No 62 October 1984 20pl10p to strikers Formerly Spartacist Britain
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Pickets battle cops at Allerton Bywater, Yorkshire, 21 August. Break the strikebreakers! Spread the strike! John Sturrock (Network) ea From Brighton to Blackpool, the past month militant Cammell Laird shipyard occupation in confirmed in open conference the undisputed Birkenhead, ruthlessly crushed by a military authority of the miners in the eyes of labour 'Lefts' bailout style police raid, to strikes against racist and the oppressed, and the undisguised bank victimisation in the car industry, the senti ruptcy of the official leadership of the labour ment to join the miners in strike action against movement. The TUC's promise of 'total physical Judas Kinnock the Tory union-bashers is pervasive. support' in early September has meant the scut Even the traditionally right-wing pit depu tling of the potentially explosive dock strike ties voted 82 per cent in favour of strike ac and a drive to bury the miners in the bosses' tion, which could lead to a total shutdown of the ACAS. Labour's 'support' four weeks later was Strike now scab coalfields in Notts and elsewhere in the instantly translated into an obscene speech by Midlands. While the NACODS sellout leaders con Neil Kinnock at Blackpool praising the 'legal tinue might and main to prevent a strike through ity' which today means police-state terror and with the miners! a scabby 'compromise' with MacGregor, one of Thatcherite union-bashing. them reveal ingly confessed: 'I did not believe While 'Labour leader' Kinnock imagined him that this Government was out to destroy the self in the white wig and black robe of a High trade union movement, but when I see the kind of Court judge, Margaret Thatcher had one of her treatment being handed out to a small, moderate hirelings provocatively violate the Labour Party organisation like ours I start to wonder' conference in order to serve miners leader (Guardian, 25 September). Arthur Scargill with a writ threatening im Too true! But for all the pious phrases of prisonment for contempt. Scargill's reply com 'unity' and 'solidarity' mouthed at Brighton and pared admi rably wi th the hack Kinnock: 'I want Blackpool, the Cold War right-wing heads of the to make it absolutely clear that if the choice steel and electricians unions continue with un facing me is to be committed by the High Court abashed scabherding. And the engineering, trans to spend a prison term in Pentonville or any port and G&M leaders who claimed five weeks ago other jail for standing by this trade union or that they would start blacking coal supplies in our class, or alternatively having to live with the power industry just keep on meeting, dis the imprisonment of one's mind for betraying cussing and resolving to .. , meet and discuss one's class then there is no choice as far as I some more. The strategic Shirebrook rail depot, am concerned. I stand by my class and my union.' which controls coal output from Notts and sup plies the central power grid, has been run for Tough talk and treachery months by a handful of scabs while some 70 per cent of NUR and ASLEF members there remain sus The miners have stood and fought valiantly pended without pay for following union blacking for their class for seven long and bitter instructions. The 'left' rail union leaders have months. They have taken more than 8000 arrests, finally been forced to call a one-day regional seen two of their comrades murdered and thou strike for 9 October in protest against the vic sands more injured, their families deprived of timisations. daily necessities -- in order to stand firm in The sellout of the three-week-long dock the face of a vicious capitalist government strike in mid-September by the 'left' T&G whic~ seeks to drive the working class ever leaders was so dirty not even the Morning Star deeper into immiseration and turn back nearly a could make it look presentable (though they century of hard-won trade union rights. All tried). It gave a green light to the Tories to signs point to a hard, cold and bitter winter. step up provocations against the NUM, including As coal stocks at the power stations dwindle, the arrest threat against Scargill and renewed the long-awaited confrontation over the movement sequestration threats. Angry militants from of coal from the pitheads now looms on the hori Arthur Scargill gets the applause at Labour Party Southampton and Merseyside lobbied the Transport zon -- and Thatcher will not hesitate to use the conference. But despite the ringing declarations, House ratification meeting to denounce the troops. Yet for all the cheap words of praise strikebreaker Neil Kinnock still holds the power. settlement, which allows scab coal to pour into and empty promises of support, all that has been The sentiment to fight is certainly there. Ravenscraig while providing not even a paper decided at Brighton and Blackpool is that the The union-hating Sun was shut down for four days guarantee against the use of scab labour on the NUM membership is left to fight alone through in early October when printers walked out in docks. Scargill, after the fact, denounced the the winter. Enough treachery! The miners must protest at a front-page editorial slanging the not stand alone! Strike now . North Finchley say that W.I.L. en 8 July, 1984 trusted a sealed statement to the Dear Comrades, Conference to one YOTE AGAINST We were greatly interested to read the of the British del article 'How Miners Fought the Government in egates, accepting W.W.II' which appeared in Spartacist Britain for THE COALITION the Conference's \'"prl,-( r:-. \It !\;f'ath ! July, 1984. It is an interesting subject, but we authority, but l~f'JHeu.h('.r whtll .\ ou Y'lte, Lha t a \'i)k have to confess we feel that it has been dealt that, being almost •• r th ... l...aool1r CanJid~tt.· i!t:~ vote for with in a disappointing manner. {'hurdlill auu th(· 'flll'it':';, wholly made up of Firstly, phraseology and facts quoted (e.g. young unemployed R,:H1I',n')(·r. it " uu.Ll Hot mtlke tile the '18,000' fined or jailed under the anti ,JUl"rt"Dfl' to tlw Il~"'.it:lun in workers, it could labour laws in the War, and the incident we tOil tilt t'"lit') 411 tih' H"H~ru· not afford its own iit'" \\~f ... t di~·!t·\rd 'for}" wen" quote from the Daily Worker of the magistrate in ii, •. t'!:I"-"t~. f:r ti ..,· iAbou.r delegate. Moreover, aud nf"ft' (·ll'cted. criticised by the C.P. for leniency) show that whilst the official • use has been made of our book, Two Steps Back, ~~ Do CLASS voo;iUo .. section refused to t"" .... '00ur I't 2 WORKERS HAMMER South Wales miner speaks: 'Thatcher won't beat us down!' EDITOR'S NOTE: On Friday, 28 September the lines. Mind you, we have had two. We had a man ditional aspect of mines, of mining in South London Spartacist League held a public meeting from Bedws in Mid-Glamorgan by the name of Ron Wales. When one man goes against the tide, not on the miners strike which featured, among Jones. He went back to work because he had no only does his workmates, but everyone in the others, guest speaker Don Hughes, a striker money, he said. Well, he may be right. It's a community knows that man for what he is. And he from South Celynen colliery in South Wales. long time since a lot have had any money. But I is treated as such. I quote from Jack London: Comrade Hughes was one of only seven members of have no intention, my friends, of ever going 'When a scab walks down the street, men turn the South Celynen NUM who initially voted for back to work until my union tells me to do so. their backs, the angels weep in heaven and the strike action last March. We offer for our That man lasted two days. devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. readers in abridged form Comrade Hughes' pres The other one was from the Garw Valley, a man That is Jack London's definition of a scab. entation, which was the high point of the public by the name of Monty Morgan, a big, strong, meeting, and thank again the comrades who at hard, tough ex-Royal Marine, the media said. And IA man's right to work tended for the generous £80 collection taken he came on the television on the Welsh news. And there on behalf of the South Wales miners. he said 'Yes, it's about time somebody did some- You all know, in this room, what the strike is all about. One thing, comrades, and one thing Workers Hammer The national coal only. It is about a man's right to work. It's strike now has been go tAlKERS. TaG. RRll: fOR f1 fIGHTING TRIPLE ALLIANCE! about a man's ri"ht to go into his community ing on for over seven wi th his head held high, saying, 'Yes, I am sup months. It has been a HLL-nUT JOINT NRTIONRl STRIKE NOW! . . '- porting my family. We are going to one place or strike which has been J . another for our holidays this year. I "Iork, and hard, it has been brutal therefore I've earned it.' It is that element of and it has been violent. pride in all of us. Unfortunatelyi'we have a It has been hard because SHUT DOWN THE COUNTRYI government in power at the present time who the repercussions to \.. / \ thinks to have a job is a privilege. It's not, mineworkers' families comrades, it is a right, it is a right to every leaves a lot to be de man and woman in this country if they so desire sired. There is tremen to earn their living. dous hardship in the This case of uneconomic pits is rubbish. You mining valleys of South see, I will give you an example of what happened Wales, as there is in in my own pit. Three months before the strike other coal mining com started, we opened up a new coal face. It was munities throughout one of the most remarkable coal faces that mine Great Britain. It has workers at South Celynen colliery have ever seen been bitter, because of in their lives. The face extended a length of the frustration of not 230 metres and it was 14 foot high -- of absol being able to speak to utely clean coal, high quality steam coal. Now fellow trade unionists Miner Don Hughes speaking at Spartacist League public meeting in London, 28 with conventional cutting methods being employed who daily since the September. in the mines today, one cut along that coal face strike began, have been could have produced enough coal, the pi t couldn't passing through official NUM picket lines. These thing, and I'm doing it, I'm going back to even wind it, because it takes a minute to wind are the people whom the media so courageously work'. This big, strong, tough marine lasted two tons of coal from pit bottom to pit top. state as 'working miners'. Well I can tell you exactly three days. They could simply have not had the winding ca this, my friends. As far as the NUM is concerned A week last Thursday one of the members of my pacity to cope with just one cut. And the pit when we call an official strike there are no photographic society came up to me and he said, would have made a handsome profit. working miners. The people that go through 'What do you think of Monty Morgan, then?' I But what did the Coal Board do? Instead of picket lines are scabs. There is no work in said 'Is he dead?' 'No, no' he said, 'I mean what investing as th~y should have done in proper Great Britain for any mineworker that belongs to do you think about his cat?' I said, 'What do I roof support systems to enable that coal to be the NUM. think about his cat?' 'Aye', he said, 'he had a cut, they brought in a roof support from another I also mentioned violence. This is a great cat for thirteen years', he said, 'and a gan" of colliery, which had already closed, with the bone of contention. Margaret Thatcher and her pickets went and broke its back. What do you consequent result that coal is only being mined gang of traitors whine incessantly to the think about that then?' 'Disgusting' I said. 'To 230 metres in length and six foot six in height. media, 'Why doesn't the NUM condemn the violence take vengeance on a scab', I said, 'through in There is seven foot six of coal, my friends, on the picket lines?' Neil Kinnock and his merry juring a perfectly harmless and innocent animal left beneath the faceworkers' feet, to be lost men, they say the same thing, 'It's about time is absolutely deplorable', I said. 'It would for all time. that Arthur Scargill and the NUN executive con have been much bet 'o ::, demned violence on picket lines.' David Steel ter if they had OJ also, and his roly-poly lot, David Owen and his broken bloody Monty '!