militant. He died in extremely suspicious circumstances.... " (Ho Chi Minh declaration to representatives of La Verite, journal of the French section of the Fourth International, in 1946.)
In 1931 Ta-thu Thau, expelled from France, created a group of Indochinese BolshevikLeninists, in liaison with the international left opposition. Strongly implanted in the industrial centres, the Trotskyists followed for several years a united front policy with the Stalinists of the Indochinese C.P. and some unorganised elements, a policy which expressed itself through the regular publication of the journal La Lutte ("Tran-Dauh") and the election of two candidates to the Saigon Municipal Council. In 1935 under pressure from the Comintern, the Stalinists' turn towards the Popular Front broke up the United Front, but the La Lutte group had meanwhile four new candidates returned to the Saigon Municipal Council. The split came over taxes intended for "defence" when the two Stalinists elected capitulated before the bourgeoisie and the Trotskyists were the only ones to vote against.
The Red Mole 15th September 1970 Page 10 occasion and Ta-thu Thau's comrades became a majority in La Lutte, then gained again in the elections of 1939. In 1940 with the onset of imperialist war the repression struck more brutally than ever before: 6,000 dead in the Saigon massacre, 40,000 Vietnamese sent to France where 20,000 perished at the Front. Ta-thu Thau was sentenced, imprisoned in Saigon, escaped to Singapore, handed back to the French police by the English, interned in the notorious prison of Poulo-Condore and tortured. He was freed only at the end of the Japanese occupation, half paralysed because of the tortures he had received. The International communist Leacue incocninese secrion oT Eni Fourth International) organised at this time the People's Revolutionary Committees and the Workers Militias of Saigon-Cholon under the leadership of Nguyen Hai Au. It was in 1946 that most of the leading Indochinese Trotskyists together with Ta-thu Thau "disappeared". They had numerous enemies: French colonists, the native bourgeoisie and a section of the IndoChinese C.P. which was under direct orders from Moscow and was led by Iran van Giau. Though Tran van Giau and his group and not on the Ho faction of the Indo-Chinese C.P. Hence all talk of "Ho Chi Minh's murder squads" which one hears from the I.S. and SLL is an over-simplified distortion of an extremely complex situation.
In paying tribute to Comrade Ta-thu Thau, we cannot help but note that it was only when the Viet-Minh practised the policies he had laid down that the Vietnamese revolution was able to move forward. The policies of the Viet-Minh in 1946 (when they organised welcome committees for occupying British imperialist troops led by Gracey), in 1954 (when they accepted the. 17th parallel partition of Vietnam under pressure from both Peking and Moscow) were based on the reformist policies of Stalinism. Today the decomposition of Stalinism (e.g. the Sino-Soviet split) and the lessons learnt from the past have made it clear to the Vietnamese that the only way out is by revolutionary struggle. So today while the Vietnamese talk in Paris, in Vietnam the struggle continues and is gradually being extended to the whole of South-East Asia. The process of revolution cannot be interrupted.
HOW THE WORKERS DEMYSTIFY BOURGEOIS LAW Construction workers at Shell and Burmah Oil at Ellesmere Port have been on official strike since the beginning of July. An attempt is now being made to deny them the elementary right, supposedly guaranteed in the Trades Disputes Act of 1906, of peaceful picketing. On July 16th, forty-five pickets were arrested, and since then police have been harassing pickets outside the Shell and Burmah oil works. On Monday 24th August, 6,000 workers in Liverpool, including electricians, plumbers, draughtsmen, engineers, miners, construction workers from sites where work stopped for the day and workers from Pilkingtons, marched in solidarity with the arrested pickets and held a mass meeting on the Pier Head (at which, incidentally, John Potter from the Pilkington strike committee was loudly cheered when he appealed for solidarity among all workers in fighting the employers, the government "and even attacks from our own union leaders"). were tried at Chester Castle, seat of Peudats On August 28th, forty-one of the power and English bastion against the Welsh 'hordes" for many centuries. Chester Castle ow lives out its oppressive role as the seat c ne local Assizes and Magistrates' courts. 20 workers took it over for the day.
