No 126 November/December 1991 30p Newspaper of the Spartaclst League Facing "free market" .starvation Moscow: mass protest against Yeltsin counterrevolution MOSCOW - The imperialist media and the now anti-Communist Soviet television sought to portray Revolution Day, 7 November, as the wake after the "death of Communism". They even brought back the Romanov pretender to the tsarist throne. The new "rulers" tried to ban all celebration of the anniversary of the Bol­ sheviks taking power. The New York Times admitted that "more than 10,000 Communist loyalists" marched, but in fact as many as 90,000 came out in Moscow in an angry protest against the . ''\ >('t. anterrcvolut4m-lacaded by Yeltsin and -Oorbachev:1n Leningrad, Kiev and else­ ~here thousands more took to the streets. Gathering before the Lenin statue in October Square, there were hundreds of red flags snapping in the stiff winter wind. In contrast to the regimented formal Spartaclol phoIoe parades of previous years, this was an Rally defending Moscow's Lenin outpouring, heavily proletarian in com­ Museum,14September.Slgnsays, position, of people who wanted to take a "Gorbachev betrayed Lenin, but I stand for socialism. They chanted "Lenin! have not!" Banner at right reads, Lenin!" and "Down with the bourgeois "Hands off Lenin and Soclallsml" dictatorship!" They carried hand-painted signs with such slogans as "Privatisation: A Dream for Millionaires, for the Workers a Graveyard", "YeItsin: Russians Will Never Be Slaves - Your continued on page 5 Hate capitalism - hate Yeltsin, Kinnock!

Looking beyond the mind-numbing the Labour Party has functioned as wards capitalist restoration within the claimed leftists lining up on the side of bourgeois politicking which comprises bloodthirsty defender of the "New Soviet Union. The fake-Trotskyist left Yeltsin's counterrevolution had fmally the run-up to the general election, the World Order", often outdoing the lauded Yeltsinite counterrevolution, disabused him of his long-held wish following general observation can be Tories. The domestic corollary has joining the imperialist chorus cheering that the "left would get together". made: the Tory Party has softened up, been Labour support to the gamut of the "death of Communism". We Trot­ Many miners have a very concrete idea the Labour Party has moved and con­ Tory anti-trade union legislation; its im­ skyists have always insisted that those of what the "magic of the market" has solidated markedly to the right and the plementation of the hated poll tax and who cannot defend the existing gains of in store for the proletariat of Eastern bulk of the British left has followed victimisation of anti-poll tax protesters; the workers movement are incapable of Europe and the Soviet Union. The di­ suit. its tepid non-opposition to the recent making new conquests. And over a rect link between union-busting at With the British economy apparently moves by Home Secretary Baker to period of years, beginning with Cold home and anti-Sovietism abroad was in the most dire recessionary slump of tighten restrictions on immigration and War II, Afghanistan and Poland, it has never clearer than during the bitter any major capitalist country, the pol­ asylum; its "law and order" rhetoric, ad been capitulation to the imperialist 1984-85 miners strike. On the eve of icies of Conservative and Labour nauseam. drive to smash the Soviet workers state the strike, following Gerry Healy/Cliff parties are virtually indistinguishable in Many advanced workers may well that has driven the fake left deep into Slaughter's WRP's witch hunting "ex­ their anti-working-class reaction at vote with their feet in the upcoming the camp of Kinnockite social democ­ post" of Scargill's opposition to coun­ home and imperialism abroad. From general election. But Neil Kinnock can racy. terrevolutionary Solidarno~c, the the one-sided Anglo-American led count on the loyal support of the Brit­ A veteran miners leader who has miners leader was relentlessly red­ imperialist slaughter in the Gulf War to ish fake left. And their pledge to the been a regular reader of our press baited at the TUC and throughout the the backing of the Bush/Yeltsin drive British social democracy goes hand in caught this point at a Spartacist public strike the TUC Cold Warriors were for capitalist counterrevolution in the hand with treacherous support to the meeting in Brixton on 22 October when among the most vicious scabherders. homeland of the October Revolution, counterrevolutionary forces driving to- he said that the spectacle of self-pro continued on page 8 Smash Extradition Act and the PTA! Dessie Ellis frame-up collapses

The fIrst case of trial under the 1987 Britain has been welcomed in legal circles own draconian state ban on broadcasting Extradition Act backfIred on the British here as having positive implications for Sinn Fein - is underlined by the Dessie and Irish governments as Dessie Ellis was extradition in showing that the process of Ellis case. Now, even with the manifest freed by unanimous verdict of the jury law worked and that British juries will failure of their designs in this case, after less than three hours deliberation. acquit an Irishman on terrorist charges." Haughey & Co are trying to prepare Immediately the vindictive British state Tell that to the Birmingham Six, Guild­ public opinion for more extraditions; the had him rearrested and held overnight at ford Four, Maguire Seven, Winchester Times (31 October) reports that while at Paddington Green police station while Three, Tottenham Three and many the moment there are no cases to an they rushed through a deportation order others! The point about Ellis' acquittal is English court pending, Scotland Yard has under the Prevention of Terrorism Act that the jury was in no mood to buy yet a list of "about a dozen major suspects (PTA)! As Father Paddy Smith of the more of the government's lies. The crimi­ that it would like to extradite". As Ellis Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas nal judicial frame-ups resulting in the put it in an interview with An Phoblacht said: "They spend all this effort trying to tragedy of years totalling many decades (7 November): "Charles Haughey and get him into the country and now they stolen from the Birmingham Six, Guild­ Fianna Fail are more interested in can't wait to get him out of it" (Guardian ford Four, Maguire Seven is fresh in keeping the British happy than in pro­ 31 October). We say: down with extradi­ many people's memory. This time the tecting the rights of Irish citizens." tion! Smash the PTA! frame-up was thrown out by the jury on As we noted in our article "Haughey Obscenely this case is being used by the fIrst go: an indictment of British "jus­ does Thatcher's dirty work/ Free Dessie the bourgeois press in Ireland to argue tice". Ellis!" (Workers Hammer no 118, Novem­ that the new Extradition Act is sound The Irish bourgeoisie's complicity with ber/December 1990), Ellis was charged because Ellis got a "fair trial"! As the the British imperialists in setting up Re­ with possession of explosives with intent Irish Times (1 November) put it: "The publicans - implementing the extradition to endanger life between 1981 and 1983. outcome of the trial of Mr Dessie Ellis in treaty, the Anglo-Irish Accord and its According to the account of his case from An Phoblacht the Irish Anti-Extradition Committee in Dessie Ellis Dublin: "In fact it is physically impossible for Dessie Ellis to have had control of been extradited could be tried for James P Cannon on explosives in Britain, or to have conspired offences other than those on which the Russian Question to cause explosions in Britain, because he they had been extradited. was in custody, or otherwise under garda "In May this year, the Director of PubUc Prosecutions applied to the In the 74th year since the great 1917 surveillance throughout the entire period High Court to quash the magistrate's October Revolution the Soviet Union, un­ covered by the extradition warrants." directive, apparently to give it carte dennined by decades of Stalinist sabotage, Dessie Ellis was arrested in May 1981 on blanche to bring back the original is in the grip of a capitalist-restorationist domestic charges in Ireland and received charges. The application was refused." drive. It is the duty of revolutionary Trotsky­ bail some months later. In February 1982, ists to fight tooth and nail against Yeltsinite he left for the United States. A month The court's phony "evidence" against counterrevolution. In October 1939 the later he was re-arrested and deported Ellis didn't wash and the British state saw TROTSKY founder of American Trotskyism, James P LENIN back to IreJand in March 1983, 'fhere he yet another of its frame-up cases - in Cannon gave a speech on the RuSsian ques_ I was tried Bbd sentenced to eight years in this instance against an avowed supporter tion at the time of his fight together with Leon Trotsky against those who sought to ditch Portlaoise Prison. It was only at the time of the IRA - collapse. defence of the Soviet degenerated workers state. of his release date in April 1989 that Dessie Ellis had some telling observa­ extradition warrants were issued; the tions about his time spent in the British The guiding lines of the revolutionary Marxist approach to the question have been: British judiciary consciously decided only prisons: "Brixton was a hellhole. It was See the reality and see it whole at every stage; never surrender any position before to seek extradition at this late date in really deplorable, the conditions, every­ it is lost; the worst of all capitulators is the one who capitulates before the decisive order to deny Ellis the chance to have a thing, food, facilities, you name it. There's battle. solicitor make a careful investigation in people hanging themselves there every The International Left Opposition which originated in 1923 as an opposition in the his defence. second week. It's hard for everyone there, Russian party (the original nucleus of the Fourth International) has always taken a The magistrate refused to prosecute not just for me because I was Irish. It's precise attitude on the Russian question. In the fIrst stages of the degeneration of which Ellis on the original charges - they were every bit as bad for ordinary British the Stalinist bureaucracy was the banner bearer the opposition considered it possible too blatantly flimsy - and substituted two prisoners, constant searches, etc. It's hard to rectify matters by methods of reform through the change of regime in the new charges alleging conspiracy to cause to describe, you'd have to be there" (An Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Later, when it became clearer that the grievous bodily harm by use of explosive Phoblacht 7 November). Communist Party of Lenin had been irremediably destroyed, and after it became substances and conspiracy to cause crimi­ As Patrick Hill of the Birmingham Six manifest that the reactionary bureaucracy could be removed only by civil war, the nal damage. But in their eagerness to im­ stated outside the Old Bailey upon his Fourth International, standing as before on its analysis of the Soviet Union as a prison Dessie Ellis the courts blundered, release after years in prison for a crime workers' state, came out for a political revolution. as the Times (31 October) reported: he did not commit: "Justice! I don't think All the time throughout this entire period of 16 years the Bolshevik-Leninists have "The magistrate's action 'unwittingly the people in there have got the intelli­ stoutly maintained, in the face of all slander and persecution, that they were the firmest stirred up an international hornet's gence nor the honesty to spell the word, defenders of the workers' state and that in the hour of danger they would be in the nest', Mr Robertson said. Under never mind dispense it. They're rotten!" front ranks of its defense. We always said the moment of danger will frod the Fourth international law, no one who had continued on page 8 Internationalists at their posts defending the conquests of the great revo:ution without ceasing for a moment our struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. Now that th~ hour of danger is at hand - now that the long-awaited war is actually knocking at the door -it would be very strange if the Fourth International should renege on its oft­ repeated pledge. - "Speech on the Russian Question" (15 October 1939)

FalllWlroterlPOI_12 FREE WORKERSIIAMMER GERONIMO No 16, NOW! For a federation of workers rep.ublics in the British Islesl ~ Autumn/Winter 1991 r .J """'.it Courts Slam Doors Against For a Socialist United States of Europel ,Ii Geronimo jl Jaga \, Page 12 ______Newspaper of the Spartaclst League, British section of the International 75p ~J' '~<~-~ ------Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). (24 pages) EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (Editor), Jon Branche, Alec Gilchrist, 8bhlin Holiday Appeal for Class·War Prisoners Supreme Court of Injustice 2 McDonald, Alan Mason, Len Michelson, 81en Rawlings, Michael Riaz, David Strachan Ten Years of Hell for Mumia Abu-Jamar 5 Defend Moabit Anti-Fascists 8 PRODUCTION MANAGER: Michael Riaz Remember the Attica Rebellion! . ······ .. 11 poe Protests ClOSing of Lenin Museum .. 16 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Antoine Vernes .. 19 Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU Order from/make cheques payable to: L. Subscriptions: £3.00 for 1 year, overseas airmail £6.00. I Opinions expre&&ed in signed articles or leiters do not necessarily expr.a the editorial viewpoint. Partisan Defence Committee, • Printed by Slough New&papers Ud(TU). ISSN 0267-8721 BCM Box 4986, London WC1 N 3XX