} C bunch of turncoats, they've all got the same Morgan's back. ' (3 idea, that the NUM should condemn violence on (laughter) ~ Z picket lines. Well comrades, I can tell you But you see, my ro this, from day one, through the media, the NUM friends, you may has consistently condemned violence on the ask, why is it that ! picket line. We have sent requests to every we have no scabs now chief constable in every mining area to call off in South Wales? The their do"s. answer is quite Proof of this is the fact that at the present simple. ~ining in time there are just over 8000 mineworkers who South Wales is a have been arrested. There are over 6000 pickets ,little bit different that have been injured, 1000 seriously. There ·1 to the other coal have been four deaths as a result of pickettin", fields, because in two actually died on picket duty and two lads South Wales there from South Wales from a pit about nine miles has always been a away from us at South Celynen, they died while tradition, sons have going pickerting in a car accident. Everywhere always fcllowed you go from day one. NUM pickets are subject to fathers into rhe harassment by the various police forces that mines. ~lyself, I am have been gathered together in different areas. a third generation In the counties of Nottingham, Yorkshire, Derby miner at South shire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire they are Celynen colliery. My virtually police states. The villages there are grandfather worked under siege, you are not allowed to walk down the 1 there for 36 years, street without being stopped and being question- until he lost both ed. I know, I've been there. They use truncheons his legs in an as though a man or woman would throw confetti at underground acci a wedding. They hit everyone and everything they dent, in 1930. The see in front of them. They mean to teach mine coal owner of the Picket line violence: cops in riot gear bash up striker at Maltby, 24 September. For mass labour workers a lesson. day paid him gen- mobilisations to smaS,l police terror in the coalfields! 3ut I'll tell you this, my friends, mine erous compensation workers are a very strange breed. They're not for the loss of his two limbs: he had thirty Before I left home this morning I found two intellectuals, if they were of course they pounds. My father of course followed him into of my pay slips. For a craftsman to earn £112 wouldn't be in the ~it. They're hard, rough and the pit once he left school, and he worked 51 before deductions and take home £68, there's the majority very crude men. And they are men years at South Celynen colliery underground, something very radically wrong. During one 0~ who through the very nature of their work are until he retired at 65. He unfortunately dropped travels, I was told about an incident which took not easily frightened. So Margaret Thatcher can dead before he could reach 66. Nothing remark place, towards the end of last November in this get no solace from the fact that she is going to able about that, for the expectation of life of city of London. Sotheby's put up for auction a beat us back to work. It just won't be the case. a mineworker doesn't extend much more than 72 or pair of Queen Victoria's drawers. And those most Regarding scabbing. We in South Wales, un 73. And I have been there also since September royal of lace-edged antiques was bought by a fortunately, are the only area of the NUM left 1948. Scottish gentleman, for £270. That, my friends, without a single scab going through picket So comrades, that's the secret. It's the tra- continued on page 11 OCTOBER 1984 3 Letters from our readers: 'Congratulations on Workers Hammer' Bristol hear from Martyn and his brother Howard about in Nigel Tranter's excellent historical novel, 23 June 1984 the change of name and, personally I very much the Robert the Bruce trilogy, the speech he Dear comrades, like the change, but [comrade], to quote a well imputes to Robert, King of Scots, on the eve of Whilst on a recent miners demonstration in known sayivg, it is not the name on the package the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where the Cardiff I agreed with one of your comrades to that counts but the contents within. I am con Scots inflicted a decisive defeat against their take a strike special subscription (£1.00 for fident that your paper will live up to its new English oppressors under King Edward I, the 5 issues) .... title as it did to its old one in all matters. notorious 'Hammer of the Scots': I also purchased a copy of the Solidarnosc It only remains for me to say that I look 'Today is fate hammered out on the anvil, pamphlet (and have read it) and a copy [of] forward to seeing you and your other comrades hammered into shape. Women and Revolution (Spring 84) more recently. this weekend and to tender fraternal greeting 'But mark you, today we are the hammer, not I was most interested in the article on incest to all others within your valued movement. Sincerely yours, the iron! And the land, our land, is the which I thought was bold and perceptive. Ther~ Don Hughes anvil. The iron is the arrogant, invading are few socialist/communist journals that would English host, which once more desecrates our have dared tread on such 'delicate' ground, more land. But this time, friends, is the last. power to your elbows. I have also enclosed £1.50 This time, we shall hammer and bend and mould for the next four issues of Women and Revolution Dear Comrade Editor, that great unwieldy host .... ' hoping they will be of similar quality .... What a surprise to have received my copy of Yours with comradely ~anks, Spartacist Britain only to find it had been sub The heroic miners strike is an impressive Ian Denison stituted by a copy of the Workers Hammer. Thank example of how class struggle can break down fully the contents hadn't changed, but why on national and racial divisions within the working Bristol earth choose that name. Surely it would have class and forge unity in struggle against the 1 October 1984 been an ideal opportunity for a Bolshevik Party common class enemy. We seek to provide the ham Dear comrades, to call its organ the Truth. mer -- a revolutionary programme and party - ... Finally, I would like to congratulate you Keep up the good work . with which the powerful multi-national and on the launchin·g of Workers Hammer. I hope that Yours fraternally, multi-racial proletariat of these islands can this takes you a step forward and am sure that R P Hall, finally break and destroy this arrogant, it will live up to the high standards of Warsop Main NUM oppressive and exploitative ruling class .• Spartacist Britain. Yours fraternally, Ian Denison Workers Hammer replies: We are gratified by the response to our paper and its new name from Dig deep! [Dunscrdft, S Yorks] readers old and new. We appreciate the plight comrade Douglass describes. It is for that NUM Derbyshire Area Dear Comrades, reason, and our recognition of the political Warsop Main Branch I do appreciate your coverage of issues and importance of establishing the widest possible 26-9-84 events but after 6 months on STRIKE can't afford readership among this fighting layer of the a subscription. Can you waive the fee for working class, that we have introduced our Dear Brother, striking miners? special 50p introductory subscription for Could you please help our cause and The piece on SWP's position on picket lines miners. We also thank comrade Douglass for his place the following advert in your and RCP's position on closed shop and on a bal leaflet suggestion. free section. lot and Workers Power's call for a 'national Opinions on the change to Workers Hammer from CHURCH WARSOP Wm1ENS ACTION GROUP vote' need producing in one leaflet and distri our readership seem to be running about four-to - desperately require donation of buting to picket lines to let everyone know who one in favour. Comrade Hall's sentiment is well food & monies in our effort to stands where. taken. Palpably the truth is a powerful weapon feed our families and sustain our RG's of the r~volutionary vanguard in this country. struggle. David Douglass From the oh-so-democratic pretensions of this murderous imperialist ruling class and its Yours fraternally, anachronistic monarchy to the dreary windbaggery D.G. Daniels Cwmcarn, Crosskeys, Gwent of the Labourite politicians, capitalist Britain Donations to: c/o 98 St Lawrence Ave 19 September 1984 is truly a land of cant and hypocrisy. Bolsover Dear comrades, But in choosing Workers Hammer we wanted a Chesterfield ... At the time of writing this, I have not name that conveyed an active. and necessary, S44 6HT yet received my copy of Workers Hammer. I did tool of the workers in their struggle. We note W(JRI(JRS_'lll~JIIJI1!l~~ ~------"-'--- Subscription drive Itttlm.ml"ttttzjGtfitJ,i~f!i,blimi'g;"jD SUCCESS! In launching this subscription drive intro ducing Workers Hammer, we placed priority on 1 South Africa Apartheid reaching out to militant miners at the fore~ front of the class struggle. The response was gratifying, particularly given the hardship Quota Points Percentage facing strikers' families: over half the subs sold were the miners introductory specials. Birmingham 80 89 111 Class-conscious militants need a paper that London 175 tells the truth! Door-to-door sales garnered 215 123 36 subs in the Kent coalfield and another 34 Sheff ie Id 80 87.5 109 in one South Yorks mining village, Dunscroft. Other 12 Roving teams to Wales and Scotland signifi cantly increased our readership in those areas. Total 335 403.5 120 The eight new subscribers in BL and the sub bought by TGWU branch 5/35, West Midlands r------lorry drivers, reflected the impact of our ex subscribe posure of the disgusting scab coal operation nO\N! in BL. Comrades sold subs on picket lines, at o 10 issues of Workers Hammer for £2 demos, strike centres and their workplaces and on campuses. The London branch's focus on o Special introductory offer: 5 issues of Workers Hammer 50p to striking miners, £1 to others Tamil militants netted 15 points. Included in the total were 24 subs to Women & Revolution, o 10 issues of Workers Hammer plus 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US, £6 10 to Young Spartacus and 38 joint Workers (all above subs include Spartacist, organ of the international Spartacist tendency) Hammer/Workers Vanguard subs. We salute comrade Debbie H (London), who o 4 issues of Women & Revolution for £1.50 came first with an impressive 49 points, com rade Emma G (also London) with 39 and Pat S, a supporter in Rover Solihull who sold 25 ~~:n: ~ :: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : . points. Welcome to our new readers. And if Address you haven't yet done so, subscribe now to the only Marxist press in Britain. _ Make payable/post to Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London We1 H 8JE L...______.... L... ______------.1 4 WORKERS HAMMER Black all coal! Picket lines mean don't cross! Shut down BL's scab operation! The dirtiest open secret of the Midlands not to prevent workers from entering the plant claims across BL! Stop the return to plant trade union movement is the massive scab coal or handling the already stockpiled coal inside. bargaining -- stop scab coal in BL! Strike now operation at BL plants. Tens of thousands of In short, the NUM could set up a token 'infor to roll back management's attacks and alongside tons of scab coal have been pouring into plants mational' picket of four miners (even Denis the miners! like Rover Solihull and Longbridge since the Healey is prepared to accept six!) as long as While the actions of CP convenors like Jack miners strike began, building up an estimated they didn't interfere with production! Adams are particularly despicable, they are five-six months' stockpile. And this is one A few days later the Trades Council appealed consistent with the overall policy of the Com story you won't read in the Morning Star, since directly to BL workers: 'Clearly, if trades munist Party. And the pro-Kremlin wing of the Communist Party supporters like Longbridge con unionists working in these establishments are party is no better than 'Euros' like Adams: venor Jack Adams and Rovers convenor Joe Harris prepared to use stockpiled coal then the miners' after seven months the tankie-controlled Morning have been in the front lines of this scandalous struggle will be set back. We should now make a Star has not printed a word about scab coal in backstabbing operation directed at the miners. calIon all these trades unionists to carry out BL! Beginning with our May leaflet to BL workers, TUC policy and boycott this scab coal and oil At a public CP meeting held in Birmingham on through our aggressive exposure of the scab coal substitutes, whether stockpiled or not ... All September 13, CP industrial organiser Pete at a June rally at Saltley Gates, the Spartacist trades unionists should bring forward their Carter lauded the recent TUC conference, incred League has sou~ht to rouse the ~abour movement claim sq that action can be taken alongside the to do something about ibly claiming that we now had a General Council it. SL supporter capable of turning the TUC into a 'real cam Patrick Sliney, a paigning body'. But Carter's attempt to bury the TGWU militant, has issue of scab coal flopped. Nigel Ashfield, fought to get the coal secretary of the Lea Hall NUM st~ike committee, blacked at Rovers, intervened to demand that scab cdal be blacked mobilising several in the BL foundries, noted that the miners had dozen workers to de gotten no cooperation from the Longbridge con mand that the union venor, and added that he had