The public galleries were crowded out with workers showing solidarity. Many sat in the isles on the floor and a large overflow crow mited in the Castle vard. The prosecutid evidence was given by Cheshire Assistant Chief Constable Rennie, well-known for his intimidatory role during the Roberts Arundel dispute at nearby Stockport, when workers were savaged by police under his direction. Rennie now shares with Palfrey, Chief Constable of Tancashire, the role of harassing strikers in the North West. (The neo-fascist Palfrey being a frequent dinner guest at the table of Lord Pilkington, owner of St. Helens.) The trial showed clearly that the only reason for the mass arrests was intimidation of what had been highly organised and effective picketing. Lorr drivers arriving at the Ellesmere Port plant hac been induced to fuck off with their loads and the police had had to call in a helicopter to regularise traffic chaos in the area. A whole column of strikers, marching to relieve the early shift on the picket line, was surrounded by the police under Rennie's personal direction, told to disperse ancain une same orean a command was issued to arrest them. Many workers were trying to disperse but as they were surrounded by the fuzz they had no avenue to use. One man was even arrested whilst sitting nursing a sore ankle on railway sleepers at the road side! "Better than Brian Rix"
In court, the proceedings were as unjust as the event that had given rise to the trial. The three degenerate fossils on the bench were indistinruishable from the dusty portraits of ancient arons who surrounded the walls, and to whom the chairman of the bench appeared to look for guidance on several occasions. At one point a worker cried out that the proceedings were "Better than Brian Rix and towards the end of the two-day trial, defendants and public alike lost all semblance of respect for the proceedings. Not even the works convenor could nduce people to stand for the exit or entranc f the Bench-the many police in court havin long given up this task. As a result the amount of pomp and bullshit was reduced to a minimum.
Needless to say, all were found guilty itself a statistical improbability even assuming the existence of "impartial magistrates. But there was no impartiality, indeed the magistrates seemed to have great difficulty in even understanding the proceedings. For instance, Defence Council was at pains to point out that whereas most of the police "evidence" concerned obstruction of traffic, the charge was one of obstruction of police, and that these were different offences. Nevertheless after a fiveminute retirement the magistrates announced their decision on the basis of the inconvenience that had been caused to trattic.
The Workers Take Over All were fined £10 and given four months in which to pay- the magistrates' estimate of the duration of the strike. But in addition all were required to be bound over in the sum of 250 or two years. And this was the difficulty mmediately and rightly the workers said thi was a denial of their right to picket in the future. They shouted out their objections:
They've got us now on a trumped-up charge so they'll get us again. "The magistrates cler intervened and asked the Bench to explain the alternative. Three months imprisonment! Total uproar. A man in the gallery rose to his feet and hollered "Fascist Pigs A defendant rose and exclaimed that he would serve his sentence as he would wish to feel free on release "to slip on a banana skin" without risk of being hauled before the court. The defence solicitor hastily asked for an adjournment and the magistrates cleared off again. At this point the proceedings for the first time became democratic and a council ensued with speeches being made by the defendants, workers in the public gallery and even a contribution by a Mole correspondent who had gained admission to the press box by a subterfuge. Speeches for and against going to prison were made and men rose to denounce une travesty or ustice to wnice they had just been subjected. At the end of this oenar session une converor who sae beer bound over the previous day) made a plea for and the magistrates were invited to return. All, with a bad grace and much truculence, agreed to the humiliation of the binaing over. ney are au to appeal.
Outside, while the magistrates apprehensively accelerated away, angry men declared their disbelief in the judicial system and announced their resolve to harden the strike.
DO0 urerory Teresa Hayter PILKINGTONVILLE PICKINGS The heroic struggle of the Pilkington glass workers is well known and will doubtless feature in the industrial history of the decade. Known also is the cooperation that took place between Lord Pilkington, Lord Cooper and the local police in crushing the dispute and hounding the militants. But some of the details of this cooperation are particularly harrowing and as our Moles have been burrowing about in the shit heap left behind by these monsters, we would like to cleanse ourselves by passing on some of the choicest titbits.