2 WORKERS HAMMER

... lit ..-, .$ t,"\\.'i'-;...\ i"};\~:;'::, "< .• ,";~~,,,JIr',.'I.:; ~~~ " ~"'t.' .. ' .... 4. Polish elections: protest against Walesa

On eve of Polish elections, miners protest in Warsaw "shock treatment" against Solldarnosc government's attacks on workers,

WARSAW-The 27 October parliamen­ Judeo-Solidarno~c control all political "C;ommunist crimes", demanding that by vocal anti-Semites. In the days before tary elections registered a sharp protest life." A day after one televised tirade by former Stalinists be arraigned as "gang­ the vote, SdRP leader CimOszeMCZ con­ against the capitalist "shock treatment" these right-wingers, anti-Semitic thugs sters" and "offenders", demned any demonstrations at all, for being meted out by the government of carried out an unsuccessful attack at the The Catholic hierarchy, stung by its fear of upsetting their electoral prospects. president Lech Walesa and his economics entrance to Warsaw's only synagogue. failure last spring to push a blanket ban Yet a thousand OPZZ miners, their czar Leszek Balcerowicz. Meanwhile Walesa, who pushed ''Who on abortion through the Sejm (parlia­ number deliberately kept low by the are the Jews?" racist demagogy in his ment), took back its earlier promise not bureaucrats, staged a protest against the Balcerowicz's Liberal-Democratic successful presidential bid last year, to endorse candidates and issued a public attacks on their pensions on the eve of Congress and Walesa's Centre Alliance issued statements accusing "the people of appeal from the pulpits to vote only for the election. got a bare seven per cent each. They the Communist system" of being respon- "Christian" lists in order to combat the In the election campaign, the SdRP-led were both swamped by the Democratic left alliance did not so much as mention Left Alliance dominated by the ex­ the word socialism, calling only for a Stalinist Social Democrats (SdRP), which social safety net, defence of free educa­ came in a close second to the Democratic tion and higher wages under the capitalist Union of former Solidarno~t prime min­ state. With unemployment around ten per ister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who was cent and millions more barely surviving forced out by Walesa, with some twelve on poverty wages, the Social Democrats per cent each. The official peasant party do not demand jobs for all but offer only under the former Stalinist regime also mealy-mouthed opposition to "mass, beat the government parties. The degree structural" unemployment. Instead of of popular cynicism with the current attacking rising anti-Semitism and anti­ regime was shown by the near 60 per Roma (Gypsy) pogroms head-on, they cent abstention rate and was punctuated preach "tolerance". Instead of forthrightly by the strong showing for the Beer fighting clerical attacks on abortion, they Lovers Party (PPPP), founded a couple call for a "referendum" on the question. of months ago by some actors, more as a In the face of redbaiting attacks following joke than a political group. the August coup in the Soviet Union, the But the election campaign was no joke. SdRP broadcast its opposition to the Frustration and despair over widespread coup and support to the "democratic" immiseration was also channelled into forces behind Yeltsin's counterrevolution­ significant votes for openly clericalist and ary countercoup. anti-Semitic parties to the right of the What passed for Trotskyists in Poland SolidarnoM: mainstream, like Catholic until recently were in fact social-demo­ Electoral Action and the "Christian na­ cratic denizens of the Solidarno~c swamp. tionalist" Confederation for an Indepen­ Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa and his friends: anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, Daiej, the newspaper of self-styled "Trot­ dent Poland (KPN). antl-working-class, skyist" supporters of Ernest Mandel's What was touted as Poland's "first free sible for the bad economic situation and "disciplined electorate of the former United Secretariat, called for a vote to parliamentary election" in the post-war for anti-government demonstrations. Communist party". Trybuna reported that candidates representing ''workers' inter­ era was marked by an ominous wave of Walesa's threats to "lead the streets" in some churches campaign leaflets were ests", like a Nowa Huta steelworks leader anti-Semitism and anti-Communism. against "Communism" were accompanied being distributed on election day. One of Solidarno~c '80, run by the virulently "Phantoms of last year's presidential by former Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzez­ bishop stated outright that Catholics anti-Communist and anti-Semitic Marian election campaign revived," wrote the ex­ inski, who proclaimed in a national televi­ should vote for Catholics, Jews for Jews, Jurczyk. And Mandel favourite JozefPin­ Stalinist newspaper Trybuna, describing sion broadcast that the former "people's and Communists for Communists. These ior's supporters not only ran on the plat­ how Stars of David with gallows and the republic" had been run by "traitors, pogromist appeals come in a country form of Labour Solidarity, but organised word "Jew" had been sprayed over elec­ criminals and thieves". Though election­ where only several thousand Jews remain. its campaign out of their office. ' tion posters. The anti-Semitic National In contrast, the Spartakusowska Grupa eering was officially forbidden the day In the aftermath of the elections, with Party ran TV broadcasts screaming that before the vote, state television carried an various parties scrambling to form some Polski refused to call for a vote to any the "Judeo-Kommuna [Communism] and candidate in the current elections, and inflammatory hour-long programme on sort of tenuous coalition government, Walesa seized the opportunity to put sought instead to intervene with a Trot­ skyist programme in workers' protests forward his bid to play the role of bon­ Platforma aparte, "offering" to take over as prime against capitalist attacks. At the Warsaw minister as well as president. Walesa has teachers demonstration, we were the only SPAiiAiusOYiC6W~.-'IM ==---~ Spartakusowc6w long wanted to follow in the footsteps of ones distributing literature. The SGP is the only organisation in Poland which !!!- Newspaper of the his ido~ Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, the forthrightly opposes the counterrevolu­ ..... ~aIikaIII...... Spartakusowska Grupa Polski fascistic dictator of inter-war Poland. But •• --:-..::::::: ...... -.,.UII'D.• --,- tionary tide sweeping Eastern Europe and ::::::.,:..~~~:.;:::;'~~O;;:' :::='";-c.:::'::::::-:.:,:':''':!'' his increasingly despised capitalist regime the Soviet Union, fighting to revive the ~';:::;.;~. :r:::::.. ..=-:.:=:~,.:;; No 2, Autumn 1991 (30p) has neither Pilsudski's authority nor his revolutionary unity of the Soviet, Polish ==;;:::.~_ .... ~ =::~;;:;::F'=:: power, and his "offer" was instantly --.., .. ~,...... ,...... -- Contenta Include: _~~'"t::""...:=.-- ::=::;:..~.:.= rebuffed . and German workers. Against the cleri­ ... ,_,~-. ... ~~"t:. :.,-:~.:-.. "'-" --.....~=-...... ~.::.:..~ • Extend workers reaI.tance calist onslaught, we struggle openly agaInat Cllpltallat IltUIckaI The ex-Stalinists, whose OPZZ trade­ against all manifestations of anti-Semit­ :1 iNRiA'-K-U-S-O-WC---;"OW- • Internatlonallat Poll.,. Trotakyls.. union federation is several times larger ism and fight to defend and restore the fought agalnat Hitler's Invasion­ than the Solidarno~t "union", are seen as full right to free abortion on demand. ,...... III...... ,...PI", dll'" From the War.. w Ghetto: the only ones organising mass protest In our paper PlatfoTma Spartakusow­ Wspomnienla rewolucyJnego Defend the Soviet Unlonl against the "Balcerowicz plan" of IMF­ cow and in demonstrations we called to roHtnlka fydowskIego • 1981-6partacJa.... lei: Stop dictated austerity. But their opposition "Extend workers resistance to capitalist Solldarno66 counterrevolution I remains carefully within the bounds of :r..~~:7=7:;:,s::'r::a:E ::..a=" ~=-:?:;::":=~ attacks!" and "Build a Leninist-Trotskyist ;::....~....=.::..~:::':!!.,a:: ....:,...~-=. ..=;..-;:..:. • The Poland of Luxemburg v the transition to a full-fledged capitalist econ­ party" capable of leading to victory the Poland of PI'-ucIaid-Memoirs of omy. Demonstrations, like the recent ....,....sr~.:-aS~ ~_ ...... ,... .. , _ "I. =~":::::;:"~~___ I", z-...... ,.--.. struggle against Solidarno~c counterrevol­ ::""-~&.....-==-:. =r=;=-'...,:...-=-.....:.=.~= a revoluUonary JewIsh work... "silent marches" by the teachers union, ._.,.,11'...-._='= ...... ' ..... ~ ..- _ .". -...... ""'-'Irj 1-; ution. We used our very limited forces to ,.,..~,..,--,. !:':"'....:r.=.=:::.:.e: =--~ are tightly controlled, with workers from .-....---~I_I """'- ...... ,...... Order from/make chequea payable to: establish a Leninist pole of attraction and ~-=-~...:*.= == :-:..o:::-...-=~-==:::c.: Spartaclat Publications the factories discouraged from attending. we continue in this vital task. PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU As a result, a demonstration by old-age =~-.-....-,.-:~~E'"~= .... ~:.."U:r~E=-= it!..-::::.:1;':::,; Reprinted from Worlen VtmgJUII'd pensioners in September was taken over no 538, 8 November 1991. NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1991 3 without even a ftgleaf of liberal public hypocrisy. Limerick University, for exam­ Dublin--­ ple, has spent the better part of a year in court trying to evict a few families whose caravans were parked near the front gate of the college. The reality is that there is a racist consensus in this country extending all the way from the Faanna Fail gangsters to the despicable Labour and Workers Parties. Smash racist attacks Karl Marx observed over a century ago that for the English working class to free itself from the chains of exploitation, it would have to actively take the side of the Irish workers and peasants struggling against the British Empire. In much the same way, the defence of the Travellers' against Travellers! community is an acid test for Irish revol­ utionaries; their treatment in Ireland echoes the vile chauvinism directed against the Irish in Britain. The plight of the Travellers must be championed by the workers movement, which has the social power to beat back the attacks on Travellers. Today, with a crisis-racked government, with unemploy­ ment at 19 per cent and a third of the population under the government's own poverty line, the wretched, pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracy is working over­ time to keep the lid on class struggle. We ftght to forge a genuine Leninist-Trotskyist party which can act as a tribune of the people, fighting for the liberation of women and the defence of all the oppressed in­ cluding Travellers and homosexuals. While initiating the protests against the pur bans on Travellers in Dublin, the state-capitalist Socialist Workers Movement (SWM) has enthusiastically embraced those counter­ revolutionary forces throughout Eastern DSYG photos Europe and within the Soviet Union whose Dublin, 18 October: sixty demonstrators picket Palace Bar protesting racist anti-Traveller ban. shock troops are fascistic, anti-Semitic, Worlcers Hammer prints below the leaf­ winter without heat and sanitation. The policy against Travellers. It's high time for racist scum responsible as well for un­ let produced by the Dublin Spartacist Irish state is responsible for such deaths as the workers movement and all decent leashing attacks against the Gypsies Youth Group (DSYG) on 15 October fol­ it continues to force the Travelling people people to mobilise to put an end to these (Roma and Cinti peoples). For their part, lowing the arrest of six protesters demand­ to live in degradation and on starvation attacks against the Travellers! the cheerleaders for Yeltsin's counterrevol­ ing an end to the ban on Travellers at incomes. As the DSYG statement con­ There are over 30,000 Travellers living ution in the Irish Workers Group (IWG) Dublin's Palace Bar. cludes: For workers action to smash the in the Irish Republic, one-third of them in have simply abstained from the protests in Travellers in Ireland are a nomadic anti-Traveller attacks! Workers to Power in horriftc roadside "halting sites", most of defence of the Travellers. people similar to the Gypsy peoples Ireland! which lack elementary sanitation or other We do not forget that in the Nazi Holo­ throughout Europe. In 19th century Ire­ facilities. The toll of such oppression is caust as many as half a million Gypsies land, for example, they occupied a niche On 11 October, over 50 demonstrators taken in premature death: infant mortality were exterminated in the death camps. The as itinerant craftsmen and horse traders. picketed and occupied Dublin's Palace Bar in due largely to respiratory diseases and Bolsheviks who led the Russian October Today, this role has largely disappeared protest over its exclusion of Travellers. The gastroenteritis is three times higher among Revolution of 1917 smashed the anti­ and many Travellers have to rely on remit­ Gardai soon arrived to quash the protest, Travellers than the rest of the population; Semitic Black Hundreds fascists. And, tances from relatives in England, perhaps pushing the demonstrators out of the pub and only 1.7 per cent of Travellers live to be 65 despite bureaucratic Stalinist misrule, it along with minimal part-time building onto the street, arresting six. Among those years old. Discrimination is pervasive, from was the Soviet Red Army that smashed the work in Dublin. As the DSYG leaflet arrested was Michael Collins, a Traveller and not being served in pubs or hotels to being Nazi scourge in Europe! As a communist pointed out, Travellers fill Irish jails in actor on the popular TV programme "Glen­ forced to pick up the dole at separate times youth organisation in the tradition of Marx, disproportionate numbers, are subject to roe" who had also been refused service at the from everyone else. Paltry official attempts Lenin and Trotsky we in the DSYG rec­ brutally enforced official discrimination, Bowes pub, picketed by anti-racist protesters to "settle" individual Traveller families in ognise that only successful socialist revol­ and are the butt of derision and contempt. a week earlier. Drop all cJuuges against council housing or to erect official halting ution can clear away all the reactionary Their oppression mirrors that of the Irish the six now! sites often lead to attacks by racist thugs. crap produced by this clericalist state. For in Britain. As the Gardai struck, we in the Dublin Travellers fill Irish jails in dispropor­ workers action to smash the anti-Traveller The DSYG leaflet uses the term Spartacist Youth Group (DSYG) chanted: tionate numbers, and are the butt of attacks! Workers to Power in Ireland! "gombeenocracy". In the last century the "From South Africa to Dublin, smash derision and contempt, displayed often 15 October 1991 "gombeen man" was a usurious middle­ apartheid!" which was soon picked up by man whose exactions weighed down on the entire picket. And it was no accident the rural poor. The pronounced social that on the same day the Evening Press backwa,rdness of Ireland's ruling Fianna reported that the Dublin County Council Order yours now! Fail Party is rooted in its historical base had voted to "physically remove" Travel­ Youth Group among analogous small-time, small-town lers living on "unauthorised" sites in the capitalists and exploiting farmers, bulwark Dublin area and take them to the county • Theses on Ireland of the overweening Catholic Church. border ''where they will be ordered to • Derry 1968: how the left failed Ireland: Another reference which may not be return to the counties where they have been • Westminster butchers workers to power! familiar to our readers is "beyond the normally resident". Designed to "combat" • Northern Ireland: for a Pale" - a term coined in the ftfteenth an "influx" of Travellers into the capital, proletarian solution! ~i- century referring to the area of Ireland this grotesque measure certainly smacks of • Irish students fight anti-abortion "'.-~ inhabited by Gaelic clans and not under apartheid. reaction As Martin Collins of the Dublin Travel­ English control. Not only in the rural • Robinson's popular front: heartland of this rotten gombeenocracy, lers Education Development Group put it: trap for workers and women but in the seat of "enlightened Robin­ "It's outrageous and travellers will react sonism" in South Dublin and Dun Laogh­ against this decision. What you're talking • Connolly's legacy and the struggle for a revolutionary party aire, anti-Traveller oppression is rife. In about here is eviction and putting a quota the case of the latter, there are virtually on the number of people who can come to no authorised halting sites for Travellers Dublin. It's completely racist .... " Travel­ £1.00 and it is here that some of the most lers are to be driven onto any piece of (48 pages) egregious racist injunctions, police provo­ waste ground, preferably next to a vermin­ Order from/make cheques cation and evictions have taken place. infested dump and preferably well ''beyond payable to: Last December a young Traveller the Pale". As official Dublin struts around International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) woman, Anne Maughan, froze to death in as the "1991 European City of Culture" Dublin Spartaclat Youth Group a ditch in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin replete with the supposed "progressive" PO Box 2944, Dublin 1 (L-ish ,Times, 11 December 1990). Her face of President Mary Robinson, the Spartacls' Publlcatlona death is not uncommon among Travellers, gombeenocracy have shown themselves PO Box"1041, London NW5 3EU forced to live through the damp, cold Irish prepared to brutally enforce a bantustan