personally written take all necessary a letter of protest to the CP, to which he had action, including received no reply. Rovers militant Pat Sliney strike action. And pointed to the role of CP union leaders in while they've done sabotaging the efforts of car militants to black little enough to stop the scab coal. In reply Carter could only whine the scabbing, even that if steelworkers crossed NUM picket lines, official trade union then how could you expect car workers to do bodies have felt com otherwise -- in effect admitting that he had Scab coal goes into Bl pelled to lodge pro- Workers Hammer the same policy as Bill Sirs! And as the meeting tests. The latest was the Birmingham Trades miners.' But the Trades Council did nothing to broke up, one frenzied CPer physically assaulted Council, which in a 7 September letter com back up its appeal. Were it serious, it would Pat Sliney while he had his back turned. plained to Jack Adams: 'The Birmingham Trades dispatch mass pickets to the BL plants to shut What it boils down to is a question of Council has been disturbed to hear that scab down the scab operations. And no phoney 'infor leadership. The trade union fakers say that to coal is stockpiled at Longbridge and that scab mational' picket lines: picket lines mean don't black coal means shutting down the plants. For coal is still, apparently, being delivered to cross! Import Controls Committee chairman Jack Adams, the factory.' The Spartacist League stands for industrial dedicated to 'British industry' and 'British Well, predictably Adams -- who's been carry action alongside the miners to build a general jobs for British workers', scab coal is just ing out his blackleg policies for seven full strike that can bring down Thatcher. There are part of 'saving BL'. And the rest of the fake months in defiance of both NUM and TGWU in few sections of workers who have more reason to left is little better, having ignored the scab structions to black coal -- was hardly swayed join the miners' fight than the BL workforce. bing at BL for months and then belatedly seeking by this latest appeal. In a reply addressed to BL was the first significant target for the to cover themselves. When miners did put up the Trades Council, Adams complained of the Thatcher Cold War anti-union crusade. Tens of small pickets at Longbridge this month, sup interference 'by some third party elements' . thousands of jobs were slashed away, the stew porters of groups like the SWP ignored them and In short, he would damn well scabherd as much as ards' organisation ravaged by repeated victim went into work, anyway! As for Workers Power, he saw fit. Adams also told the Council that in isations. Only in the last year the endless its one steward at Longbridge has apparently line with the 'spirit as well as the letter of speed-up and the vindictive management regime quit the plant in the middle of this great class the TUC's decisions' the stewards council at has provoked unofficial strike after strike. battle. Only the Trotskyists of the SL have con Longbridge would 'accommodate' official pickets And now the Austin Rover Group (prinCipally sistently fought to mobilise the car workers to from South Wales NUM commencing September 16. Longbridge and Cowley) has a major pay claim in fi~ht alongside the miners to defeat bloody But Adams' terms specified that the pickets were for November 1. We say: bring forward all the Thatcher and win this crucial class war .• Reinstate Nat Akinbayo! Racist victimisation at Ford Dagenham In a blatantly provocative and racist victim racist bourgeoisie, as it seeks to whip up and engine plants at Dagenham are under attack. isation in mid-September, management at Ford patriotic hysteria for its anti-Soviet war Both car workers and miners have every interest Dagenham car plant sacked Nat Akinbayo, a black drive. At Birmingham's Longbridge plant, BL man in shutting down the operations of the car shop steward. On 21 June Aki approached foreman agement similarly sacked militant black worker bosses, who are using scab coal to keep their Barry ~Ioody to demand that he stop assigning Zedekiah Mills last spring for defending himself operations going. And the presence of striking inspectors to give orders to hourly workers, a against a foreman's racist abuse. For two weeks miners on the picket lines of car workers would clear violation of union work rules. The foreman BL workers struck solidly in support of Mills, go a long way in building effective picket lines later accused Aki of damaging the roof of a before the strike was called off by sellout con that no one dares cross. Bring forward the pay Sierra by pounding it with his hand. Not only venor Jack Adams. claims of car workers and strike now! The whole did four witnesies testify the car was already But car workers have the power to strIke TGWU should be brought out alongside the miners. damaged when it came out of the ovens, but in- back. The miners have shown the way with their We need a class-struggle leadership to defend deed, Aki has crippled hands with plastic arti- militant battle against Thatcher's bloody union the trade unions and stop the Tories' job mass ficial joints, which would shatter under such bashing government. Ford workers have taken acre. Defend Sat Akinbayo! Strike with the impact! Foreman Moody is a notorious racist thousands of redundancies, and now the foundry miners to win!. white South African who has regularly engaged in J Il'!!!IiIi5'-M"'-"'-~i'! '~~~~&&~~_Ii ... racist harassment and abuse of minority workers. He. not Aki should be run out of the plant! SPARTACIST CLASS SERIES Aki is a militant steward who has fought for his members against the company's racist har The Russian Revolution - programme and party aSS3ent and violation of agreed union pro cedures. His sacking after ten weeks suspension outraged the workforce -- and finally forced the 1. The fight for a revolutionary party - the development of Bolshevism shop stewards committee to call a strike. But Thursday, 7.30pm, 11 October con'ienor (and CP supporter) Joe Gordon and the 2, 1917 - The great October revolution union officialdom continued to drag their feet, Wednesday, 7.30pm, 17 October re:!'clsed to organise solid mass pickets and, after 3. The party as tribune of the people a couple of days, ended the strike, acceptinf a Wednesday. 7.30pm, 24 October pi,orcey 'independent arbitration' enquiry which 4. Defend the gains of October - oust the Stalinist bureaucracy Wednesday. 7.30pm, 31 October offers nothing. Reverse the sellout -- all-out TROTSKY LENIN scr~ke action now! Reinstate ~at Akinbayo! ~he intensified racis~ directed against the Prince Albert Pub, 37 Wharfdale Road, London N1 (King's Cross tube) heavily minority ',I'Qrkforce of Dagenham is part of For further information phone 01-278 2232 the targetting of blacks and Asians by this } '___ ~ __~_""""--""""""""'---L.-..h~-,:r~="_=" _____ ~ ... _'£,:~.",: >:::.~__ • ~- OCTOBER 1984 5 n his new book Sparks Fly, notorious anti communist and scabherder Frank Chapple de Iscribes the vicious witchhunt of miners leader Fingermen for Labour/TOe rig Arthur Scargill at the Blackpool TUC one year ago: , .. , can anyone seriously challenge my con tention that I spoke comprehensively for the British trade union movement when I lambasted left union leaders for junketing off to hob nob in Moscow while refusing to talk to our own elected government at home? Or when I Hate Thatcher/Mac~ ridiculed those who thought we should take to the streets to drive Mrs Thatcher from the Ba'athist regime of Iraq executed 21 Commun office? .. ist Par~y militants in 1978, News Line stood by 'I was less reticent over Arthur Scargill's its dictators. To any decent working-class mili next extraordinary gaffe. News Line, the tant, that will seem odious enough. At Blackpool EXPR', Trotskyite Workers' Revolutionary party news however News Line was able to make a tangible l-.----j It Scargill were Polish paper, published a letter from Scargill in and significant impact on the class struggle in he would be which he described the banned Polish trade Britain. And on whose behalf? union, Solidarity, as "an anti-socialist organisation which desires the overthrow of a Scargill. Solidarity and the WRP socialist state". The Trots took full advan The Blackpool TUC opened with an affirmation tage of him by dropping their bombshell story of loyalty to Reagan's barbarous KAL 007 anti in the middle of TUC week. It came on top of Soviet war provocation. Already Scargill was his one-sided ~oscow speech, blaming Margaret under attack for his Moscow speech which stated Thatcher and Reagan for being the main threat the simple truth: that 'Ronald Ray-gun and the to world peace. plutonium blonde' were bent on nuclear war 'Not surprisingly, my views were avidly can against the Soviet bloc. The order of the day at vassed and I said: "I regard these sort of Blackpool was the drive by Chapple and other remarks as the ravings of an idiot." There CIA-supporting bureaucrats on the TUC right to was a consensus of like opinion among the impose the policies of 'new realism' on the moderates and even his left pals were embar British union movement. These policies -- co rassed by his outburst .... operating with the union-bashing Tories over ' ... the more the public see of TUC delegates anti-union legislation, 'loosening the ties' Scargill, the WR Pi backslappin~ Scargill, the more they'll be with the Labour Party and opening the road to convinced that we're all a bunch of loopy conciliation with the Cold War II union haters mil i t an t s. ' in the SDP -- were soon to be drawn in the blood It was no accident that the Sunday Times (2 Sep of the NGA and trade unionism at GCHQ Chel tenham. tember) chose to print this excerpt from Chap They were a statement of willingness to act as ple's book on the eve of last month's Brighton policemen for Thatcherite austerity, domestic TUC, a reminder to the bosses' tools on the TUC fist of the imperialist campaign against the to do the dirty against Scargill again. gains of the working class internationally, Uniquely the Spartacist League told the truth above all the war build-up against the USSR. &bout the Cold War Thatcherite witchhunt of This is where the Healyite WRP entered the Scargill a year ago and how it was used to iso picture. Two months earlier, in July, the WRP late the militant miners lea~~r and the NUM as a had written an 'open letter' to Scargill, de whole in order to push through the backstabbing manding that he withdraw his attack on Polish 'new realism' policy. And, as we said then, Solidarnosc made at a Communist Party rally the 'Uniquely we Trotskyists who openly said "Stop previous month. Scargill replied five days Solidarnosc Counterrevolution" have no qualms in later. In a letter to WRP General Secretary Mike defending Scargill against these anti-communist, Banda, the miners leader affirmed, 'I am opposed anti-working-class attacks' (Spartacist Bri tain to Solidarity because I believe it is an anti no 52, September 1983). The TUC Cold Warriors Union-hating F.leet Street rags witchhunt Scargill aner I'liews Llr socialist organisation who desire the overthrow counterrevolutionary POllsn ::.OIlOiHIIU" .... who led the attack on Scargill over his correct of a socialist state' (emphasis in original). condemnation of Solidarnosc -- Chapple, Bill News Line, a daily paper, waited fUlly seFen publish the letter when it did. Those miners, Sirs, Alastair Graham, Terry Duffy -- have much weeks before publishing Scargill's letter and for instance in South YorkShire, who cancelled in common. All are sponsors of the pro-NATO, their rejoinder. When it finally came out, on their orders for News Line in the wake of the CIA-backed Labour Committee for Transatlantic the third day of TUC week, it exploded like a Blackpool TUC certainly felt that the Healy out Understanding; all are vociferous in opposing bombshell in the middle of Blackpool's mini-Cold fit was whoring for Thatcher against the miners any action against Thatcher's attacks on the War. in this action. Indeed to anyone familiar with trade unions and in urging workers to cross News Line archly claims, 'We chose to publish the role played by the so-called Labour Commit miners' picket lines. this correspondence during TUC week in order to tee for Transatlantic Understanding within the How does the Workers Revolutionary Party ensure the widest circulation within the labour British labour movement, the intervention of the (WRP) fit in with this lot? What sort of revol movement.' But the principal recipients of this Healy group at Blackpool might reasonably have utionary party is it that would provide grist to 'widest circulation' would appear to have been looked like one of its scenarios. the mill of the likes of Chapple? In their bat the right-wing labour bureaucrats and their That the reformist TUC 'lefts', including tle against Thatcher/MacGregor striking miners Fleet Street friends. News Line's story was leading supporters of the Communist Party like may have come across