The GMWU owes its continued existence in Pilkingtonville to Lord Pilkington. He retains the union. Those of the 600 workers sacked by Pilkington's who have been reemployed, have had to rejoin the GMWU as a condition of reemployment. Despite this the glass workers union has had an effect far outside the town. Requests for membership have even come in from groups not connected with the glass industry, engineering workers in Manchester and chemical workers at Widnes. In the North West there are now many who have learnt by the GMWU treachery and are disaffected with Lord Cooper's strikebreaking.
* Many will wonder at the remarkable ease with which the GMWU was able to parallel the company propaganda machine. How did the GMWU come to be using the ground of St. Helen's Rugby League Football Club for its mass meeting? We should not, without permission, divulge the name of the Rugby Club Director who is a close buddy of Lord Pilk, but you could call the GMWU and ask them how they thought they came by the ground.
* * And again there is the scandal of the letter sent out by Pilkingtons to their workers on May 12th. Side One was written bv the company and concerned damage to the future of the glass industry, etc. Side Two was an attack on the rank and file committee and a eulogy of the GMWU. In fact this backside of the leaflet was written by the GMWU, and passed off as a company handout, after the company PRO had done his best to polish up the peculiarly persistent flavour of bureaucratic trade union argot. it coula de bereved tnat unis was tne reason why Pilkingtons, when submitting their written evidence to the Court of Enquiry, carefully omitted to photocopy the reverse side of the leaflet so that the Court was deprived of this choice prose. Contempt of court? Through out, the company Press office acted generally. for the GMWU. Many journalists were able to save themselves a second sixpence- we.have.a statement by the union you might care to hear The RED PLOT never really got off the ground, although the Pilkington family, at a loss to understand their sudden loss of popularity and deference in their town, to this day still believe with all honesty that they were the unwitting victims of outside trained agents. The Special Branch tried hard to disabuse them of this romantic notion after a team of detectives had spent three weeks checking employee records without finding anything of interest (although they added to their own files in the process). Even the specialist muck raker from The People returned to London empty-handed * * The uniformed police were not found wanting, however, and when the GMWU approached the company with an organisational problem they turned up trumps. The GMWU, short of public address equipment for a meeting, approched management with this difficulty. Could the company please do anything to help? Well, come back tomorrow and we shall see. No promises, mind you. In the event the company were able to borrow loudhailers from th police and so help out the nice GMWU. But it didn't work anyway, because the rank and file strike committee turned up with their own superior equipment (which they had borrowed from local building workers) and drowned them out.
Of course throughout the period, Palfrey, Chie little but watch. for the last few years they are talking about. structure. society as a whole?
There is an abysmal lack of good militant songs in the culture of the British Left; this is a reflec tion of philistinism and chauvinism, for just a few miles across the Irish Sea there is a living tradition of revolutionary music that can scarcely be equalled anywhere else in the world.
There are concrete reasons for the existence of this tradition: a long struggle against oppression, a mass peasantry, a working class which is only a few generations away from its peasant roots (the remarkable Behan family is a product of this), and a Celtic culture that was strong enough to assimilate and absorb wave after wave of English planters. The songs show many influences, and, like all good tolk songs, they have been fashioned out of the materials that came to hand, rough and ready songs forged in the heat of some battle or incident, or ancient songs polished by singer after singer over the centures These records* are an excellent introduction to this music. They include such lovely old songs as "The Croppy Boy" and such lively new ones as "The Long March" (about the People's Democracy march from Belfast to Derry, January 1969). One L.P., which is dedicated to James Connolly, contains the beautiful "James Connolly the Irish Rebel", and (fantastically) a poem about Connolly's execution written by a soldier who was on the firing squad.
Buy these records, learn these songs, sing them at parties and on demonstrations. In learning them you will learn much also about the history of the Irish revolutionary struggle. And they are intensely political; