National Conference in London on November 1.
This was followed by a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy next day, November 2, the 52nd anniversary of the notorious Balfour The PSC itself emerged from the co-ordinating committee that held the first demonstration on the issue in February of this year.
Gathering round it most of the organisations of the British left, with the most noticeable exceptions being the SLL and the CPGB, it organised a second demonstration in May and now publishes a magazine, Fedayeen.
Between the May demo and the Conference, however, the political co-ordinates of the Campaign have altered. In the Middle East itself the fedayeen have grown in power, and have stepped up their activity within Israel as well as carrying out a number of maximally public acts like the TWA hijacking. Areas of Israel like Hebron which have been quiet for two years have now erupted into fiery resistance. In addition, the latent contradiction between the Arab governments, intent on manipulating the issue for their own gain, and the fedayeen, has erupted into the fighting in the Lebanon, and the threat of a similar eruption hangs over Jordan. The coups in Sudan and Libya have strengthened the anti-Zionist alliance, and the threat by Libya to withdraw its over £300 m.
sterling balances from London has opened up a new front in the assault on capitalist Britain.
From the British end, the visit of forty comrades to Jordan in the summer has increased awareness on the left, in spite of the counterrevolutionary conduct of some of them who indulged in treacherous "co-operation" with the police on their return. Moreover, the rising wave of criticism of the Zionists in the bourgeois press and the hysterical replies of the space for propaganda on this issue.
The demo in May had not however attracted the numbers expected and this led to the decision to change PSC from being a campaign based on organisations to being one based on members. The PSC Conference met therefore to work out a Constitution, and to discuss any possible changes in the Manifesto.
The earlier half of the day was devoted to changes in the Manifesto, and none of any imprt were made. Attempts were made to include a denunciation of "Soviet social-imperialism"; to delete all criticism of the big powers and the UN; to delete all references to imperialism (sic); and to include a definition of Zionism as "Jewish nationalism". These and other assaults from left and right were rejected, as was an attempt need for a Workers' and peasants' struggle to build a united Middle East.
The later session dealt with the Constitution, and in general ratified the draft proposed by mittee, elected by the annual Conference, would run the PSC and would have power to expel branches, members or organisations. A National Representative Council, on which branches and organisations would be represented, would have a more consultative role. Branches could consist of any ten members, membership being defined by acceptance of the Manifesto and Constitution.
An attempt was made to transfer the expulsion powers from the EC to the NRC, and in attempt was supported by IS, IMG, the BVSF. and the Committee for Solidaritv with the it has both the support of the British left and of the Arab students and workers in this country, and it will continue to evolve in response to the general evolution of the Palestinian and Arab revolutions. The continuing work of PSC will enable the left in Britain to think through this complex issue and to overcome the reluctance and confusion imposed on it by the bourgeois press, Zionist propaganda and the legacy of the Second World War.
The campaign has attracted not only the standard left, but also the Arab students and workers. The former are evolving from parochi al m to internationalism, the latter from nationalism to socialism. In addition, the specific subject of this campaign also attracts a few ultra-right eccentrics who exert no political influence at meetings, but merely provoke. The anti-Zionist Israelis of ISRACA play an important though independent role.
As the Conference was sitting, three distinct revolutionary struggles were exploding in the Arab world: in Israel the fedayeen were fighting the Zionist state, in Lebanon they were fighting the capitalist comprador bourgeoisie of that country, and in the mountains of Muscat and Oman the guerrillas of the liberation forces were pressing on to victory against the Sultan of Muscat and his British bosses. These three struggles are separate but united, blasting apart the double exploitation of Zionism and imperialism, and launching a struggle in the Arab 'states that is at once a nationalist, anti-imperialist one and a class struggle. The PSC will evolve with this complex revolutionary totality and will remain the link here of the colonial revolution in the Middle East and the socialist revolution in Britain.
On 25 June last Franco's political police the military arm of the LUAR, and immediately organised several actions in Portugal. The actions, code named Matias, after the student Antonio Matias, a LUAR militant who had been been shot by the Portuguese political police, the PIDE, represent an important political step forward in the Portuguese resistance to fascism and the struggle for socialism. The operation which coordinated several commando groups aimed at the seizure of the workers town of Covilha, in the heart of the mountains.
He was unfortunately involved in a car crash, leading to his discovery, with eight other revolutionaries, who were arrested after a gun battle which lasted several hours. One of the comrades, Daniel Teixeira, was killed in prison whilst being tortured by the PIDE. The others, including Palma, were tried by a political tribunal, and on 9 May they were each sentenced to 15 years, followed by a period of restrictive "security measures". Palma, needless to say, wasn't allowed to attend his own trial.
Instead he escaped. He obtained a fragmen of a file, and cut his way out of jail. On 26 June this year, whilst still engaged in revolutionar work, he was recognised in Madrid by BIDE spies, arrested by the Spanish, and he is to be extradited, on, ironically enough, 24 December, to Portugal. Inacio Palma's political role has never been in doubt; arrested on successive occasions in the United States, in Brazil, in Morocco, in Senegal and in France, none of them exactly sympathetic to men like Palma, and has, even in those countries, always been protected from extradition. It seems likely. though, that his political work is now in its gravest danger. Return to Portugal may well mean the death sentence, and Spain has agreed