4 WORKERS HAMMER Free the Tottenham Three now! state. In October 1985, the cops came even know. As Hill stressed, fmally: "I released after those frame-ups col­ up one short after staging a violent and agreed, to keep them off my back. They lapsed and the Maguire family's convic­ racist rampage through Broadwater could have told me to name Prince tions were held to be "unsafe" Farm estate in Tottenham in London Charles and I would have said it was (although they have been subjected to following community protests over the him, I was in such a state." During the an "inquiry" meant to smear them cold-blooded police murder of Mrs trial, Jason Hill's "confession" was despite the fact that everyone knows Cynthia Jarrett. Out for revenge, in dismissed by the judge as "fantastical, they are innocent). Furthermore, the 1987 the state secured the convictions strange and make-believe", but con­ case of Judith Ward - jailed for life in of these three young men for the death veniently this was done in a private part 1974 for the IRA's bombing in York­ of one PC Keith Blakelock. What of the hearing with the jury absent. shire of an army coach - has been passed for "evidence" in this frame-up Now with the aid of Electrostatic referred to the Court of Appeal; she trial were two later retracted "admis­ Deposition Analysis (the ESDA test), has now retracted her confession and sions" extracted from two teenagers forensic experts have demonstrated that the forensic "evidence" against her has who were denied access to solicitors the cops' "records" of Winston Silcott's been discredited. As frame-up after and held incommunicado for several remarks during his interrogations were frame-up case collapses, the Tottenham days clad only in underpants and blan­ faked: original notes were replaced and Three are the most prominent such kets. One of them, Engin Raghip, had additional statements concocted. Two victims of capitalist injustice to remain a mental age of seven. Winston Silcott months ago, Home Secretary Kenneth behind bars. never "confessed" to anything. Baker announced an investigation into The Labour Party leaders have aided Over the past several months, fur­ the 'I convictions" of Silcott and Braith­ and abetted the persecution of the Tot­ ther evidence has emerged of the waite. Within hours of receiving the tenham Three - Kinnock even going depths of the state's frame-up of these report of the investigation, the two so far as to place a wreath at the mem­ Times men. Jason Hill, the other youth who cases were referred to the Court of orial of the cop Blakelock. And Labour Winston Silcott was forced to name Silcott as the one Appeal. Raghip had already been was in power when the Birmingham Six who "organised" the death of Blakelock granted an appeal on separate grounds; were jailed in an orgy of anti-Irish More than five years on, Winston is now suing the police for his incarcer­ his case is to be heard in November. hysteria. Against the bosses, against the Silcott, Mark Braithwaite and Engin ation and maltreatment in 1985. Hill We say: free them now/ Millions of Labour traitors, the organised workers Raghip continue to languish in prison, revealed to the Observer (21 July) that pounds in compensation won't make up movement must mobilise to demand victims of a vicious and vindictive his police interrogators kept feeding for their stolen years. The Guildford the immediate freedom of the Totten­ frame-up by the racist British capitalist him Silcott's name, a man he didn't Four and Birmingham Six have been ham Three!

