkout by the has crippled the union movement in strike strategy had to be linked to a with the members '" where neces­ tradesmen in protest at cop arrests of this country for almost a century with mass refusal to sign over. When sary signing pieces of paper in order pickets, over a letter by him moaning "independenceN of the trade unions. Gallagher told his members to sign , to keep the organisation together" about "safety" on the site on the other They steadfastly ducked the necessary over to "stay on the sites" it was a (their emphasis). The result of that bit side of the line! Wen, what should call for mass pickets and a strike com­ sure indication that he'd thrown in the of Laborite "wisdom", comrades of have happened was that, instead of a mittee to run the strike. But then why towel. The SLL's capitulation on this the Communist League, is that the dozen or so militants outnumbered by not? For the SLL picket lines are and their justification of this cowardice BLF is off the building sites, has few cops, there should have been hun­ something you cross and the labour to other workers aids and abets the members to speak of, and no organ­ dreds of BLs backed up by building lieutenants of capitalism in the ACTU Hawke government's liquidation of isation. The union has been destroyed tradesmen and workers pulled out are the future leaders of a •'workers the BLF and its attempt to establish without a fight and you are in the from nearby factories to shut the site government". Moreover, at the 28 one big company union in the building company of the likes of Beams and down. Then things would have gotten May Redfern Oval mass meeting industry. What was necessary was not Hardy in covering for the BLF tops' really "unsafe" for scabs like Cam­ where metal union militants did fight to "stay on the sites" but to shut them capitulation. eron! Despite the craft-unionist for class struggle solidarity action to down! Hardy justified signing over by Only the Spartacist League, the "tradition"in this country of unions defend the BLF (see opposite page) equating their cowardly tailing of genuine Trotskyists in Australia. scabbing on each others' strikes, there SLL supporter Alan Hardy spoke to Gallagher's bureaucratic capitulation fought for class struggle defence of the are still plenty of union militants who calIon the Accord's ACTU policemen with the Bolsheviks work in the Tsarist BLF. We warn all militant workers and know that, as one picket told Martin to fight the Labor government for a army in World War I. Wen, Messrs youth against the Socialist Labour Neal, "Anyone who crosses a picket wage rise and not only refused to Beams, Hardy & Co, there is a big League - they are corrupt political line is a scab." . support the Fairfax metal workers' difference - it's called the class line. bandits and scabs. • July I August 1988 11 , Australasian - ... SPARTACIST ALP/ACTU Scabherders Smash BlF For Hard Class Struggle to The BulletiD Bring Down Hawke I

Workers Need a Trotskyist Party

The world imperialist economic to its imperialist masters and its Big crisis is hitting Australia hard. The Brother in Washington that it is more dollar keeps bouncing around below than willing and able to regiment the the USS.65 level. The foreign debt has unions of this country for anti-Soviet Unlon-bult.r Hawk.: exploded to $75 billion thus doubling war and austerity. The "accord" Thatch.r In Drag. in the last eighteen months. Australian between the ALP and ACTU has capitalism, which has always had a always been a no-strike pledge writ strongly "rentier" character, built up large and in this crisis climate it had to so "under duress", and fight it in the PIA militant Bret Stebbing and then an inherently uncompetitive manu­ be tested dramatically. Thus starting courts I distributed it and fought for it at the facturing sector behind" huge tariff in April, while fulsomely praising Redfern Oval mass meeting is a walls to keep out "cheap" Asian goods Reagan's terror bombing of Libyan Class-Struggle Leadership ringing confirmation both that and paid its way through the export of civilians and war provocations against Could Have Won Hawke's onslaught on the BLP was mineral raw materials and pastoral the Soviet Union, Hawke went over to widely seen as an attack on all unions and agricultural produce. Though open war on the union movement. One The BLP has gone down virtually and that there was a will to join hands expanded after WWII on the basis of of Australia's most militant unions, without a shot fired, handing Hawke with the BLP to drive back that attack. large-scale European immigration, the Builders Labourers Pederation an easy victory. But it didn't have to be Metal union bureaucrats called the manufacturing has since been run (BLP), was effectively liquidated in a that way and it is necessary to draw meeting - over a piddling 2.30/0 wage down by the bourgeoisie and now blitzkrieg of Arbitration Commission the lessons of this