No 146 July/August 1995 30p Newspaper of the Silartacist League Racist state killing of Brian Douglas

On 3 May two cops from Kennington ation after being trussed up and pinned unemployment is more than 35 per Public relations exercises in "com­ police station in London stopped Brian to the floor, with thirteen feet of adhe­ cent, with Pakistani and Bangladeshi munity policing" cannot hide the brutal Douglas for a minor driving offence. sive tape wrapped around her head. unemployment four times that of reality. Calls for community control of Five days later Douglas died in hospi­ The cops, who were only charged with whites. Racial tension had been height­ the police are reformist chimeras and tal, the result of being beaten about the manslaughter, not murder, claimed that ened over the Lumb Lane "red light" demands for "independent" enquiries head with the new "American-style" they were simply following government area. In a dangerous twist, Asian are only invitations to cover up. Fascist police batons. The two police officers "procedures". Last October, Joseph vigilantes, with the tacit co-operation and racist attacks must be met with the responsible have been given "compas­ Nnalue died when he fell from a fourth of the police, have engaged in a reac- independent mobilisation of the multi­ sionate leave" to recover from "person­ floor window of his home after immi­ • tionary moralistic campaign to drive racial working class and its allies al trauma". Douglas is dead, the first gration police burst in. The acquittal of out prostitutes, both black and white. among the oppressed black and ASian killing with the new batons-another Joy Gardner's killers is a green light to This can only exacerbate tensions. communities. Full citizenship rights for black victim of the racist "law and or­ the police and immigration officials to Prostitution should be decriminalised. all foreign-bom workers and their fami­ der" of capitalist Britain. Over two terrorise refugees and asylum seekers, Unemployment, poor housing, deprived lies! Down with the racist immigration thousand people took to the streets in and an attempt to terrify black and schools, racial attacks and police ha­ and nationality laws! two angry protest demonstrations after Asian communities. rassment is what capitalist Britain It is capitalism which breeds racism the killing. On 9 and 10 June the anger of Asian offers minority youth. The Criminal and incites its guardians in blue to' act A few weeks later cops charged with youth boiled over in the Manningham Justice Act, which passed through with impunity against the oppressed. the manslaughter of Joy Gardner were district of Bradford, sparked by a po­ parliament unopposed by Tony "law Joy Gardner and Brian Douglas will acquitted. Special deportation and lice attack on an Asian family. Youth and order" Blair's Labour Party, pro­ never see justice, but the masses of extradition squad police and immigra­ battled with riot cops and on the sec­ vides cops with increased powers to other potential victims of this rotten tion officers stormed into her home on ond night attacked white-owned prop­ attack trade unions, blacks, Asians, system will, when capitalism is over­ 28 July 1993. Gardner died ofasphyxi- erty. In this heavily Muslim area male minorities and youth. thrown and workers rule established.

~ <. : Imperialist rivalry and the Balkan slaughter

Last month, American. warplanes flights and provide air cover for dle UN bombed Bosnian Serb forces, which re­ rapid-reaction force. TItis nwks a major sponded by taking British, French and step for post-reunification Genllany, wltich other UN "peacekeepers" hostage. Clinton has grown increasingly assertive since an­ then announced dlat US ground troops nexing East Gennany in 1989-90. Bonn would participate in "a reconfiguration and has already sent two warsltips to dle area, a strengdlening" of the UN forces. More and Gerntan officers are on board AWACS than 23,000 US military personnel were planes directing NATO air strikes, but dtis dispatched or readied for deployment to the move nlarks dle first combat ntission for Balkan region. On 3 June at a NATO Gerntan military forces since World War meeting in Paris, Pentagon chief Peny II. TIle decision is e.\.'peCted to be approved pledged US air support for a European by dle Bundestag (parliamcnt), and has "rapid reaction" force. Yet that same day, split dle opposition Social Democrats. following the downing of a US flier by Still, Gerntan war ntinistcr Volker Ruhc Serb anti-aircraft rockets, and facing an emphasised that Bundeswchr ground uproar by dle Republican-dominated Con­ troops will not be scnt to dle fonncr Yugo­ gress and a hostile public reaction, the slavia, whcre memories of dle Nazi inva­ American president backtracked, saying it sion are strong. was "extremely unlikely" US soldiers All of dlC partics involved in dle Balkan would be involved, and dlen only to evac­ blood-bath-the various Western imperial­ uate dle UN forces. ists, dlC Russians, dle local nationalists­ This kind of zigzag and double-talk is engagc in constant ntanoeuvres, back­ by no means unique to dle hapless and Darko Bandie stabbing and revefsals of policy. Therc inept Clinton gang. Far from it. Sound­ Swedish UN troops patrol Tuzla In central Bosnia. Balkan wars have exposed have been countless and contradictory UN ing macho, France's newly elected right­ and Intensified Imperialist rivalries. and NATO resolutions and "peace" plans, ist president, Jacques Chirac, declared continued on page J2 that French troops would no longer be keepers" being held hostage against fur­ "humiliated" by dle Serbs but would thcr NATO air strikcs, and dley are now now fight back. The new 12,500-strong talking of pulling out tlleir troops-the quick-reaction force has been set up for largest contingent of dle UNINATO just dlat purpose. The French aircraft forces in Bosnia-by tlle end ofdle year. carrier Foch was dispatched to the Adri­ TI1C latest development is dle decision atic to join the USS Theodore Roose­ on 26 Junc by dle Gerntan government to velt. At the same time, French officials . send amled forces to dle Balkans. Tonmdo were negotiating a private deal with figllter jets equipped widl sopltisticated Bosnian Serbs to release UN "peace- radar-jallU1ting equipment will join NATO COB headquarters in 1980. And around dte world, dte Bolivian army is reviled for Down witli~the Bolivian state of siege its mercenary role in the CIA assassi­ nation of Ernesto Che Guevara. The Partisan Defunce Committee has sent Tony Bcnn. But whilst speaking out USSR. Never mind dlat WP had sup­ Reprinted below is a statement distrib­ a message to the Bolivian embassy denounc­ uted by the Spartacist League/Britain at a against the anti-union attacks, various ported CIA-backed, reactionary Solid­ ing dte raids and arrests, dentanding the arnosc in Poland and stood in support of demonstration in London on 25 April, fake-left organisations like the Workers stage of siege be lifted and all victints of dte Yeltsin' s counterrevolutionary barricades protesting the brutal repression of trade Intcrnational League (WIL) and WP reactionary crackdown released. We call on unionists in Bolivia. Since then the COB postured as opponents of class collabora­ in Moscow, August 1991. working-class organisations and defenders of It was a Spartacist Lea~e speaker who union federation bowed to the state of tionism. Lcading WIL spokesman, Rich­ democratic liberties around dle world to join detailed our principled stance of defence siege and on I May callcd off its general ard Price said that the history of Bolivia in protesting dte Bolivian government's of the gains of October and opposition to strike. Soon after the teachers also re­ showed that it's fatal to rely on. petty dictatorial measures and assault on dte la­ treacherous popular front betrayal. As our turned to work after 50 days of hard strug­ bourgeois nationalists. However he didn't bour movement. TIle intentational working statement makes clear, class collabora­ gle. Several hundred unionists and leftists mention that his organisation called for a class holds dle government of President tionism has left a bitter legacy of defeat in are still being held under military law. vote to the ANC/COSATU/SACP, na­ Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada responsible for Bolivia. TIle proletariat of Bolivia desper­ On 18 May, a mccting org~ised by the tionalist popular front in the South Afri­ anything dtat 118ppens to dtose it has seized. ately needs its Bolshevik party. (Workers PowerlLcague for a Revolution­ can elections last year! Meanwhile a WP President Sanchez clearly intends to ary Conununist International-initiated) supporter cribbing from our statement, repeat his "exploit" of 1985-86, when after Bolivian Union Solidarity Conunittee described how Jeffrey Sachs had used defeating a march on La Paz by the nulitant drew over 100 people from the Icft and Bolivia as a guinea pig for capitalist re­ TIle state of siege decreed by dte Bolivian tin miners, tile govenunent in which sanchez labour movement including Labour MP, storationist policies in Poland and the government at midnight, April 19 is an was then dte economic czar simply closed assault on dle trade-union movement and a down dle state-Qwned mines. In March frontal attack on the rights of the working 1985, at dte height of a general strike, dte people and horribly impoverished masses of unions ltad effectively occupied the capital. Tory bastards brawl over Europe dlis Andean country. TIus act of force is But as in any real general strike, dle question aimed at smashing the general strike under was sltarply posed: which class SI1811 rule? way for dte last three weeks, which in turn TIle COB leaderslup under veteran caudillo Blah' stands ready to serve the City was called to back up dte 80,000 teachers, Juan Lechin did nodling, and eventually on strike for a mondt and a half against dte voted to disband dte occupation. Nor did government's plans to "privatise"-ie, liqui­ Lora's POR wage dte crucial fight to build As we go to press, the Tory party has reflects the most bitter division in the date-public education. WOIKCfS militias and workers councils (sovi­ erupted in internal warfare after prime ruling class since dle pre-World War II That these "exceptional measures" are ets) as tile velucle for a proletarian fight for minister 101m Major announced his resig­ fight between dle pro-Gennan faction of intended to behead the workers movement power. nation as party leader. Major hopes that Halifax and the equally anti-Soviet "anti­ was clearly shown by dte police raid on a In dle aftermadt of dus ignominious his coup de theatre will net him the large appeasement" camp of Churchill. It is national meeting of the Central Obrera defeat, dle nunlber of miners of dte state party vote of confidence needed to repair only dle latest round in the European Boliviana in the capital of La Paz where Comibol corporation was reduced from his damaged and frail leadership. Guar­ divide. Thatcher was brought down by over 100 COB leaders were arrested and 30,000 in 1986 to less titan 3,000 today. The dian conunentator Hugo Young called mass opposition to dle Poll Tax, which loaded onto trucks, hauled off to the mili­ rest were driven offdle altiplano and forced Major's action, "the only thrilling thing he intersected division over Europe inside her tary airport of El Alto and then flown to .to cultivate coca to survive. Meanwhile, has ever done" (23 June). But it may yet Cabinet, manifested in dte 1990 leader­ internal exile in disease-ridden jungle under dle watchword of "capitalisation" be the last "thrilling" thing he ever does, ship elections which she lost. Moreover areas of dte country. All together, more President sanchez and his family bought up particularly as festering Tory discontent dle "Eurosceptics" are criss-crossed with dlan 1000 workers, teachers, students, the most lucrative mines to line dteir own promises to involve aspiring leaders Mi­ dle hardline pro-Unionist faction of the. peasants and others have been arrested, pockets. Today dte Bolivian government chael Portillo and Michael Heseltine. But Tory party. It is dlis combination of anti­ and according to official figures more than seeks to bludgeon dte workers, teachers, Jolm Major and all dle Tory leadership Gennan xenophobia and Ulster Unionism 300 are presently being held in jails and students and peasants into submission to its contenders have been involved in dle gov­ which is catalysing Major's troubles. places of detention around Bolivia. ernment's grinding anti-working-class . Financial Times journalist Joe Rogaly starvation plans dictated from Washington. Above all, dlis is a brazen attempt to But even propped up on dlC bayonets of its austerity and union-busting, racist attacks remarked d18t there are three Tory parties install a "virtual dictatorship"-as COB against minorities and imperialist aggres­ in dle Commons'today: "The dtird Tory mercenary anny, the regime oflooter-in-chief leader Oscar Salas managed to exclaim sanchez de Losada will not rest easy. The sion against working people dle world party is led by Tony Blair" (24-25 June). before being dragged off-in order to over. Labour leader Tony "law and order" Blair US will not stand by its "denlocratic" would­ implement draconian "neo-liberal" auster­ be dictator when his usefulness is at an end Already the "squeaky clean Thatcher­ is waiting in dle wings. One of the reasons ity policies made in dte USA. Bolivia is ite" fonner Welsh Secretary Jolm Red­ he is popular widt dte bosses' press is dtat any more than it did widt earlier American touted as dle model for dle vicious "shock puppets, from Trujillo to Somoza. wood has announced his candidature. ap­ he represents the big business view, in­ treatment" of Harvard's expert in capital­ parently with Thatcher's blessing and the clined towards closer ties widt Europe. The proletariat ofdte altiplano has given ist starvation, Jeffrey Sachs, who based on magnificent examples of heroic struggle in support offonner Tory chancellor Nonnan Blair promises dtat under Labour capital­ his "success" in decimating the already Lamont. These connections alone proba­ ism will be safer than ever. It is dle most the almost half a century since dte tin bosses miserable living standards in Bolivia went of la rosca were driven from dteir palatial bly guarantee Redwood dle hatred of the right-wing leadership since Ramsay Mac­ on to devise similar plans to consolidate majority of dle population. He hopes to Donald openly betrayed the working class mansions. But at dte height of tile 1952 counterrevolution through impoverishing uprising by workers and peasants, the possi­ muster dle support of the Tory xeno­ by breaking widt Labour to head up a the workers in Poland and tlle USSR. phobes for a policy of massively increased bility of workers revolution was aborted as coalition "National Governnlent" in 1932. Dreamed up in academic think tanks, defence spending alongside a programme The Labourite fake left are predictably dte COB gave its backing to the same Na­ endorsed by Washington and Wall Street, tiooal Revolutionary Movement (MNR) that that evinces admiration for Newt Gingrich egging on Blair's electoral bid, but as we ordered by the IMF, dlese monstrous and dte American "New Right", promotes is today in power. At that crucial time Lora's said in Workers Hammer no 144: schemes are now being enforced by riot more religion in schools and a vendetta POR called for all power to the left wing of , "Miserable British capitalism, a sea of sticks and automatic rifles of the Bolivian dle bourgeois-nationalist MNR (led by against single parents. poverty and oppression. Miserable British government. In dlis, they are assisted by Lecllin) radler than fighting for a workers The B~,itish bourgeoisie is being tom Labourism, a puddle of cowardice and the DEA squads, who have trained tlle betrayal. It would be hard to dream up two • and peasants governntent. Two decades apart by dle results of dle end of the Cold notorious drug-trafficking "anti-drug" War and the dtreatened loss of its "special better arguments for the perspective of later, in 1971, dle POR fonned a "revolu­ building a revolutionary Marxist party, units of dle Bolivian military to unleash relationship" widl US imperialism. This is tionary front" widl army general Juan Jose coounitted to class struggle all the way up to terror against peasant coca growers. We Torres as the fraudulent "answer" to dte at dte heart of the Tory schism and dte smashing the capitalist state and establish­ demand: US imperialist agencies and dispute over "European integration". It ing a planned socialist economy.". coup by dictator Hugo Banzer. (Torres "advisors" out of Bolivia now! quickly laid down his arms.) In dte name of The mass arrest ofdte COB leadership Bolivian exceptiooalism, such all-too-typical took place even before dte "exceptional class collaboration has over and over been measures" were announced. Earlier that dle bane ofdleBolivian proletariat. WORKERSIIAMMER day, a squad ofdte Bolivian navy arrested What is necessary is a revolutionary peasant union leaders who were meeting vanguard party to lead dte class-conscious For a federation of workers republics In the British Islesl ~ in the town of Copacabana. And news Bolivian workers, at dle head of dle op­ For a Socialist United States of Europel dispatches report a raid by more than two pressed Aymara and Quechua Indian masses Newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the International dozen heavily armed police on dte resi­ and aided by dteir allies around dle globe, in Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). dence of Guillermo Lora, leader of dte the struggle to put an end to the capitalist EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Branche, Andrew Gatsos (Editor), Alec Gilchrist, Patrick Lardit, Eibhlin McDonald, Alan Mason, Len Michelson, Ellen Rawlings, David Strachan, Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Revolu­ tyranny wluch has meant dtat ever since Jo Watt (Managing editor) tionary Workers Party). The martyrdom of colonial tinlCS tIie base ofdle silver mountain PRODUCTION MANAGER: Lorraine Richards his brodter, mine workers leader Cesar of Potosi has been surrounded by Indian CIRCULATION MANAGER: Kathie Tennant Lora, vilely murdered by dte military 20 labourers' hovels. The wealdt of dUs long­ Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU years ago dtis July, is vividly remembered suffering land belongs to dtose who produce Subscriptions: £3 for 1 year, Europe outside Britain & Ireland £4, overseas airmail £7 by Bolivian workers, as is the murder of it! For an audlentic Bolivian Trotskyist Oplnl~s expressed In signed ertlcles or lelte.. do not nec:esaarlly express lhe edHorial Viewpoint. union and leftist leaders when dte Garcia party, built in dte struggle to reforge a Printed by Cherwell Valley LHhographlc LId (TU). ISSN 026703721 Meza junta assaUlted and demolished the del11ocratic-centraIist Fourdt International! •