shops. Moskovskoe Komsomolets carried Trotskyists march on Moscow's struggle to combat Rusian chauvinism is a heart-rending story of a worker who was Revolution Day to mobilise the workers movement against Moscow .•• every manifestation of anti-Semitism. At (Continued from page 1) crushed by a train when he jumped onto the subway tracks to retrieve a sausage he Despite a few pictures of Stalin one point about 20 Stalinists attempted to had struggled all day to get for his family. sprinkled among the signs, there were physically exclude our contingent, Rapacious Reforms Will Not Work", and The older generation who came out many more of Lenin and there was also shouting "Trotskyists out of the demon­ "Down with the CIA's Perestroika!" They remember what a horrible thing hunger the red banner of the International stration", "Get out of our country", etc. repeatedly sang the Intemationale and is - they remember bread rationing Communist League emblazoned with the But we were able to effectively rally the other revolutionary songs from the early during the heroic struggle of the Soviet insignia of Trotsky's Fourth International. crowd to defend us. One worker came out days of the Soviet Republic under Lenin people against the Nazi invaders. One Moreover, the demonstration was ex­ of the crowd to stand with us against this and Trotsky. recalled, "My mother on 1(j October 1941 tremely receptive to Trotsk)ist literature. rabble, and stayed to sell with us all day. As tens of thousands marched to Red stood on the longest bread line of that In Moscow, supporters of the ICL sold A student from Moscow State University Square, they voiced a deep working-class year, and even so it was not half as long 4750 copies of our Russian-language sup­ came to our contingent and said that he's hatred towards the agents of Wall Street as today's!" (SovetsTCllya Rossiya, 9 plement, "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yel­ been looking for Trotskyism all his life. and Frankfurt who have come to the fore November). tsin-Bush Counterrevolution!", and 600 As the crowd paraded towards Red following the botched Kremlin coup in Yet the Revolution Day demonstration copies of our Russian-language Spartacist Square, a comrade reported: August. The older generation of CPers in­ was not narrowly economic in character, bulletin, "Return to the Road of Lenin "While we marched we chanted, 'Long termingled with the youth. The mood was nor, given the occasion, could it be. and Trotsky!" Live the October Revolution!' 'Long angry and sharply contrasted with last Above all, it expressed visceral working­ Unfortunately, the Revolution Day Live the Soviet Union!' 'Down with year's November 7th parade, presided class hostility to capitalist restoration and protests were not entirely free of reac­ Yeltsin/Gorbachev!Bush's Russian over by Gorbachev, where the main the destruction of the Soviet Union by tionary attitudes, especially anti-Semitism. Nationalist Counterrevolution! For Pro­ slogan was "The Success of Perestroika Western imperialism and its Russian Pamyat salesmen were peddling their letarian Internationalism!' One of our Lies in Civil Concord". Among the signs agents. One sign said: "What Adolf did fIlth. The Stalinist organisers of the rally contacts chanted 'Long Uve the World this year was one showing the double­ appealed to Great Russian chauvinism. Communist Movement - Workers of not do, Michael has done". When a the World Unite!' These were all met headed tsarist eagle with one head being British journalist asked, why call Gorba­ Our comrades were baited alternately as by loud 'Hurrah! Hurrah!" Yeltsin and the other Gorbachev. Another chev "Michael", the bearer of the slogan "Trotskyites" and "Jews". We shot back wrote under Gorbachev's portrait, "You replied: "We call him Michael because that the fIlth they spewed was the White Along the march, a supporter of the ruined the country, hell waits for you". he's a westerner now" (Financial Times, Guard politics of Yeltsin which are at war ICL was interviewed by Pravda. In its Initially, Moscow mayor Gavriil Popov 8 November). with the revolutionary politics of Lenin next issue it reported on its front page - a leading figure in the capitalist Gorbachev is not a Westerniser in the and Red October. The cutting edge of the continued on page 10 counterrevolution - announced a ban on sense of seeking to modernise Soviet any Revolution Day demonstration within society and the economy, as Peter the the city's ring road, which includes Red Great attempted to do for Russia in the Square. But when it became clear that the age of absolutism. Gorbachev, Yeltsin & protests would take place in defiance of Co want to sell out the Soviet Union to his authority, Popov rescinded the ban the Western banks and multinationals-at Lenin-Trotsky Fund needs your money! night before. This is symptomatic of how fire-sale prices. If they succeed, Russia, politically weak are the forces pushing for the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc will be de­ The resources of the International capitalist restoration. In our first graded to the economic level of Latin Communist League are sparse, our ~Klnne::HbCnaPTaKOBUeB ISPARTACJSTI statement after the August coup and American neocolonies while all the old current tasks mammoth. We have just o6aflkpoTKBWKAcR ctanKHK3M countercoup, we noted: "But while Yel­ reactionary crap from the pre-1917 tsarist printed 70,000 copies of the Russian otkpblBaeT Wll103b1 AIIR tsin & Co now see a clear field to push autocracy will return. translation of "Soviet Workers: Defeat kanKt8nKctK~eCkoA peCT8Bpa4KM. through a forced-draft reintroduction of Indeed, the answer of the pro-Western Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!" (pic­ COBBTCKMB capitalism, the outcome is not yet defin­ "democrats" to working-class protest is ture at right). We are now reprinting P800~MBI itively decided" (WoiXers Hammer no 125, the fIrst Russian-language Spartacist AonoR BnbqMHcKO-OYWBBcKym lying promises of prosperity under cap­ KOHTppBBonmqMm I September/October 1991). We added that italism, accompanied by appeals to Bulletin, "What Is Trotskyism", of the Soviet proletariat "has not been heard mediaeval obscurantism. On the eve of which 25,000 have already been sold §§t...:::#,1::=..:::~' 1.3·':'~25;·1 .... __ ."" .... -~-.~- 1"- -.-_ .. _. "~ .. -.-.. from". But on 7 November, it began to throughout the Soviet Union. Pro-so­ ~';:~:?'s=.~~T~ :::~=.::;.r-. Revolution Day, the mayor of Leningrad .... "".. p060 ... ~._ ...... =_ ....•• _l ...... --n< ...... raise its voice. organised a fete to celebrate restoring the cialist Soviet workers are thirsting for Ijj·;fir-"'=::~·~·~-- 7::'55:':' - ",::-..:::.::=. The numbers pouring into the streets city's old name of St Petersburg. Featured Trotskyist literature, but economic real­ far exceeded the organisers' expectations. in this ceremony were Patriarch Aleksy II, ities dictate that we must heavily Soviet working people in struggle Revolution Day tapped into the economic Primate of the Russian Orthodox church, subsidise our publications to keep them against counterrevolution. desperation of Moscow's working people. and Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich affordable. Printing costs, travel and Make donations payable/send to: The week before, Yeltsin announced that Romanov, son of the cousin of Tsar other expenses mean that an interna­ Spartacist, PO Box 1041, London NWS all price controls would soon be ended, Nicolas II. Grand Duke Romanov, who tionalist intervention in the Soviet 3EU. Mark back of cheque: "Lenin­ setting off a new wave of panic buying, had never before set foot in the Soviet Union costs money. Help forge the Trotsky Fund" (or simply "L-T hoarding and speculation. For the first Union, said he hoped to become the new Trotskyist nucleus needed to lead the Fund"). time bread began to disappear from the Russian tsar!

NOV~MBER/DECI;MBER 1991 5 Thousand-strong mass pickets shut down key Renault-Cleon car plant, leading to shut-downs of the entire chain. srock itterrand's France iiilll.llii/ii· then ordered not to venture into the ernment is largely discredited and has power to bring down bourgeois rule and provinces). On 24 October a one-day gen­ been in agonising crisis for several open the road to socialism. eral strike shut down the ports, heavily months. We must all take advantage of Workers Hammer has received the this opening to make them cry uncle." following report from France: disrupted public transportation in some Popular front against cities and reduced the production of With the collapse of Stalinism in East­ the workers NOVEMBER 13 - At 3.30 on the morn­ electrical power, as tens of thousands of ern Europe and the Soviet Union, the Since being elected to power in 1981, ing of 5 November, almost 500 CRS (riot striking workers marched through the bourgeoisie thinks it can celebrate the Mitterrand's Union of the Left has un­ police) took over the CIt~on plant and streets of Paris and numerous other "death of Communism" and bury the derlined the grievous consequences of the opened up the gates. No violence. The cities. class struggle. Indeed, the Kremlin bu­ popular front for the working class. By CGT union tops made sure there was no Mitterrand tried to head off the up­ reaucrats have always pretended that compromising the independence of the resistance. The decision was taken by the surge of class struggle by mixing threats, class struggle and socialist revolution in working class, this alliance between the prime minister. On that day, only false promises and police attacks. Yet the the West are a utopian dream. However, reformist workers parties - the Socialists hardened scabs and management person­ strikes continued in the hospitals, and the wave of strikes by French workers and (in an informal "corridor coalition") nel went in through a passage formed by walkouts swept Renault car plants in against the social-democratic government the French Communist Party (PCF)­ the strikers on one side and cops on the Cleon, Le Mans, Sandouville and Flins. of French capitalism recalls what was and part of the bourgeoisie was able to other. The bastion of the strikes has been at the graphically demonstrated by the general impose on the working class the wage­ In the next two days, repeated propo­ Renault plant in Cleon (Normandy), strike of May 1968 - the proletariat in gouging plans demanded by the bosses. sals by the bureaucrats to go back to where hundreds of militant pickets have the advanced capitalist countries has the The working-class leaderships, bound by work in exchange for a paltry "produc­ kept the plant shut down since 17 Octo­ tivity bonus" were passionately rejected ber. Despite management attempts to by the general assemblies. In a secret mobilise scabs, the strike has grown ballot on the afternoon of the 7th, a increasingly solid and outside support has J majority of voting strikers voted to con­ grown (more than 90,000 francs collected tinue; nevertheless, the CGT-CFDT local in solidarity donations). Giving an idea of i·_I'.;'"'' leadership marched in tight ranks to the the size of the pickets, every 24 hours 750 podium and announced that the strike litres of coffee are consumed, 2200 snackS was over, impervious to the explosions of distributed and 1200 hot meals served. disbelief and anger. The strikers were This morning Renault-Le Mans went on not defeated, they were stabbed in the strike as well, locking up the plant man­ back! ager for several hours and now barricad­ In animated discussions inside and ing the entrance to the factory "just like outside the plant, our comrades point to at Cleon". the programmatic roots of this bare­ The Cleon strikers are demanding a faced betrayal. Renault-Le Mans is still 1500-franc (£150) monthly wage boost­ on strike and today the dockers launched hardly enough to compensate for the May 1968 French a nation-wide port shut-down. severe erosion of purchasing power. In general strike: reality the struggle goes well beyond the PCF /CGT Stalinist NOVEMBER 4-After a decade of question of wages, as our comrades of misleaders cruel austerity imposed by the "socialist" the Ligue Trotskyste de France (LTF) saved bourgeoisie president Fran~ois Mitterrand, the anger pointed out in a special strike supplement by liquidating of French workers has begun to explode. of Le Bokhevik: strike rather than Over the past month, a wave of strikes by "To break the resistance of this govern­ fight for power. Renault car-workers almost brought the ment ready to do anything to defend company to a standstill. Striking nurses capitalist profits (and ail the more demonstrating in the streets of Paris brutal since they know they're near the end of their rope and are vulnerable), stood up to water cannons, tear-gas and much more than 'ordinary' wage police charges. Peasants made their anger struggles are necessary .... Today the felt as they repeatedly sacked tax collec­ ingredients for the necessary general­ tors' offices as well as meetings and ban­ ised counter-offensive by the workers quets by government ministers (who were are accumulating. The Mitterrand gov-

