No 207 SUMMER 2009 40p Newspaper of the Spartacist League Forge a multiethnic revolutionary workers party! if" publish helow an edited alld Depression wasn't Roosevelt's New .~~ -'--- __ .1. ~_ •• ~.~. ___ ............. ___ •• ' f (}n~'&8'&W UJ (P. MONI',_ Deal, but World War 11. It was when . gil'cll h)' cOlJlrade Julia Effie,}' at a the imperialist governments In Spartacist League public meeting ;n Britain and the US mobilised their London on 4 April. economies for WWlI that they fully The ongoing world capitalist reces­ adopted Keynes's programme of sion is having a tremendous impact on deficit spending for "public works" the British economy and inflicting -- battleships, bombers, tanks and severe hardship on working people. finally atomic hombs. Thc lahour Across Britain the rate of home repos­ movement must oppose protec­ sessions is rising while the nllmber of tionism and fight fur international job losses is cnonnolls. The working~class solidarity. crisis has demonstrated quill..' Production itself is socialised openly the hmlkruptcy and irra~ Unions must defend immigrant workers! and international in scope tionality of the capitalist sys~ and the international working tem and what the leaders of all class must he mohilised capitalist countries agree on is Down with chauvinist construction strikes! across national and other that working people will be divisions. made to pay for it. It also confinTIs the Marxist understanding that ultimately Reactionary strikes tht..:rc is no answer to the boom-and-bust Since January a series of reactionary cycles of capitalism short of proletarian and virulently chauvinist strikes and socialist revolution that takes power out protests havc taken place on building of the hands of the capitalist ruling class sites at Britain's power stations and oil and replaces it with a planned, refineries. Building workers at Lindsey socialised economy. Only the achieve­ oil refinery in Lincolnshire went on ment of a world socialist order can strike against the fact that foreign con~ eliminate the age~old problems of tractors hired workers in their home poverty, scarcity and want. We seek to country to work in Britain. This spark cd build a multiethnic revolutionary work~ widespread protests at other sites cen­ ers party to overthrow capitalist rule. tred on the demand "British jobs for OUf starting point is the understanding British workers", a protectionist slogan that the working class cannot wield the long identified with the fascists and capitalist state for its own interests, that recently used by Gordon Brown. Thesc the state must be smashed and replaced protests were in contrast to the occupa­ hy a workers state, the dictatorship of London, 28 March: contingents at mass trade union protest against capitalist tions at Visteon plants in Belfast and the proletariat. economic crisis, In the face of chauvinist campaign for "British jobs", Italian London in April whcrc workers fought At the U20 summit in London, world trade unionists (centre) march for jobs alongside British trade union for better redundancy packages when leaders underscored "the critical impor­ contingents (top and bottom), the factory closures were announced. tance of rejecting protectionism", ie The Lindsey strike was not intend­ measures that are designed to give pref­ pie proposed that in rcturn for a govern~ ers and immigrants while building ed to secure more jobs, but to redi­ erence to the industry of one's own ment bailout, French car makers should illusions in the benevolence of one's vide jobs in favour of British work~ country. But .in thc face of world rcces~ shut down plants in Eastern Europe and "'own" capitalists, who are responsi­ ers. In such situations we demand the sian, protectionism is increasing. produce in France. blc for the destitution of the working highest rate of pay and benefits no Obama included a "buy American" For the bourgeoisie, "free trade" class. Protcctionism ultimately leads matter who does the work, and equal clause in his "rescvc" package for and protcctionism arc options they to trade wars laying the basis for war pay for equal work. Thc settlemcnt at American industry and tensions can debate, but for the working class between imperialist powers for con~ Lindsey pledged that 102 jobs prcvi~ between capitalist govcrnments within protectionism is poison. It serves to trol of markets and spheres of influ~ ously expected to go to Italian workers the European Union (EU) have been channel discontent over job losses ence. It's worth recalling that what would be offered to British workers. exacerbated. Nicolas Sarkozy for exam~ into hostility towards foreign work~ got the world out of the Great cuntinued un page 8 April 23 marked 30 years since the Eyewitnesses reported seeing the SPG British state killed anti-fascist activist pour out of two vans and wade into the J~\.