2 WORKERS HAMMER ~Rartacist leaflet to AWL school Socialists have nothing to debate with Ken "8 special" Maginnis

The imperialist-brokered "peace deal" versy on campuses and in the National militaries, witll whom they are well con­ full pay and a sliding scale of wages and in Northern Ireland, under the heel of the Union of Students. We oppose state and nected. This C IS/Loyalist march attacked hours. Militant and Workers Liberty pay British Army, backed up by the sectarian university administration/student union left paper sellers at a London Labour lip service to working-class unity, while and heavily anned Royal Ulster Constabu­ bans and censorship of this group. Such Party conference (probably including some cosying up to Loyalist representatives. buy (RUC) and Royal Irish Regiment bans would set dangerous precedents and of Militant's own members), propelling They both uphold the (Unionist) tradition (RIR), is a fraud; a recipe for further sub­ necessarily partake of a racist expression Militant to cancel a planned London pub­ of the now-defunct Northern Ireland la­ jugation of the oppressed Catholic minor­ in this overwhelmingly white country with lic meeting. The Loyalist/fascist mob then bour Party, whose demise came about in ity and intensified communal conflict. Any its established Christian churches. But proceeded to Downing Street to protest large part because they refused to wage leftist organisation with a gut-level hatred notwithstanding that Hizb-ut-Tahrir draws John Major's "peace" process. even a minimal fight for civil rights for of imperialist rule would demand that the its support mainly from oppressed Muslim When Hutchinson proclaims himself a Catholics in the 1960s. British Army (butchers of the oppressed minorities and has been the target of reac­ "'!;ocialist", it has an alanning ring of What drives Workers Liberty 8lld Mili­ from Ireland to India) get out, and would tionruy racism, it is itself a racist, sexist, Strasserism, ie tllat wing of tlle Nazis tant to participate in this current white­ defend the Catholic population against the homophobic and anti-Jewish organisation which stressed "socialist" demagogy. wash of the most reactionruy forces of repressive forces of the state. Not so Sean .which denies the Holocaust. In predomi­ Trotsky repeatedly warned tlle German Ulster Unionism is their fundamental Matgamna's Alliance for Workers Liberty nantly Muslim countries, such an organi­ Communist Party of the dangers of adapt­ belief in the "democratic" nature of the (AWL), whose "weekend of socialist de­ sation is akin to the clerical fascists of the ing to this, and they repeatedly ignored his British state. Welcoming the representa­ bate" in London this 30 June to 2 July, National Salvation Party in Turkey or the warnings-part and parcel of their crimi­ tives of outright brutality against Catho­ entitled "Ideas for Freedom", features a Algerian fundamentalists who murder nal refusal to fight for an effective workers lics into leftist meetings is the rotten fruit "debate" with Ulster Loyalist politician unveiled women. Revolutionaries and united front to counter the fascists. Mili­ of sowing deadly illusions in imperialist Ken Maginnis! socialists have no business in debating tant honcho Peter Hadden took Hutchin­ "peace" schemes. This in tum is a product Exactly what does Ken Maginnis MP this outfit. And making "fme" distinctions son at his word and, obscenely invoking of their years-long adaptation to tlle Brit­ have to do with "workers liberty", and between "agreeing to argue" and "invit­ rhetoric against "sectarianism" and for ish Labour Party, which dispatched the what is there for socialists to "debate" ing" to debate, as does the Revolutionruy "workers unity", he welcomed the oppor­ army to Northern Ireland in 1969, and with him? He is the "security" spokesman International League in justifying its sup­ tunity to debate with "others who've which today backs Major to the hilt. Both of the Ulster Unionist Party and a paid porter's own debate with Hizb-ut-Tahrir come to socialism by different routes". organisations consistently refuse to call "adviser" to the RUC. After a stint in the at Kingsway College, is just so much Intagine that Protestant workers from the for inmlediate, unconditional witlldrawal murderous sectarian B Specials (Northern codswallop. Harland and Wolff shipyard or Shorts' of the troops, instead painting tlle anny as Ireland-A political directory. 1968-88, Not so long ago the AWL, to its credit, factory strike in protest against a UVF "peacekeepers", which could only be Flackes and Elliott), he served in the organised a public meeting for Taslima murder of a Catholic worker (as they have pulled out when a "denlocratic" solution is Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from Nasrin, the Bangladeshi fighter for wom­ done in the past), and then along comes in place. Matgantna's Socialist Organiser 1970 to 1981. The UDR, today known as en's rights who has been threatened with Militant to offer a platform for the UVF in has insisted that "Only tIle British army the RIR, was notorious for its level of death by Islamic fundamentalists. Our the name of "workers unity"! has held the six-counties unit under one interpenetration with the Loyalist comrades joined with AWL supporters in We insist on the immediate. uncondi­ rule. Without that, intra-Irish civil war paramilitaries. This collusion extends defence squads to defend that meeting tional withdrawal ofBritish troops from would have bloodily redrawn the political from the cold-blooded murder of three against Hizb-ut-Tahrir types. At the AWL Northern Ireland, as a basic prerequisite map of Ireland" (Socialist Organiser, 2 members of the Dublin-based Miami conference an Algerian socialist is invited for any kind of progressive solution. We December 1993). Actively supporting Showband in 1975, while Maginriis was to speak about the situation in Algeria, seek a proletarian resolution, on both redrawing the border as a "federal solu­ still on "active service", to the continuing where organisations just like Hizb-ut­ sides of the Irish Sea, in which the British tion" under capitalism, SO says: "But passing of security files on Catholics to Tahrir torture, rape and murder to subju­ imperialist state power, the southern Irish from a socialist point of view. iftlley want Loyalist death squads. gate women to their fundamentalist dic­ clericalist state and the sectarian Orange it (protestant autonomy not dle present Today Maginnis is cultivating creden­ tates. Workers Liberty's seemingly schiz­ statelet in Northern Ireland-of which ridiculous partition, with its 45% ofCath­ tials as part of the "liberal wing" of Ulster ophrenic behaviour is in fact quintes­ Ken Maginnis is a representative par olics in the 'Protestant-UnIonist' state) Unionism, mainly in southern Ireland, sentially social-democratic. Like most of excellence-must be shattered and re­ tlten they are entitled' to it both under where he has found friends among sup­ the fake left in the orbit of the Labour placed by the working class seizing capitalism and after we have buried capi­ porters of the Mruy Robinson popular Party, the AWL sided with the CIA­ power. talism" (Socialist Organiser, 2 December front. Maginnis is a far cry from what backed reactionary mujahedin in Afghani­ Contrary to both Militant and the 1994). Their scenario, which implies a could even be described as a bourgeois stan against the Red Army, whose pres­ AWL, who cheered on the capitalist coun­ "bloodless repartition", preswllably due to liberal. Last year he called for "selective" ence offered Afghani women the possibil­ terrevolution, dlC destruction of the Soviet the "civilising" presence of the British internment in Northern Ireland, and when ity of escaping from chattel slavery. At Union was a massive defeat for the work­ Army, is a lie and a recipe for a commu­ RUC chief Sir Hugh Annesley made bottom the AWL's faith in parliamentary­ ing class. As well with -its demise, the nalist conflagration. noises aboqt "scaling down" army and style debate with anyone rests on social­ ANC, PLO and Sinn Fein went openly At bottom tllese last-viceroy-of-India police activity to encourage the IRA democratic illusions in the "neutrality" of looking to imperialists for "deals". The socialists assume that the working class is ceasefrre, Maginnis called for Annesley's the capitalist state. IRA's ceasefire announced last August is incapable of transcending sectarianism, resignation and castigated him for "par­ Workers Liberty's "debate" with Ma­ part of Sinn Fein's quest for a "negotiated and that the Protestants are totally wedded leying and pandering to" the IRA (Inde­ ginnis is obscene, but not unique. Militant settlement" with British imperialism, to Loyalism. In all likelihood, a defmite pendent, 12 August 1994). Not surpris­ Labour in Belfast have gone even further pursued through the "good offices" of the resolution of the character of the Northern ingly, he voted against reducing the age of down the same suicidal path, openly host­ southern Irish clericalist state and under­ Ireland Protestant community will be consent for homosexuals in Britain from ing a representative of the Loyalist death written by US imperialism. But there can reached with the withdrawal of the British 21 to IS. No socialist, no trade union squads on their platfornl. Militant boasts be no democratic solution to dle oppres­ Army, blJt it will depend on the circum­ militant, no decent Labour Party activist that on 9 May they organised "an historic sion of the Catholics under capitalism; stances in which tllis occurs. In dle con­ should want to have anything to do with meeting" to discuss "Is there a future for forcible reunification of Ireland would text of an upsurge of class mobilisations, the putrid exercise of "debating" this socialism", and gave a platform to one simply reverse dle terms of oppression directed also against imperialism, oppor­ reactionruy frontrnan for the RUCIRIR. Billy Hutchinson, spokesman for the against the Protestant minority. The parti­ tunities would certainly arise for a class (Where does this line of debating any Progressive Unionist Party, which Mili­ tion of Ireland and the resultant sectarian determination of the question. bourgeois reactionruy or cop spokesman tant Labour unashamedly explains is statelet of Northern Ireland, defined Workers Liberty advocates a "Labour end? Would the comrades of the AWL "widely considered to be the political against the Catholic, clericalist state in the Party" in Northern Ireland with close links want to "debate" Frank Rizzo? He's the wing of the Ulster Volunteer Force" (Mili­ South, has served to reinforce the commu­ to dle pro-inlperialist British Labour Party notorious racist ex-mayor and ex-police tant, 19 May). That is precisely what the nal divide. and Protestant fears of incorpo­ and to tlle pro-Unionist, class-cOllabora­ commissioner of Philadelphia, whose PUP is-a front for the fascistic UVF, ration into a Catllolic state can well be tionist Irish Labour Party of Dick Spring. threat directed at the "new breed ofjour­ who have perpetrated some of the most utilised to precipitate a fonn of "etlmic What is desperately needed on both is­ nalism" bore its bitter fruit in the frame-up savage atrocities in Northern Ireland, from cleansing". Revolutionaries defend tlle lands are genuinely revolutionary parties, leading to Mumia Abu-Jamal's death the "Shankill Butchers" in tlle mid-1970s IRA wIlen it has been fighting against the built in opposition to all fonns of Labour­ sentence.) to "spray jobs" in CatllOlic-frequented British Anriy and state repression, while ism, dedicated to smashing capitalist rule. That the "debate" with Maginnis is not pubs and bookmakers' shops. politically opposing the nationalism of British troops out of Northern Ireland! an isolated aberration is demonstrated by A mere ten days prior to Militant's Sinn Fein, which often involves criminal Not Orange against Green, but class a­ another of this weekend's "debates", that "historic meeting" in Belfast, Hutchin­ murder of Protestant civilians. We fight gainst class! No to forced reunifica­ with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Islamic fundamental­ son's UVF marched through London for an end to discrimination against Cath­ tion-for a federation of workers repub­ ists who have been at the centre of contro- protected by Combat IS fascist para- olics, and for jobs for all, worksharing on lics in tlle British Isles!_

JULY/AUGUST 1995 3 Dail Drohibits abortion referral Free abortion on demand!

women's oppression in Ireland. It has they shy away from fighting for the basic time nailed the constitutional cretinism of been a focal point of legal and social right for free abortion on demand. At the the "Repeal the Eighth Amendment Cam­ struggles over the past twelve years, par­ time of the X case, the Socialist Workers paign" (which the IWG actively built) as ticularly since the Catholic hierarchy, Party (SWP) capitulated to- the liberal the "Keep Abortion Illegal Campaign". along with the Pro Life Amendment Cam­ bourgeoisie's restrictive "special grounds" Fighting for free abortion on demand paign and the Society for the Protection of for abortion line. An SWP leaflet pro­ means having to confront the Labour Party the Unborn Child (SPUC) forced and won claimed "Rape victims have the right to and the Democratic Left misleaders, who a referendum (known as the Eighth abortion!" We say: all women have the capitulate to the Catholic church. Both This year marks the 25th anniversary of parties, government coalition partners of the women's liberation movement in the bourgeois Fine Gael, supported the Ireland. But 25 years on, what has been • abortion infonnation Act. A Labour Party gained? Women still cannot get abortion spokesman explained that: "It is an altered referral let alone free, safe, legal abortion. Bill and doesn't meet with Labour criteria The right to divorce does not exist and the but we are in Government with two other "target" date for the divorce referendum parties now" (Irish Times, 23 February). has been postponed yet again. Child care These social-democratic betrayers use facilities are virtually non-existent, unem­ E.. : <..,£ coalition "unity" with Fine Gael as a ployment stands at 20 per cent and women .. " .. means to excuse their treachery . (who only make up about 38 per cent of . Far from confronting tile Labour Party the workforce) earn on average only 68 and Democratic Left, Socialist Worker per cent the average male wage. and Militant Labour called for a vote for "TIlere is more than enough unfinished Mary Robinson, the candidate of the la­ business here to keep things going for bour Party popular front, in the presiden­ another 25 years" was the gloomy assess­ tial elections. During the 1992 election the ment of the Sunday Tribune (21 May) .. SWP, Militant and IWG called for a vote But the women's liberation movement to Labour and Democratic Left, both of strategy of pressurising the bourgeoisie for which openly declared their intentions of change is a refonllist dead-end. Even the joining in a coalition government. The most minimal gains for working people, DSG stood out as opponents of the popu­ women and minorities have been achieved lar front. We said no vote to Labour, the or ly as a result of social struggle. And Workers Party or Democratic Left and under capitalism, every refonll remains Workers Hammer warned that such a class-collaborationist reversible; the restrictions imposed by the DSG contingent at Dublin demonstration protesting Charles Windsor's vlsli to alliance would necessarily be anti-woman, abortion infonllation Act is the latest Ireland. 31 May. anti-Tmveller, anti-working-class and pro­ example. Only socialist revolution can lay imperialist. dIe basis for genuine women's liberation. Amendment) which "copper fastened" the right to abortion! On the International As for the petty-bourgeois nationalists In the 1992 constitutional referendum banning of abortion into the Constitution. Women's Day march in Dublin this year, of Sino Fein (SF), tlley have no answer to Ireland voted by a majority of three to two The issue came ·to a head again in 1992 the SWP limited the demands of the dem­ women's oppression. For SF the woman in favour of the right to infonnation and a . when a young 14-year-old pregnant gu.l onstration to the call for more abortion question is second rate and subordinate to woman's right to travel outside Ireland for (an alleged rape victim) tried to get an infonnation. the national question and tile establish­ an abortion. TIle Dublin Spartacist Group abortion outside the country. By ruling her At the same demonstration Militant ment of a CatilOlic capitalist united Ire­ (DSG) advocated a "yes" vote· for the attempt illegal the High Court essentially Labour distributed a leaflet supporting the land. To take a stand on women's rights referendum questions dealing with these placed every Irish woman seeking an abortion infonnation Bill, complaining would mean confronting the Catholic two minimal rights, .while fighting for free abortion under house arrest. The whole t1mt, "Yes the bill is a step forward but it church and as a result splitting their own abortion on demand. But we stood in issue became known as the X case as tens is a watering down on what people voted movement, just as tlley were split over the opposition to this year's abortion infonna­ of dlOusands, mostly young women, joined for." TIleir leaflet went on to demand: "No X case. In 1992, SF supporters were tion Bill, which became law in May, demonstrations against tile High Court exporting our problems abroad. For the found on demonstrations both for and because of its imposition of severe restric­ ruling. TIle govennllent eventually backed provision of abortion in Ireland through against the rigllt of women to travel to tions on abortion infonnation. down and allowed tile X case woman to dIe health service." Aside from leaving out have abortions. Their nationalism means The new Act allows only infonllation leave tile country for an abortion. And to the question of the grounds and costs of t1mt they Imve no interest in mobilising that is "non-

4 WORKERS HAMMER Catholic church. But Ian Paisley and his ilk are just as opposed to abortion, divorce and rights for gays as the reactionaries of T&G elections: Morris and Dromey, no choice the Catholic church. The liberal agenda both tries to inch Irish society forward, heading off social In the recent election for general secre­ But if Dromey is a fully paid-up ing critical electoral support to a candidate , in such a union election, must be that they struggle, and to appease Loyalism in order tary of the Transport and General Workers Blairhead, that hardly makes Morris a to broker an imperialist "peace". But as Union (T&G) there was no basis to sup­ valid alternative, let alone a class warrior. represent a decisive break in the direction we have warned, the imperialist "peace" port, however critically, the incumbent Guardian journalist, Seumas Milne, ad­ of class struggle, against the habitual reformist betrayal of the Labourite mis­ deal over Northem Ireland "will be bloody Bill Morris against Tony Blair crony, Jack mits that "The irony of all this is that and brutal and will necessarily be at the Dromey. The second largest, and one of Morris is no leftwinger. On both industrial leaders of the working class. Without this, expense ofthe oppressed Catholic minor­ the most powerful unions in Britain, the and political strategy, it would be hard to a so-called "left" candidate is simply a part of the division of labour, coralling militant ity. And it would not do any good for T&G has been dominated by left of centre put a smart card between him and his working-class Protestants either" (Work­ Labourite figures for the last forty years. challenger" (Guardian, 24 May). Instead workers who are repulsed by his more ers Hammer no 138, NovemberlDecem­ The election contest, subjected to media of fighting the T &G' s loss of membership openly treacherous "right" brethren. The ber 1993). hype and conducted amidst bitter personal (more than halved from two million in SWP's Socialist Review (June 1995) frets The British imperialists are not with­ accusations, is not without its significance. 1975, with 200,000 lost since he took over that "many ordinary TGWU members are drawing their troops from Northern Ire­ But, contrary to the illusions of the fake in 1991), Morris hired outside consultants unaware of any real difference between the land, abandoning the Northern Ireland left, who mostly and predictably lined up to help "downsize" the T &G. Although he two candidates". Alarnted by the workers' Unionists or ending the systematic dis­ behind the barely "left" Morris, there was was the main spokesman for the T&G's clear-sightedness the SWP, along with most crimination against the Catholics. But no decisive divide between the two candi­ defence of Clause IV, Morris argued in­ of the fake-revolutionary left-Militant Labour, Socialist Organiser, Workers Power according to the International Bolshevik dates. The contest for T&G leadership was side the union's executive to drop this Tendency (lBT), a group of embittered an intra-bureaucratic conflict that did not stance. And while calling on tlte next et al-hasten to brush up Morris' credentials and forecast wondrous implications of his quitters from the ICL, "to say that what­ go beyond an exchange of rhetoric among Labour government to repeal the Tory ever 'settlement' is eventually cooked up loyal Labourites. Old-style treachery was • anti-union legislation of the eighties, victory. These fuwning socialists, fer all their will 'necessarily be at the expense of the pitted against New Labour betrayal. Morris refuses to' countenance any strug~ complaints and whining, refuse to struggle oppressed Catholic minority' is not 'neces­ A victory for Jack Dromey would have gle against and outside these laws, leaving to break the working class from their strengthened Tony Blair's hand in the sarily' true. It could be at the expense of strikes like that at Badgerline to go down Labourite misleaders, right and "left". the Protestants" (J917 no 16, 1995). To pursuit of an accommodating and docile in isolated defeat. While many T &G mem­ Workers Power (June 1995), ever eager to believe that the current "peace process" union leadership which will not make any bers today don't earn the T&G's proposed prove its mastery of "tactics" explains that could really be about the reversal of the difficulties for a future capitalist Labour minimum hourly wage of £4.15, Morris' "In other circumstances, revolutionaries terms of oppression shows deep illusions government at the beck and call of the City "campaign" is not to mobilise the union in might have given critical support '--0 a in the British bourgeoisie and a pandering and international finance. Dromey de­ class action but to plead with the Labour challenge to Bill Morris' four-year reign to the fears of the Unionists. For a start it nounced Morris for "year in and year out, Party to pass legislation when it comes to at the T&G." Organisations like Workers belies reality. Since the "peace deal" there threatening the chances of a Labour gov­ power. Some apologists for Morris, like Power who advocate putting Labour into have been continued RUC attacks on ernment" and proclaimed that this union Labour Briefing (June 1995), tout the fact office no matter what the circumstances, Republicans and oppressed Catholics. Not election was about ensuring that there that he is black and "a national figure are little more than Labour's loyal "left" surprisingly the IBT article makes only a would be a Labour government led by promoting [black people's] agenda" as an appendages in constant search for a lesser scant reference to the imperialist "deal" in Tony Blair. Together with his wife, sha­ argument for supporting him. It was Mor­ evil while, just like Bill Morris, uniting the Middle East where the PLO polices dow Labour spokesman on employment ris who played a key role in organising the behind Tony Blair to campaign for the the Gaza strip for the Israeli state, or to Harriet Harman, Dromey is part of Blair's TUC demonstration against racism in "New" Labour Party come next election. South Africa where the ANC nationalist inner circle, and his election campaign has early 1994, which served to channel mass In sharp contrast genuine Marxists fight to popular front government smashes strikes been assisted by the same advisors who ran anger and militancy into electoral support break the working class from the treacher­ and evicts squatters in the interests of nea­ Blair's successful attack on Clause IV. to the Labour Party. Despite the T&G's ous Labourite bureaucracy. What is des­ Apartheid capitalism. Despite paying reluctant lip-service to the contretemps with the modernisers, Morris perately needed is a revolutionary party, The systematic discrimination against T&G's call for a minimum wage, Dromey has repeatedly called for unity behind forged in hard political struggle against Catholics and the economic devastation of clearly supports the BlairlHarman refusal Tony Blair. the Labour and trade union misleaders, to the province's industry, which has meant to commit a future Labour government to For revolutionaries and militants com­ lead the working class in the overthrow of dire poverty for the Protestant working anything without the CBl's approval. mitted to class struggle, the basis for giv- capitalism through socialist revolution. _ class as well, simply cannot be resolved within the framework of capitalism. Revo­ lutionary Marxists fight for the immedi­ such a line from the Legion of Mary and! women's oppression. The reactionary It is working-class struggle which will ate, unconditional withdrawal ofBritish or SPUC. But this headline came from the Youth Defence contains a hardened core win real gains for the class as a whole and troops from Northern Ireland No for­ paper of the Workers Solidarity Move­ of fascist thugs, who physically target for women and the oppressed. The organ­ cible reunification! Not Orange against ment (spring issue). In trying to "relate" to pro-abortion forces, trade unionists and ised working class has tlle power to shut Green but class against class! For an anti-church sentiment, tlley end up on the leftists. The anonymous letter bomb down production and ultimately, to over­ Irish workers republic within a socialist side of right-wing reaction and its cam­ hoaxes sent to the Well Woman Clinic throw capitalism. But revolutionaries flderation ofthe British Isles! paign to drive any teacher with "suspect" and the Irish Council of General Practi­ must win the trade unions to a prograntme sexuality out of the schools. In the same tioners on 9 June shows the threat that the of struggle not simply on economic issues Down with anti-sex, anti-woman article they defend the rights of priests and fascists pose. For mass trade union mobi­ but in the interests of all the oppressed. reactionary moralisml nuns to teach in schools. We note that Iisations to stop Youth Defonce/SPUC For exantple, trade unions must be won to The case of Father Brendan Smyth, their headline seemed to have a short shelf reaction! fighting for free abortion on demand. In a convicted of child abuse, brought down life, and WSM members took to featuring The fascists today are small but the country with a high trade union member­ the previous Reynolds Fianna Fail govern­ the back-page article about a long-settled bourgeoisie keeps tllem in reserve. If the ship, women make up a greater proportion ment. It has now returned to 'haunt the trade union dispute. popular front cannot contain workers' of unionised workers than tlleir. percentage current coalition government although the The campaign against child abuse is struggles, the bourgeoisie will turn to its in the workforce. But to mobilise the pro-Robinson bourgeoisie has used the being used to channel outrage into calls other weapon, the fascists, to smash the working class to fight for women's rights case to tarnish the reputation of the Catho­ for more state intervention .. When the jail organised workers movenlent. The efforts will mean a political struggle for a revolu­ lic church and present the Irish state in a sentence for the man convicted of unlaw­ of fascist scum are nurtured by religious tionary progranuue against tlle sellout more modem secular light to the bourgeoi­ ful carnal knowledge in the X case was bigots like retired judge O'Hanlon who trade union bureaucracy. sie in Northern Ireland. drastically reduced this spring, a demon­ believes that "law-making power is de­ Irish capitalism cannot provide full em­ Rape and child abuse are horrific stration was called outside the Dail in rived not from the State or the people of ployment, much less free women from do­ crimes and we certainly do not oppose the protest. The SWP reported the dentonstra­ the State but from God" (Irish Times, 1 mestic slavery. TIle fight for jobs for all, prosecution of perpetrators, but the Smyth tion with a solemn warning of the possible March 1995) and refers to·the abortion equal pay for equal work, free abortion on case and the X case have been used by the right-wing trajectory of calls for state information Bill, as part of a "climate of demand, free 24-hour child care, the rigllt to government to mount a reactionary moral­ intervention (Socialist Worker, 1-13 April death". divorce, ,viII not be won through appealing istic canlpaign aimed at bolstering the 1995). They neglected to mention that to the liberal Irish bourgeoisie, the Labour institution of the fanlily, the chief instru­ they were also on the demonstration call­ Workers must rule in Ireland if Party or Democratic Left. Working-class ment of women's oppression under capi­ ing for the judge's sacking. Presumably women are to be free struggle in defence of women's rights in the talism. We insist that sex involving young the other judges are OK for the SWP. But The potential for working-class strug­ Republic can be a catalyst for cross-conuuu­ people is not a priori a crime. In addition what about Travellers, leftists, Republi­ gle is palpable. in Ireland. Industrial con­ nal struggle in Northem Ireland. Only to calling for a radical lowering of the cans and trade unionists who have been at frontation is looming at TEAM Aer Lin­ working-class revolution and the establish­ legal age of adulthood, we are in favour of the receiving end of brutal Irish justice? gus where redundancies are again on the ment of a planned economy can provide dle replacing the whole network of "age of agenda. Electricity Supply Board workers material conditions for women's liberation, consent" laws with the principle of effec­ Stop Youth Defence/SPUC are threatening industrial action in re­ freeing women from dle domestic drudgery reaction I tive consent, applicable to people of all sponse torplanned job cuts. This June of the home to playa full part in social life. ages. Government out ofthe bedroom! Fascism in Ireland has historically locked-out Irish Press journalists occu­ Above all what's needed is a revolutionary The front-page newspaper headline, organised in alliance with the Catholic pied the newspaper offices for five days in party, a tribune ofdle people d13t will figllt "Keep the paedopbiles out of our schools" right, often with an overlapping member­ response to the sacking of a journalist, and for dle liberation of women and all dle op­ is in step with the bourgeoisie's reaction­ ship. It seeks to mobilise around reaction­ workers at Dunnes Store are currently on pressed. For women's liberation througll ary moralism. One would normally expect ary ideology centring on the family and strike. socialist revolution! _