6 WORKERS HAMMER l

the strait-jacket of class collaboration to It chevik has been sold to strike pickets and the Mitterrand government, repeatedly the supplement distributed, this has led strikes to defeat, demoralising the produced animated debates on Mitter­ workers. After a decade of popular-front I rand, the PCFs role in the popular front, government, the number of strikes feU and the need for a workers government. last year to the lowest level since 1946. Appeals for class-struggle action have Far from being a "step forward" for found resonance among the strikers. A the working class as its "leftist" sup­ leaflet voted by the strikers on the picket porters imagined, Mitterrand's popular lines and subsequently signed by the local front has, in the words of Socialist ex­ CGT cited the ''victims of the austerity prime minister Fabius, done the bour­ Renault worker policy of the Mitterrand government" in geoisie's "dirty work". After a decade of Gilles Cazin calling on the workers of the region to "socialist" austerity, the wages of French leads protest strike on 24 October "and to converge on workers are the ninth-lowest in the Com­ against fascist Renault-Cleon to join the pickets". On mon Market, just above Greece, Portugal attack on North the 24th over a dozen delegations from and Spain. Unemployment has leaped to Africans near factories on strike were in front of Re­ a record three million. And a special Rouen during nault-Clean. Among the speakers was an target of Mitterrand's popular front has 1988 campaign LTF militant who concluded her remarks to much applause by calling on the wives been "immigrants", who have been sub­ as Ugue of the strikers to participate actively in ject to massive expulsions and racist Trotskyste police terror in the ghettos. This term is support of the strike. A women's commit­ candidate for grotesquely applied even to people born tee has since been set up. in France, children of foreign-born French A delegation from Renault -F1ins was workers who have lived in France for parliament. also present and declared their support to decades! the idea of extending the strike to Flins. Yet despite lay-offs and expulsions, The link with F1ins (where 40 per cent of "immigrant" workers are heavily inte­ the workforce is "immigrants") is import­ grated in French industry, especially in ant for the success of the strike in the the car factories. Largely North African motor industry. This underlines the im­ workers at the Renault plant in F1ins safety team has been set up and fires are So each worker affected would show up portance for French workers to take up were among the first to strike against the kept going round the clock. Defying a accompanied by as many as 200-300 the demand of "Full citizenship rights for Mitterrand popular front in the early '80s. court injunction, the workers maintained concerned co-workers! "An injury to one 'immigrants'!" (The government responded by launching their pickets - at times numbering over is an injury to aU" is a weU-known maxim With the Cleon plant shut down, Re­ a racist campaign, accusing them of being a thousand and stiu going strong. The for united labour struggle, and this nault has only been able to keep other manipulated by "ayatollahs".) During the determined strikers even turned back a impulse has been reflected at Clean. One plants sporadically operating by importing Gulf War, while Mitterrand sent French bulldozer sent to break through the bar­ union official said that everyone knows parts from plants in Mexico, Spain and troops to participate in Bush's neo­ ricades. When the plant manager showed that in the CGT there are members of Chile. Renault workers must appeal for colonial aggression against Iraq, "im­ up at the head of 300 scabs (mainly the PCF, LCR, LTF, but we're aU united international solidarity from feUow work­ migrant" workers at Flins, united in management personnel) he was sent for the strike. In Renault, as is typical in ers in Renault branches in other coun­ struggle with their French co-workers, led packing under a barrage of rotten eggs. French industry, there are several unions, tries. Yet the nationalist line of the PCF several dozen work stoppages against InitiaUy, although the pickets blocked the largest being the CGT and CFDT. and the CGT is an obstacle to this. To repressive measures and intolerable the movement of trucks, they aUowed Over the last decade, union membership their traditional "Produce French" chau­ working conditions. scabs to slither in and out of the plant. has faUen as the result of the do-nothing vinism has now been added vile anti­ After a decade of anti-working-class This "tactic" of leaky pickets was pushed attitude of the union bureaucracies in the Japanese racism. L'Humanite (2 Novem­ attacks, Mitterrand's popular front is by the union tops to show the bourgeoisie face of employer and government attacks. ber) called for French car companies "to deeply discredited. Edith Cresson is the that they respect the "right to work" - a However, the Clean strike has been jointly wage a battle on the European most despised prime minister since de "right" which the bosses "respect" with marked by repeated general assemblies of front against the Japanese", and criticised Gaulle's "constitutional" coup d'etat mass lay-offs. (Levy has announced his the striking workers, including those in Renault's aUiance with Volvo, "a veritable established the Fifth Republic in 1958. The popular front in office has meant that any serious labour struggle quickly posed a challenge to the reformist 1 misleaders and their bourgeois allies in .; the government. Yet virtually the entire ~ French "far left" (including the LCR [United Secretariat], W [Lutte Ouvriere] and PCI [Lambertistes], as weU as various smaUer groups who also falsely claim to be Trotskyist) has supported Mitterrand, however "critically", and their tailist poli­ tics render them incapable of leading sharp class battles. The Ligue Trotskyste, which uniquely called for working-class Strikers at opposition to the popular front, is fighting Renault-Ch!on to build a Bolshevik leadership in the throw up struggle to sweep away the bureaucratic barricades at labour lieutenants of capital. plant entrances to stop trucks. The strike at Renault-Cleon The stronghold of the strikes in Re­ nault has been the plant in Clean, which produces motors and gearboxes for the entire state-owned company. The bosses have taken over from the Japanese the "just in time" production scheme, which intention to slash 28,000 of Renault's the different unions as weU as the unor­ Trojan horse for Japanese penetration in keeps stocks to a minimum in order to 68,000 jobs.) By last week the strikers ganised. This unity in struggle must be Europe"! cut costs. However, this only works in the were throwing up solid picket lines, facing organised in an elected committee res­ This echoes the anti-Japanese hysteria absence of strikes, and to the consterna­ down the squads of scabs mobilised by ponsible for the running of the strike and fanned by Cresson, who also responded tion of the bosses it has given this plant a the bosses to break through the lines. negotiations. to a racist campaign by the Gaullist pivotal role. Because of the determined Delegations (some 500-strong) were To win this strike it is key first of aU to mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, by calling strike at Clean, other plants have been showing up in buses and cars from other make it solid and spread it. Gilles Cazin, for "charter" airliners to deport North forced to shut down for lack of parts, at Renault plants, the peasant federation has an LTF militant who has worked at Africans. Now at a meeting in Berlin, times bringing the entire Renault chain to been bringing food supplies and set up a Renault-Clean for almost 20 years, has representatives of the Common Market a grinding halt. farmers market at cost. On weekends the fought for real picket lines to keep out countries joined with the German govern­ The Cleon strikers have been highly struck plant has been the site of a popu­ the scabs, for an elected strike committee ment in declaring war on immigration. combative, reflecting the wellspring of lar fete as families gather on the picket and for workers' delegations to extend the Anti-foreigner racism has also raised its discontent which goes far beyond the line. strike throughout the car industry. In ugly head in this strike. A CGT represen­ strikers' wage demands. Renault presi­ From the first days of the strike, Re­ 1988, Cazin was the candidate of the tative at Cleon even declared: ''We don't dent, the hated Raymond Levy, de­ nault management sought to break it by Ligue Trotskyste for parliamentary dep­ have slanted eyes .... It's not part of our nounced them as "terrorists". The strik­ repression. Dozens of union officials and uty, running against former premier culture." It is the duty of every class­ ers quickly set up barricades at the plant individual strike militants were sanctioned Fabius. The LTF has a decade-long conscious worker to stamp out this kind gates, blocking aU trucks so that not a with 5-10 days off work without pay and history of communist work at the Clean of racist ftlth: it plays into the hands of single motor or gearbox could leave the threatened with firing. But according to plant and in nearby Rouen where it has the company, undercuts the vital struggle plant. Tents have been set up with TVs law, the company must first inform the fought to smash racist terror and defend for international solidarity and reinforces and their own electrical supply, a union individual affected in a formal interview. North African "immigrants". As Le Bol- continued on page 11

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1991 7 -'-'-~---

Capitalism ... (Continued from page 1)

Virtual civil war raged in the coal fields of Britain. Knifed by the LabourjTUC tops, right and "left", the miners fought alone against armies of Thatcher's cops. From the failed witch hunt instigated by the late, unlamented swine Robert Maxwell's pro-Labour Party Daily Minvr against the miners leadership over "Rus­ sian gold" to the recent TUC conference where the NUM's simple statement in defence of the right to strike was de­ feated by those telling Scargill to "look East", the link between the class struggle at home and the Russian question has been manifest. (Maxwell's own "Soviet John Harris link" is now news; according to the Times Even a grovelling reformist like Dave Nellist (above) Is witchhunted by the of 14 November: "Claims that Pergamon unspeakable Kinnock, ever loyal in his services to his capitalist masters. Press, the company founded by the late Robert Maxwell, was funded by the "No, I don't agree with that...if the British left as phoney as the day is and partially broken with Cliffite state Soviet Communist party are to be investi­ workers are making a mistake in sup­ long. We did not advocate even the most capitalism at the time of the Soviet inter­ gated by the Foreign Office." Documents porting a capitalist alternative policy, savagely critical support to Mahmood; a vention in Afghanistan, it tried to straddle circulated among members of the Rus­ then I'd be the first to condemn it. I do sufficient reason being that this Militant­ the fence between the Third Camp and sian parliament list Pergamon as one of not agree with pulling down statues of supported Broad Left/Real Labour cam­ genuine Trotskyism. Workers Power the Soviet CP's "friendly firms" and owed Lenin. I do not agree with attacks on paign made clear its support for a Labour made a hard right turn over the German the working class movement. ... " 500,000 roubles. Typical Maxwellia: witch Party victory in the general election: ie, events which culminated in its full-bore hunting Scargill while apparently being on its commitment to a Kinnock govern­ support to Yeltsinite counterrevolution in the receiving end of "Moscow gold" ment. At the same time there were those, the Soviet Union (see "Fake Trotskyists himself.) Fake Trotskyists: Kinnock/ Yeltsin camp followers notably the staunch entrists of Socialist cheer on Yeltsin's counterrevolution", Socialist Organiser and Workers Power Organiser, who condemned the campaign Workers Hammer no 125, September /Oc­ scandalously sponsored the tour to Brit­ Thatcher's out, dumped by her own from the right and worried that it would tober 1991). All the centrist fudging and ain of the fascist-connected Yuri But­ party because of her opposition to closer "only encourage silly people elsewhere to gobbledegook that had characterised chenko-key spokesman for the UDM/ European integration and her support to run independent candidates against Workers Power's positions on the Red Maxwell witch hunt. In sharp contrast, the despised poll tax. And following the Labour in a General Election in safe Army intervention in Afghanistan and the intervention of comrades from the miners strike, a defeatist and compliant Labour seats". The CPB/Morning Star Solidarnosc counterrevolution in Poland ICL at last autumn's miners conference trade union bureaucracy made her union­ bunch likewise blathered that the Mah­ is gone - on this one their position is in Donetsk stymied the attempt by the busting services less essential. Meanwhile, mood candidacy endangered the "labour counterrevolutionary through and through movement as a whole". and to the core. Workers Power stand Today Socialist Workers Party spokes­ four-square on the side of Yeltsin's barri­ man Paul Foot claims: "Everywhere cades and they're proud of it. In response to their American co-thinkers, who in the Counter­ among socialists, there is a frisson of face of the ascendance of the forces of revolutionary excitement that at last it looks as if the capitalist reaction in the Soviet Union scum Veitsin Tories are on the way out, and that for the first time in many people's adult lives, now feel somewhat ill at ease with ped­ with US dling the line of a "united front" with the imperialist the British people will elect a Labour Yeltsinites against theWUPt Workers warmonger Bush. government" (Socialist Worker,9 Novem­ Power argues: " ... it was necessary to 6' Both men long ber). This "frisson of excitement" at the for the .. prospect of a Labour government is re­ form a common front of resistance, a military and class struggle bloc with those capitalist peated throughout the fake left, if forces and with their leaders. . .. A part of " enslavement of nowhere else. Their differences are trivial - the entrists plump for Kinnock from this united front call would have been to the Soviet fight alongside the 'democrats' and the working masses. within the Labour Party, while Cliff & Co will fight for a Kinnock victory in the Yeltsinites to defend all the centres of general election from outside. The bot­ resistance to the coup including the tom line for the SWP is, just as for Mili­ RSFSR parliament (the 'White House')." AFL-CIA and UDM scum to get the the working people, the millions of unem­ tant, "socialists, quite rightly, vote La­ Workers Power spelled out in the Soviet miners to condemn Scargill. ployed, the burgeoning thousands of bour" (Socialist Review, November 1991). clearest possible terms that for them the Most recently, Kinnock vetoed the homeless, the poverty-stricken students, Workers Power explains: "Once the atten­ defence of "general (bourgeois) demo­ selection of NUM nominee Ken Capstick, the black, Asian, Irish and other minor­ tion of the working class becomes focused cratic rights" was the order of the day. vice-chairman of the Yorkshire NUM and ities facing increased fascist terror and on the election of a Labour government, Backing capitalist "democracy" against Scargill supporter. Scargill himself, who police harassment, the Scottish working simply urging people to ignore Labour the dictatorship of the proletariat, still plumps for "unity" with arch-scab people first singled out for the poll-tax will not win anyone to a revolutionary whether under Lenin and Trotsky or Kinnock, at least partially recognises the treatment, the gays and lesbians under perspective. We have to focus the illu­ deformed by Stalinism, has been the stakes in the Soviet Union. At a meeting the gun of draconian legislation and sions and aspirations of millions of calling card of the social democracy since he attended in Liverpool in September, vicious state persecution - to name only workers into activity and into clear Karl Kautsky's attacks on the Bolshevik the Morning Star industrial correspondent some - are getting offered more of the demands on Labour that it act in the regime. Workers Power is aiming in a Isolda McNeill was asked from the floor same by the Tories and Labour alike. interest of the working class." straight line towards the social demo­ whether they stood with miners in Siberia When a Militant supporter, Leslie Workers Power is in fact a nearly cratic camp. striking against the coup, ie, in response Mahmood, ran in the 4 July Walton by­ perfect index of the rightward motion of The recent events in the Soviet Union to Yeltsin's call. Her reply was yes. Scar­ election against the official Labour candi­ the British left. Having lurched to the left showed that there's not much left in gill replied: date, it opened up a "tactical" debate on