debacle. There was increase and a new superannuation Australian capitalism's traditional decisions, parliamentary deregis­ plenty of will to fight among Builders plan - to let off steam and to shore up export markets are being ripped away tration legislation, phalanxes of cops Labourers as well as among the the Accord. PIA bureaucrat Bob by the EEC and the United States and and scab union organisers from the rank and file of the other building Davies ruled class-struggle defence of the prices of coal and iron ore are BWIU, FEDPA, AWU and FlA, unions. What was centrally missing the BLP "out of order", and refused "falling. As we go to press the Triple-A and charges of BLP "terrorism" . was a class-struggle leadership with the microphone to BLP members credit rating ofthis resource-rich white Labourers on building sites in NSW, a strategy to win. As we said in a present - a good day's work for his imperialist enclave in Asia is under Victoria and the ACT were told their leaflet distributed on 23 April to a capitalist masters. _ review by Wall St financial institutions union no longer existed and presented mass meeting of two thousand BLs BLP militants and Spartacist sup- . like Moody's and Salomon Brothers with a scab contract by which they in Sydney: porters Martin Neal and Tony Caruso and as stated in the 12 July Sydney signed over to one of the raiding .. A hard fight can tum this situation refused to sign the government's Morning Herald: "To avoid the unions, repudiated their BLP member- around. The strategy to win is a scab contract and, calling on all other ASp photo nation-wide building industry strike, BLs to refuse as well, linked this mobilising the full resources of the refusal to a fighting strategy at the union to build mass pickets that 13 May Victorian branch meeting of nobody crosses to shut down the sites and drive off the cops and scabherding the BLP. Their resolution stated: "We reject any reliance on the courts, traitors. The BLF must fight but it must not be left to fight alone. All Arbitration or the Labor government, unionists must stand in solidarity with instruments of the class enemy and declare the necessity to rely on our the BLF, and an all-out fight would have a powerful appeal." own strength. Thus the 13 May monthly general - "Smash Attacks on the BLF! Bust the Union-Busters!", Australasian meeting of the Victorian branch of the Spartacist no l1S BLF resolves to organise immediately an industry-wide strike, with mass We also called for mass refusal to sign pickets to drive back the Govern­ Hawke/Cain/Wran's scab contract. ment's attacks and regain full union Hawke's "test" of the Accord was an rights for the BLF and its members. opportunity not only to defend the All charges must be dropped and all sacked members reinstated. BLP but to smash the whole class­ That is is necessary to bring out the collaborationist Accord structure and membership of the other building Spartacllt contlng.nt on Sydn.y May Day 1988: fighting antl-Sovl.t Cold turn the tide that has been running industry unions to shut the whole War, for cla.... truggl. d.f.nce of BLF. against the unions since Hawke took industry down tight and to extend the power in 1983. strike nationwide until this attack on ignominy of a lower credit rating, the ship and demanded their "share" of In May resolutions demanding the entire union movement is driven government will have to convince the union funds (an open prelude to class-struggle solidarity action in back. That a strike committee be men from Moody's that it is practising government theft of the union's defense of the BLP (see box this issue) elected to run the strike." austerity as well as preaching it". assets). In a violation of even common were put by union militants and During the meeting Neal, who'd been Thus when Hawke's Treasurer Paul law justice they were given the ulti­ Spartacist supporters to meetings of sacked for his principled refusal to Keating announced that Australia was matum of sign or be sacked. Isolated the APTU and ATEA in Melbourne sign the scab contract, made the link headed for' 'banana republic" status it by the ALP/ ACTU bureaucracy and and to a meeting of metal workers at "between Hawke's Thatcherite attack was by way of something between a shackled by their own Laborite faith in John Pairfax and Sons and then to a on the BLP and Reagan/Hawke's drive threat and a promise to the proletariat the capitalist courts the BLP leader­ mass stop work meeting of around for war against the Soviet degenerated and oppressed of this country. ship of Norm Gallagher and Steve 5000 metal workers at Redfern Oval in workers state and pointed to the heroic The Cold War Labor government of Black instructed their members to sign Sydney. That the metal workers at example of the 1984-85 British miners Robert Hawke has to continually prove over, sign statements that they'd done Pairfax adopted the resolution put by Continued on page nine 12 July/August 1988