JULY/AUGUST 1995 5 "Third camp',' social democrats pan,der to Islamic fundamentalism ------'··fls·

held a "debate" under the title "After Khomeini in Iran": ConmlUnism, What's Left for Socialism?" "They were not, as many left wing Now they give the answer. Left rudderless commentators have mistakenly believed, in imperialism's "New World Order", merely an expression of 'backward,' these opportunists have been trailing in bazaar-based traditional, 'parasitic,' 'mer­ the wake of reactionary Islamic fundamen­ chant capital.' Nor were they simply an expression of classic bourgeois counter­ talists, such as those in Algeria who bru­ revolution. They undertook a revolution­ tally murder unveiled women, foreigners, ary reorganisation of ownership and and anyone they perceive as representing control of capital within Iran even while modern culture. The Autumn 1994 issue !eaving ~pitalist relations of production of the Cliffites' journal International mtact .... Socialism has a 60-page lead article by A neat trick, if you can do it. SWP "theoretician" Chris Harman on For the Cliffites, Iran is part of a pat­ "The Prophet and the Proletariat", com­ tern ofmdical, "anti-imperialist" and even Reul8rs Cllfflte journal trumpets supposed plete with a green cover and Ambic-look­ "revolutionary" "Islamism" throughout the Algeria: FI~ declares fundamentalist -antI-Imperialism- of Islamic reaction. ing lettering. Meanwhile, the SWP's Muslim world. Thus the British SWP leader Abassl ·our president". Socialist Worker (20 August (994) pro­ writes: claims, "Islamists have now replaced "The Iranian revolution of 1979, which The counterrevolutionary destruction of socialists and the left in terms ofbeing in was rapidly taken over by the Mullahs, and Its Implications", New Left Review, the Soviet Unioo has provoked some striking the frontline against the state in many the popular Afghan resistance to the NovemberlDecember (987). Halliday is a disorientation among suppOsed leftists. countries" (emphasis in original). Soviet invasion, the Palestinian intifada, pretty easy target, since during the Persian And, come to think of it, we can recall which was more and more influenced by Gulf War he came out for the USINATO Many, tmder the pressure of the Cold War, the fundamentalists, all contributed to the already bought into imperialist anti-Soviet­ but a single article in the Cliffite press in attack on Imq! revival of anti-imperialist feeling, filtered In debunking this certified "social­ ism, using as an excuse the bureaucratic defence ofTaslima Nasrin, the coumgeous through religion, of broad masses of imperialist", the International Socialism degeneration of the Russian Revolution Bangladeshi writer condemned to death by North Africans." article adopts a pseudo-"mdical" posture: urxb' Stalinist rule. But few could match the Islamic clerics who judged her fight -Socialist Review, February 1992 frothing Stalinophobia of the international against anti-woman bigotry and her de­ This is hardly a reflection of"anti-imperi­ "The Islamic regime in Iran doolinates tendency led by Tony Cliff and his British nunciations of both Muslim and Hindu alism", as the Cliffites would have it, but discussions on Islamic revivalism, much as the record of Stalinism dominates discus­ Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which chauvinists in Bangladesh and India to be rather of despair and reaction, which both an affiont to their "religious feelings" (see sions on socialism. And often, even on the proclaimed the ascendancy ofYeltsin coun­ emotionally and in its sociological base left, very similar oco:lusions are drawn. The terrevolution in Moscow as "the Russian Women and Revolution no 44, Winter has much in common with Hitler's "Na­ IsIamists are seen, much as the Stalinists Revolution of 1991"! Today, without thC 1994-Spring (995). This brief article in tional Socialism". Though looking to the _ ooce stm, as the most dangerous of all pole star ofhatred fer what Reagan called the Socialisme International (no 78, January past, the Islamic fundamentalist wave is a political faa:s, able to impose a totalitarian­ "evil enlpire" to guide them, the Cliffites (995) allows for the need to "stand with ilm that will pllWIlt any further progressive response to the oppressive conditions of development" have locked onto a bizarre infatuation with her against the death threats", but devotes the late 20th century. Its present rise as a Islantic fundantentalists. Their US affiliate, most of its content to denigmting Taslirna mass movement is the reactionary reflec­ But while today Harman claims to be arguing against those, like Halliday, who the Intemational Socialist Organization as a chantpion of women's libemtion. The tion of both the absence of a communist 080), has taken to giving public fonnns article criticises her for "respect for the called the Iranian mullah regime "Islam alternative and the manifest dead-end of with a fascist face" as well as against with titles like "Islantic Fundantentalism: state", neglecting to mention, of course, nationalism. Anti-Intperialist or Reactionruy?" A flyer for that the Cliffites themselves routinely those who "see the Islamist movements as This can be seen most clearly among 'progressive"', the Cliffites' own record a 22 November 1994 ISO forunl in Berkeley petition the mcist imperialist state to ban the Palestinians and in Algeria. The PLO fascists. Earlier the SWP defended Salntan places them clearly in the latter camp. At declared, "Islantism ... must be transformed nationalists are now acting as the murder­ the time ofKltomeini's victory, the ISO in into an independent, revolutionary socialist Rushdie against the fatwa (edict calling ous enforcers for Zionist tymnny, driving for his death) issued by Iran's Ayatollah the US ran laudatory articles on the mul­ perspective::. the historically secular Palestinian masses lahs' "mass movement" with headlines in 1"989, and even published an For decades, the calling card of Cliff's Khomeini into the amlS of Hantas fundamentalists. like "The Fonn-Religious, The Spirit­ social-democmtic outfit was its descrip­ interview with Rushdie early on. But for Algeria won its war of independence Revolution!" tion of the Soviet Union as "state capital­ the Cliffites, who have made a career of against France, but this anti-colonial The criminal support for reactionary ist". From the time of the 1950-53 Korean bCing "State Department socialists", their victory did little to alleviate the exploita­ fundamentalists in Iran by leftists around War on, this nonsensical "theory" served reticence on Nasrin and current infatuation • tion and social oppression of the masses, the world was a monstrous betrayal. In as ajustification for lining up with imperi­ with Islamic fundamentalism goes along who now tum to fundamentalism as an contrast, the Spartacist tendency put for­ alism (first veiled, then openly) against the with Washington's current stance (shared answer. ward a progmnmte for proletarian revolu­ USSR and any state they considered a by sections of West European social de­ tion, declaring: "Down With the Shah! Soviet "satellite". From arch-reactionary mocracy) to "do business" with "moder­ From Iran and Afghanistan ••• Down With the Mullahs! Workers Must mujahedin in Afghanistan, who butchered ate" fundamentalists, from Imn to Algeria. Lead Imnian Revolution!" Uniquely on teachers as "communist infidels" for edu­ The· Harman article in International The Cliffites' fascination with "Islam­ the left, we warned that the mullahs in cating girls, to Polish SolidarnoSC, that Socialism is all about "contradictions of ism" repeats the opportunist left's disas· power would seek to reimpose the chador company union of the CIA and the Vati­ Islantism". He treats Islamic fundanlental­ trous capitulation to the reactionary mul­ can, no anti-Soviet movement was too ist "mass movements" as mdical petty­ lahs who came to power in Imn a decade Contact addresses L and a halfago. Khomeini's victory led to retrogmde for Cliff & Co's enthusiastic bourgeois nationalist fomtations, which Spartacist LeagueJBritain support. More recently, the Cliffites joined "have taken up anti-imperialist slo~s the execution of thousands of leftists, the Miami gusano mafia in hailing a and some anti-imperialist actions". But Kurds, women, homosexuals and any Glasgow counterrevolutionary riot in Cuba (see opponent of theocratic rule. Harman starts PO Box ISO, Glasgow G3 6DX despite their populist rhetoric, their de­ off his article with a polemic against the "Tony Cliff's US cohorts: gusano social­ 0141-3320788 nunciations of the "Great Satan" of the US New Left Review's Fred Halliday for ists?" WH no 143, NovemberlDecember and occasional jibes at the IMF, seeking counterposing a bloc with the libeml London 1994). But even for this crowd whose to whip up support among the desperately bourgeoisie in Imn to the left's support for PO Box 1041, London NWS 3EU stock in trade was vitupemting against impoverished masses from Teheran to Khomeini. Halliday said the left should 0171-4851396 Soviet "totalitarianism", it's hard to get Algiers, the Islamic fundamentalists are have "come out in a firm and united way worked up over the "threat" of Fidel Cas­ firmly committed to maintaining capitalist against the clerical forces and in alliance Dublin Spartacist Group tro and the Kim dynasty in North Korea. exploitation. While sprinkling a few cave­ with the 'libemls'" around Bakhtiar, the PO Box 2944 In hamlony with the bourgeois refrain ats about, Harman waxes increasingly first prime minister after the overthrow of Dublin 1 of a supposed "death of conmlunism", a enthusiastic, reaching a crescendo as he the shah, who 'was soon purged by the Tel: 01 8304230 couple of years ago tlle Canadian Cliffites writes ofthe "Islantic intelligentsia around Khomeiniites ("The Imnian Revolution