Spartacist League ~ class series Six at the time of their release also made Dessie Ellis ... a point of thanking the British people and (Continued from page 2) have continued to champion the cause of the Tottenham Three. These links are important and the lesson must be taken ·'i~~~.~~~ True vengeance for the victims of British to heart that British and Irish workers Dates: 16 November, 30 November injustice will be exacted only when vic­ and oppressed, both South and North, Time and Venue: Saturdays, 3pm torious workers revolution sweeps this Catholic and Protestant must forge bonds against the common enemies: the ruling Holborn Library, 32-38 Theobalds Road WC1 rotten, racist capitalist system away, along (Nearest tube: Holborn or Chancery Lane) with its Labour Party quislings who sent classes of Britain and Ireland - South the British troops into Northern Ireland and North. Smash extradition and the Leon Trotsky's The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the and rammed through the Prevention of PTA! For the immediate unconditional Fourth International (The Transitional Programme) is a basic reading Terrorism Act. withdrawal of British troops from North­ for the class series. Once back in Dublin Dessie Ellis said: ern Ireland! Not Orange against Green "I . would like to thank the people in - but class against class! No forcible All readings are available from the Spartacist League Britain for their help. I hope the British reunification! For an Irish workers repub­ For more information: call 071-485 1396 or people will take on board the message lic within a socialist federation of the that Ireland is unfree." The Birmingham British Isles!. write to Spartacist League, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU

8 .WQRKERS HAMMER Britain of centrism, those who are "revo­ CPGB has functioned for decades as a time Leninist has shown its soft under­ government to launch an international lutionary in word, but reformist in deed". third-rate Labour Party. And one would belly on the Labour Party question; it brigade to fight the CIA-backed mujahe­ The overwhelming majority of the fake have to look long and hard for a more also supported the Mahmood "Real din when Gorbachev treacherously with­ Trotskyists were unashamedly on the obsequious pro-Labour outfit than the Labour" campaign in Liverpool. During drew the Red Anny-the opening shot Yeltsinite barricades for counterrevol­ NCP. Predictably New Worlcer's front­ the Gulf War it refused to take a side for in wholesale retreat in the face of imperi­ ution. It was left to the small Revolution­ page article ("Campaign for a Labour the defeat of USjBritish imperialism. alism. Claiming that counterrevolution ary Internationalist League (RIL), seek­ victory", 'IT September) pleaded: "The This dovetailed with the line of the "left" was inevitable, they belittled our concen­ ing to occupy the niche Workers Power right-wing position of Neil Kinnock and Labourites, who called for UN interven­ tration of forces in Germany at the time once did, to try to maintain a foot in both the leadership should not deter anyone tion and economic sanctions, thereby of the beginnin~ of political revolution in camps. While opposing a "united front" from campaigning for a Labour victory." playing their role in whipping up social­ the DDR, when the struggle against with Yeltsin, RIL called on Soviet Unlike the bulk of the left, the Leninist patriotic sentiment against Iraq. unification under capitalism was the workers to observe Yeltsin's strike call. (aka the Provisional Central Committee In their Brent election leaflet you front-line. Only 24 hours after Yeltsin's While claiming it wanted to "fight" capi­ of the Communist Party of Great Britain) won't find the word "internationalism"; countercoup they declared that "genuine talist restoration, it attacked our call on claims it is not supporting Labour. It is indeed, with the exception of a passing, communists should briefly mourn before Moscow workers to clean out the coun­ running four candidates, claiming to be sneering reference to the collapse of getting on with the job of organising on terrevolutionary rabble outside the Rus­ "a genuine working class alternative to "Soviet socialism" there is no mention of the basis of the lessons our defeat in the sian parliament. Calling for workers to the true blue Tories of John Major and anywhere outside the British Isles. Nor USSR teaches". Its premature writing-off sweep away the barricades defending the pale pink 'Tories' under Neil Kin­ did this grotesque parochialism and Len­ of the Soviet Union, and its abdication of Yeltsin would have meant a military bloc nock". However, Leninist's peculiar ver­ inist's conciliation with Labourite chau­ proletarian internationalism, fuelled by with any of the coup forces that moved to sion of standing candidates against vinism fall from the skies. Although flirt­ defeatism about the revolutionary capac­ crush the Yeltsinites. This is the sticking Labour is to offer "minimum demands" ing at times with Trotskyist terminology, ity of the proletariat, defme its trajectory point with the RIL. As we noted in our to Ken Livingstone - Labour candidate Leninist never broke fundamentally from not towards communism but the camp of last issue: "in an armed struggle pitting in Brent - and if he "publicly commits" socialism in one country which Trotsky social democracy. outright restorationists against recalci­ himself to these "then we will stand down characterised as follows: "To approach The working people and oppressed of trant elements of the bureaucracy, de­ and work flat out for his victory". In fact, the prospects of a social revolution within these isles do need a revolutionary work­ fence of the collectivised economy would there is probably nothing in the Leninist's national boundaries is to fall victim to the ing-class alternative to the Labour Party. have been placed on the agenda whatever reformist electoral programme - cen­ same national narrowness which consti­ Such a party will be based on a prole­ the Stalinists' intentions. Trotskyists tring on opposition to cuts, racial and tutes the substance of social-patriotism" tarian internationalist programme, built in would have entered a military bloc with sexual oppression, the right to a decent (Third International After Lenin, p53). combat against the social democracy and 'the Thermidorian section of the bureau­ job, immediate and unconditional with­ Oscillating between a search for a its camp followers whose hostility towards cracy against open attack by capitalist drawal of British troops from Ireland­ progressive wing of the bureaucracy and the October Revolution has been and is counterrevolution', as Trotsky postulated that the slick left-Labourite Livingstone classless appeals for "democracy", the inextricably linked with defence of capi­ in the 1938 Transitional Programme." The could not pay lip service to. Leninist was particularly disdainful of talism at home. We in the ICL are com­ RIL's imbibing of social-democratic "anti­ Leninist doesn't take Livingstone out revolutionary internationalist struggle to mitted to the perspective of building this Stalinism" means it can't stomach being for what he really is - a class traitor in mobilise proletarian forces to defend the revolutionary party as part of the struggle in a bloc with Stalinists even in defence his own right and one firmly committed gains of October at key points. Thus they to reforge the Fourth International, world of a workers state - just as the RIL's US to a Kinnock victory. This is not the first sneered at our proposal to the Afghan party of socialist revolution .• cohorts supported Solidamo~c against Jaruzelski's countercoup in 1981. When it comes to the Labour Party, RIL's call is to "give critical electoral support to La­ bour" - ie a vote to Kinnock. We are the party of the Russian Workers Hammer welcomes Revolution Among the disintegration products of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the ex-CPGB and its one-time rival the our new subscribers ··Oorbacbevite CPB . combine slavish Congratulations to all comrades on the Labourism with capitulation to the forces completion of the autumn 1991 Workers of capitalist counterrevolution. The New Hammer SUbscription drive undertaken Communist Party (NCP), while support­ jointly by the London and Glasgow ing the pathetic perestroika coup which branches of the Spartacist League/Britain refused to mobilise against the Yeltsinite and the Dublin Spartacist Youth Group. centre at the Moscow "White House", at A total of 388 points were sold, repre­ least had the gut impulse to recognise the senting 123 per cent of the quota of 315. Yeltsinites for the counterrevolutionaries This represents 74 joint subscriptions to they are. In the aftermath of Yeltsin's Workers Hammer/Workers Vanguard, 60 countercoup the NCP calls for defence of single subs to Workers Hammer, 95 Cuba and "the remaining countries of Women and Revolution subs as well as a socialism" while apparently conceding number of subs to other ICL sectional victory to counterrevolution in the USSR. periodicals. Individual winners this year But as we have stressed the outcome is were London comrades Debbie and Mike not yet decided. Unlike the Stalinist NCP, who tied with 48.5 points each; honour­ we do not equate the pathetic last gasp of able mention goes to Pat (London) with Soviet Stalinism with the destruction of 39 points and Ali in Glasgow with 38. the workers state. The multi-millioned This year's sub drive took place in the state apparatus including the army has aftermath of the botched coup and Yel­ not been dismantled and a proletarian tsin's counterrevolutionary countercoup in mobilisation against the Yeltsin/Gorba­ the Soviet Union. Our headline "Bank­ chev forces could throw back the counter­ rupt Stalinism opens floodgates to capital­ revolutionaries. And we are ftghting to ist restoration/Soviet workers: Defeat forge a genuinely Leninist vanguard party Yeltsin-Bush counterrevolution" was in the USSR with this perspective not sharply counterposed to the social demo­ least because the destruction of the Soviet crats and pseudo-Trotskyists who com­ Union and its return to capitalism would WORKERSIIAMMER prise their "left" tail. We also were able Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League represent a world-historic defeat for the to offer the first publication of the Dublin workers of the world, increasing the Spartacist Youth Group "Ireland: workers prospect of imperialist attack against the to power!" during the course of the sub remaining deformed workers states as drive; some 64 were sold in Dublin. C 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer for £3 well as giving a massive impulse towards Workers Hammer warmly welcomes our (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £6.00) an inter-imperialist World War III. new readers and subscribers to Workers C 1·year subSCription to Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, As Leninists and Trotskyists we have Vanguard and Women and Revolution .• stood for the unconditional military Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £8.00 All above subscriptions include Spartacist, organ of the International defence of the Soviet Union while assert­ Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) ing the necessity of extending the gains of SL/B & DSYG October through international proletarian Joint sub drive C 3 issues of Women & Revolution for £1.50 revolution. This is diametrically opposed Name ______to the Stalinist lie of "socialism in one Final totals country" and its corollary-popular­ Address ______frontist class collaboration in the capital­ Quota Pta % ist countries. While there are elements in Dublin 75 75 100 Postcocie Telephone ______the NCP and other CPs that subjectively Glasgow 70 88 126 want to defend the Soviet Union from London 170 225 132 Make chequee payable/poet to: Spartaclet Publlcatlone, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU capitalist restoration, they have been Total 315 388 123 trained in a reformist ~ool in which the