News Line, paper of the so catapulted onto the front pages of many of the Mick McGahey, failed to rise in Scargill's de called WRP. This organisation, led by Gerry most virulently anti-union, anti-communist Tory fence against the News Line-inspired vilifica Healy and Mike Banda, claims to support the rags in the country. tion should come as no surprise. For all their miners, even to be a Trotskyist party fighting Was this not predictable? By the time News 'militant' blather, these 'lefts' maintained for socialist revolution. But don't be fooled: Line chose to publish Scargill's letter, he was their normal posture, seated on their hands. We the WRP is no friend of the miners, nor is it already the subject of anti-communist vilifica in the Spartacist League stand politically op revolutionary, nor is it a workers party. tion from the right wing at Blackpool; News Line posed to Scargill's left reformism, with its Despite its periodic oh-so-revolutionary de was certainly aware of this fact, since it ran nationalist protectionism and support for a clamations, the WRP is a gang of political ban daily coverage of the congress. Any intelligent Labour government under the likes of Neil Kin dits presently outside the workers movement. In observer of the labour movement could have as nock. Nor is Scargill politically friendly to the eight years since the Healy gang set up News sumed that this letter would add fuel to the us; in the past he has been known to crumple Line as a lavish four-colour daily (mysteriously right-wing fire against Scargill, given that the Spartacist League leaflets and throw them to the sustained by a group of a few hundred members) it mainstream of the Labour Party/TUC leadership, ground. But we stood firm against the witchhunt has been, above all else, a mouthpiece of Libyan I echoing the ruling class, deem support to Soli orchestrated by the Cold Warriors on the TUC. We dictator Muamm-~r Qaddafi. avowed anti-communist, '\ darnosc a sacred cow. It would appear to any recognised at the time that it was directed not naniacal protector of Idi Amin and self sensible working-Class militant that there wa3 only at Scargill as an individual but at isolat DToclaimed apologist for Adolf Hitler. Even when an ulterior motive to Ne,vs Line's decision to ing the NUM in the labour movement, the better Blackpool TUC, September 1983: Anti-communist witchhunt of militant miners leader Arthur Scargill (left) by Cold Warriors Frank Chapple, Len Murray (right) & Co prepared the way for backstabbing 'new realism' and Thatcher's assault on NU M. ; WORKERS HAMMER 'Now the facts are', says News Line (16 July 1983) 'that it is the leaders of the Polish 19ainst Scargill and the miners government, all leading members of the Stalinist Communist Party, and not Solidarity, who have relations with Reagan and the big American banks.' As Trotskyists we know only too well how the Stalinist policy of conciliating imperialism undermines the workers states. But let's look at the real facts. On 18 October 1981, barely two months before Solidarnosc' bid for power, Walesa -Hate the WRP! was wined and dined at a hush-hush breakfast (subsequently exposed in the 16 December 1981 Le perialist interests and capitalist counterrevol Canard Enchaine) with some twenty top-level ution at its first national congress in 1981, American financiers and industrialists (includ pimping off the just grievances of the Polish ing the presidents of Ford, Westinghouse and workers against years of bureaucratic mismanage General Dynamics) who flew in just to meet him ment, gave an enormous impetus to NATO's Cold at a posh restaurant at Paris' Charles de Gaulle War II against the deformed and degenerated airport. Does News Line suppose they were dis workers states. So when Gerry Healy plumped for cussing shop-floor organisation? Solidarnosc he jumped into bed with a pretty We hit the nail on the head when we dubbed scrofulous lot: Reagan, Thatcher, 'Socialist' Solidarnosc a 'Polish company union for the CIA austerity-monger Mitterrand, CPGB Eurocommun and bankers'. It is well-known that the Healy ists, the small-time reformist American Social ites engage in CIA/cop-baiting of groups on the ist Workers Party of Jack Barnes whom the left. Yet when it comes to Solidarnosc, they Healyites have been smearing for years as 'FBI care remarkably little about the CIA funds con agents' -- not to mention the likes of Frank duited to it via the American trade union con Chapple and Denis Healey. federation and European social democracy, or the News Line's attempt to put an 'orthodox' backing of CIA radio station 'Radio Free gloss on its support to counterrevolution with Europe'. 'Every trade union in th~'world is talk of 'political revolution' is just so much 'penetrated by the CIA', they dismissively claim. cynical hogwash. In Hungary 1956, which was an But the point, as Frank Chapple & Co would cer incipient proletarian political revolution, the tainly tell them, is that Solidarnosc was run on insurgent workers were suppressing reactionary the CIA's Cold War programme ('free trade rabble instead of being led by them. The Trotsky unions', 'democratic' counterrevolution etc). ist programme of workers political revolution is In his reply to Scargill's letter Banda as based on defence of collectivised property. serted (News LinE', 7 September 1983) that 'Soli We supported the Stalinist regime's spiking darity has never sought state power nor anything of Solidarnosc' power bid through martial law, like it.' Really? At the now notorious secret whilst continuing at all points to argue that Radom meeting of Solidarity's governing body on the Stalinist progenitors 9f Poland's crisis 3 December 1981, Warsaw branch leader Bujak de were incapable of politically defeating Solidar clared, 'The government should be finally over nosc or destroying its basis of support in the ~hrown, unmasked and deprived of any credi private landholding peasantry. We fight for a bility.' Walesa sought to disguise their Trotskyist party, which would counterpose to counterrevolutionary aims, hut went on to Solidarnosc the necessity for unions independent declare: of the ruling bureaucracy but firmly based on I defence of the collectivised property and plan 'After all, let us realise that we are bring ned economy, for the separation of church and ing this system down. Let us at last realise state, for cancellation of the debt to the im this. If we agree to have private store perialist bankers, for the construction of keepers, buy up state farms and ensure com workers councils (soviets) as the basis for a plete self-management, this system will cease workers government of the Bolshevik type. Trot to exis t.' (lvashington Pos t, 20 December 'of NUM sltlon 10 skyist propaganda cells must be created among 1981) the historically socialist Polish proletariat to On 12 December 1981 Solidarnosc called for a to set this powerful union up for the attack restore the deep and rich Marxist tradition per national referendum, to be conducted by itself, that was forthcoming. While disagreeing with sonified by Rosa Luxembur~. on whether the Polish United Workers Party Scargill's characterisation of the bureaucrati Is there a militant worker anywhere in the should continue to run the country and whether cally-deformed Stalinist-run Polish workers world who isn't aware that Solidarnosc is the the link with the USSR should be ended, advocat state as 'socialist', we wholeheartedly agree only 'trade union' in the world that Reagan and ing a 'temporary non-communist government' and that Solidarnosc is an anti-socialist organisa Thatcher support? When Scargill uttered words to 'free elections'. It was in response to these tion which seeks the bloody return of capitalism this effect Healy's 'dialectical' pen-pushers moves that the Stalinist regime finally moved to to Poland. took a page from a primer on formal logic, stop Solidarnosc' bid for power through imposi News Line is by no means unique in its sup turned it upside down and accused Scargill of tion of m~rtial law. Just like the anti port for the Vatican/CIA-inspired Solidarnosc. 'smearing' Solidarnosc. At least Scargill can communist Fleet Street rags, News Line quivered From Fleet Street to the fake-left press, that recognise a scab in Poland as well as in Not with rage that 'hundreds of Polish workers, in support is well-nigh unanimous. But with its tinghamshire -- and Solidarnosc is a scab cluding coalminers, have been shot down, baton action at Blackpool a year ago News Line went 'union' if ever there was one. When Scargill ap charged and jailed by' the military dictatorship further than the fake-left supporters of Soli pealed to the Polish Stalinist regime to cease of Jaruzelski'. Let's talk proportions here: darnosc. Its support for counterrevolution in exports of scab coal to Britain during the seven dead in Poland in defence of an historic Poland was translated into valuable ammunition strike, News Line (7 May 1984) claimed, 'If gain for the working class; tens of thousands to Fleet Street and the TUC Cold Warriors to ad vance the cause of anti-working-class reaction ANTI·IMPERIAUST ALUANCE at home. Long before Chapple's book, it was ~-::....~-:-::::.:: ...... ~",.~-- A Com7unlqu6 patently obvious that Scargill and the left had Ce"t,.1 C_Mltt•• of u,. Wort.r... ~~oI'''''''_InLondorl suffered a defeat at the hands of the Cold War 011 ~ .. 1m... ..-.:I on ...... ~, right at Blackpool; that this was a victory for ---. Thatcher; that the witchhunt of Scargill over Solidarnosc facilitated that defeat. Yet the WRP indicated no remorse, much less self-criticism, over its role. On the contrary, it boasted abo~t it, rapidly releasing a pamphlet entitled 'Scargill, Solidarity & WorkeFs Revolutionary Party' . NOW, a year later, News Line (3 September) reviews Chapple's book under the headline Anti-communist 'Thatcher's favourite union chief' and sputters, Libyan dictator 'Chapple ~as deployed all the literary devices of a "Sun" leader-writer to abuse miners' Muammar Qaddafi, leader Arthur Scargill and other left-wingers'. WRP's 'united front' Nowhere in the article does Ner-is Line dissociate partner. itself from the rather prominent role Chapple there was a free trade union movement in Poland, slaughtered in defence of clerical reaction in himself attributes to it in his abuse of Scar Scargill's plea would have been heeded.' Iran by the execution squads of the WRP's gill. One would expect a socialist newspaper, an Like hell! Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa has favoured Khomeini regime (see Labour Review, honest newspaper, a newspaper concerned with lately been telling all and sundry that Maggie June 1983, for one of the more recent Healyite standing with the miners and against scabherders Thatcher is a 'wise and brave woman' who 'will hosannas to Iran's 'revolutionary' regime). like Chapple to consider_it necessary to take up find a solution' to the miners strike, while Well, if Solidarnosc was interested in state such matters. If Chapple can be labelled railing like the Iron Lady herself against power, maybe it wasn't pro-capitalist? According 'Thatcher's favourite union chief', wouldn't it miners' 'violence' (see 'Walesa loves Thatcher', to the Neh'S Line of 16 September 1983, 'Even a be equally apt to call the WRP 'Thatcher's Workers Hammer no 61, September 1984). Three cursory glance at the documents of the Solid favourite "revolutionaries"'? We say: Hate years ago, when Reagan was smashing the PATCO arity Congress of~ugust 14-26 1981, leave no Thatcher/MacGregor -- Hate the WRP! union in the US, Solidarnosc conspicuously re doubts about Solidarity's anti-capitalist The only 'union' Thatcher and Reagan love fused to solidarise with the American trade nature_' As the WHP itself reprinted these It is no accident that Polish Solidarnosc is unionists. Instead Wales a hailed Reagan's 1980 documents in its journal Labour Review (January the issue that the Healyites chose to launch election as 'a very good sign for the world and 1982), we can assume that the following passages their attack on Scargill. As News Line (9 Sep for Poland' and proclaimed Reagan's America to came to its attention: tember 1983) observed, it is a 'touchstone for be the model for the sort of 'democracy' he 'The present system of providing enterprises the international workers' movement'. The con wished upon the Polish workers (in a CBS tele with planned directives, rewarding them for solidation of Solidarnosc as an agency for im- vision broadcast, 2 November 1981). continued on page 8 OCTOBER 1984 7 Party in the 1983 election (unlike, for example, of the Iraqi proletariat, this judicial murder 1974), whilst emphasising there might be a basis horrified all even halfway decent elements WRP ... for selective critical support to any Labour within the labour movement. But News Line (2 (Continued from page 7) candidates who broke ranks and counterposed February 1979) defended the Iraqi capitalist satisfying pre-set figures, supplying them themselves to the Cold