6 WORKERS HAMMER (the head-to-toe veil), restore barbaric home" , concluding: slightest understanding tllat the role of Cliffites write, in justification of the Is­ punishments (eg flogging, amputations), Marxists is to lead the working class in a lamic headscarf, tIlat "exposing women's suppress national minorities and crush the "All this offers opportunities for social­ fight for power against both the bloody bodies in modem society is Qne of tile workers movement and left as ruthlessly ists, as long as they are clear about the military regime and the reactionary funda- . fonns expressing tile oppression of as the shah. FIS. They have to support them against mentalists. In contrast, the Trotskyist women in presenting tIlem as a sexual attacks from the regime in so far as they Cold War anti-Sovietism and tailing Platform Tendency of the PST, which object" (Socialisme International, De­ represent, in however confused a way, an cohered on an internationalist programme the fundamentalists came together for the opposition in which large numbers of the cember 1994)! And SWP honcho Alex Cliffites over Afghanistan. For a decade, dispossessed and sections of the working around the Russian question (including Callinicos went so far as to declare tI18t Washington armed and supported the class put their trust. At the same time defence of Soviet intervention in Afghani­ "the headscaifis not a sign ofthe 'impris­ fundamentalists' reactionary jihad (holy socialists have to be implacably hostile to stan and opposition to Polish SolidarnoSC) onment of women' but ofmodesty"!! In war), using the opportunity to wage a their politics. They must defend women's and the· fight for workers revolution in Algiers, women and even schoolgirls have proxy war against the Soviet Union. We rights and democratic rights." Algeria, declared: been beaten and in several instances shot -Socialist Review, February 1992 forthrightly hailed the intervention of the "The FlS is the sworn enemy of the pr0- and killed by Islanlic fundamentalists for Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan against Tltis talk of defending democratic rights is letariat, minorities and women.... At failing to obey tIlis reactionary code of the mullah-led forces, and we called for so much eyewash, to hide the fact that a present 1he regime imprisons FlS mili­ "modesty". the extension to Afghanistan of the social fundanlentalist victory in Algeria-which tants, tomorrow, like yesterday, the rul- gains of tile October Revolution. But the For generations, Stalinists and social Cliffites were foursquare on the side of denlocrats rehashed tile classic Menshevik schema of tile "two-stage revolution", reaction. In Britain, SWP leader Paul Foot DPA I Socialist succeeded in provoking an anti-Soviet counselling tile working class to support supposed bourgeois "progressives" as an frenzy on tile floor of Parlianlent by right­ Worker wing Tories and Labour "lefts" alike, ""' ...... illusory "first step" toward socialist revo­ through incendiary "revelations" in his _-May 1988 lution. Tltis suicidal policy of class collab­ Daily Mirror column of the possibility oration has inevitably led to bloody de­ feats, from China in 1927 to Allende's that British meat exports to the Soviet Chile in tile early 1970s. But at least the Union might be sent to Soviet soldiers in so-called "progressive" nationalists like Afghanistan (Spartacist Britain no 24, Cltiang Kai-shek vaguely aspired to mod­ August-September 1980). ernise tIleir countries (such as opposing In the US, tile ISO bombastically pro- dle binding of women's feet), even as tIley claimed all-out support to the mullahs: violendy repressed the working class. The "Just as socialists welcomed the defeat of Islamic fundamentalists, whom the the u.s. in Vietnam, we welcome the Cliffites see as allies in "anti-imperialist"/ defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan. It ISO supported CIA-aided mujahedin cutthroats struggle, dream of turning tile clock back wiII give heart to all those inside the to the age of tile prophet! USSR and in Eastern Europe who want in Afghanistan, cheered to break the rule of Stalin's heirs." Soviet withdrawal which Tile Cliffites' grotesque genuflection -Socialist Worker, May 1988 meant death for before Islamic fundamentalism is not women, leftists. simply a bizarre aberration. In tile Soviet In the first place, the ISO's predecessor, Union, wltich they called "state capitalist", the Shachtmanite International Socialists, dley sided with any and all "anti-Stalinist" had to go through considerable contor­ forces, no matter how reactionary. In tions to belatedly and minimally defend the Cliffites support-would impose an ing class will promote the development of Algeria, which actually is a capitalist the Vietnamese against the US, using the Islamic dictatorship that would wipe out the FIS against the workers or against a country WitIl a heavily statified economy, "democratic" argwnent of "self-deternlina­ any semblance of democracy and spell popular uprising .... they likewise bloc politically with tile tion" in order to evade tile fundamental death-literally-for unveiled women. "The real progress which the Bolsheviks made on the road to the emancipation of most retrograde opponents of the military issue ofa Stalinist-led social revolution, And there is strong evidence that the regime. It is interesting tIlat as the imperi­ however bureaucratically defornled. And , women contrasts strongly with the op­ Cliffites actually hammered their pro-FIS pression which women still suffer today alists proclaim dle "deadl of conununism", what the Soviet withdrawal from Afghani­ line down the throats of their conrrades in under the bonapartist 'socialist' regimes, bOtIl ex-Stalinists and social democrats stan "gave heart to" was the forces of Algeria, where such. illusions are truly like in Algeria, which haven't broken have gravitated into unsavoury alliances bloody counterrevolution. From East suicidal. with capitalism. This is a striking confir­ with far right-wing nationalist forces, from Berlin to Moscow, tile SWP and ISO On the eve of the first electoral victory mation of Trotsky's theory of permanent dle "red-brown" coalition in Russia to tile cheered the restoration of capitalism, of the FIS in the June 1990 municipal revolution according to which elementary bourgeois democratic rights cannot be Cliffites' yeamed-for "red-green" coalition which meant mass unemployment, racist elections, a spokesman of the Communist in Algeria. terror and rampant attacks on women's won completely except through a social­ Movement of Algeria (MCA), interviewed ist revolution led by the proletariat." The only tiling is, conuades, it takes rights. in the journal of the French Cliffites, two to tango, even in a chador. And to tile characterised the FIS as "ultra-reaction­ Islamic fundamentalists, all socialists are ary" and even "a fascist current" with In defence of progress infidels, to be punished accordingly. Tile ... to "Holy War" in Algeria principles, ideology and political action Today, the Cliffites' fascination with Cliffites' policy is suicidal for themselves The question of Islamic fundamental­ "sintilar to the National Front in France". the Islamic fundamentalists is hardly and any workers, youth or women unfortu­ ism is by no means limited to a historical At the same tinte, the MCA representative lintited to Algeria. In France last year, the nate enough to be influenced by dlem. The examination of the lessons of Iran and lil1tited ltis programme to the "struggle for Mitterrand-Balladur government, as part proletariat must be galvanised politically Afghanistan. The issue is posed again democracy" tIuough elections and the of its campaign of wi tipping up anti-inuni­ around a progranune not to replace dle sharply in Algeria, where the bloody mili­ fonnation of a "democratic and revolution­ grant hysteria, waged a racist canlpaign of unifonned dictators WitIl robed theocrats tary regime and reactionary Islamic funda­ ary opposition" (Socialisme Interna­ expelling from school girls who wear the . but to achieve tIleir own class rule, not to mentalists are locked in a gruesome civil tional, May 1990). But when the FIS Islamic headscarf. In opposing tIlese at­ be tIrrown back into benighted medieval­ war. And it is centrally to Algeria that the swept the parliamentary elections of De­ tacks, our conuades of tile Ligue ism but to take society forward to socialist Cliffites address themselves. Harman cember f991, Socialisme International trotskyste de France have also sharply emancipation and enlightenment. writes of the "contradictions" of the FIS, (February 1992) declared: "Revolutionar­ warned against dle fundamentalist danger. the Islamic Salvation Front, which he ies in Algeria must fight side by side with In contrast, tile Cliffites politically tail Adallted from Workers Vanguard claims is "caught between respectability these people, even in actions called by the after tile fundamentalists. The French no 613, 30 December 1994 . and insurrectionism". He does not even FIS." They even presented the FIS as a hint at the fact that tile "insurrectionism" force which could be pressured into op­ of the FIS aims to set up a reactionary posing imperialism! As they explained it, tlleocratic dictatorship. "in order to come to power, tile FIS needs The SWP says: "We are on the side of the masses' support and such a regime WORKERSIIAMMER the Islamists when they confront tile would be opposed to tile policy imposed Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League state-but only then" (SOCialist Worker, on Algeria by tile IMF". However, tile 20 August)! The Cliffites get a little precondition for breaking tile stranglehold D 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer for £3.00 includes queasy when the Algerian fundamentalists of the international bankers cartel of tile Spartacist, organ of the International Communist league (Fourth assassinate teachers, journalists, leftists. IMF and tile domination of tile· world Internationalist); and Women and Revolution But what about when they "confront tile market is a proletarian revolution over­ (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £7.00; Europe outside Britain & Ireland £4.(0) state" by blowing up nationalised facto­ tIrrowing capitalism and extending to the ries, derailing govemment-owned passen­ imperialist centres. D 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer PLUS 22 issues of Workers ger trains and bunting down state schools? The MCA, which a footnote in Har­ Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist league/US for £8.00 Presunlably Cliff et al would be applaud­ man's article coyly says "no longer Subscription includes Spartacist, organ of the International ing. Yet the Cliffites' "Islamist" line is not exists",joined the Cliffites and entered the Communist league (Fourth Internationalist); Women and Revolution; going down very well with some of their PST (Socialist Workers Party), the Alge­ and Black History and the Class Struggle own supporters, notably women. rian section of Ernest Mandel's United When the sinister Islanlic fundanlental­ Secretariat. Tllere dley fonned an "opposi­ Name ______ists swept tile first round of parliamentary tion" which published a docunlent, "Bal­ elections in Algeria three years ago, the ance Sheet and Perspectives of the PST' Address ______SWP gushed that "the breakduough of the (23 October 1992), which managed tile ,~ FIS reflects the rise of revolutionary feel­ singular feat of never once mentioning the Postcode Telephone ______ing". They felt compelled to add a rider FIS and the need to fight it. Nowhere in Make cheques payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU about FIS strikebreaking and how they dtis docunlent, or Ham18n's article, or any "argue that women should remain at of the Cliffites' docwnents, is tIlere the

JULY/AUGUST 1995 7 ~ ton, D.C. 11le Philly cops showed tIleir ~ Jamal •.. O! idea of "justice" ten years ago when tIley :t: (Contll1I1ed/rom page 16) bombed tile MOVE commune, witll ex­ 3 plosives provided by tile FBI, setting off a ~ firestorm dlat killed eleven black people, including five children, and conswning an TIle threatened execution of Jamal is entire city block. Mark Goldberg, a Jewish not only inherently racist and barbaric, it ex~p, is suing tile police department for is also the first explicitly political execu­ half a million dollars, charging he was tIOn attempted in tllis coimtry since tile driven out of tile department by tile open go\'ernment murdered Julius and EtIlel anti-Senlitism of his superior officers. And Rosenberg in 1953, Just as the Rosen­ now Pennsylvania's top cop, Attorney bergs were murdered in the McCartilyite General Ernest Preate, Jr., has pleaded climate of Cold War anti-Conununism, guilty to ntail fraud and agreed to resign the persecution of Jamal takes place in tile Labour MP over a scandal involving illegal ganlbling context of President Clinton's drive to Jeremy Corbyn operations. Jolm Shaw, dIe former head of the Philly FOP, now resides in a federal bring back COINTELPRO and abridge addresses penitentiary, convicted of corruption. fundamental freedoms for tile entire popu­ demonstratIon for Jamal, Meanwllile, in a crude attempt at intim­ lation and of a bipartisan assault on every London 7 idation, dIe Philadelphia District Attor­ social program from welfare to Medicare, June. ney's office sent out an official letter on particularly targeting tile black ghetto June 2 to prominent supporters of Jamal population. inoluding dIe actors Ed Asner, Mike Far­ The death penalty is tile centerpiece of rell, Ossie Davis and Whoopi Goldberg, the right-wing backlash for racist "law and denouncing tIleir support for Jamal as order," Clinton's new crime bill, passed "nlisguided, misinfornled" and repulsive. just before last year's elections, mandates The D.A's office stated ominously tIlat the death penalty for 60 more federal Addison-Wesley's "decision to publish offenses, effectively making the deatll reflection of dleir own struggles against tile bookstores, tile capitalist media Mr. Abu-Jamal's book and reward him penalty tile law of the land even in states apartlleid state terror and the criminal­ launched an orchestrated canlpaign and witll a profit for his deed, looks to be tile that abolished it. By mid-May, 24 people ization of political dissent. deafening drunlbeat for Mwnia's deatll. In only true nliscarriage of justice here." So were executed in the U.S. >this year-a mucl1 for tile "balanced" scales of "blind" Across Europe, where capitalist coun­ a lead editorial worthy ofwitchhunter Joe pace that will nearly double dIe highest McCart1ly, tile New York Post railed tIlat justice. From the governor's mansion to yearly total of executions since dIe reinsti­ terrevolution in tile former deformed the D.A.'s office to tile FOP, tile entire workers states has brought poverty, dis­ "The Left Fetes a Cop-Killer," denounc­ tution of tile death penalty in 1976, On ing Jamal's defenders and in particular legal system in Pennsylvania, as regards ease and fratricidal war in the East, ac­ June 7, just one day after South Africa tIlose who would be participating in pub­ tile Jantal case, recalls tile stench of Ala­ companied by emboldened fascist activity abolished the deatll penalty, dIe U.S, lic readings from Live from Death Row on bama in tile days of Jim Crow when tile and anti-immigrant witchhunts in dIe Senate passed Clinton's anti-terrorism May 20. One, featuring Giancarlo Espo­ powers dlat be similarly railed against package, which limits inmates to one West, Jamal's case has been embraced by sito, was picketed by 50 screaming white "New York lawyers" and "outside agita­ tors." Mike Farrell, co-chair of tile Com­ federal court challenge to their deatll sen­ trade unionists, Holocaust survivor groups racists from tile Philly, New York and nlittee to Save Mwnia Abu-Jamal, pub­ tence witllin one year of conviction. This and immigrant youtll who see in tile fight New Jersey Fraternal Orders of Police. for tIlis imprisoned fonner Black Pandler licly responded to tile attack witll a letter measure is a virtual death sentence for tile The May 18 "Eye on America" segment of Party leader tIle struggle against dIe forces printed in tile Philadelphia Daily News: centuries-old right of habeas corpus by Dan Ratller's CBS-TV national evening exploiting and oppressing tIlem as well. whdl 40 percent of death sentences are news featured an equally vile smear job, "Given the retrograde tone of the cam­ overturned. The American ruling class The mushrooming support from tile orga­ preceded tile day before by a lengtlly arti­ paign being waged-and signed onto by nized workers movement is particularly cle in tile Washington Post and earlier too many normally responsible jour­ wa.'lts a compliant and "disciplined" pop­ nals-one understands why so many of ulace. Mwnia stands as a symbol of defi­ important in linking tile fight for Mwnia's pieces in tile Boston Globe and tile Philadelphia Daily News. The crusade to the disfranchised find themselves willing ance against tIlis racist oppression. That is life witllliving struggle outside dIe prison to believe the powers-that-be are once kill Jamal moved into high gear last year why they want him dead. walls. again conspiring to remove from their in a successful attempt by tile FOP and Jamal's case has become a rallying midst an articulate and passionate voice otllers to cow National Public Radio into who otTers an alternative vision." point for all dlOse who want to fight A lynch mob is· on the rampage , canceling a series of commentaries by against this whole raeist onslaught. In In tIleir campaign to assassinate Mwnia In a moving statement to his supporters Jantal. Abu-Jamal, tile media have cynically February and March tIle PDC and its massed outside Philadelphia City Hall for The press announcement dlat Mwnia's fraternal organizations across the seas trotted out tile dead police officer's the June 5 press conference and rally, book was about to be published upped tile widow, Maureen Faulkner, claiming dlat organized demonstrations and rallies Jamal pointed out dlat Ridge signed tile ante against Jamal. The prison autllorities tIlis innocent man must die so dlat she will wllich drew support from increasing nunl­ deadl warrant knowing dlat Murnia's cut off all paralegal and press visits in again be able to get a peaceful night's bers of minority, inunigrant and labor attorneys were filing a petition for a new retaliation for increased support for Jamal sleep. Do any of tIlem inquire how tile organizations. Since February nearly trial on June 5. "Everyone in tile state of and publication of tile book. In the latest wife and children of Mwnia Abu-Jamal $20,000 has been raised for legal defense. Pennsylvania knew we were conling Mon­ atrOCity, Jamal has been placed in disci­ sleep, knowing tIlat their husband, fatller More recently, support has rolled in from day" to file. Ridge's action "was clearly plinary custody on charges of"conspiriog" and grandfatller is targeted for deatll? One tile powerful black trade union movement political. He is at tile call of tIlose who are witll his attorneys and supporters to pub­ of the dentagogic lies pushed by tile in Soutll Africa. These workers see in our calling for my blood." lish tile book. FOP's friends in tile press was dlat Jamal fight against tile legacy of slavery repre­ If Albert Sabo, tile judge who sen­ The attempted book-banning by jack­ turned and smiled at Maureen Faulkner sented by tIle "legal" lynching of Jamal a tenced Munlia to die, is tile King ofDeatll booted FOP tIlugs in uniform underscores when tile ballistics expert held up her Row, Governor Ridge clearly aspires to be tile essential trutll: they want to lock up husband's bloody shirt in evidence at the Crown PriRce. In office for just four Mumia's ideas and kill the writer. Like Jamal's June 1982 trial. Trial transcripts montlls, Ridge has already signed a stag­ the writers Salman Rushdie and Taslima show that Jantal was not even in tile court­ gering 15 deatll warrants and presided Nasrin, whose liberating views threaten room when this happened, because tile over tIle first Pennsylvania execution in 33 tIlose who benefit from a repressive soci­ judge excluded him from much of his own years. In response to inquiries why he ,ety, Munlia Abu-Jantal has been sentenced trial! signed Mwnia's warrant, Ridge's office to die because his ideas, his courage and replied, "to fulfill a canlpaign promise." his hwnanity threaten the rulers of this From Oakland to Sydney: TImt prol1lise was ntade to tile racist thugs whole system of injustice. Jantal has be­ Mumia must not diel in blue, dIe Philly cops who tried to kill come tile focal point of tile broader fight Jamal in dIe street 14 years ago and who against tile racist deatll penalty, and that is While availing ourselves of every legal have been trying to silence him ever since. why tile forces of deatll seek to vilifY him. resource at our disposal to save Jamal's The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of They want tile public to fear and loatlle tile life, deatll penalty abolitionists cannot Police (FOP) has been on a rampage to nearly 3,000 prisoners on deatll row expect justice dlfough tile capitalist force Jal1ml's execution. TIley have seized as nameless, faceless "brutes"-and courts. We must rely on and organize tile on the publication of Jamal's new book, Mwnia's eloquent, compassionate writ­ trentendous power of social protest to save Live from Death Row-a collection of his ings expose this lie. Mumia. Were it not for tile massmobili­ 'intensely compassionate writings about The ntacabre race to tile slaughterhouse zations against Jim Crow '~ustice," the tIle horrors of racism, injustice and prison reaches beyond tile Philadelphia cops and Scottsboro Boys would have been exe­ life-to rev up tIleir frenzied drive for dIe Governor Ridge to tile highest levels of cuted for a crime tIley did not cornnlit. legallync1ling oftllis powerful spokesman government. In mid-May President Clin­ In tile largest death penalty protests in for the oppressed and to intimidate tile ton attended the national FOP's annual this country in decades, tIlousands across coundess thousands who have raised their gatllering in Washington, and later met the country and in some 35 cities around voices to save him. Addison-Wesley, the with FOP leaders where he grotesquely tile world poured into the streets to de­ publisher of Live from Death Row, has equated leftist protesters of tile '60s witll mand dlat Jamal not be executed. Jamal's new book of prIson wrItIngs been the target of FOP harassment, in­ fascist terrorists reveling in tile slaughter • Philadelphia: Some 600 Jamal sup­ has thrown the racIst pro-death cluding a plane flying over dleir publish­ of innocent people in Oklahoma City. Em­ porters filled tile plaza outside Philadel­ forces Into a frenzied campaIgn to ing house trailing a 30-foot streamer read­ boldened by tile "law and order" drive, tile phia's City Hall for a press conference silence hIm and to IntImidate his ing, "Addison-Wesley Supports Convicted racist cops act as jf tIley stand above tile organized by tile Concerned Family and supporters. Cop Killer." law, as demonstrated by the rampage by Friends of Murnia Abu-Jamal in con­ In May, when Live from Death Row hit drunken New York City cops in Washing- junction witll tile filing of Jamal's legal