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1991 9 read: "Unity! Solidarity! For the Rights Moscow ••• of Working People!" However, a placard (Continued from page 5) saying "Free Prices Mean Death for the People!" caught the angry and desperate that "an Australian woman representative mood of the Soviet working class. of the International Communist League", asked why she had come, responded: For a Leninist-Trotskyist partyl "The October Revolution was directed to the whole world. What is happening with Last year the Soviet Union had a near­ you these days is a blow to communists in record grain harvest of almost 220 million tons. Yet there were still severe food all countries." shortages as the distribution system In other Soviet cities similar, though collapsed due to massive hoarding, smaller, Revolution Day demonstrations speculation and black marketeering. This were held. In Leningrad, several thousand year the grain harvest has fallen to 165 militants, including a number of sailors in million tons, the lowest level in ten years. uniform, gathered next to the historic bat­ Everyone is expecting food riots, which tleship Aurora, which played a key role in have already begun to spread, this winter. the Bolsheviks' seizure in 1917 of the "A revolt would be most likely in Decem­ Winter Palace, site of Kerensky's provi­ ber," predicts Major General Viktor sional government. One speaker declared: Ivanenko, head of the KGB in the "Our duty is to not allow the restoration Russian Republic. Moscow News (13 of capitalism in our country! We will not October) even predicted "Putsch-2", a be lackeys of American imperialism!" new coup coming off desperate blow-ups Over 300 pieces of Spartacist literature Dar Spiegel over hunger. were sold to the Revolution Day And everyone in Russia knows it was demonstrators in Leningrad. A hundred All the old crap returns: Russian Orthodox priest on barricades at YeHsln'. "White House". food riots by women workers in February copies of ICL literature were sold at the 1917 which set off the revolution that Kiev'demonstration by members of the nationalist strife - border wars, inter­ override previous legislation. toppled the tsarist autocracy. The Union of Socialist Students of the communalist pogroms - such as are now In an attempted show of strength, Yeltsinite "democrats" rightly fear that Ukraine. An additional 800 pieces of ravaging Yugoslavia. We Leninist­ would-be Tsar Boris decreed a state of food riots could spark their overthrow, Spartacist literature were sold to Trotskyists stand for proletarian political emergency in the Chechen-Ingush Auto­ too. The ''black colonel" Viktor Alknis, a Revolution Day demonstrators in other revolution to reforge the Soviet Union on nomous Region - a traditionally Muslim leading figure among the "patriots", provincial centres. the socialist basis of genuine national enclave in the northern Caucasus which foresees Soviet army officers and ranks The most dramatic confrontation took equality. had declared its independence from the supporting and joining popular protests place in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Russian Republic-and threatened to against the new regime. However, Alknis Some 5000 demonstrators, organised by, Would-be Tsar Boris decrees send in Soviet troops. This move was so is no enemy of a market economy. Far among others, the Union of Toilers of "free market" starvation flagrantly dictatorial and inflammatory from it. He is an outspoken advocate of the Ukraine, marched from an outlying "People will suffer but we have to go that even Yeltsin's supporters in the "the Chilean model" for a strong Soviet cemetery to a statue of Lenin in the through this," declared Boris Yeltsin as Russian parliament came out against it (capitalist) state. central city. En route they were blocked he announced his new economic shock and he backed off. The question of how to ensure food by a sizable number of Ukrainian treatment. All price controls are to be In a small way Yeltsin's retreat over supplies was ever-present on Revolution nationalists and fascists in fighting uniforms. But the column broke through the blockade and continued on while the rightists harassed the march from the o sides. As they reached the Lenin statue, gO .20.0 1. Karel'skaya the column again had to pierce a 2. Komi nationalist/fascist blockade in order to lay Ji14!9 3. Mordovskaya flowers commemorating the founder of 'P'. 4. Chuvashskaya the Soviet workers state. As the demon­ 5. Mariyskaya stration dispersed and thinned, they were 6. Tatarskaya attacked by the nationalists and several 7. Udmurtskaya demonstrators suffered serious injuries. 8. Bashkirskaya 9. Kabardino­ The principal organisers of the 7 Balkarskaya November demonstrations were drawn 10. Severo-Osetinskaya from a rump of the so-called "patriotic" 11. Checheno- wing of the Stalinist movement: the Ingushskaya 12. Kalmytskaya Moscow Workers Council, the United J:"E'Of~ATIVE ~ Front of Toilers (OFT) and a broader ~ 13. Dagestanskaya 14. Abkhazskaya umbrella group, "Toiling Moscow". The 15. Adzharskaya Moscow Workers Council's Viktor An­ 16. Nakhichevanskaya pilov postures as a hard opponent of 17. Kara-Kalpakskaya Yeltsin, but simply wants to tum the 18. Tuvinskaya clock back before 1987, with a "peres­ 19. Buryatskaya I :=3 Soviet Soc,al,s! Republ,cs(namedl troika" (restructuring) of the CPSU. 20. Yakutskaya These Stalinists played on working-class me Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (1- 20) 'm 1000 opposition to Gorbachev and Yeltsin's privatisation before the August coup, but PergamonP..... when the decisive moment came, they Soviet Union united over a hundred peoples. Drive for capitalist restoration has sparked orgy of nationalist strife. unctitically subordinated themselves to Return to the Internationalist programme of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevlksl the bankrupt and ineffectual "Gang of Eight" and failed to mobilise any of their lifted by the year's end. Unprofitable Chechen-Ingush points up the funda­ Day. The Moscow Workers Council working-class base to go after the enterprises are to be shut down. Collec­ mental weakness of his position. For the called for "Distribution of Goods Under Yeltsinite spearhead of counterrevolution. tive farms are to be privatised. And the popular mood is turning markedly against Control of the Workers!" Another central economic ministries will be the "democrats", ie open capitalist-res­ grouping, Toiling Moscow, called for Now in opposition, they are appealing dismantled. So Yeltsin decreed. But torationists, who are now held responsible putting "under WORKERS' AND to narrow economic concerns linked to carrying out this programme of even for the hyperinflation, shortages of food PEASANTS' CONTROL prices and the Russian nationalism. Thus an early call greater immiseration of the Soviet and everything else, and the overall wages of the 'democrats' and bandits, for Revolution Day issued by the Moscow working people is another matter. descent into economic chaos. A poll by partycrats and speculators and FORCE Workers Council concluded with the In the two and a half months following the Moscow Sociological Agency in late THEM to work". Workers control is slogan: "No to the physical and spiritual the Kremlin coup attempt in August, October showed 65 per cent of Mus­ indeed, urgently, necessary. But popular genocide of the Russian peoples!" Yet in jockeying between Yeltsin's Russian covites believe the political and economic resistance to "free market" starvation can the city of Moscow itself, about half the Republic, Gorbachev and the nationalist situation is the same or worse than preserve the Soviet Union on a socialist industrial workforce is from non-Russian leaders of the non-Russian republics before the August coup attempt. basis only by breaking from the policies republics - Ukrainians, Caucasians, produced a power vacuum at the centre The imperialist godfathers of Yeltsin, of the parasitic, nationalist bureaucracy Turkic-speaking Central Asians. Trying to of the fractured Soviet Union. As the im­ Popov & Co are worried about working­ which led the Soviet Union to disaster. outbid the Yeltsinite counterrevolution­ perialists complained that the country was class opposition to capitalist coun­ Workers resistance will immediately face aries in appeals to Great Russian drifting, in late October Yeltsin moved to terrevolution in Russia. One can already the question of power, and to succeed it nationalism is poison and anathema to reassert himself as the strongman of the see the beginnings of this. In late requires the leadership of a genuinely ihe struggle for a genuinely socialist counterrevolution by announcing a "free October, the Moscow Federation of communist, ie Leninist-Trotskyist party. union of soviet republics. market" shock treatment and demanding Labour Unions organised a march of up The Stalinist "patriots" at bottom have In their own way, many of the Russian sweeping dictatorial powers. The Russian to 50,000 against the price increases. The no alternative to the market. The Stalinist "patriots" accept the disin­ parliament duly voted him the right to Federation leaders did not challenge Yel­ "maximum programme" of Anpilov's tegration of the USSR along national ban all elections and referenda for more tsin/Popov and their "free market" newspaper Molniya offers a lot of left lines. But the break-up of the Soviet than a year, cancel all legislation passed programme as such but rather adopted a verbiage, but in practice the "minimum Union would necessarily produce bloody by local and regional assemblies, and defensive posture. Their main banner programme" (the real programme) takes