War leadership. With the regime, justifying the execution 'for illegally with appropriate raw materials, investments deep split effected inside the Labour Party by forming cells in the armed forces. The pur~ose and financial means to fulfill their planned the onset of Cold War, we have intervened with of these cells was to fight against the Govern objective, limiting employment and wages, the call to 'Drive out the SDP fifth column' - ment.' The Healyi tes' shameless defence 0:" v.,hi te setting prices etc. -- this whole so-called the likes of Denis Healey and Roy Hattersley who terror, later supplemented by ardent suprort !.or firm hand over enterprises maintained by the have no place in the labour movement -- and to the 'Iranian revolution' -- Ayatollah KhoQeini's centre, must cease to exist. Enterprises must place the Little England 'socialists' like Tony ghastly Islamic hell -- demonstrated the truth be independent, self-managed and self Benn in a position of power where the bankruptcy of our observation that: financing.' ('Position on the social and of their left reformist politics could be more 'For a small propaganda group without a sig economic reform of the country', p468, our effectively exposed and combatted. This would nificant mass base, moreover, program is de emphasis) aid in winning the masses of workers away from cisive in determining a group's class charac Just what self-financing means is explained the Labour misleaders, 'left' as well as right, ter. In the case of the Healy/Banda or~aniz later on: 'This means that enterprises function to a revolutionary programme and party. ation, the contradiction between its ing better will be able to develop and those "Trotskyist" pretensions and the dictates of functioning badly may even go bankrupt.' As ... and messengers for Qaddafi its Libyan patrons has repetitively come down thousands of redundant workers in Britain know What is the history of this 'workers revol in favour of the latter.' (Workers Vanguard well, as the striking miners fighting for their utionary' newspaper which gets favourable men no 230, 27 April 1979) jobs and those of their sons and daughters un tion from some of the most openly counterrevol When the WRP's Vanessa Redgrave brought a libel derstand in their guts, this is how the cdpi utionary anti-working-class elements on and off suit against Socialist Organiser editor Sean talist market functions. The breaking-up of the Fleet Street? News Line made its appearance in Matgamna in 1981, the WRP conspicuously chose centrally-planned economy in Poland, which these May 1976, two months after the first Healyite not to contest Matgamna's allegation that the documents advocate in effect (even without im daily fvorkers Press folded with the presumption WRP has received material aid from Libya. mediate wholesale denationalisation) could only of 'lack of funds'. Ever since it has been a Even before the appearance of News Line with have meant the introduction of mass unemployment mouthpiece for the megalomaniacal ravings and its enthusing over Qaddafi's Libya, it had been and the opening up of the economy to even 'people's democracy' pretensions of Libyan dic commonly held among the left that the Healy greater penetration by foreign capital. To us tator Qaddafi. In the year around Ner,..·s Line's group combines idiot organisational sectarianism Healy's 'Polish socialism' sounds awfully like appearance WRP members reportedly visited that with the wildest gyrations of gross political devastated Liverpool or the Rhondda valley. devoutly anti-communist dictatorship three times. opportunism to create an aura of extreme insta bility. It appears widely accepted by many left WRP: whores for the Cold Warriors ... Early on News Line (26 February 1977) hailed the London publication of Qaddafi's Green Book as ists that they have a readiness to employ physi In its reply to Scargill, 'lc~'s Line (9 Sep- . 'an uncompromising rejection of parliamentary cal gangsterism against left-wing opponents. tember 1983) cfaimed: 'He who injures Solidari tyl democracy in favour of "the authority of the i Such views are reinforced by the fact that, as injures the international working class, and ! I people'" and featured a favourable interview (14 far back as 1966, there was the infamous 'Tate particularly the British working class at a time September 1976) with the head of Qaddafi's affair', in which Healy took legal action in the when trade union rights are under vicious attack 'trade union federation'. Our American comrades bosses' courts against several left-wing papers from the Tory government.' Frank Chapple, in noted at the time: to suppress a protest letter by Canadian United very similar terms, argues that, 'Throughout TUC 'The WRP's shameless presentation of Secretariat supporter Ernie Tate alleging that week Scargill did maximum damage to free trade Qaddafi's repression of the Libyan working he'd been beaten up outside a meeting of Healy's unionists at home and abroad.' Meaning what? class leaves no doubt of its utter sub organisation, causing hospitalisation. Yet Healy Scargill 'proposed defiance of any laws inspired jugation before this capitalist dictator .... never denied, in the words of his solicitor, 'a by Norman Tebbit, then the employment secretary, i even a cursory glance at News Line's year disturbance on the pavement' which came when 'Mr but his rabble-rousing was voted down'. There's long pandering to the oil-rich Qaddafi forces Healy, in fact, asked a steward to clear the more like the truth: Scargill opposes Solidar the observation that there is something very pavement' (where Tate was standing). nosc and opposes the anti-trade-union laws; rotten in the state of Denmark.' (Workers In 1975 Vanessa Redgrave, whose filmstar while he who lines up with CIA-backed 'free Vanguard no 158, 20 May 1977) lifestyle might not disgrace Nancy Reagan, trade unionism', counterrevolution and imperial Shortly thereafter, News Line (10 August 1977) dragged British Leyland car worker Alan Thornett ism in Poland will more than likely make himself issued a grandiose 'joint communique' announcing (who broke with the WRP in 1974 to form the cen available as hatchetman for Reagan/Thatcher's 'a united front of the forces of the Libyan trist Workers Socialist League) into court over open agents within the British workers movement, revolution and the Workers Revolutionary Party', a personal loan. She did it again six years the CIA/NATO/IMF lovers in the Labour/TUC right pledging the WRP to 'unconditionally defend' later with her libel suit against Socialist wing. Qaddafi's 'leadership against imperialism and Organiser's Matgamna. (Though for all his dis At the same time, the WRP seeks to appeal to its agents'. ~ust with the WRP's support to anti-Communist militant youth and workers disaffected with the When, less than two years later, the Iraqi juridical murder in Iraq, Matgamna shares Healy's betrayals of the Labourites with a load of anti Ba'athist regime executed 21 Iraqi CP militants bed when it comes to anti-Communism in Poland.) Labour rhetoric. Thus News Line of 8 September as part of a major crackdown on this mass party The WRP's current role is all the more dis- 1983 attacks Scargill for his support to the Labour Party: 'Scargill's opposition to Solidarity is closely linked with his unprincipled support for the election of another treacherous Labour government in Britain. By supporting Labour at the polls, he has favoured the election of a government completely committed to NATO and the preparation of nuclear war against the USSR and Poland. ' You want to know the true measure of Healy/ Banda's 'revolutionary opposition to Labourism'? Let the Central Committee of the WRP have the floor: 'The working class stood alone and voted solidly Labour in spite of the betrayals of the reformist Labour Party leaders. We called ill for a united class vote against the Tories and a complete rejection of the blandishments of the Alliance and that is what happened.' ('The only way ahead after the General Elec tion', News_, Line , 13 June 1983) That's what we mean whe~ we say 'political bandits'! Sometimes you just can't get it right, can you Gerry? The WRP's fantasy world notwith standing, Scargill's opposition to Solidarnosc is not in line with, but out of step with the Cold War consensus demanded by the Labour Party leadership. Would it not be more appropriate to draw the conclusion that theWRPitself 'favoured ... a government completely committed to NATO', and that this is indeed 'closely linked' with their support for Solidarity, as shown in the Blackpool TUC. Likewise in the US Healy's satel lite group for years called on racist neander thal Cold War bureaucrat George Meany to 'Build a Labour Party'. If such a monstrosity were to arise it would be a party immeasurably worse than even that of Denis Healey and Frank Chapple. Meany's successor as head of the AFL-CIO, Lane Kirkland, today sits on Ronald Reagan's Salvador Commission as it devises defences for the death-squad regime in El Salvador. Unlike the WRP charlatans, Trotskyists fight to build revolutionary workers parties through breaking workers and the oppressed from their pro-capitalist misleaders. With Foot/Healey campaigning openly on a platform of Cold War Social Contract austerity, the Spartacist League refused to offer critical support to the Labour Friends of Solidarnosc, Polish company union for CIA and bankers: Gerry Healy. Margaret Thatcher. Denis Healev 8 WORKERS HAMMER gusting in the light of the earlier history of the Healy tendency. For the Spartacist tendency it is important to expose the reality behind the WRP's miserable facade of Trotskyism because we KHOMEINY R ~'!s4=~! ,- stand in Britain and internationally as the con tinuators of the authentic revolutionary pro gramme of Leninism which the WRP's predecessors, the Socialist Labour League (SLL), once upheld. - • v:".. ~~_, ~l0"" __ """'.UII'~~~ '#~ The revolutionary traditions of Trotskyism A CONSPIRACY EXPOSED t:::II:IIC:I During World War II the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain prostrated itself before Winston Churchill, the butcher of Tonypandy, in the name of a 'war against fascism'. The Stalin ists broke strikes, witchhunted the Trotskyists News Line stood as 'Hitler's agents' and supported imperialism's by its dictators suppression of independence struggles by even when Britain's colonial slaves. The British Trotsky Iraqi Sa 'athist ists (including present-day WRP leaders) stood, regime murdered despite flaws, as a beacon to the most militant Communist Party layers of the working class -- those who, like militants. ...., tessly purged! 2 February 1979 miners from Kent to South Wales and Yorkshire, 8 March 1979 braved Churchill's troops and all the bosses' anti-union patriotic propaganda to strike for their rights. reforge an authentically Trotskyist Fourth Banda gang have shown that their stomachs are The SLL itself was formed following the International. Healy demanded at the conference never too queasy for any task at hand. Hungarian Revolution of 1956; Healy's group re that we denounce ourselves as 'petty-bourgeois And their support for counterrevolutionary cruited an impressive layer of CPGB intellect American chauvinists' as evidence of unthinking Polish Solidarnosc at a time of imperialist uals and trade union militants through a prin loyalty. This was an excuse to justify the split hysteria against opponents of that CIA 'union' cipled and highly effective campaign in support and further exposed Healy's bureaucratic gave them an opportunity to convince working of the heroic Hungarian workers' upsurge against methods. • class militants that these messengers for Stalinist bureaucratism and for workers democ The political basis for these anti-Leninist Qaddafi were also prepared to be whores for racy. In the late fifties and early sixties the organisational methods became clear shortly Thatcher. At Blackpool, News Line 'took full SLL's Labour Review waged an important theoreti thereafter as the Healyites took the side of Mao advantage' of Scargill to, quite literally, be cal struggle against the revisionism of Michel Tse-Tung's Red Guards in the bureaucratic in come a bludgeon against militancy in the hands Pablo and Ernest Mandel, which had destroyed the fighting of the Chinese 'Cultural Revolution' of Thatcher's favourite union chiefs. Trotskyist Fourth International from within. and enthusiastically embraced the anti-working Every working-class militant should look for Pabloism argued for an abandonment of the per class Arab nationalist regimes of Nasser's Egypt ward to the day when the Healy/Banda gang is spective of workers revolution, seeking to and Syria in the name of a mythical 'Arab Revol politically removed as a menace to the left and liquidate the Trotskyist vanguard parties and ution'. The Healy group also began advancing the labour movement. And every miner who hates programme necessary to lead the working class to strategy of 'Make the Lefts Fight', a demand Thatcher and MacGregor should, rightly, hate the power in favour of pressuring Stalinist and that the left Labourites oust Wilson & Co and WRP as well. This expose is one aspect of our social-democratic bureaucrats to the left and lead the Labour Party on so-called 'socialist all-sided struggle to build the genuinely later uncritically hailing petty-bourgeois policies'. (For a period in the 1950s Healy had Trotskyist mass revolutionary party the British nationalist guerrillaism as well. been deeply immersed in the Bevan wing of the working class so desperately needs to put an It was on this basis that the predecessors of Labour Party.) Around then in 1968 the SLL end to the death agony of this worm-eaten the international Spartacist tendency, the hailed the Vietnamese Stalinists as 'instinc capitalist system .