8 WORKERS HAMMER papers on June 5. For the flISt time the Philly press corps, who have been echoing the Fraternal Order of Police calls for Jamal's head, got to hear the anatomy ofJamal's frame-up and proof Join the campaign ofhis innocence from lead attorney Len Weinglass and PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein. Speakers included Pam MOBILISE NOW! was the message Africa of the Concerned Family and at the 7 June emergency demo outside the Friends, Ed Jarvis of the PDC, Clark US embassy in London. Initiated by the Kissinger of Refuse and Resist! and Partisan Defence Committee in response former political prisoner Dhoruba bin to the signing of the death warrant for Wahad. Ray Martinez, an SEIU orga­ Jamal, the protest drew more than 15 nizer in Puerto Rico and adviser of the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal organisations and 150 people. Speeches flew in to express his support. were interspersed with loud, angry chants of "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the • New York: Four hours later over Racist Death Penalty!" Speaking for the 1,000 protesters marching to a beating Spartacist League, Andrew Gatsos under­ drwll ringed New York's Madison lined the resonance which Mumia's fight Square Garden. Although a phalanx of has found among the oppressed and work­ cops prevented protesters from using bullhorns, chants of Free Munlia! Free ing people in Britain and pointed out that, Mumia! could be heard for blocks. A "the legal formality regarding capital truck driver passing by who blew his punishment... didn't stop the murder of hom in solidarity was pulled over and Joy Gardner" or of Omasase Lumumba or arrested. Brian Douglas. Gatsos concluded, "It's going to take a workers revolution to put • Oakland: Over 500 angry protesters the capitalist state machinery of death out rallied in downtown Oakland to de­ of business once and for all!" Other mand "Save the Life of Mumia Abu­ speakers included representatives from the Jamal!" Kiilu Nyasha, a former Panther NUJ, RMT and NATFHE; the Green who remains active in the fight to free Party, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, in the United States and the case of Abu­ US Partisan Defense Committee's jour­ political prisoners despite being con­ the National Union of Students executive, Jamal", calling on the Pennsylvania gov­ nal Class Struggle Defense Notes, fined to a wheel chair, told the crowd, Workers Power, Friends of MOVE, Afri­ ernor to grant MWllia a stay of execution special issue on the campaign, from the "I wrote Mumia and I told him I will can Liberation Support Campaign, the and a retrial. And in Britain, 36 MPs l18ve PDC in London (20 copies for £6). Get not go through losing you like I went Revolutionary Communist Group, the so far signed a second Early Day Motion a copy of the PDC video, "From Death through losing George Jackson." Turkish organisation Devrimci Sol and in the House of Commons, condenming Row, This is Mumia Abu-Jamal" (£15) ILWU International President Brian more. the death warrant signed by Ridge and and arrange video showings for your McWilliams sent out a notice urging In Glasgow, a 24 June united-front noting its "vindictive timing". friends and co-workers. Prepare for ILWU members to attend the rally, and protest meeting initiated by the PDC and FUNDS ARE URGENTLY emergency demonstrations-get on the addressed the rally himself as the union supported by the Scottish Region of the NEEDED! To get a new trial and over­ PDC phone chain to organise in your banner waved from the speakers plat­ Fire Brigades Union and the Glasgow turn the death sentence could cost more area. You can purchase Mumia's book form. Owen Marron, Executive Secre­ University Labour Club drew two dozen than a million dollars. Send a contribution Live from Death Row at Index Books in tary of the Alameda Central Labor people. Brian Meechan of the GU Labour for Mwnia's legal defence to the PDC at London, but ask your local bookshop to Council linked the rollback of union Club said, "The framing of Jamal repre­ BCM Box 4986, London WC1N 3XX, order it today! rights with attacks on the black com­ sents a naked political expediency on the and make your cheque payable to the SEND PROTESTS to: Governor Tom munity and pledged labor support for part of the American ruling class .... " POC, writing "Jamal legal defence" on the Ridge, Main Capitol Building, Room 225, the fight for Jamal's life: Partisan Defence Conmlittee speakers back. All these funds are sent in their Harrisburg, PA 17120, USA. Within a "We're all taught in school that the Con­ urged those in attendance to "make this entirety to the Committee to Save Mumia week of signing Jamal's death warrant, stitution and the Bill of Rights protects canlpaign your own", by raising funds for Abu-Jamal in New York. To date over Ridge received over 20,000 letters of pro­ us, and gives us justice, but it does not. The only way people get justice is to Mumia's legal defence, passing motions £2000 has been raised in Britain and test. Now he's changing his phone and fax exercise their rights, and that's what for active support of Jan18l in their unions Ireland, including donations from the numbers daily to try to stay ahead of the we're doing here today .... We in orga­ and other organisations, and publicising FBU, the NUJ, the Scottish Branch of the growing movement for Janlal. As we go to nized labor know that the law is not just. the case. Actions and meetings in defence GPMU, two branches ofNATFHE, and press the phone nunlber is (717) 787- For too many years the courts and the ofMwllia are being organised in Birming­ £500 from the rapJhardcore/dance group 2500 and the fax is (717) 783-8609. police were owned by the employers; they exploited the workers. Every time ham by a committee of trade union and Fun-da-mental, as well as many individual WRITE TO JAMAL to express your that we had a good strike, they would go socialist organisations and individuals. contributors. solidarity: MWllia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, to court, get injunctions and break our On 15 June, the European Parliament SPREAD THE WORD! ORGAN­ SCI Greene, 1040 E. Roy Furman High­ strikes .... [W]e know the history of Phil­ passed a "Resolution on the death penalty ISE PROTEST! Order bundles of the way, Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090, USA. adelphia: the bombing of the row houses, the destruction and the terrible loss of life, women and children. The only way we're going to stop that is to keep dem­ political opponents of the status qUIr­ in the fight for the "voice of the voiceless" German intelligence and victim of a vi­ onstrating like this and to try and con­ both to kill the most dangerous and to and the NUJ Deputy General Secretary ad­ cious witchhunting campaign by the Ger­ vince the people who run the government frighten the rest. We must not be fright­ dressed the June 7 protest in London as man Fourth Reich, issued a statement: ened. We must not shy away from the in Pennsylvania not to execute an inno­ did representatives from other unions and cent man. Give him a fair and just trial defense of Mumia. We must make sure "Even before the establishment of Hit­ and we in the labor movement will be that NO AMERICAN POLmCAL PRIS­ a very broad spectrwll of socialist groups. ler's dictatorship in Gerntany and the with you, and all the other organizations. ONER suffers the fate of Ethel and Julius Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour Party Member persecution of our family, my parents And if we keep at it, we will get justice Rosenberg. " of Parliament, told the crowd, declared the significance of solidarity for our brother." exemplified by the injustice imposed in The death penalty shackles the ancient "This proposed legal murder of someone the USA on the Italians Sacco and Van­ Hundreds more demonstrated in Los who is not even guilty of the crime for zetti. During Nazi rule and the Holocaust tradition of torture to the ruthless machin­ which he has been charged is yet another Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Wash­ ery ofthe modern capitalist state. With the we owed our lives to international soli­ example of the brutality of the law and darity .... I therefore ask every individual ington, D.C. An evening rally in Minne­ recent abolition of the death penalty in order lobby in the United States and apolis on June 3 was disrupted when who has met with injustice or who is South Africa, today the United States is indeed exactly the same law and order fighting for his rights to join the demand police on horseback charged into the the only Western power to engage in the lobby that is at work in this country as to save the life ofMumia Abu-Jamal." peaceful crowd of200, spraying mace and state-sanctioned slaughter of its own well." arresting eleven people. The Boston rally people. Echoing earlier movements in A June 6 protest outside tlle U.S. Con­ at the memorial to the courageous black In Germany some 300 people pro­ sulate in Vancouver, British Columbia Europe against cl18ttel slavery in America, tested on June 8 at the U.S. Consulate in Civil War soldiers of the Massachusetts today the demand, "Save Munlia Abu­ was heavily built by the Canadian Union Berlin to demand Save Mwuia Abu­ of Postal Workers, which also participated 54th Regiment heard a statement from Jamal! Abolish the racist death penalty!" Jamal. The IG Medien journalists union, in the Toronto rally. Demonstrations took Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's children, rings out in many languages on the streets which elected Mumia to an honorary place in Sydney. Australia on June 7 and Robert and Michael Meeropol. of Berlin, Paris, London. R0'11C, Amster­ position on their Berlin executive conuuit­ in Melbourne the following day. About dam, Tokyo, and elsewhere. "Make no mistake about it, the answer to tee earlier this year, issued our demo call 100 people demonstrated in Paris. the question of whether something like In London on June 7 about 150 people under their union's signature. A mixed France· outside the American Consulate our parents' case could happen again is a protested outside the U.S. Embassy. Jesse TurkishlKurdishiGenllan youth group, on June 8. A statement from the CGT snarling YES pronounced by the Su­ Jackson was infonlled of the death warrant D259, unfurled a huge banner bearing a dockers union in Marseilles was read, preme Court and new Governor of the for Jamal while he was on tour in Eng­ black panther and reading "Freedom for saying, "The dockers of the port of Mar­ Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Our land. At a public meeting on June 4, Jack­ Mumia Abu-Jama!." Speakers included seilles love liberty and life too much to parents were almost saved by the mobili­ son told his audience, "We are all in zation of thousands of Americans. PDS members of parliament, student ren18in silent in the face of racist injustice Mumia can yet be saved if we devote prayer that Mumia Abu-Janlal must not leaders, and'a statement was read by the and the heavy silence of the death pen­ ourselves wholeheartedly to spreading die by capital punisluuent. We must stop international Auschwitz (survivors) alty!" Demonstrations and pickets in the word about his specific case and also this killing. It does not make sense." committee. AnlSterdam were held on June 7 and 8 and about the awful way the Death Penalty is Mumia's colleagues in the National Markus Wolf, a Jewish survivor of are also scheduled for June 15 and 16. used as the ultimate weapon against Union of Journalists are actively involved Hitler's Third Reich, former head of East continued on page 10

JULY/AUGUST 1995 9 the national population, compose about penalty is part of the historic struggle for class people by both black as well as forty percent of the Death Row popula­ black equality in America. white cops on the streets of every major Jamal ••• city of this country .... (Continued/rom page 9) tion." Over 80 percent of those sent to In any struggle for social justice it is essential to have a crystal clear view of "Reagan's feds in collusion with black death row from Jamal's Philadelphia are Democratic Mayor Goode bombed the Cities around Italy are plastered with black, some one third o/those on the row who your friends and who your enemies MOVE household in 1985, killing eleven posters calling for Mumia's freedom and from Ph~/!!delphia sent t!Jere by. .. Judge are. The Partisan Defense Committee has people including young ci)ildren, babies. a national demonstration is planned on Saba, a fonner under-sheriff (or 16 years led the way in organizing broad-based Clinton's feds caused the fiery death of June 24 in Rome. and member of the Fraternal Order of united-front defense efforts. We abhor almost a hundred people in Waco, in­ Police. dle suppression of any political views for cluding children. And after the fascists Stop racist legal lynchings bombed and killed in Oklahoma the In the 1987 case of McCleskey v. lowest conmton denominator "unity." Clinton administration seized this oppor­ To the brutal reality of rampant jobless­ Kemp, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowl­ Widlin the framework of fighting for tunity as a chance to push anti-Arab ness. impoverislunent and the epidemic of edged the ovenvhelmingly racial bias in Jantal there can and must be open political racism, as a chance to step up the cam­ homclessness. the rulers of American the application of the death penalty but discussion and debate. However, there is paign to eliminate the democratic rights society have no solution but increased argued that this didn '/ matter because, no place for COilS, who are the front line of the majority of the American people .... of this whole system of racist terror, in "It is time to respond to the legal lynch repression. With 1.5 million people be­ "taken to its logical conclusion [this] mobs. It's time to respond to the hind bars, the U.S. is the world's biggest throws into serious question the principles a struggle for justice. Unfortunately, one strikebreakers. It's time to stop the Dem­ jailer, imprisoning blacks at a rate far that underlie our criminal justice system." of the speakers at the June 5 press confer­ ocrat and Republican party regimes higher than South Africa's apartheid TI1US Chief Justice Relmquist & Co. reaf­ ence was Ron Hampton of the National which have been using these means to rulers ever dreamed of Over 25 percent of finn the principle set forth by Justice Black Police Officer's Association, which suppress working-class people and poor young black men are under1he "supervi­ Roger Taney in the infamous 1857 Dred recently sent a letter opposing Jamal's people. It's time to build a working-class party. It's time to save Mumia Abu-Ja­ sion" of the very criminal injustice system. Scott case, that blacks "had no rights execution. Whatever their personal feel­ mal. Abolish the Death Penalty. Finish Capital punislunent is institutionalized which the white man was bound to ings about the death penalty may be, these the Civil War!" racist murder. It represents the legacy of respect." black cops are no less a part of the capital­ slavery-legal lynching-a continuation State executions are a social act meant ists' bloody terror machine than the white TIle campaign to save Jamal is at a of the ideology that proclaims that black to intimidate and brutalize a whole peo­ racist dlugs-their brothers in blue. critical point. As Ossie Davis, co-chair­ people are not hwnan and can be killed ple. TIle racist death penalty goes hand in Speaking for dle PDC Ed Jarvis protested man of dle Conunittee to Save MWl1ia with impunity. As Jamal wrote in the hand with theex1ralegal terror of the KKK this cop's presence, noting: Abu-Jamal said, "The warrant is an out­ prestigious Yale Law JOllrnal, "You will and sununary executions by cops on the "This legal lynching is one side of the rage! Mwnia is somebody we desperately fmd a blacker world on Death Row. Afri­ street to keep black people "in their legal lynchings that go on every day need alive. We cannot let dlem take such can Americans. a mere twelve percent of place." The fight to abolish the death against black people, against working- a voice from us.".

TIle campaign to save Mwuia Abu-Jantal On June 12 the South Africa Conmtunist has touched a deep chord in South Africa, Party sent a protest. And the New Unity where thousands of black unionists and anti­ Movenlent wrote to the PDC that dleir apartheid fighters have vivid experience of South African unions comrades are "angered and appalled" by dle dlC racist prisons and dle threat of dle signing ofdle death warrant, and noted d18t: gallows which sent hundreds of political join campaign to save Jamal "Governor Ridge and his followers have prisoners to dleir deafus. In recent weeks, a chosen to ignore the long and dedicated nwnber of South African unions, as well as efforts ofan international constituency to the Congress ofSouth African Trade Unions secure the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal. (COSATU), the predominandy black union They now wish to claim the life of federation, have made urgent appeals to save nunlber of labor organizations around dte silence them. The case of our first Mumia to provide a blood-sacrifice on Jamal's life. world, several key South African unions democratically-elected President is but the altar of mounting fascist war on Afr;can National Congress (ANC) one such example. liberty and justice. We join the POC in have joined the fight to save the life its campaign both to save the life of secretary general M. C. Ramaphosa, fired of America's only death row political "Your system of justice is on trial. MUMIA ABU-Jantal must not die." Mumia Abu-Jantal and to secure the off a protest letter to Pennsylvania gov­ prisoner. These include tlte Soutlt African completeresloration of his liberty." ernor Ridge on June 2, urging Janlal's Conmtercial Catering and Allied Workers A number of socialist organizations death sentence be conuuuted and de­ have also joined the fight. Last Sep­ Union (SACCAWU), the Food Farming Powerhouse of black labor manding a retrial of his case. COSATV Beverage and Allied Workers Union tember, the Workers Organisation for noted in its letter that dle union federation, (FFBAWU), Turning Wheel Workers' Socialist Action wrote that WOSA and the In the huge class battles to forge the "representing one and a half million Union, the Steel Mining and Conmtercial Workers' List Party "call for the im­ SOUdl African black unions, dle black members, would like to express grave Workers Union (STEMCWU), tlte Trans­ mediate abolition of the racist and proletariat came to the fore of the anti­ concern at the death sentence imposed on port and General Workers Union (fGWU), barbaric death penalty, and add our voices apartheid struggle. It was their social journalist, Mumia Abu-JanIa\. ... Our or­ and dle National Union of Metalworkers to all brothers and sisters in the United weight which rocked the white supre­ ganisation has struggled against all forms (NUMSA). States and elsewhere who are demanding macist regime. The black workers of of racism, oppression and the use of the May 26 protest letter from NUMSA a retrial, at the very least, for Comrade death sentence to silence political 11te South Africa are still fighting to obtain activists. We are therefore vehenlently noted: Abu-Jamal." The Workers International their freedom from racist oppression and opposed to the death penalty on both "On behalf of our 187,000 members of To Rebuild the Fourth International sent a capitalist exploitation. From South Africa protest telegram stating: ideological and humanitarian grounds." National Union of Metalworkers of to dle U.S., dle campaign against dle On June 6, in its first major decision, South Africa, we wish to express our "Mumia Abu-Jantal was framed. The racist deadl penalty is part ofdle fight to grave concern at the death sentence racist police force will try together with the Constitutional Court in Cape Town which has been imposed on journalist smash the whole chain of repression of dle abolished the death penalty, ruling that the state to use this case and 'trial' capitalist state in the struggle for interna­ Mumia Abu-Jamal." of Abu-Jantal to intintidate other rad­ capital punislunent was unconstitutional. tional workers revolution. This union, which organizes the icals. We take courage from the princi­ As New York Times Johannesburg corre­ combative auto workers from Port pled struggle waged by the comrades spondent Harold French noted, for Elizabeth to Durban and Johannesburg, is around Abu-Jamal and support you Reprinted from Class-Struggle Defense decades, execution was used "as a means " wholeheartedly. " at dle very heart of the power of the South Notes no 22, Summer 1995. of terror in enforcing the system of racial ' African black proletariat. Fonner un\pn separation known as apartheid." Bodl in president, now Member of Parliament, the United States and South Africa, the Moses Mayekiso faced the death penalty FOOD FARMING BEVERAGE AND ALLIED WORKERS UN/ON OF S.A. barbarous death penalty is the legacy of No. 213. 2nd Flo:), when he was jailed as part of the OJoIlC;.a8l.,.HOUM racial subjugation which denied fun­ "Alexandra Five." Mayekiso and his damental rights to whole peoples, re­ "

10 WORKERS HAMMER Cliffites in US get lesson in workers democracy

On 17 June, the International Socialist destroying 1be Black Pan1ber Party. Wittingly bombing of the federal building in Okla­ altogedler. In dns way, too, dre ISO leader­ Organization (ISO-affiliated to Tony ocunwittingly, the ISO's gangsterism leaves homa, Clinton is ranuning through a new ship does the bourgeoisie's dirty work. Cliffs Socialist Workers Party in Britain) dlem open to being used as dle tool of more COINTELPRO. Clearly dle purpose ltere is for the ISO to assaulted members and supporters of the sinister agencies. TIle ruling class understands, as do we, control its membersltip by drawing a blood Spartacist League who were distributing a Our rebuff of the ISO's attack and our that a mass protest to free Mwnia Abu­ line. A nwnber of ISO menlbers have seen leaflet pointedly questioning the ISO's intmediate full exposure of the incident Jantal and abolish the racist death penalty dle figllt to free Jantal as vital to the figllt belated defence of death row political pris­ stands in contrast to dleir guilty public strikes a blow against the whole system of against racist American capitalism, and one oner Mumia Abu-Jamal, particularly in silence and senti-private an!! ever-twisting capitalist repression. So do their media \\itich dle}' riglttly dlOugllt the ISO should be light of their view that the' racist cops can lies on the Internet. Finally, on 24 June, moudlpieces. TIle ISO's attack came on the involved in. Finally dleir leadersltip re­ be won to the side of the working class and the ISO "Steering Conunittee" came up heels ofa front-page ~icle in dle 16 June spooded with articles in defence of Jantal, but

oppressed through "struggle". This leaflet with an "official" statement which, how­ Wall Street Journal which portrayed Ja­ I the fuct that we have long been in the lead in is reprinted below. ever, is not for public distribution! Here we mal's supporters and the Spartacist League dre campaign for Jantal, mobilising and c0- The ISO's gangsterism is devastating find dle following antalgam of slander: dle in particular as cultists. Recall the govern­ operating with diverse groups and tenden­ evidence that their "support" to the cam­ SL's "actions, radler than helping to build ment's mass murder of dle black men, cies, gives the lie to the Is6 leadership's 'sa­ paign for Jamal isn't worth the paper it's our movement, are ainted at destroying it"; women and children in the MOVE com­ tanic depicticn ofour aganisation as a bunch printed on. For years, while the ISO main­ "among dle Spartacist League's initiatives mune in Philadelphia or the 87 charred of crazed sectarians and "disrupters". Vio­ tained a stony silence, dle Partisan Defense isdle Partisan Defense Committee"; "the bodies ofdle Branch Davidians in Waco lence and slander is the way they resolve that Committee, a legal and social defence or­ PDC has been heavily involved with the to understand dle deadly impact of being contradiction. ganisation affiliated with dle SL, initiated campaign to free Pennsylvania death row declared a cult on the front page of a major The abject hypocrisy of the ISO's current mass rallies and protests on behalf of inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal". You don't capitalist newspaper. stance ofoppositicn to violence is revealed in Jamal seeking to unite dle broadest possi­ need to read between dle lines to get dle • Beyond dle lies, the ISO's statement the following news from South Africa. When ble spectrum of political groups, trade message of this smear job-ie, one of the reveals breathtaking contempt for their, a suppa1er of the ISO's affiliate, the Interna­ unionists and odlers in this country and main organisations fighting to mobilise in own membership. Hundreds of participants tional Socialists of South Africa (lSSA), was internationally for a common purpose Jamal's defence are "thugs" who want to at dleir national gadlering in Chicago saw infonned of the Clticago events, he boasted while scrupulously maintaining dle right of "destroy" the workers movement and there­ SL supporters distributing literature and of his own participation in "gool)ing" Spar­ all participants to raise dleir own particular fore ... you shouldn't get involved. engaging in political discussion. Yet the tacist comrades in Britain and screamed at political viewpoints. It will take more than a large bucket of ISO statement asserts dlat one of our sales our comrade, "You are nodring! You are a Who benefits from the ISO's slander, cen­ clorox to make this wash. But again, cui teams "carried no literature and made no peanutofan organisaticn." Troubled bydris !UShip and violence against us? Answer: the bono (who benefits) from the ISO's slan­ attempt to talk to anyone arriving for the response, an observer from dle South African racist rulers and their cops who want to see ders? The international outcry for Jamal is meeting". ISO members face the grim Conunwrist Party (which claints 50,000 Mumia dead. The FBI's "OOlIllIfr-intelligence a thorn in the side of the capitalist rulers choice of corruption: either they must menlbers) replied, "By your logic, then the program", COINTELPRO, used the same who want to press ahead with the frrst ex­ swear to a story they know is not true, or, South Aftican Commwrist Party ought to do tactics-lies and "dirty tricks" ainted at fo­ plicidy political execution in this COWltry if they are troubled by lies and violence, the same dring to you." Think about it. • menting disunity and violence-in their cam­ since the murders of Julius and Ethel dley will be driven out of the organisation Reprinted from Workers Vanguard paign against the left, particularly ainted at Rosenberg in 1953. Seizing on the heinous and perhaps give up on left-wing politics no 625, 30 June 1995