\. \'\j'" , "ERS Blair Peach during a demonstration fleeing demonstrators. No fewer than ten > against the National Front (NF) in witnesses reported seeing Blair Peach l\\~n1\~1,.. ~ .... Southall. He was killed by cops un­ attacked by one ofthese SPG thugs. But BLAiR rt"~ .1*30; leashed that day by the James Cal­ no cop was ever charged with any crime. laghan Labour government to defend When the coroner's inquest 13 months Southall, April the fascist NF who were staging a after the killing announced its verdict of ANt> 1979: Asian provocation in an area heavily populat­ death by "misadventure", we wrote: workers honour "But it was not a 'misadventure' which ed by Asian working-class families. GURDID Sill,. anti-fascist fig hter Hundreds of anti-fascists were arrested; cracked Blair Peach's skull in half. It was Blair Peach (inset) dozens were injured by the police. Blair a police truncheon, or similar weapon, and victim of Peach's skull was fractured by vicious wielded with fatal effect by one or sev­ racist murder blows from the notorious Special Patrol eral of the more than 3000 cops who Gurdlp (Gurdid) Group (SPG), the police unit that spear­ rioted outside Southall Town Hall to Singh Chaggar. headed the bloody assault. protect the future would-be guardians of gas chambers and concentration camps Nazi regalia." In fact, the doctor who from the wrath of their intended vic­ carried out the second post-mortem on tims" (Spartaeist Britain no 22, June behalf of the Peach family suggestcd A salute to Charles Darwin 1980). that the weapon used had becn "a lead This year marks the 150th anniversary In the late 1970s, when the NF was weighted rubber 'cosh' or hosepipe 01 the publication 01 On the Origin of canying out racist terror on the streets, filled with lead shot". Species by Charles Darwin and the 200th the Asian community of Southall The capitalist state protects and cov­ anniversllIY oIDarwin:, hirth. Through his became a symbol of resistance to these ers for its hired thugs. Repeated efforts theory olevolution through natural selec­ attacks. The racist murder of Gurdip to press for an enquiry into the cop tion, 0/; as he pn~/erred to call it, "descent Singh Chaggar in 1976 called forth a killing of Blair Peach-which the statc with modUication ", Darwin unshackled militant youth revolt which took up the would certainly whitewash - have biological science.linm the chains ofreli­ Sikh battle cry, "We shall fight like failed. Twenty years after Pcach was gion and metaphysics by providing a mate­ lions". Militant trade union struggle in killed, in again ruling out an investiga­ rialist explanation for the evolutiun oflife the area including at Heathrow Airport tion, Labour minister Paul Boateng TROTSKY LENIN Oil this planet through careful, meticu- drew support from the local popUlation. said, "Lessons have been learncd from lously recorded studies (?j'variation within Blair Peach, a member of the Socialist the circumstances of his death about the species. Yet, el'l'n as itforms the has is o/modl.!rn hi%f{Y, evolution continues to be a Workers Party, was respected as a dedi­ policing of public order incidents and the constant target qj" the fundamentalist Christian right and reactionaries, including cated teacher and anti-racist. Five days importance of good police-community hecQuse it eliminates an.t' scient(/ic hasisfhr racism. after he was killed, some 10,000 rclations" (bbc.co.uk, 13 April 1999). In thefallowing excerptFom an article (written in 1919 and revised in 1922) on marched in defiant tribute, raising Fast forward ten years: Ian Tomlinson the renegade Fom Marxism Karl KautsJ..y, revolutionary leader Leon Tmtsky compared clenched fists as they passed the spot was killed at the hands of the Territorial thc historic hrcadth (~rDarwin:~ ...·cient(jic studies to Marx:'l study qj'human society, where he was killed. Support Group, which in 1987 replaced pointing Ollt that hoth reveal that long periods (d~\'eeming equilihrium arc p('riodi('a/~J' The findings or a police enquiry into the SPG as a Metropolitan Police spe­ interrupted hy tUrrlultuous pcriods (!lrupid. rev()/utioIlW:I' change. Peach's death were never published, but cial unit for "disorder" as well as "anti- . a few·.·.fIW\ d.·.·, ,1 AI pre ._ 'p"," "cOtlip' .<---_ ...•. ,___ H(·· The Darwinian theory ofthc origin of species encompasses the entire span of devel­ wrote in the 1980 article, "When the ·-·--:We ren~lber a;d honour Blair Peach. opment of the plant and animal kingdoms. The struggle for survival and the processes ClD team did a search of SPG lockers Nine years after his death we wrote of natural and sexual selection proceed continuously and uninterruptedly. But if one for 'unauthorised weapons', they wcre (1t(Jrkers Hammer no 98, May/June could observe these processes with ample time at one's disposal- a millennium, say, diverted long enough for the lockers 1988): "Vengeance for his dcath will only as the smallest unit of measure "-one would undoubtedly discover with one's own eyes to be sanitised.