• Revolutionary Tendency fighting the same Pablo tive' Trotskyists who had 'outline[d] a strategy ist liquidationism within the American Socialist for the conquest of power' (Fourth Inter A SpartaCist Pamphlet $100 Workers Party, sought to make common cause with national, February 1968). In short, the Healy Healy in Britain in the struggle for the prin ites betrayed the Trotskyist programme, abandon READ Sol;darnoSc: ciples of Trotskyism. Our efforts were ulti ing the need for independent Leninist leadership mately blocked by the sectarianism and bureau in the struggle for workers power. Thus they Polish cratism of Healy (see the documentary record in embarked on the road which has brought us the THE CompanV Union tor our Marxist Bulletin series). In 1962 Healy and sorry WRP of today. his American toad Tim Wohlforth engineered an CIA and Bankers unprincipled split in the Revolutionary Tendency Hate the WRP - Fight for Trotskyism! TRUTH! x -- blocking an effective factional struggle in Britain's miners are locked in a battle with it- the SWP -- and subsequently got us bureaucrat a ruling class whose war on the workers' unions Read the pamphlet "'" /. ?,," n ically expelled from that organisation. In 1966 is a necessary corollary to war preparations that tells the truth ~~ "" oJ { t : ,~r" ,- ,,~._ Healy expelled our comrades from an internation against the deformed/degenerated workers states. about Solidarnosc ,0,'0'.' I oC~;;".J _i al conference when we refused to bury our pol And the more decrepit its system gets, the more I dar~~:._ itical disagreements. These centred on Healy's the ruling class is capable of finding even the 70p inc p&p absurd claims that Cuba remained a capitalist most unsavoury allies to use against the workers I country and that the Fourth International had it exploits. That is where the WRP enters the I already been 'reconstructed' and the Healy group picture. With their unabashed defence of the Make payable/ post to was it. In contrast we insisted that the politi most brutal and grotesque reactionary white I Spartacist Publications, terror against women, minorities and working --.J cal struggle against Pabloism must be carried PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE through on an international plane in order to class militants in the Middle East, the Healy/ While the WIL carried out some effective agi to accept the discipline of the Fourth Inter tation among rank-and-file soldiers in the national. Bornstein and Richardson claim that British Trotskyism. • • Eighth Army, this shameless statement by Grant, the WIL was unable to attend the founding con (Continued from page 2) coming in the context of the Eighth Army's vic ference of the FI in 1938 simply because of dire tories against the Germans in North Africa, poverty. The FI thought otherwis~: Using the slogan 'Break the coalition - could only fuel illusions that the British im 'The invitation of the International del- Labour to power', the WIL stated that it would perialist army was waging a war against fascism. egation to this group to be represented and ...... only offer critical support to Labour when and Let us not forget too that at this time the present its point of view to the world con if Labour broke with the coalition government British army was playing a key role in suppress ference. either by delegate or letter, was and stood in its own name. They maintained this ing incipient proletarian revolution in Italy. disregarded; all we have is a statement, policy throughout the war years. In the 1945 In fact Grant's statement was unfortunately apparently addressed to the world at large, Neath (Glamorgan) by-election Jock Haston stood not out of the general context of the WIL's ad rejecting in advance any decision of the for the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) , aptation, which expressed itself in its aggress world conference not in accord with their own formed after the fusion of the WIL with the ive espousal of a variant of the 'Proletarian untenable demands.' ('Resolution on Unifi Revolutionary Socialist League, against a Labour Military Policy' (P~W). Initially adopted by the cation of the British Section', from Docu candidate. The organ of the RCP proclaimed, American Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party ments of the Fourth International 1933-40) 'Vote against the Coalition' and stated, 'Re (SWP) , but never seriously implemented in prac This was only the most glaring example of a pro member when you vote, that a vote for the Labour tice, the P~W souGht to intersect anti-fascist foundly anti-internationalist streak in the candidate is a vote for Churchill and the sentiment within the working class with the call politics of the WIL's central leadership, symp Tories' (Socialist Appeal, February 1945). Today for workers control over military training for tomatic of an adaptation to Labourism and 'fog it is the international Spartacist tendency the bourgeois army. During the invasion fever of over-the-channel' parochialism which is the bane uniquely which stands by Trotskyist principle 1940-41, when a German invasion appeared immi of the British left to this day. When James P and refuses to extend critical support to re nent, the WIL raised the slogan, 'Arm the Cannon, founder of American Trotskyism and formist workers parties that are in popular workers to defeat the threat of invasion' and Trotsky's trusted collaborator, visited Britain front coalitions. called for a 'workers militia' incorporating the just before the war to try to bring about a While falsely adducing to the WIL their own Home Guard. Likewise the WIL stood delegates for fusion of the WIL and the official British sec support to the social-imperialist Labour Party, the factory Joint Production Committees, union tion, he found himself being treated like an however, Bornstein and Richardson seek to deny management efforts aimed at increasing war pro ignorant American hick. the WIL's adaptations to social-chauvinist sen duction, and raised the call for workers control Despite its programmatic deficiencies, the timent within the working class during the war. of production in the context of denunciations WIL sought to stand against imperialist war and They claim that we took Ted Grant's reference to that 'Britain's war production is in chaos' the social-democratic and Stalinist hangmen. 'our Eighth Army' out of context. Here is the (1942 WIL leaflet for a public meeting on While Bornstein and Richardson peer out from full quote: 'Workers Control of Production'). their Labour Party nest, the Spartacist League 'We have a victorious army in North Africa As we pointed out in our original article, seeks to educate a new layer of Trotskyist and Italy -- and I say yes, Long live the the WIL's susceptibility to such social cadre, but not to the social-democratic Eighth Army because it is our army.' (Workers patriotic pressures was related to its origins parochialism that has for so long masqueraded International News, January 1944) as an unprincipled, cliquist split which refused as Trotskyism on this island .• OCTOBER 1984 9 Break. • • (Continued from page 1) Drive fascist Harrington off NLP ! settlement outright: 'We do not expect anyone to After a summer out mobilising for the fas That some 600 students turned out for the make deals which result in people crossing our cists' deadly programme of race terror, Patrick emergency student union meeting iS,a measure of picket lines.' Harrington is once more back at North London their anger that this slime has oozed his way While the dockers were out, the country was Polytechnic (NLP) as a direct provocation back onto campus under the protection of the poised on the verge of a general strike -- a against students at this heavily minority col bosses' cops and courts. But the Student Union general strike which could have been realised lege. Last term hundreds of students put them Exec motion to the meeting attempted to bury the had the leaders of the rail and transport unions selves on the line in an attempt to drive this fight within the bounds of legality, even ac seriously implemented their pledges of soli prominent member of the National Front off the cepting that Harrington has the 'right' to darity and joined the miners in all-out strike NLP Kentish Town site. As the Spartacist League 'separate off campus tuition' and calling for action. What is needed now is to reverse the stressed in a leaflet distributed at the time: 'peaceful mass demonstrations' conforming to sellouts and for all unions which claim to sup 'The NF's presence at NLP means a direct High Court guidelines. A supporter of the port the NUM to strike [",i th the miners. Trade threat to the safety of every black, ASian, Spartacist Society at NLP pOinted to the union defence guards must be organised to re Irish, immigrant, Jewish, gay and socialist example of the miners' powerful strike against pulse strikebreaking cop/scab terror. Militants student and worker on that campus .... What is the government and stressed the need for stu from other striking unions, women's support involved here is not Harrington's "right" to dents to link up with the trade unions, who do groups, the unemployed and minori ty organisations an education, but defence of the population have the social power to stop fascist scum like must be drawn in to form joint elected strike of this city against race terror. If the fas Harrington in his tracks. She called for committees which could lay the basis for alter cists aren't stopped now, there will be more Harrington to be 'driven off campus by mass native organs of power to the strikebreaking deadly attacks: more of the murderous fire student/minority/worker mobilisation'. capitalist state. What is needed above all is a bombings which have plagued families in East At a 100-strong picket on the following day, leadership prepared to go into a classwide show London, more of the racist stabbings like thoroughly disorganised by the student union, down with the capitalist state. But the pro that of Ala Miah Azad in February.' enabling Harrington to walk through unscathed, capitalist bureaucrats fear and hate the pros A Student Union Executive motion to a 4 Oct the Spartacist Society brought out nearly a pect of such a confrontation which would necess ober emergency meeting on Harrington points out dozen people, including members of the NUR and arily pose the question, which class rules? Thus that this past summer 'he acted as agent for the ASLEF from the heavily minority workforce of they threaten to strangle the miners' heroic National Front candidate standing in the GLC London Transport and several miners bearing fight. bye-elections in Paddington' and 'appear [ed] at placards reading: 'This miner says: Unions/ the Maidstone fascist march in "uniform"'. He Minorities must crush fascist scum!' The SL Kinnock spits on miners' struggle has also been tape recorded at Chapel Market as calls for all trade unions and student, min 'saying that he agreed with firebombing his ority and socialist organisations to mobilise to What was clear throughout the week at Black opponents' . drive fascist Harrington off NLP .• pool was that deep and antagonistic forces are pulling and tugging at the Labour Party, point Hattersley's right-wing document on the economy, Council to give pit fight backing'. The TUC ing on the one hand to cowardly, parliamentarist which was praised even by the Financial Times, conference disowned even a paltry lOp a head crawling before Thatcher and, on the other, was approved overwhelmingly. So too was the new mandatory levy, but the 22 September Morning towards class struggle which could sink the defence document which, while making the Healey Star crowed, 'TUC urges: "Dig deep for the Tories. A thoughtful editorial in Race Today ite right (and the Pentagon) uncomfortable by miners"'. The 19 September Morning Star joined (October/November 1984) summed up the situation its unilateralist rhetoric, sharply reaffirms port employers in cheering the latest dock going into Blackpool: Labour's commitment to NATO. (And a non-nuclear sellout, with the patently false claim '''No 'The Labour Party goes t~ Conference in Octo Britain committed to NATO is an absurdity; scab" assurance by BSC ends dock strike', and ber with much on its plate and little appe the unilateralist pledges will be worth about tite for the tasks at hand. The leadership, followed it up with a 21 September editorial as much as Michael Foot's were by the time a whose major reason for existing is the pol headed, 'Follow transport union lead'. Indeed! general election rolls around.) itical defeat of the Thatcher government, can In addition to Labour transport spokesman John A resolution upholding the right to form hardly be said to be in the vanguard of that Prescott, those most responsible for shoving black sections was disgustingly slapped down by through this sellout were such p~ominent CP sup struggle. 