guards. Yet the ISO's mentors in the bourgeois ideology) tlle capitalist rulers British SWP have happily bragged of purvey. prison guards setting up Socialist Worker The title of a recent Socialist Worker readers' circles! (12 May) article, for exanlple, reads And what of other police agencies? "Death penalty not a deterrent to murder." Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! Since the time he was a 15-year-old But the death penalty is murder, executed spokesman for the Philadelphia chapter of by the racist capitalist rulers. We are Abolish the racist death penalty! the Black Panther Party, Jamal was a opposed to the death penalty on principle. target of the Philly cops and the FBI's We do not accord dlis governnlent the For over a decade, Mumia Abu-Jamal Jamal is stark testimony to the Marxist COINTELPRO program. Thirty-eight right to say who lives and who dies. In has been entombed in a cell on death row understanding that the cops are the armed Pandlers were murdered and hundreds of racist America, the death penalty is the in Pennsylvania for a crime he did not dtugs and enforcers for the racist rule of others jailed on frame-up charges in dns lynch rope of the Ku Klux Klan made commit, sentenced to die for his political the wealthy few against any who would deadly FBI vendetta. Jamal is a supporter "legal," enlbedded in a history going back beliefs. A former Black Panther, supporter oppose them. But how does this jive with of the MOVE organization. In 1985, in a to dle slave codes which defined black of the MOVE organization and an award­ the ISO's view that the police are "work­ joint operation of the Philly cops, city people as chattel. winning journalist who even on death row ers in uniform" whose strikes and de­ administration, FBI and Reagan govern­ For the Spartacist LeaguelSpartacus continues to use his searingly eloquent mands for "union" rights should be sup­ ment, the MOVE household was fire­ Youth Club the fight to save dle life of voice to expose the crimes of America's ported? One of the baldest expressions of bombed, murdering II black men, women Munlia Abu-Jamal and to abolish dle rulers, Jamal is dle symbol of what the this position was made by John Molyneux and children and incinerating an entire racist deadt penalty is an integral part of death penalty is all about in the racist, a leading "theoretician" of the ISO's neighborhood. our figllt for black freedom in a socialist capitalistU.SA On June I, Pennsylvania parent organization, the British Socialist Today, seizing on the hideous Okla­ America. Now ,is dle time dlat all oppo­ governor Tom Ridge signed an execution Workers Party. In his nrisnamed "Teach homa bombing, the Clinton adntinistration nents of the racist death penalty-par­ warrant against Jantal. yourself Marxism" column, Molyneux has rammed through a new COINTEL­ ticularly the multiracial working class The Partisan Defense Committee, a opined that "part of the struggle to smash PRO, the "Omnibus Counterterrorism which has dre social power to strike a real non-sectarian legal and social defense dle state may involve supporting rebel­ Act," which targets virtually the entire blow against this whole system of racist organization whose purpose is in accor­ lions of sections of the police against their population of the U.S. In a leaflet at UC reaction-must be mobilized to save the dance with the political views ofdle Spar­ officers and employers" (SOcialist Work­ Berkeley the ISO responded by asking life of Mumia Abu-Jantal. United-front tacist LeaguelU.S., has long fOUgllt to er, 28 August 1993)! "Can we rely on the FBI to protect us?" actions, in which all participants can mobilize the broadest social forces in the Cop "rebellions" are aimed at getting That self-proclaimed socialists would express dleir particular views, also allows figlu to save Munlia's life. This cause has rid of any restrictions on dleir ability to even pose such a question, speaks vol­ for the exchange and clash of opinion been taken up in the U.S. and internation- terrorize the inner cities, smash strikes and umes of the ISO's view of the state as a which is vital to building a revolutionary ""'ally by many thousands of trade unionists, exact vengeance against all other per­ benign and in some cases even a benevo­ workers party that can lead the fight for a leftists, writers, artists, political figures ceived "enenries." TIre Philadelphia police lent force (particularly in its Democratic socialist America. and other opponents of the racist death "wrion," the Fra1ernal Order of Police, has Party face). It is a good thing that the ISO has penalty. been on campaign footing to have Jantal That's why dte -ISO meekly submits finally decided to take up the defense of After years of silence, the International put to death. With the backing of other control of anti-fascist protests to the racist Jamal. But the ISO's policy of slander, Socialist Organization published an article police "wrions" dley have been mobilizing police. Typically, the ISO waltzes its exclusionism and violence are antithetical in Jamal's defense in the June 9 issue of to silence Jamal and intimidate his sup­ members and supporters into fenced-in to dte cause of mobilizing mass social Socialist Worker. This is an about-face porters. Socialist Worker denounces the police pens-surrounded by cops with protest to save Mumia's life. Less than a and we look forward to the ISO mobi­ racism of the Philly cops but presumably dleir guns, their gas, their niglltsticks and year ago, several ISO thugs physically lizing its forces in the desperately needed dle ISO would support dlem if they were dleir horses-to impotently "protest" dte attacked dlfee members of the Spartacus writed-front efforts to save Jantal's life. At "on strike" for better pay and working fascists without ever mobilizing to stop YOUdl Club outside a death penalty forum dle same time, taking up the cause of a conditions i.e., more money to carry out dlem. That's also why the ISO appeals to at Boston University. Petitions and litera­ man who the media, the government and their terror. the agencies of the U.S. governnlent ture for Jantal were ripped out of our com­ dte cops lyingly revile as a "cop killer" In its review of Jamal's book "Live -anti-labor gangsters with state power­ rades' hands, seized in stacks off our must pose some excruciating contradic­ From Death Row," Socialist Worker to rid dle Teamsters of "mob influence." literature table, tom to shreds and tllfO\\11 tions for dle ISO to deal widl (and per­ notes dtat the "most powerful essays in the TIle whole demeanor and language of tlle out on dle street. Substituting dle fist for haps this is the reason for their belated book describe the barbaric and dehuntan­ ISO is that of housebroken "socialists" the brain, tlle ISO leadership's tactics defense of Jamal). izing routine of prison life." The hands-on who take care not to "offend" dle powers ltave long been to attempt to draw a blood The police franle-up of Mumia Abu- agents of this barbarism are the prison that be and the "public opinion" (i.e., continued on page 15

JULY/AUGUST 1995 11 Yugoslavia, Wallcr Zinuncnnann, con­ state while restructuring its economy where the Muslims were concentrated. Balkans .... trasts the rclative national amity under the along capitalist . lines. But at this point Since the end of 1992, the situation in (Continued from page 1) Titoist system to the fratricidal nationalism the newly reunified German Fourth ex-Yugoslavia has been one of strategic of today: Reich entered the scene in a decisive way stalemate. The Croat and Bosnian Mus­ and steam-rollered its European allies lim forces, while building up their man­ nwnerous cease-fifes followed by new of­ "For all their sins, the Yugoslav into recognising the independence of power and military ha~dware, have not fensives and counteroffensives. Western Conullunist leaders rarely .incited their been strong enough to roll back the govcnunents routinely denounce the Ser­ captive audience to hate other Yugo­ Slovenia, Croatia and, somewhat later, slavs for their ethnic origins... . Indeed Serbs. And the Western imperialist pow­ bian leaders as "war criminals" and then Bosnia. the main cliche of Tito's Yugoslavia We wrote at the time: "The masters of ers, each for different and conflicting turn around and negotiate new "peacekeep­ was 'brotherhood and unity.' The na­ the Frankfurt banks and Ruhr factories reasons, have been unwilling to launch a ing" arrangements with them. TIle disarray tionalists are different From Belgrade believe that with reunification last year major war against the Serbs on behalf of and divisions among the Western imperial­ and Zagreb they constantly exhort citi­ they have reversed the Third Reich's their Croatian and/or Bosnian Muslim ists are mirrored by those of the embattled zens to hate members of different ethnic groups." defeat in World War II. In Yugoslavia clients. Balkan nationalists. TIle ,Croats and Bos­ -New York Review ofBooks, they are seeking to reverse Gennany's nian Muslims, supposedly allies against the 2 February . defeat in World War I" (Workers Van­ Post-Soviet NATO, post-Soviet Serbs in a Gernlan-sponsored federation, The murderous nationalism which was guard no 531, 19 July 1991). Before Russia and the Balkan quagmire periodically turn on and fight one another. characteristic of interwar capitalist Yugo­ World War I, Slovenia, Croatia and "Step by step, mission by mission, 111e Serbian nationalist camp, too, is di­ Bosnia were part of the decaying Austro- token force by token force, the German vided into bitterly hostile factions quite slavia has fed off and driven capitalist capable of masSacring each other. Fundamentally, the Balkan blood-bath is the product of capitalist counterrevolu­ tion in Eastern Europe and the destruction of tlle Soviet Union under the pressure of world imperialism. TI1foughout Eastern Europe that counterrevolution was fuelled by, and in turn reinforced, resurgent nation­ alism. A~ the same time, with the disap­ pearance of the Soviet Union the systern of Cold War alliances is falling apart in the face of increasing interimperialist rivalry, centrally between the United States, Ger­ many and Japan. In announcing Bonn's decision to send air force, army and navy forces to the region, Gernlan "defence" minister Riille "said tlmt contributing to the Balkans mission will give GernlanY more clout in Europe", the AP (26 June) report­ ed. "'TIle Americans are clearly on the margins of the policy, ",;th Britain and France leading the way,' he said." The wars precipitated by tlle break-up ofYugosiavia have exposed and intensi­ fied tlle tensions witllin NATO, which Der Spiegel Reuters has lost its central reason for existence. Serbian civilians (left) held In detention centre by Croatian army, which drove out thousands In recent offensive. Indeed, one right-wing ideologue in the Right. fascistic Croatian leader FranJo TudJrnan (second from left). US, Jonatllan Clarke of the Cato Insti­ tute in Washington, argues for scrapping counterrevolution. TIus development was Hungarian CJ11pire, the junior partner of military is inching its way back toward NATO aitogetller along Witll a total prepared by the bureaucratic defornmtions Germany's Wilhelmine Second Reich the battlefield, 50 years after it lost Hit­ withdrawal from Bosnia: "During the and inherent Iinutations of Yugoslav Sta­ (empire) led by Bismarck and his suc­ ler's war and bid a humiliating farewell Cold War, NATO served a vital pur­ linism with its progratlmle of building "$0- cessors. The present drive of the Fourth to arms", wrote dIe Los Angeles Times pose. But, by keeping the alliance alive cialism in one country". Only extension of Reich of German imperialism to restore (20 June). "Now, with NATO defense beyond its useful life, American poliey­ proletarian revolution to the advanced cap­ its sphere of influence in the northern ministries putting together a rapid-reac~ makers risk seeing the United States italist countries of Western Europe could Balkans .is not simply motivated by his­ tion force for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the sucked into obscure wars where dIe Am­ provide the economic basis for genuine torical sentiment or a desire for revenge. postwar German army is on the verge of erican interest is slight and where the national equality in dIe relatively impover­ This region contains a wealth of miner­ its most politically charged extra-terri­ American role-as in Bosnia-makes a ished Balkans. As it was, Tito's "market als of strategic importance to German torial undertaking yet: 2,000 soldiers, 12 bad situation worse" (Los Angeles socialism", which opened Yugoslavia to industry. C-160 transport aircraft and about a Times, 30 May). increasing imperialist economic penetra­ The Serbs were not only the largest dozen Tornado attack planes are being US policy in the Balkans, or rather tion, reinforced disparities anloog the vari­ nationality in pre-1991 Yugoslavia but readied for possible action in dle Balkan the lack of any coherent policy, is not ous regions, fuelling resurgent nationalism. also the most geographically dispersed. war." Following the NATO meeting in determined by what is happening on the Especially after Tito's death in 1980, A quarter of the Serb population lived Paris, Bonn's defence ministry rewrote ground in Bosnia and Croatia but rather the Yugoslav Stalinist bureaucracy in­ outside of its own national republic, its "Order No. I" for an "out-of-area" by Washington's shifting relations with creasingly fractured along national lines. mainly in Croatia and Bosnia. With the deployment of German military forces to London, Paris, Bonn, Moscow and, indi­ In the late 1980s dIe strident nationalist break-up of Yugoslavia, these large Ser­ include "possible support for a multina­ recdy, Tokyo. For all their hesitancy, Slobodan Milosevic, who took over the bian communities confronted hostile na­ tional coalition" in Bosnia. Since then NATO's insertion of beefed-up strike leadership of the Serbian League of tionalist regimes in Zagreb and Sarajevo. preparations have been "going ahead forces points towards a change in the Communists, tranlpled on Tito's care­ Fear of becoming an oppressed minority, full-duottle for departure in the direction charactCf, of the war, "subordinating the fully balanced national arrangements, • combined with chauvinist sentiment for of the Balkans", wrote Der Spiegel (19 Croat and Bosnian Muslim armies to an beginning widl a violent attack on the a Greater Serbia, ignited a new series of June). And now dIe decision to deploy imperialist war against the Serbs", as we Albanians of Kosovo. Milosevic's drive Balkan wars. has been made. At dIe same time,' Ger­ noted in Workers Vanguard no 624. In for a "Greater Serbia", in turn, re­ These began in the frontier regions of man chancellor Kohl declared, "Ger­ that eventuality, it is the elementary duty inforced anti-Communist nationalism in Croatia as loCal Serbian militias backed many must in no case allow itself to get of revolutionary Marxists and class­ Croatia and Slovenia, dIe wealdlier, tra­ by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army drawn into the war." conscious workers to defend the Serbs ditionally Roman CadlOlic northernmost fought forces loyal to the fascistic regime Gernlan imperialism is presently in­ against an imperialist onslaught. republics of Yugoslavia which were for­ of Franjo Tudjman in Zagreb. By the end hibited by the burden of its history from merly part of dIe Genuanic sphere of of 1991, dIe Serbs controlled 30 per cent undertaking. resolute military action by German Fourth Reich pushed influence. Recent docmllents have re­ of Croatia with Tudjman & Co vowing itself The atrocities conullitted by the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia vealed dlat for decades dIe West German to retake this territory when they were Wehrmacht and Hitler's Croatian and 111e Socialist Federal Republic of Yu­ secret service worked closely widl dIe strong enough to do so. Next came the Bosnian Muslim fascist puppets during goslavia was born out of World War II Croatian Ustasha and other right-wing three-sided communalist bloodletting in World War II are seared into the na­ when Tito' s ConmlUnist Partisans success­ nationalists to bring about the break-up Bosnia between Serbs, Croats and Bos­ tional consciousness of dIe Serbian peo­ fully battled dIe occupying Nazi German ofTitoist Yugoslavia. nian Muslims. The Serbs-making up ple. TIle Iiberallsocial-democratic Die Wehrmacllt as well as the Croatian fascist As capitalist counterrevolution swept about a third of Bosnia's population Zeit (16 June) writes: "All reasons of Ustaslm and Serbian royalist Chetniks. across Eastern Europe, the ternlinal cri­ -were a largely peasant population historical experien~ and present ratio­ Emerging from the war with inuncnse pop­ sis of Titoist Yugoslavia came in early which owned over 60 per cent of the nality force dIe Genuans to a 'policy of ular and moral authority, Tito and his com­ 1991 when newly elected rigllt-wing na­ land in the republic, while dIe Bosnian restraint.' Thus, we will never expose rades socialised the economy-albeit in a tionalist governments in Croatia and Muslims were a predominantly urban­ ourselves militarily on our own but only bureaucratically controlled and deformed Slovenia declared secession from dIe ised people. Thus when the war began based on an unambiguously docunlented manner-in the name of the "brotherhood federated state. The United States, Brit­ the well-armed Serb forces were able to request from the [NATO] Alliance or dIe and unitY" of the working people ofYugo­ ain and France made a half-hearted dip­ take over most ·of dIe countryside and lay UN in conjunction with odlers." How­ slavia. Even a former US anlbassador to lomatic effort to preserve a Yugo~lav siege to Sarajevo and dIe odler cities ever, the introduction of dIe soldiers of