10 WORKERS HAMMER over: as was the case in last summer's class. The disintegration of the USSR Russian presidential campaign, when cannot be halted by Stalinist "patriotism", Molniya supported the candidacy of the which increasingly has taken the form of anti-Semite Makashev, who was for narrow Russian nationalism. Only the "equality of all property forms"! programme of proletarian inter­ Moscow mayor Popov has decreed that nationalism, carried out by a communist basic foodstuffs - bread, meat, butter vanguard with a multinational cadre, can and eggs - are to be rationed by reforge the Soviet Union on the basis of coupons. Control over the means of life national equality and socialist economic must be wrested from this lackey of Wall planning. Street and Frankfurt. Workers com­ For decades, the oppressive, corrupt mittees must be set up to oversee the dis­ and parasitic Kremlin oligarchy falsely tribution of food, smashing the claimed the historic mantle of Lenin's stranglehold of parasitic petty traders, Bolshevik Party. In reality, it was the black marketeers and pro-capitalist Trotskyist Left Opposition which pre­ bureaucrats who would become Russia's served and carried forward the revo­ new capitalist exploiters. The vast lutionary internationalist programme of quantities of foodstuffs they are hoarding Red October. Stalin, under the banner of must be seized and defended, which "building socialism in one country", was requires the formation of workers defence the gravedigger of the revolution, whose committees, ie the nucleus of workers surviving cadre he murdered in the Great ' militias, in coordination with pro-socialist Purge of the 1930s. It is urgently elements of the Soviet Army. necessary to build a new Bolshevik party The attempts to victimise national in the Soviet Union, uniting the most minorities, to rip apart the multinational class-conscious workers with revolutionary Soviet proletariat while giving free rein to Marxist intellectuals. Only under the monarchists and Pamyat thugs and leadership of such an authentic. com­ pardoning Nazi war criminals, must be munist party, section of a reforged Fourth Novo6Ii met by organised multinational workers International, can the Soviet working Red soldiers demonstrate for communism in Moscow, 1917. defence guards. class and its allies defeat the forces of These urgently necessary measures can bloody capitalist counterrevolqtion. be a step in creating organs of proletarian for a programme of all-sided workers programme is actually carried out. The dual power to challenge and overthrow control as the indispensable means to authors of this programme must be Reprinted from Worfcen Vanguard the Yeltsin/Gorbachev counterrevolu­ prevent famine. In this situation of dual overthrown by the revolutionary working no 539, 22 November 1991. tionary gang. Independent workers power, in which the shaky capitalist committees must be formed in factories, government had ordered a rise in food mines, railway yards and other enterprises prices, he emphasisei: "For only the pushing the Mitterrand/Cresson govern­ to prevent lay-offs and privatisation by winning of power by the proletariat, France ••• ment to send in the police. But in the taking plants and controlling production. headed by the Bolshevik Party, can put present climate of social tension, particu­ (Continued from page 7) Such workers committees can be the an end to the outrageous actions of larly after the police charge against strik­ basis for genuine soviets, drawing into Kerensky and Co. and restore the work of ing nurses, this could easily backfrre. the racist climate which Le Pen's fascist their ranks collective farmers, oppressed democratic food distribution, supply and Above all: Cleon must not stand alone! movement feeds on as murderous attacks minorities, working women, Red Army other organisations, which Kerensky and Many Renault-Cleon strikers recall mount against "immigrant" workers and soldiers and officers, old-age pensioners his government are frustrating. The with pride that their plant was among the youth. - all those who will be victimised by the Bolsheviks are acting. .. as the represen­ frrst to mobilise during the general strike "new order". But authentic soviets must tatives of the interests of the whole of May 1968. But they must also draw the become organs for the struggle for people.... " The crisis of revolutionary lessons of May '68, which was stabbed in power. Revolutionary leadership is the The historic catastrophe now facing leadership the back by the national leadership of the key. Soviet working people cannot be pre­ Since the combative strike of railway PCF and the union tops who hoped to __ -~well-kn0Wlr1lrticle, "The Im- vented or even softened by. defensive workers five years ago, strikes in France bring in a "left" government of the capi­ pending Catastrophe and How to Combat economic struggles. Trade-union activism have often seen the formation of strike talist state. What that powerful general It", written in September 1917 on the eve cannot prevent mass unemployment and coordinating committees, as is the case in strike lacked was a leadership with the of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin called hyperinflation if the Wall Street/Yeltsin the present nurses strike. These have programme and determination to lead the served to bridge the several unions, and mobilisation forward to workers revol­ have frequently escaped from the iron ution. And now ten years of "left" gov­ control of Stalinist CGT and social-demo­ ernment has demonstrated the bank­ cratic CFDT bureaucrats. French workers ruptcy of the popular front as it relent­ are justifiably distrustful of the reformist lessly drives down the living standards of union leaderships which led them into the working people and persecutes North support for Mitterrand. However, as African "immigrants". Lenin explained in his classic work What The Ligue Trotskyste banner at the Is To Be Done? the spontaneous organis­ Paris demonstration during the one-day ation of workers cannot alone resolve the general strike of 24 October declared: problem of leadership. "Break with Mitterrand! For a May '68 Contents: In the microcosm of this key strike, it that goes all the way!" As its 19 October is being shown with crystal clarity how supplement to Le Bolchevik declared: New, lengthy Introduction presents Stalinism and social democracy sabotage "The Mitterrand government is in a Trotskyist perspective on the the most elementary workers struggles. desperate straits but defends the inter­ developments in the Soviet Union. While Cli~on strikers at a 1 November ests of capitalism with hammer and Trotskyism: What It Is general assembly chanted "tenir, tenir, tongs. Every thoroughgoing workers Published in English as "Trotskyism: tenirf' (hold on) at every mention of struggle becomes a political struggle What It Isn't and What It Is!" going back, L 'Humanire claimed the which calls out for a class-struggle leadership. To win, working-class mili­ February 1990. An in-depth analysis workers were "ready to take down the tants must therefore get rid of the of the real positions of revolutionary picket lines if Renault management would Trotskyism against the revisionist bureaucrats who have been completely currents, particularly in light of guarantee that negotiations would begin corrupted through class collaboration, the events in Germany. on proposals for a minimal specified in order to construct a revolutionary wage increase and no reprisals"! Mean­ workers party. Such a party will fight Three pieces from the intervention of J while, the regional CFDT called for "all for a workers government to expropri­ the ICL into the upheavals in the DDR 5000 Cleon workers" (ie, including the ate capitalism and put an end once and during the last year including for all to this social system which trans­ What the Spartaclsts Want and letters Reprints from Leon Trotsky's writings: scabs) to meet in front of the factory to From the Transitional Program "vote" on the strike. forms into misery the enormous riches to soldier comrades distributed to produced by the workers." Soviet troops stationed in the DDR. "The USSR and Problems of the With the strikers holding firm, the Transitional Epoch" hardline Renault management and many Reprinted from Worfcen Vanguard Also contains: Chapter V of The Revolution Betrayed in the media, including Le Monde, are no 538, 8 November 1991. "The Soviet Thermldor" In Defense of Marshal Tukhachevsky Translated from Workers Vanguard Break the Blockade! No. 321, 14 January 1983. Refutation Letter to the Embassy of the USSR of slanders against one of the Red "Imperialist Encirclement Spartacist League/Britain Army's most brilliant leaders. Endangers USSR" Glasgow PO Box 150 London PO Box 1041 When Was the Soviet Thermldor? Glasgow G3 6DX London NW5 3EU From Spartacist, English edition, 56 pages 041-332 0788 071-485 1396 No. 43-44, Summer 1989. Price: 50 kopeks £1.00 Dublin Spartacist Youth Group Make cheques payable to/post to: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 2944 PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Dublin 1 01-974617

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1991 11 ~ . ,-'~,J.--\ ~'l;il" ',.~ :". " .... ' .. f,.: '.' , __ • " ••.. "'I~ ..... " ..... t;lo WORKERS Glasgow: protesters foil first warrant sale Labour council sheriff's men sent packing GlASGOW - In Scotland some two and back to their rightful owners. ernment in the middle of the great prominent Glasgow supporter Bill Black­ a half million summary warrants for the " 'NO ARRESTS WERE MADE' dis­ miners strike to increase rates rather than stock, we read that the SNP ''with its recovery of poll tax arrears - 200 million approved the Glasgow Evening Times. countenance strike action by Liverpool attractive and radical social policies" has pounds plus in Strathclyde where non­ Well, the working class are not organised workers, to the public threat to shop anti­ made the Young Scottish NationaIists payment has been put at 84 per cent­ to carry out arrests yet, but there are poll tax demonstrators after the police (YSN) the "strongest youth branch of any testify.to the depth of opposition to the those who are pledged to stop these riot in Trafalgar Square - Militant's Scottish political party" (Milittmt, 4 Octo­ hated poll tax, dead but yet unburied. criminals, these animals called 'SHER­ spineless Labourite treachery is well ber). In a centre-page article in the 20 When Margaret Thatcher, the chief archi­ IFFS MEN' from kicking in doors and known. Militant opposes the elementary September issue, Milittmt worries that a tect and advocate of the poll tax, went stealing from the poor. demand for the immediate removal of fourth Tory term could see Scotland down the tubes last November, the poll "This class victory ended on one sour British troops from Northern Ireland. It delivered into the arms of the SNP unless tax was politically killed off - but the victimisations continue against those who refused to pay. In Scotland, used as a guinea-pig for the tax .and sharply hit by the devastation of industry, the Tory party is almost irrelevant, running a poor third behind Labour and the Liberal Demo­ crats. We print below a slightly edited eye-witness account by a Workers Ham­ mer supporter of the defeat of the first attempted warrant sale in Scotland. What our reporter demonstrated is that Labour, no less than the Tories, is committed to attacking the working class, to admin­ istrating the same vicious, oppressive capitalist system.

"On the cold grey morning of October 1st, in a constant drizzle, just after lUx) am, a spokesperson for lABOUR CON­ TROLLED Strathclyde Regional Council was forced to announce the cancellation Jell of the first Scottish poll tax 'warrant sale' Glasgow, 1 October: angry antI-poll tax demonstrators confront cops as protest forces Labour Council sheriffs to turn of the furniture of a working class Port tail and abandon warrant sale. Glasgow family. "This 'total victory' by [about 400] anti­ note! After the ritual hanging of an effigy functioned as lackeys for the war­ Labour campaigns on a "socialist" pro­ poll tax protesters followed a three plus of Maggie Thatcher, Tommy Sheridan, mongering Labourite/CND crowd during gramme: ie, one that ''will demand that a hour siege of the lABOUR council's despite his earlier handling by the the Gulf War-calling for a general Scottish parliament begins to transform former police station in Turnbull Street Glasgow polis, still needed to touch his election to put Kinnock into No 10 and Scottish society in the interests of the near Glasgow Cross. forelock to them. He explained to the fingering to the cops those in the Spart­ working class"! For Militant, a "Scottish "Strathclyde's Labour Council Executive crowd that the 'boys with the funny hats' acist League who called for the defeat of parliament" is to be achieved through the had planned well, seeking out the safe (Police) also had friends and family who the bloody BritishfUS imperialists in the toothless "Scottish Constitutional Conven­ premises of a former police station and did not pay the poll tax. As the Militant War. Crowning Militant's reformist "s0- tion" intended to circumvent demands for [sheriff officers] ABERNETHY, MC­ supporters upfront cheered their hero's cialism" is its call for an Enabling Act in independence. Militant's "Scottish parlia­ INTYRE & CO had aided and abetted mention of the 'Workers in Uniform' the "Mother of Parliaments" to na­ ment", the central orientation of its so­ by getting an interdict against Tommy those at the back moaned 'what's he tionalise the top 200 monopolies. called "Scottish turn", would be Sheridan and the whole Inverclyde Anti­ saying that for?' and sporadic shouts of And where it has stood against official Liverpool City Council writ large. If you Poll Tax Union. No auctioneers would '£xxx the Polis' broke out. Kinnockites, as in the Liverpool by-elec­ liked Derek Hatton, you'll love Tommy touch" it, but the 'socialists' of the "But the Battle continues! 'MILITANT' tion in July, Militant offers no political Sheridan. REGION 'justifIed' their loyalty to the often quotes the 1916 Glasgow Rent alternative to the Labour Party. On the As for the gentlemen of the SNP, capitalist state by whining that the worthy Strike but it never mentions two con­ contrary, it desperately tries to breathe these aspiring rulers of a devolved capi­ councillors might be 'surcharged' by Her clusions of that period - One, the cam­ life into what Rosa Luxemburg called the talist Scotland fear and loathe the un­ Majesty's Government if they did not paign was won by industrial strike action "stinking corpse" of social democracy, leashing of the social power of the work­ proceed with the 'sale'. and, two, the leaders of that Campaign pledging itself to "Real Labour" policies ing class. The SNP is happy to be the "The working class of Glasgow correctly rejected the Labour Party (much more and to a "majority Labour government lapdog of the imperialists - including identilled every individual in civvies as socialist in that time) as sell out elected at the earliest opportunity" (Mili­ English imperialists - so long as it gets 'scabs' when they appeared behind the reformists and went on to form the Com­ tant, 7 June). It is precisely for this rea­ its own piece of turf to oppress and thin blue line, whether they were 'SHER­ munist Party." son that we did not advocate even the exploit (an independent Scotland as part IFFS MEN', from the council or what­ • • • most critical support to Lesley Mahmood, of the EC). And the NATO-loving SNP is ever. Between bursts of song, such as The Militant tendency, the leading the Militant candidate in Liverpool (see an ardent supporter of the counter­ 'NO WARRANT SALES IN SCOT­ political force in the Anti-Poll Tax "Labourites fall out in Liverpool", revolutionary, fascist-infested Baltic na­ lAND', these 'scabs' were harangued Unions, shares every bit the pro-capitalist Worlcers Hammer no 124, July/August tionalists such as the Lithuanian Sajudis. mercilessly. reformism of the Labour Party. Sheri­ 1991). For all its "can pay, won't pay" windbag­ "When victory was announced, the 400 dan's genuflection to the Glasgow police In Scotland the imposition of the poll gery, where the SNP have controlled strong cheered themselves and jeered the (Militant wants the cops to be in the tax is widely recognised as an aspect of councils, they-like the Labour Party­ opposition, breaking out into the warning unions!) is entirely of a piece with Mili­ national oppression. And the prolonged implemented the poll tax. chant of 'EASY! EASY!' and impromptu tant's Labourite and chauvinist loyalty to historical betrayals of the Labour Party What's needed is the forging of an congas. They refused to clear the yard British imperialist "democracy". From the -not least its enforcement of the Tory authentic communist alternative to the until the 'SHERIFFS MEN' set off back use of bailiffs against Liverpool rates poll tax - have fuelled the growth of Labour traitors and Tartan Tories of the to Port Glasgow with their tails between debtors in 1984-85 by Derek Hatton & Scottish nationalism. This is reflected in SNP in Scotland. Forward to a federation their legs, to return the poor few goods Co who struck a deal with the Tory gov- the pages of Militant, where in a letter by of workers republics in the British Isles! •

12 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1991