'The party has been completely displaced by porters as Scottish TUC secretary James Moyne the National Union of Mineworkers and its and TGWU regional secretary Hugh Wyper. leadership overtaken by Arthur Scargill .... Britain's workers and oppressed desperately It is ironic that Kinnock et al will only re need a genuine communist party, like the one which led the Russian workers to power more than tain some semblance of authenticity in the sixty years ago. Today the miners and their fam current political struggle if the miners are ilies have revived the best, Class-struggle tra defeated. ' ditions of the British proletariat. When Soviet If it were up to Kinnock, 20,000 miners would miners in the Ukraine recently offered a £50,000 long ago have lost their jobs; far better for contribution to their struggling class brothers Kinnock to lose his. here, one of their representatives explained, Yet at Blackpool, the 'lefts' who support the 'We, the Soviet people, remember well how in the NUM refused to pose a direct challenge to Kin years of civil war in Russia British dockers re nock's leadership and thus let him wriggle off fused to load weapons intended for suppressing the hook. The Kinnock/Hattersley nightmare our revolution.' ticket was unanimously reelected. Various resol utions calling for strike action with the miners A victory for the miners today will not only bring the vindictive Iron Lady Thatcher to her or posing a challenge to Kinnock's sanctified knees but open the road to doing away with the Tory union-bashing 'legality' were either with class system whose savagery and horror she so drawn or squashed. While Judas Kinnock spits on well embodies. A tragic harbinger of what the miners' struggle and openly rubbishes Scar Thatcher intends for the British working class gill in the Fleet Street press, the Labour/TUC when she talks about a return to 'Victorian 'lefts' acquiesce to the dictates of Labour values' is the recent death of a l4-year-old Party 'unity'. But class-struggle unity centred striker's son killed while scavenging on a spoil on securing a miners' victory against the Tories tip for coal to heat his family's horne. And then is counterposed to unity with the right-wing the Tory government brutally denied the family strikebreakers who split the workers movement by Social Security funeral benefits as punishment keeping the miners isolated. for supporting the strike. '-.W When the Spar-tacist League offered Tony Benn The depth of self-sacrifice and the breadth critical support in last spring's Chesterfield of support for this struggle is a recognition by-election, he refused rather than be associ that on its outcome hinges the fate of trade ated with our ~all to drive Denis Healey and his Miners support march in Glasgo~, 15 September: unions, entire communities and the livelihoods NATO/CIA-lovini gang out of the Labour Party. unemployed rally behind the strike. and security of every working-Class and minority Now Benn is chief 'left' purveyor of 'unity' family in this country. But the fight for victory a coalition of right wingers and the 'left' with the strikebreakers on the right. And Scar is inextricably linked to the fight for a new gill is incapable of posing a consistent chal Militant tendency. This slap in the face to the leadership of the labour movement committed to thousands of blacks and Asians who have b~en among lenge to Kinnock's leadership because he does uncompromising class struggle against the capi the most ardent supporters of the miners strike not have a consistent strategy to counterpose to talists. That is why we say: The miners must is a statement that Ktnnock's Labour Party is the treacherous Kinnock's. For all his willing not stand alone! Strike now ,"ith the miners! not even willing to pay lip service to the fight ness to stand up to the Tories, Scargill's aim 3ring the Iron Lady to her knees! • is not to lead a class-struggle offensive di against racism! Even an NGA motion to expel rected towards the overthrow of the capitalist press tycoon Maxwell for his union-busting court system but towards a reformist scheme for bol suit was rejected. What sort of workers party stering British industry through the 'Plan for is this? Workers need a revolutionary party, not Coal' and under a future Labour government. a party of multi-millionaire strikebreakers, Spartacist League Public Meeting The right wing was on the defensive from day closet Tories and CIA-loving warmongers! one at Blackpool. Kinnock was battered and bruised when resolutions supporting the miners Sink Thatcher! Sink Thatcher! and denouncing police violence were passed Even a relatively small revolutionary party against his scarcely veiled opposition. Then his could tap the massive groundswell of support for Speaker: Tony Vanzler (Spartacist League Central Committee) reselection scheme designed to weaken left and the miners and harness it behind a strategy Guest speaker: Dick Hall trade union influence was dumped and a motion aimed at purging this abhorrent capitalist sys (North Derbyshire NUM. speaking in a personal capacity) to support potentially illegal budgets set by tem. Yet the Labour-loyal fake Trotskyists en Labour councils passed. But Kinnock was not thuse over the miners' 'victory' at Blackpool. 7.30pm chased off the platform as any Tory making a And the Communist Party (CP) offers nothing more Tuesday, 9 October Roebuck Pub similar speech in the presence of NUM supporters than lying apologies for Kinnock and the TUC Charles Street rightfully would have been, when he echoed backstabbers. With the TUC pleading for private Sheffield S 1 Thatcher's rubbish against miners' 'violence' chats to hear Ian MacGregor's , side', Morning For more information phone (0742) 737067 from the platform; indeed he was applauded. Star (8 September) headlined, 'New TUC General 10 WORKERS HAMMER Trade unions: stop ships, planes to South Africa! Workers Va na uard As tens of thousands of black gold miners and -= I- ~ Ca'" for union boycott, of tran'port and township residents are fighting the full fury I •;:, _ .-., - - - £1 '1 1- >.' ,':jL <" commerce with South Africa are not -the usual of South Africa's apartheid state terror, soli- -". ---: ..'. /.~ /.fI;-;p'ff': L .. 1: . empty liberal rhetoric. In Australia, maritime darity aCC20n by the international labour move- I . ·~c .·...:--\;:f!f·~7"i;tl;!r.·· .! ..",~:-' workers have begun to put solidarity into action. ment is urgently necessary. Since the eruption I.~ .... ~¥":. - 1!:tL«'... /"'~ ...... - .. '. In response to the apartheid butchers' murderous of mass, anti-apartheid black protests in early suppression of mass protests in Sharpeville, be September, the international Spartacist tend ginning on 6 September workers in the port of ency and class-struggle union militants have Sydney blacked the South African vessel Sasocean called for an emergency international labour Nederburg. First the Waterside Workers Feder boycott of all cargo to and from South Africa. ation boycotted the ship for 24 hours and then On 20 September, militants of the Inter- tugboat workers in the Firemen and Deckhands' national Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union of New South Wales refused to handle the Union (ILWU) in the San Francisco Bay Area ship for two more days. distributed a leaflet, issued by 25-year ILWU In contrast to liberal 'disinvestment' veteran Stan Gow, headlined 'Longshoremen: Hot schemes, which only prettify imperialism, Cargo [Black] All South African Shipping!' At Trotskyists have called on labour internationally the 24 September New York port meeting of the to refuse to handle military cargo to South National Maritime Union (N~ru), members of the Africa. Today a boycott of all transport is Militant-Solidarity Caucus presented a resol Oakland, California, June 1983: militant dockers seek to called for to support the black revolt against ution calling for 'stopping all ships and stop South African ship to protest execution of anti apartheid. Come to the aid of our black working cargo to and from South Africa'. Britain's apartheid fi~hters. class brothers and sisters facing murderous struggling miners are natural allies of the police-state repreSSion in South Africa! Words brutally oppressed black South African workers African shipping -- which, to our knowledge, are cheap. Now is the hour for concrete acts of and should seek to forge concrete links of continues to berth at Southampton among other labour solidarity! solidarity. Militant seamen and dockers here docks -- even as they continue to fight for Adapted from Workers Vanguard no 363, must fight for effective blacking of all South solidarity strike action with the miners here. 28 September 1984 '- the earth the black peoples of southern Africa have been stripped of their birthright and land, Miner speaks ... South Africa • • • and transformed through apartheid into a mig ratory labour force with its barracks-like com (Continued from page 3) (Continued from page 12) I pounds and onerous pass controls. The gold mines to the penny, is double the amount which the NUM ordered their re-arrest following a 7 September are a concentrated microcosm of the prison camp claimed for a faceworker back in 1977. And as I ruling by the Natal Supreme Court that their de- speak to you here tonight, a faceworker today tention had been illegal. While Botha screams that South Africa is for black toilers. gets £26 per shift. So that figure of £135 still for the blood of these anti-apartheid fighters, Though apartheid has forcibly uprooted 3.5 hasn't been achieved seven years later. In fact, ' provocatively reneging on an agreement to return million blacks and d~mped them into the bantu my friends, you could say that both this govern South African arms purchasers arrested in stan hell-holes, though it arrests hundreds and ment and the Coal Board doesn't consider a face- Britain to stand trial here, the Thatcher thousands a year for not having permits in their worker in the British coal industry to be even government has done all it can to oblige Pre passbooks to be in 'white' South Africa, the worth as much as one leg of old Queen Victoria's toria short of actually evicting the refugees. lifeblood of the country's mines, ports and drawers. (laughter) British officials deny them toilet facilities, factories is black labour. Apartheid is, above And finally, my experience at Orgreave. That access to relatives and reject requests to in all, a system for keeping black labour cheap and was something, comrades, which I never thought I tercede on their behalf. And now three of the vulnerable. It leaves all those it does not need would ever see in Britain. I saw scenes at six who left 'voluntarily' have been arrested. -- the Children, the women, the old, the maimed, and an ever-increasing reserve army of the unem Orgreave, which would have disgusted the Black The British ruling class ~~ tiad ~y a tho~ ployed -- to the desperate poverty of the bantu shirts in Germany in the 1930s. I saw old men saLd ~~d one strings to the apartheid butchers knocked to the ground with truncheons. I saw a in Pretoria, both economically and politically. stans. Thus workers are paid little more than is young woman pushing a kiddie in a carry cot Witness Thatcher's welcome to apartheid hangman needed to keep them slaving from one day to the knocked flying with a shield. And when an old P W Botha last June, and the red carpet treat next, always with a threat of deportation to the gentleman dashed out from his garden, picked up ment accorded to Botha sweetheart Zola Budd, bantustans wi th a note in the passbook 'idle and the kiddie cot and took him into his garden for while valiant anti-racist militants are virtual undesirable' . Yet the very 'success' safekeeping, a policeman ran up behind him and ly driven into the arms of Botha's torturers. of the system is driving it into crisis. The boom of the 1960s hit him on the back of the head with a trun Any reliance on 'democratic' British imperialism has given way to stagnation caused by an acute cheon. That was absolutely terrible. I've seen to aid the struggle against apartheid, through skilled labour shortage, low productivity and a old ladies as we were fleeing away from Orgreave appeals for British disinvestment and sanctions, weak domestic market. As an economist at the come