12 WORKERS HAMMER the Fourth Reich into the Balkans, even larly Gennan, imperialists. TItuS the tages were released in exchange for a peace to the region. Washington is mak­ in guise of UN "peacekeepers", would Russians helped convince Milosevic to promise of no further NATO air raids. ing a big diplomatic effort to induce Milo­ encounter detenllined and fanatical resis­ accept the Gerntan-sponscired Croatia­ TIle upshot was tIlat the US "get tough" sevic to recognise Bosnia on tile basis of tance by the Serbs. Hence Bonn's strat­ Bosnia federation last year. If the US policy towards tile Serbs ended in hunlil­ the boundaries it had as a Yugoslav re­ egy is to manoeuvre and pressure the takes a tougher line towards tile Serbs, iating its West European allies, public in return for dropping the interna­ British and French to fight the Serbs to especially backed up by large-scale mili­ From tile West European standpoint, tional economic sanctions against Serbia, make the Balkans safe for the Deutsche tary action, tIlis would strengthen the insult was then added to injury by tile lllere is no doubt that Milosevic is will­ Bank. forces of anti-Western nationalism in Captain Scott O'Grady affair, tile US ing to sell out his enlbattled Serbian brethren Britain and France were the main big­ Russia. TIle Independent (29 May) lays fighter pilot shot down by Bosnian Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia in order to convince power allies of Serbia against Germany out a worst-case scenario in tIlis regard: who was rescued after hiding in the the Western imperialists that he is a man in both World Wars I and II. Partly for "The risk is that Russia and America woods for six days. O'Grady was flown to with whom they can do business. But that reason, London and Paris saw the will become ranged on opposing sides Wasbington where he was greeted by whether dle Belgrade strongntan can control break-up of Yugoslavia as an opportu­ in a war in south-eastem Europe. Last Clinton and the media like a conquering Serbian forces in Croatia and Bosnia, let week, it was mainly American war­ hero. Clearly the American people are un­ alone the ultranationalists in Serbia itself, is nity to reassert their status as regional planes that bombed the Serbs. The Rus­ powers mediating between the contend­ sian president, using Serbian hostage­ willing to risk the life of even a single US another question entirely. The crazed nation­ ing Balkan nationalisms, acting some­ taking as his cue, has effectively vetoed soldier in the Balkan conflict. Pointing to alist fanatic Vojislav Seselj- once a Milo­ what independently of the Germans, another raid .... the "extraordinary over-reaction" to ,sevic henchman and ally, now an oppo- guiding the Americans and finessing the "The most urgent question of all for O'Grady's rescue, British journalist Mar­ nent---argues that "Whatever the superpow­ Russians. The British and French there­ Europe is how to prevent a new east­ tin Woollacott castigated American for­ ers gain with Milosevic will stay only on west schism on the continent." fore introduced small military contin­ eign policy as "selfish, short-term, tele­ paper. His negotiating power with other gents into the region to give credibility TIle US ruling class-increasingly vision-driven and subject to change at Serbs is minor now." A deal between the to their diplomatic manoeuvres. But this distrustful of post-Soviet Russia, in­ short notice" (Guardian, 10 June). NATO powers and Milosevic is no more is a tricky and dangerous game, which creasingly hostile to Japan-is inclined These short-notice changes reflect in likely to end the seemingly interminable war can easily get out of hand. The Inde­ to placate the West Europeans over the good part differences Witllin US ruling in the Balkans than the CWTent Bosnian pendent (30 May) recently quoted with Balkans. This line was expressed in a circles between, to use conventional Muslinl offensive. '. approval Bismarck's comments about candid and cynical way by New York tenns, hawks and doves. But in this case, .. Milosevic has for some time been car­ getting involved with the Balkan con­ Times foreign affairs specialist Thomas the hawks want to defeat the Serbs with­ rying out a balancing act, trying to placate flicts of his day: "One must give these Friedman, in a colwlm entitled "Allies" out fighting them. Instead, tlley propose to the NATO imperialists while singing a sheep stealers plainly to understand that (7 June): build up the war-fighting capacity of the different tune in Belgrade, Not only will it the European governments have rio need "I don't give two cents about Bosnia. Bosnian Muslim forces. A prominent be difficult for him to shove a diktat down to harness themselves to tlleir lusts and Not two cents. The people there have spokesman for this line is Republican Se­ the throats of those fighting in Bosnia, but brought on their own troubles. But 1 do nate leader and presidential aspirant Rob­ Serbian society is not one seamless mass. rivalries. " feel loyalty to the allies who have put In order to avoid becoming harnessed their own troops in harm's way .... The ert Dole, who calls for lifting the UN­ While Milosevic, now head of tile Serbian to the lusts and rivalries of tile warring Bosnias will come and go, but good mandated arms embargo so that the Bos­ Socialist Party, has aggressively played Balkan nationalists, especially the Serbs, friends whom we can count on for nian Muslims can supposedly fight the the nationalist card, his wife, Mirjana the British and French want to employ solving problems that really do involve Serbs on equal tenns. Markovic, is the leading ideologist of tile American military power. Whether, and our national interest are hard to find." The debate over the arms embargo has "Communist Alliance-Movement for Yu­ for what purpose, that power should be But for all the pious declarations of become a diplomatic charade since in any goslavia", which has been closely linked deployed is currently being hotIy debated America's responsibility to its long-time case it is not being enforced. Over the to the army and claims to oppose nation­ in Washington and Wall Street. WitIl the West European allies, the logic of the past few years advanced weaponry h8s alism. "For the last three years", she has end of the Cold War, US ruling circles Balkan war is intensifYing the divisions been pouring in to the Sarajevo regime, written, "our newspapers have been mak­ now see Japan Inc'as Enemy No I. Clin­ among the NATO powers as events of the mainly from Islamic countries, with US ing heroes out of war profiteers, killers ton's rapidly escalating trade war against past few months so clearly dentonstrate. approval. A senior State Department offi­ driven by religious hatred and other crimi­ Japan, especially imposing 100 per cent Thus another reason Washington's cial conceded, "We're not really against nals who make their sick atrocities out to tariffs on luxury-model Toyotas and Nis­ geostrategists are weighing intervention someone helping the Muslims" (Washing­ be acts of patriotism and bravery" (quoted sans, has rankled tile West European in Bosnia is that in the US' absence the ton Post, 14 April). The main "someone" in Le Monde, 24 May), More fundamen­ bourgeoisies, who fear Washington may alternative means of bringing an arming the Bosnian Muslim forces is Iran, tally, the working class, which has suf­ do the same to them (see "Clinton Heats imperialist "peace" to tile Balkans would a state branded by American imperialism fered greatly under the imperialist Up Trade War", Workers Vanguard no be a Gennan-Russian condominiwu in as tile centre of anti-Western Islamic embargo and which in tile pre-1991 Yu­ 624, 2 June). If Washington now acts in the fonner Yugoslavia, with each fundamentalism and "international terror­ goslavia on several occasions exploded in the Balkans witll the same unilateral dis­ keeping tlleir respective clients in line. ism". But, as the saying goes, politics etlmically integrated class struggle, can dain for its imperialist "allies", this TIlis is not for now, and certainly not makes strange bedfellows. only be banned by this intercommunal would further antagonise the West with Washington's man Yeltsin in the The main obstacle preventing the Bos­ slaugllter. Europeans, possibly leading to the Kremlin, but even tile distant possibility nian Muslims from getting the weapons Marxist and proletarian international­ disintegration of NATO. And the US of such a realignment would give the they want is, in fact, their sometime ally, ists oppose all sides in the squalid nation­ ruling class does not want tIlat to hap­ Pentagon nightmares, providing the mas­ sometime enemy, tile Croats. Bosnia is alist blood-bath tIlat has ripped apart the pen, at least not now. ters of now-Greater Gennany access to land-locked, so tanks and other heavy ar­ former Yugoslavia, establishing capitalist If the trade war with Japan impinges tremendous material resources (oil, tillery have to pass through the Adriatic rule over dle corpses of workers and peas­ on Washington's actions and inactions minerals, grain), nuclear weapons and ports in Croatia, .. and sometimes they ants of all nationalities. We oppose all in tile Balkans, US relations WitIl post­ delivery systems. If the present national­ don't pass through. Because of their lack forms of imperialist intervention in the Soviet Russia are a far more direct and ethnic civil war is undernlining the of heavy weaponry, the current Muslirit Balkans, from economic boycotts to important factor. When in December pretence of a New World, Order, a offensive to break the siege of Sarajevo is "peacekeeping", troops to NATO air 1991, following his ascendancy the pre­ serious split in NATO would quickly put unlikely to result in a decisive victory strikes. A democratic and equitable reso­ vious August, Boris Yeltsin kicked Gor­ an end to such imperialist illusions. over the Serbs but only an intensification lution of the conflicting nationalist claims bachev out of tile Kremlin and declared of the war with massacres and counter­ in the Balkans can only be achieved under tile fonllal dissolution of the Soviet Un­ Britain/U S/U NINATO out of the massacres by both sides. the rule of the proletariat, the only class ion, the American ruling class celebrated Balkansl If the inlperialist "hawks" now vow to without an interest in pursuing nationalist the "death of communism" and looked Iri late April, the Croatian army fight to the last Bosnian Muslim soldier, goals. This bloody conflict underscores forward to Russia becoming a junior launched an offensive taking over west­ the "doves" place their hopes in, of all the need for Trotskyist parties, built in the partner in a Washington-dominated ern Slavonia, a Serbian-populated region people, Slobodan Milosevic. Here is a struggle to reforge the Fourth Inter­ "New World Order". But things haven't which Serb forces had controlled since man vilified for years by Western politi­ national, to lead the fight for a socialist worked out that way. As Russia de­ the first round of the Balkan war ended cians and the media as the pre-eminent federation of tile Balkans in a socialist scends into social chaos, rampant crim­ in late 1991. More than 5000 Serbian "war criminal" in the Balkans, the archi­ united states of Europe. inality and bloody national conflicts (eg, refugees fled the advancing Croatian tect of"etlmic cleansing". Now he is pre­ Rel)rinted from Workers Vanguard the Chechen war), its new rulers have army as hundreds were killed. The Serbs sented as the indispensable figure to bring no 625, 30 June 1995. expressed their own imperial anlbitions predictably retaliated 'by shelling the harking back to the tsarist empire. Iri­ Croatian capital of Zagreb and renewing creasingly, bourgeois opinion in the US artillery attacks on Sarajevo. Spartacist Youth ~ class series views post-Soviet Russia as a dangerous The Americans, overriding the objec­ place and a loose cannon on the world tions of the British and French, decided From the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution political scene. to "punish" the Serbs with air strikes Tsarist Russia was the historic great­ against their arms depots in Bosnia. UN Introduction to the history and theory of Marxism power protector of its Serbian "little spokesman Fred Eckltardt blustered: brothers", and the Yeltsin regime has "The idea was to send a strong political Capitalism, socialism and communism 5 July intervened in the present Balkan conflict message that the escalating violence in The Bolshevik Revolution 19 July in order to reassert Russia's role as a Sarajevo had to stop." The Bosnian great European power. Moscow has si­ Serbs sent back a stronger message by 7 pm, upstairs at Uberties Bar, 100 Camden High Street, NW1 multaneously acted as a lawyer for the taking the British and French soldiers (nearest tube: Camden Town) Serbs, in the international diplomatic hostage and chaining some of them to For readings and more information: 0171-485 1396 arena and as a soft cop towards the the arms caches and other potential tar­ Serbs on behalf of the Western, particu- ge~ of American air power. The hos- KtJt1cel5 Hammerdid not appear In June.

JULY/AUGUST 1995 13 Aircraft statute". More than one Panther FBI files ••. :r,:;re..-- • activist was shot dead by the cops with the -::;~ ..... • subsequent claim that they had been (Continued from page 16) \JI'I1T1.f1 STATU oovtaJlldUIT armed and "resisted arrest". But in this racist cop terror 31Id oppression. From the Memorandum DAn: 12/./Tl 3 instance, tIle FBI was frustrated in its moment Jamal appeared on the Philadelphia : a"c, ",u•• etpbla 0&1-31 1) attempt to get Jamal, as the report con­ political scene as a 15-year-<>ld spokesman o U cluded: "Cook was searched by Special for the Black Panther Party, the cops, FBI : Direotor , ral (lSlr &IO) 00" Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investiga­ and who knows which other government Z IUIJ1.cT: nlLl'! C()OI: tion prior to boarding Trans World Air­ agencies had him in their gunsights. TIlese .11 - ...p ...... ro- 11130/11 uc_.D.IlDI .,.bJ.ct for lines, Flight 15; however, no weapon was 122 files prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, C.t'lor, 111 the Adatal.tr.U'. 18'e. ("DI1). located." of D wide-mnging collusion between the FBI and lour rec..... D.aHoD for IDelualO III tIl. "DII By 1970 the BPP was being tom apart the Philadelphia Police Deparonent­ I ••ppro,.': ho.nU, tbo eubJ.ct Ie bdlll pl.c.' ID e through a combination of government C.Ulo" 11 rot".. tb" C.Ulor, 111.oUl 10.... "DIII cn. 00 particularly its Civil Disobedience Unit tb•• ubJect eUl b. luul.be' ••".r ,. terror and internal factionalism between r o (CDU) and Intelligence Division "red SlIbJect I. belna pl'ce' I_ c.u.o , n r .i~ce be the Huey Newton wing and Eldridge h •• no. octl.olf .ll... ed M."U .. lth the Cl .... ,.cU " squads"---extending to at least four other Cleaver, who espoused a militant-sound­ o' the B'ack "",thor rart,. tlo rollP tbi rocoa ' for.e' .,0"lIolco ". C oftiOftS tb. ing guerrillaist strategy from his exile in security agencies, including the Naval In­ tl Cle. ,.ctlo.. , t\lo 1I •• 011lt!0.... , reople. C... II .. 'CO vestigative Service Office, Military Intelli­ "c'e (ltre") 1I0U Vile'" II"o.n '0 b. ,hO 01"" "r14/a lIee'·' Algeria. Jamal left the Panthers shortly ver ond t tM Cuo nrll•• n ". rhll.dclr,,10 corre.r ... • U/I- after the Revolutionary Peoples Constitu­ gence, Office of Special Investigation and .,\1 ll\\01\ cr l". lire" bl••• IIl, ...... r·"u "11.\.,1""" conlal"e' ... u\\cl... rl11. b, Cook u.. der \1\. ollu conce ... I"1 tional Convention held at Philadelphia's the Secret Service. o t". .rres\ of II. Jlap ,ron. Temple University in September 1970, Using its wiretaps, its informants and st_ce .lIbJoet Ie ... ocU,. participant 111 IlIrtb"lo, let but he remained in the government's tl10 01" OD' r"rpOlle. 01 tbe \It.c" .aU •• Dloc" "" .. the' police spies, the government tracked the rY orl teenage Jamal's every move, relentlessly '"'''' (orr), ". "uAtlll •• for catel° 11. 11 cross-hairs. That autumn, Mumia was ,or crll .. ' for lncludoD I .. tbe ..riO". cotel .. arrested along with seven other high­ pursuing him at demonstrations, newspa­ of tbe "011, refer tol IIl1re.1I olrtot to .U oUlce. 'oted 11/,,/ caro .. ' "S.curl , 1 ..... •• Uo... of lD.lvl.u.18." school students for demonstrating and per sales, political meetings and fund­ t U tlo e raisers---even at picnics. They knew when distributing literature calling for "black revolutionary student power". Hearing he was to leave town and when he was to that Jan1al had started a publication called return, intercepting him as he boarded a National Black Liberation News, FBI flight and engaging in "physical observa­ headquarters instructed its field agents to tion" of returning flights. They interro­ determine "if the paper is to be published gated school officials, contacted employ­ s.] U.S. S.. i", u.-ll R.,.r .. l] t. II. ,.,,,/1 S.. i .. ~1 rr •• in Philadelphia" and to submit "complete ers, harassed Janlal's mother. And the FBI , _... _, ..... -.- --.... --,~--a~i~ details concerning its staff, printing, dis­ records are only the tip of the iceberg. tribution, financing and other pertinent During tile 1960s and '70s, the Philly details" (" Airtel", 19 November 1970). cops kept tlleirown voluminous files­ A 9 December 1971 memorandum none of which have been made avail­ FBI's murderous war on black mlJltants placed thousands of radIcals, from FBI headquarters reported the deci­ able--on some 18,000 people. What story Including Jamal, on government ACEX round-up list. sion to include Mumia on the ADEX list: "Subject is being placed in Category II do they tell? delphia; a CDU report on the same rally, Even these expurgated FBI files show acknowledgement tItat Jamal "has not since he has now actively aligned himself displayed a propensity for violence" and also dated 11 August; two "Airtels" to the with tile Cleaver Faction of the Black that Jamal was targeted for far more than FBI director, dated 14 August; a 14 Au­ surveillance. His nante was placed on two was not once found with a gun tltroughout Panther Party." Again it was Jamal's this period of intense surveillance, the gust "FBI Notice"; a 19 August "Govern~ writing that particularly irked the feds, as government hit lists: the FBI's Security ment Memorandum", again on the Hiro­ Index (SI) of those deemed a "threat" to files regularly labelled him "Anned and tbey noted that he was Philadelphia Dangerous"-a licence for the cops and shima Day rally; and a 4 September FBI correspondent for the pro-Cleaver newspa­ "national security" and the Administrative report on a Socialist Workers Party cam­ G-men to shoot first and ask questions per Babylon and "that Cook in the past Index (ADEX) of those to be rounded up paign rally where Mumia "spoke against and tluown into concentration camps in later. has made public speeches and has written the 'pigs'" followed by a cover note ultrarnilitant articles on the BPP". The case of a "national emergency". Many of And they finally did shoot him, on the dated 5 September specifically identifYing following year, the cops tried to put Jamal the docwnents bear the file notation night of 9 December 1981. The subse­ "Wesley Cook, aka Wes Mumia~'. quent trial, conviction and deatIl sentence away on a weapons charge, as the CDU. "Smith Act", the notorious "thought The files are replete with clippings of reported to the FBI that he "was arrested crime" legislation under which first Trot­ was a political frame-up pure and Black Panther articles written by Jamal simple-like the Haymarket martyrs, while in the possession of a six inch skyists and then Communist Party mem­ and reports of his public speeches. It was . bladed Exacto knife". The charges were Sacco and Vanzetti, tIle Rosenbergs-:$e bers were sent to prison for "advocating'~ Jamal's noticeable talent as a young revo­ dropped. Jantal was working as an artist revolution. culmination of years of efforts to "neutral­ lutionary journalist and propagandist at the time, and had carried the Exacto The files prove that, years before he ise" Jamal. To send Jamal to death row, which attracted so much FBI attention. knife with him from work to attend the was framed in the death of a Philadelphia prosecutor Joseph McGill told the nearly Such skills ntade him particularly danger­ trial of another black militant. cop, the feds repeatedly tried to set Jamal all-white jury that Jamal's Panther past ous in the eyes of the capitalist authorities. Among the most spectacular revela­ up on serious felony charges-including showed that he had been pIanning to kill From the days of the slavocracy, the racist tions in Jamal's FBI files is a clumsy murder-without any basis. This was a cop "all the way back then". Even in rulers have always feared literate and plot-foreshadowing the later frame-up in S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) in their skeleton form, these documents articulate black people as a challenge to 1981-to stick him with the double mur­ the government's COINTELPRO war on reveal that since "all the way back then" their power. A 24 October 1969 FBI der of Bermuda governor Sir Richard black militants, as the FBI instructed its the state has been out to get Jamal. In report on Jamal urged that he be placed Sharples and his aide. This was based agents that since the "purpose ... is to them you can see the tIueads leading to the under high-level surveillance because: solely on Jamal's presence in 1972 at disrupt. .. it is immaterial whether facts 1982 frame-up which sent Jamal to death "In spite of the subject's age (15 years), Vermont's Goddard College-where he exist to substantiate the charge" (Brian row. Philadelphia feels that his continued. was taking courses in the Third World participation in BPP activities in the Studies Department-while it had suppos­ Glick, War at Home (1989]). The lies Philadelphia Division, his position in the range from the absurd-the photo ap­ FBI's racist vendetta edly been visited by "a leading black Philadelphia Branch of the BPP, and his extremist in Bermuda". A 13 March 1973 pended to the files is not of Jamal-to the Of 293 COlNTELPRO operations past inclination to appear and speak at outlandishly sinister. When the governor public gatherings, the subject should be letter from the FBI Acting Director sought ~gainst black groups, 233 were against the to link Jamal to the murders: ofBerrnuda was assassinated in 1973, the Panthers. Vast resources, at every level of included on the Security Index." feds triedto link the killing to Jantal, who government, were expended in a ruthless Already by then, the young Panther "Because of Cook's black extrenrist had never been anywhere near Bermuda. effort to sntash this group which ada- • activist knew firsthand what it meant to be background, his possible involvement in the urban guerrilla activities of the Black TIley also falsely sought to paint him as an mantIy proclaimed the right of armed self­ on the receiving end of the state's murder­ Liberation Anny, and his attendance at "urban guerrilla" associated with the defence against racist terror and attracted ous "counterintelligence" operations. A Goddard College which attracts black Black Liberation Army, marking him to young militants with its revolutionary 6 October 1969 "airtel" reported on "si­ extremists from Bennuda, the investiga­ be assassinated by tile cops the way BLA rhetoric against the racist capitalist sys­ multaneous hits" several weeks earlier by tion to locate him should be intensified leader Zayd Shakur was. tem. Even with all their deletions and FBI and Philadelphia COU and "Intel­ and efforts should be made to detemtine Jamal came of age politically as 38 of omissions, the files on Jamal offer a ligence Squad" agents on the Philly Pan­ ifhe had been out of the country over the weekend of March 9-11, 1973." his Pantller conrrades were gunned down glimpse of the overwhelming arsenal of ther offtces and the nearby Webb's Bar, and hundreds of others jailed on frame-up state repression which was deployed which was frequented by BPP members. This report was a tissue of lies and charges in the FBI's deadly vendetta. He against tIle Panther Party and its members. In an autobiographical men10ir included in innuendos from beginning to end. The himself was clearly a ntajor target in this The feds decided to open a dossier on his new book, Live from Death Row, feds well knew that Jamal was a journalist murderous crusade. The files repeatedly the young Jan1al when he participated in a Jamal recalls how he found himself at the and public speaker, not an "urban guer­ 1 May 1969 demonstration at the Pennsyl­ time facing "a .38 special close enough to noted tllat Munlia was an effective and rilla". He had no connection to the BLA vania State Office Building demanding touch", while a cop screamed: "If you articulate spokesman and writer for the Yet were it not that his employer at Bell freedom for imprisoned BPP leader Huey fuckin' blink, I'll blow your black god­ Telephone in Philadelphia confirmed that Black Panther newspaper, who "ntade the Newton. From that day on a steady stream danm head off your shoulders!" BPP look good because his approach was Jamal had been at work during that time, of "airtels", "nitels" , memoranda and Seven months later, Jantal was set up the state might have sent him up for mur­ very positive". Indeed, not one anlOng the letters between FBI headquarters and its for another attempted "hit", as he boarded steady stream of reports to FBI headquar­ der long before the 1981 killing of Philly field agents tracked Mumia's every politi­ a flight for San Francisco in March 1970 . cop Daniel Faulkner. ters on Jamal's Panther activities, which cal move. For example, in one typical to work at the Bay Area BPP headquar­ were compiled at tile rate of virtually one four-week period in the summer of 1969, ters. According to a 2 April 1970 report, a week, indicated that he was ever en­ the FBI files include: a memorandum Assistant US Attorney Tony Lombardio Paper trail of a frame-up gaged inMylhing other than public speak­ dated 11 August reporting that Jamal "advised he would authorize the arrest of Munria Abu-Jantal survived the rulers' ing and writing. Yet despite tile FBI's ~poke at a Hiroshinta Day rally in Phila- Cook for violation of the Crime Aboard onslaught against the Black Panther Party