out to their front door with jugs and is fatal. Independent labour action must force · t' lIt Chamber of Mines put it, 'You cannot run this glasses of water and giving it to people who had t h e governmen t to gran t f u 11 po 1 1 lca asy um 0 I economy on whites alone' (Wall Street Journal, been injured on picket lines. I saw more blood the three remaining inside the consulate and 19 June). While discontent among the oppressed at Orgreave on that fatal Monday in June than demand the release of all anti-apartheid pris- non-white masses, from Indian traders to colour you'll find in any blood bank here in London. oners in South Africa. ed students to black African small farmers, is But my friends, on closing, I'll tell you nearly universal, it is the five-million-strong this. Have no fear, we feel that we are on a For permanent revolution in South Africa! black proletariat whi~h has the power to bring winning streak. The compassion and the kindness As Marx wrote in Capital, modern society the arrogant white supremacists to their knees. and the concern that I have encountered, es 'greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glitter- Key to centralising and organising the enor pecially in non-mining areas, is absolutely fan ing incarnation of the very principle of its own mous social power of this nascent black labour tastic. Thank you all very much indeed, not only I life'. It was the extraction of this Holy Grail movement against the apartheid state is the you in this room, but your supporters and your that gave South African capitalism its peculiar organisation of its class-conscious vanguard comrades who are not here this evening. A lot of expression of combined and uneven development. into a Trotskyist party, as the leader of the your people have been down to my area. They have The profitability of mining in South Africa has oppressed nation. Such a party must base itself always been made very welcome, they always will been historically maintained not through capital be made very welcome. And if any of you want to investment, which increases the productivity of upon the lessons of the Russian Revolution, the only successful workers revolution' and one which come down and help your local branch there, labour, but through brutalisation and enslave had to address the uncompleted bourgeois nation you're all quite welcome to come. There is an ment to increase the superexploitation of al democratic tasks. These lessons generalised awareness in South Wales for straightforward labour. To supply the raw muscle power and life in Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution dem politics .• blood to extract these riches from the bowels of onstrate that the tasks of national reconstruc- tion and emanCipation, agrarian revolution and genuine democracy require for their resolution Blunkett attacks Sheffield strikers the seizure of power by the proletariat at the head of the urban and rural toiling masses: For On 4 October a month-old strike by more than and banned the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration a black-centred workers and peasants government 600 Sheffield council workers in the Housing marCh, giving the green light for a threatened in South Africa! Department spread when 400 Treasury Department National Front anti-Irish, anti-immigrant South Africa is a junior partner of the major workers walked off the job, threatening an all march. The Spartacist League (SL) fought to imperialist powers as well as a regional imperi out strike. The strike began when Sheffield mobilise Sheffield's labour movement and min alist power in its own right. The US and its im Labour Council leader David Blunkett unilat ority population against the fascist threat. perialist allies' war to overturn the gains of erally ripped up a new technology agreement with Not suprisingly Blunkett hates the SL. In the Russian Revolution is at the very heart of NALGO members in the Housing Department. When April 1983 he viciously slandered us as 'CIA the Washington/London/Pretoria axis, as demon staff protested that the new council document agents' for refusing to fall in line behind strated in Angola, where Soviet-backed Cuban meant redundancies Blunkett suspended ten Labour's election campaign, and for our un troops defend Angola from the apartheid sjambok workers and then another thirteen who refused to compromising defence of the Soviet Union. But as (whip). From the gold and uranium mines of the scab. As one council worker put it, Blunkett was Sheffield's minorities have already learned and Rand to the docks and industries of the Cape, 'acting more like a Tory than a socialist'. council workers are now experiencing, the Labour every blow struck against apartheid is a blow Blunkett is a darling of the Labour 'left' Party offers little to workers and minorities. struck against Rea~an/Thatcher/Botha's sinister who brags about his support for the miners and Municipal 'socialism' a la Blunkett means job anti-Soviet war drive. The black proletariat of Sheffield being a 'nuclear-free zone' and slashing attacks on workers and racist 'benign South Africa is destined not only to be the 'apartheid-free zone'. But he's acting more like neglect' of gypsies and other minorities. An liberator. of their oppressed nation, but by Ian MacGregor trying to make the city council a all-out strike by council workers now is needed placing the country's vast mineral resources and union-free zone! Meanwhile, Sheffield has the not only to defend their jobs and union rights industrial wealth at the service of social and worst housing record in Britain for minorities. but could be a step towards spearheading a national emancipation, it can be the powerhouse Only last August the council attempted to drive broader mobilisation of the Sheffield labour for social revolution throughout deeply oppres gypsies out of the Attercliffe area of the city. movement in solidarity with the hard-battling sed and economically backward black Africa. Last January this 'socialist' joined in the miners. Bust Blunkett -- No job losses! Victory Adapted from Workers Vanguard no 363, anti-Irish hysteria after the Harrods bombing to the Sheffield council workers strike!. 28 September 1984 OCTOBER 1984 11 For international labour action against racist terror! Black workers battle South Africa apartheid Revolt in townships, class war in gold mines The black revolt against apartheid rule reached a new level in past weeks as class war exploded in the gold mines, the key sector of the entire South African economy. When 40,000 members of the black National Union of Mine workers walked out for a wage increase, the mine bosses responded with shotgun~, rubber bullets, attack dogs and tear gas. In the town of Weston aria near Johannesburg striking miners were massacred. The papers claimed seven killed, but police refused to give details on the number of dead, saying 'clearing up' was still going on. Hundreds of workers were hospitalised with rup tured spleens, fractured skulls and other serious injuries. But the black miners were not _ ?,~~,,~- fr-~~-'.2~~ cowed by this massive use of police-state Racist South African state seeks to crush black militancy. Smash apartheid! For workers revolution! terror. The very next day 10,000 of them struck for union recognition at Hartebeesfontein, 100 Africa's export earnings. The country's large in the mines today. Seven of the eight mines miles southwest of Westonaria. And the weekend but technologically backward manufacturing struck last month are owned by Anglo-American, a before, more than 600 blacks were arrested sector depends upon these foreign exchange earn huge conglomerate which is the core of the Oppen across South Africa for attending illegal ings to import capital equipment. heimer family empire. The Oppenheimers represent meetings. Marxists know that any serious labour strug the so-called liberal wing of South African Despite all its weapons and all its sava~ery, gle challenges capitalist property rights and so capitalism. Faced with the labour upsurge of the white-ruled South Africa is in deep crisis. At collides with their armed guards, the police and 1970s, Anglo-American's board saw that black this crucial moment international labour action army. In South Africa this is true with a ven unions of some sort were inevitable. Instead of can be decisive in further weakening the apart geance, since any black working-class action waiting for bitter strikes it decided to let heid state and opening the road to the libera challenges the apartheid system. In the mines, organisers into the mine compounds 'on the the tion of the enslaved black masses. Transporta for example, black workers are frequently physi ory that it is easier to negotiate with recog tion unions throughout the world must boycott cally assaulted by their white racist super nized leaders of organized unions than to con all shipping and air traffic to and from South visors. Any black worker who fights back is front an angry mob' (New York Times, 15 March Africa. Working-class organisations must mobil sacked. Now, however, the union has been able in 1983). The South African National Union of ise massive protests in solidarity with the em some cases to save the jobs of mineworkers Mineworkers (NUM) is a product of this company battled black toilers of South Africa. Free all sacked after getting into fights with their union strategy. Its general secretary Cyril victims of apartheid terror! The powerful shift bosses. One black gold miner expressed his Ramaphosa was once on the board of the Urban British labour movement, in particular, must de belief that some day the union will be strong Foundation, an Anglo-American-funded body which mand that the government grant political asylum enough to tackle the question of whether mi promotes elite housing and training for the to the anti-apartheid activists who have sought grants could live with their families (New York black petty bourgeoisie. The NUM gets most of refuge in the British consulate in Durban. Times, 15 March 1983). its funds from that Cold War creature of the The question of leadership is sharply posed American labour bureaucracy and CIA, the Inter Black revolt hits goldfields national Confederation of Free Trade Unions. But in the explosive conditions of South Africa The current wave of anti-apartheid struggle today even this tame black union can easily get began last month when 'coloureds' (persons of out of control. mixed race) and'Indians defied mass arrests to Much of what has happened in the mines in the boycott elections to the phoney parliaments, de past few weeks is murky from a distance. Accord signed to line them up against the black African ing to the Financial Times, the period leading majority and provide a multiracial facade to up to the strike and contract settlement was former prime minister Botha's assumption of a carefully choreographed by management, complete presidency with dictatorial powers. Then early with a face-saving additional 2.3 per cent last this month Sharpeville and other black townships minute pay offer, which the NUM leadership ap in the mining/industrial area of the Transvaal parently accepted just after the strike dead erupted when protests against rent increases line had passed. The Wall Street Journal (19 were met with bullets. It was at Sharpeville in September) lauded the settlement, which, it said, 1960 that police killed 69 blacks at a peaceful 'demonstrated -- for the first time -- that at demonstration, ushering in a period of massive least some mining companies in South Africa were state repression which stifled black struggle willing to deal with a black union'. But the for over a decade. This time cop and army viol superexploited black miners did not dance for ence only fanned the flames. The enraged town their masters. Tens of thousands of them went on ship dwellers hacked to death several local strike while unorganised workers went out on black puppets and torched government offices. their own. The mining bosses reacted, as uSLal, The revolt soon spread to Soweto, with its two with massive police violence. This is a sign not million inhabitants, which was the centre of the of the strength and stability of apartheid but 1976-77 revolt. of its weakness. It is, however, the half-million black gold It was to behead the protests against Botha's miners who hold the key strategic position in election farce that the apartheid regime moved the South African economy. Gold has dominated to detain the Durban Six, leaders of the United capitalist dev~opment in South Africa ever Democratic Front and the Natal Indian Congress, since it was discovered on the Rand in the late including the 71-year-old former ANC leader 19th century. Today South Africa holds 70 per Archie Gumede. The six sought refuge in the cent of the world's gold reserves outside of the British consulate in Durban after the regime Soviet bloc and gold accounts for half of South I Gold miners: key to black workers power in South Africa. continued on page 11 12 OCTOBER 1984