14 WORKERS HAMMER in the late '60s 8iu:l early '70s. He was not of one of her would-be assassins, the assassinated in his sleep in the dead of prosecution labelled Sanchez a "friend of night like Chicago Panthers Fred Hamp­ cop killers"-suggesting that Jan181,must ton and Mark Clark. He was not then be a "cop killer" as well. What led the railroaded into a prison hellhole like Los prosecution to make a connection between Angeles Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga Janlal and SI18kur? A 26 September 1973 (Pratt), who has spent the last 25 years of FBI report said that Jamal's nanle and his life buried alive for a crime that the phone nwnber had been "located among government knows he did not commit - names and telephone nunlbers found in because they had wiretaps proving his notebook nunlber 1 which was obtained innocence. But the feds and the Philly from BLA menlber (deleted) at the tirne of cops did not call otT their vendetta against her (deleted) arrest by NJ State Police". Jamal with the demise of the' Panther These files tell only a small part of the Party. They continued to hate him for his story ofdte govermnent's vendetta against eloquent and impassioned defence of Mwnia Abu-Jamal. We do know that black rights, and particularly because he despite FBI protestations that COINTEL­ remained defiant and unbowed in the face PRO ended in the mid '70s, state harass­ of state repression and racist oppression. ment of leftist political activists has con­ The FBI files indicate time and again that tinued unabated, not to mention dte deadly they could entertain no hopes that Jamal workings of dle Philadelphia police. (In would tum informant and desert the cause fact, the FBI continued to spy on Jamal for which he fought. As one such report JameslPhiiadelphia Inquirer even on deadl row: a 1991 entry absurdly remarked: "Although he is only 16 years Mumia Abu-Jamal In 1969 as Minister of Information for Philadelphia Black sought to link a prison visit to Jamal by a old and has no informant potential, he Panther Party. German huntan rights activist with a possesses much intelligence and eviden­ "machine gun attack of Anlerican Em­ tiary infornlation ifhe will talk." the Federal Bureau of Investigation, In 'Four years later, on 9 December 1981, bassy" in Bonn!) In the 1970s,;. when There was clearly extensive collusion fact, when the FBI began its counterintel­ Jantal was shot in the chest by the cops on ., Jamal was active as a journalist, Rizzo's between the FBI and Frank Rizzo's Phila­ ligence program (COINTELPRO), the a Philly street and left nearly bleeding to cops were gunning down unarmed "sus­ delphia Police Department. One notable agency used Fencl's CD squad as a mod­ death. An officer found wounded nearby pects" at a rate 37 times higher than even entry in the FBI files is a reference to el. Before Rizzo was sworn in as police died an hour later. The police, having New York's cops. And the collusion commissioner, the Philadelphia Police between the FBI and the racist PhHly cops Jamal's arrest at the age of 14 at the 1968 Department was worldng closely with his failed to get Jamal so many times before, Wallace protest. The FBI report noted that hero, J. Edgar Hoover. Rizzo accelerated concocted a frame-up and railroaded him did not stop with Jamal and dte Panthers. "Cook was 14 years of age and, therefore, that relationship." onto death row. JantaI's FBI files are When the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on the MOVE home in 1985- not criminally charged." Indeed, because And Rizzo and his cops had it in for filled widt references to the BPP's use of Jamal was a minor at the time and the Mao Zedong's Little Red Book and espe­ killing eleven men, women and children Jamal. The FBI files are replete with and destroying an entire city block-it charges were dismissed, any record of his references to Jamal's -denunciations in cially of the quote "political power grows arrest was supposed to have been de­ was the FBI which supplied the explo­ speeches and articles of the notoriously out of the barrel of a gun". This citation, stroyed. Clearly Rizzo's thugs were keep­ uttered by Mumia in a 4 January 1970 sives. racist Philly cops and Rizzo in particular. The fight to save Jan181 and to abolish ing tabs on the young, articulate opponent Jamal incurred their wrath yet again in interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer of racist and cop terror even before he (which is conspicuously missing from the the racist death penalty is part of the 1978, when as a prominent black radio struggle for black equality in America. It joined the Black Panthers and were shar­ journalist he came to dle defence of the 700 pages of FBI files, despite the inclu­ ing that information with the feds. With­ sion of numerous other newspaper clip­ will take a workers revolution to put the MOVE organisation after a manntloth capitalist state's machinery of death out of out doubt Jantal, identified in the FBI files police siege of their Powelton Village pings), was the prosecutor's key argument as one of the top duee leaders in the Phila­ a dozen years later in demanding that business once and for all and bring to home, in which one of the cops ended up justice the hired dtugs who 118ve commit­ delphia BPP, was a prime target of Frank being killed by a bullet from anodler cop's Jamal be sentenced to die on dle basis of Rizzo's racist dlUgS in blue. Document his political beliefs. ted untold crimes against dle working gun. At a press conference, dlen-mayor class and minorities in the name of "law after dQCument in dle FBI files lists as its Rizzo ominously looked at Jamal as he Another notorious travesty in Jamal's source unidentified cops from the CDU or trial was dte cross-examination of charac­ and order". Only then will the records of blamed the officer's deadt on dte "new dte govermnent's secret police agencies be Intelligence Division. According to SA breed ofjoumalism", warning: ter witness Sonia Sanchez, a renowned Paolantonio, biographer of Philly police poet. Pointing to an introduction Sanchez opened for all to see. Free Mwuia Abu­ commissioner and, later, mayor Frank "They believe what you write, what you Jamal! Abolish the racist death penalty! say. And it's got to stop. And one day, had written for a book about BLA activist Rizzo, the Philadelphia CDU led by Assata Shakur, who narrowly escaped an George Fencl: and I hope it's in my career, that you're going to have to be held responsible and execution attempt by New Jersey state Reprinted from Workers Vanguard "had a steady stream of infonners paid by accountable for what you do." troopers only to be framed for dle killing no 624, 2 June 1995.

.;~:~:~:~;::~;~;::~;~.:.::: ::::::::::;:;:;::~;:::.: .. Cliffite goons~ •• (Continuedfrom page 11) We reprint below "An open letter to the founder of the Black Panther Freedom brucker and Eli Weinberg, both now dead, President Mandela to save the lifo of Party, Huey Newton, dten in prison. guided our thoughts. line to seal otT new members from politi- Mumia Abu.Jamal in Pennsylvania" by His trial in 1982, following the death A year later we white political prisoners cal debate. . Paul Trewhela. The letter was sent on 16 ofa policeman in a shoot-out the previous were transferred from Pretoria Local Pri­ In a taped message from death row to a June 1995, South Africa Freedom Day year, was crowded with irregularities. son to Central Prison, when the authorities 1993 New York rally in his defense spon­ and anniversary of #Ie 1976 Soweto I have SlIpJl(Xted the campaign to save the wanted to use our cells to hold their sored by dle Partisan Defense Conmlittee, uprising. Trewhela was a political pris­ life of Abu-Jantal since 1990, when I spoke Namibian prisoners from Swapo, includ­ Mumia spoke powerfully to what is posed: oner in Johannesburg and Pretoria at a meeting in London in his defence. I said ing Toivo, while dtey brutalised and tor­ "This government, which bombed babies between 1964-67. He was the editor of then that in a society in which 'the black I) tured them. in Philadelphia and Baghdad, which the ANC's military wing, Umkhonto we percent of the population of Pennsylvania During the six months we were held in mows down babies in Somalia, is sowing Sizwe (Spear ofthe Nation) underground gives birth to 56 percent of the population on Pretoria Central, we listened to the execu­ the seeds of their own destruction. It is a newspaper, Freedom Fighter, in Johan­ deadt row, we are in the presence of truly tions of black prisoners every few weeks, time, not for confusion, but for opportu­ nesburg between 1963-64. From 1988 to South African conditions. ' through the singing of the Condemned nity, to transform what is into what must 1994 Trewhela co-edited the journal If South Africa can suspend the deadt , prisoners in B Wing. It was awful-one of be." For us, to "transform what is into Searchlight Soudt Africa in London. penalty, that should apply at least equally dte worst experiences of my life. what must be" means a proletarian revolu­ for Abu-Jamal. Please, Mr President, let our South tionary fight to bring down the entire Dear President Mandela, When I think about Abu-Jamal, my African experience speak loudly and system of American capitalism which is emotions go back to the time when my clearly to save dte life of Mumia Abu­ predicated on racist exploitation. I am appealing to you to use the respect in fellow co-accused and I were in the Fort Jamal in Pennsylvania, in memory of To accomplish dus task dtere can be no which you are held internationally to try to Prison in Johannesburg, on trial, in late Mini, Khayinga, Mkaba, and so many confusion over the nature of the capitalist stop the execution in the United States of a 1964. Our courageous solicitor, Joel JotTe, others. Use the force of your international state, its cops, prison guards and odler black political prisoner, Munria Abu-Jantal. was also the attorney representing the reputation to urge that the execution be set agencies of repression. While dle ISO I am writing to you as a fellow ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe heroes aside, in the same way that an interna­ leadership's belated defense of Janlal mugwenya from the grim time in the early Vuyisile Mini, Wilson Khayinga and tional campaign helped to stay dte hand of sn18cks of Oscar Wilde's statement that 1960s, when the shadow of the gallows Zinakile Mkaba. On the day before their the judge in your trial. "hypocrisy is dle homage that vice pays to hung over you too. hanging in Pretoria Central Prison on 6 The address of the Governor of Penn­ virtue," dlose who genuinely want to fight Abu-Jantal is due to be executed in November 1964, Joel brought us messages sylvania is: povernor Tom Ridge, Main for a socialist America would do well to at Pennsylvania on 17 August. He has been from our doomed comrades and we sent Capitol Building, Room 225, Harrisburg, least ponder the evident contradiction involved in radical black politics in the US our own message oflove and solidarity to PA 17120, United States of America. since he was first arrested at the age of 14, in them, with Joel. between dlis goal and dle political views 1968, in a protest against the presidential We held a memorial service for them in With deep respect, ofdle ISO. campaign of the racist governor, George the yard at the Fort, as I'm sure you did Spartacist League [US] Wallace. The following year he supported also on Robben Island. Ivan Scherm- Paul Trewhela 16 June 1995

JULY/AUGUST 1995 , 15 Thousands protest execution threat

The following article is reprinted from Four days later, on June 5, Jantal's 14 issue, "The World Screams, 'Save Class-Struggle Defense Notes no 22 attorneys filed a petition for a new trial in Mumia'." Most importantly, in Mumia's (Summer J995) published by the US the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas hometown of Philadelphia, an integrated Partisan Defense Committee. in Philadelphia. Based on months of crowd of some 600 Jamal supporters investigation, research and review, these turned out en masse to support Jamal's papers demonstrate unequivocally that attorneys at a press conference and rally "Today we begin the process of Mumia, a man who has proclaimed his on June 5 after legal papers were filed de­ undoing an unjust conviction that was innocence from the very beginning, was manding a new trial, a stay of execution, rendered in this building 13 years the victim of a politically motivated, ra­ and the removal of "hanging judge" Sabo ago." cially biased prosecution in which evi­ from Jamal's case. - Leonard Weinglass at Philadel­ dence of his innocence was suppressed. In the first five days after Governor phia press conference, June 5 The Partisan Defense Committee and Ridge condemned Munlia to death with a other organizations, among them Refuse stroke of his pen, Ridge's office was On June 1, Pennsylvania Governor And Resist!, the Concerned Family and inundated widt over 20,000 protest letters, Tom Ridge signed a death warrant for Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the faxes and postcards from around the Mumia Abu-Jamal and set Thursday Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, world. In a futile attempt to elude the tidal August 17 at 10:00 p.m. as the execution spread the word about Mumia's case and wave of protest on behalf of Mumia hit­ date. Jmnal is to be executed for his politi­ organized months in advance for emer­ ting his office, the governor shut down his cal activities and beliefs. A former Black gency protests following the signing of a toll-free "800" phone number and changes Panther Party spokesman, an award-win­ death warrant. When the warrant was his fax and phone numbers every day. ningjournalist known as the "voice of the signed, thousands of unionists, students, These desperate antics by "Governor voiceless" and supporter of the MOVE leftists, civil rights and community activ­ Death" can hardly deter dle powerful and organization, Jamal was the victim of a ists took to the streets in cities across the growing movement to save the life of racist frame-up. Human rights groups, United States and around the world to Mumia Abu-Jamal, an internationally labor unions, and other organizations rep­ demand Mumia's freedom. The New York renowned writer whose ideas inspire Mumla Abu-Jamal, death row resenting millions of people from allover Beacon, one of New York's black news­ struggles against injustice everywhere. political prisoner. dle world are fighting for Jantal's life. papers, appropriately headlined its June 8- continued on page 8 ----IIIJIlllllUIIJ-,Jlll'IlU.. :

UNITED STATES ctPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

As deadt row political prisoner Mumia daring to protest at a Philadelphia election 1 - Hilitary Intelligence, Philadelphia Abu-Jantal fights for his life in the Greene cmllpaign appearance by Dixiecrat segre­ (",to. 1 - Naval InveUigatbe Service Office, Philadelphia 1 - Office of SpeciAl InvestigAtion, Philadelphia "supermax" isolation facility in Pemtsyl­ gationist George Wallace in 1968. That 1 - Secret Service, Philadelphia vmtia, the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of same year, fanatical FBI chief J Edgar a.,... ." Police (FOP) and its allies in government Hoover declared, "The Negro youth and 0... .--OCTOBER 2_, 1'69 b1C OIk., PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA and dte media are accelerating dteir blood­ moderate[s] must be made to understand PI.14 Off- .. '11. I, 157-3937 ...... '11. ,. thirsty campaign to execute this powerful dlat if they succunlb to revolutionary ,.... WESLEY COOK spokesman for dle oppressed. Governor teachings, dley will be dead revohf­ a...... , Tom Ridge has been signing death war­ tionaries." From dle moment the young RACIAL IlATTtIt - BLACK PANTHER PARTY rants at a feverish pace since his inaugura­ Mumia Abu-Jamal (then named Wesley ~ WESLEY COOK, Nagro ..Ie, ace 15, ha. been affilieted vith the BPP ill Philedelphia dnae 5/1/19. letvun tion in January, and dte cops and their Cook) joined dle Black Pandler Party, the J~ne end October, 1"9, COOK f~ctlonad a. Branch mouthpieces clamour for Jamal to be Secretary Or Hini.ter of Co"uniaationa for tha Philadelphia chief target of Hoover's notorious Brench of the BPP. On t;lO occasiona 1n AUluet, un, COOK placed at the top ofdle list. They want to "Counter-Intelligence Program" (COIN­ .poke at anti-war ralli.L in Philadelphia. ArtiCle. written by COOK tor the official BPP nav'paper, "Tha Black Panthar" drown out the many thousands of voices TELPRO), he became, in the eyes of the are .at fo~ a. are backCround and da.oriptiva data. around the world who demand, "Mumia FBI and Philly cops, a dead man on leave. Abu-Jamal must not die!" To do so, they As dle Partisan Defense Committee wrote - P - have orchestrated a cynical propaganda in a special Jamal campaign issue of DETAILS: I 8ACKGROUIID :~~~~ barrage in recent weeks aimed at painting Class-Struggle Defense Notes (no 10, dV.J'3, oZO;'-tHI! ~. BIRTH this compassionate and articulate black April 1989): man as a vicious "cop killer". Never mind On OctOber la, 1"', WESLEY COOK, a1.0 knovn a. "The death sentence for Mumia is the WES, VEST, and HUKIA X, 01ai.. d that ha va. born in Phila- that Jamal is innocent of the crime for long arm of COINTELPRO terror reach­ delphia, Pa., on April 2_, 115_. ~ which he was sentenced to die, tlte killing ing into the courtroom. This time they of a Philadelphia cop in December 1981. got him. Mumia has been sentenced to Hay ~u" J.70 This lynch mob wants to see Jamal dead death because of his political beliefs, for what he stands for: the cause ofblack because of what he wrote, because of FBI's murderous COINTELPRO targeted Mumla Abu-Jamal as young Black emancipation. what he said, because of who he 'associ­ ated' with-and because of who he is." Panther Party activist. The sentence of deatlt was passed on Mumia Abu-Jamal long before he ever The racist state vendetta against Jantal much of the text blacked out and many docu­ of extralegal terror to silence the man who appeared in a courtroom. At dle age of 14, has now been confirmed by 700 pages of ments withheld outright, these files make it would become known as the "voice of the he was brutally beaten by racist thugs, FBI files he recendy obtained after almost clear that the. FBI and cops were on a mis­ voiceless" for his journalistic exposure of including cops-and then arrested-for three years of fighting for them. Even with sion to use any "dirty trick" in their arsenal continued on page J 4 16 JULY/AUGUST 1995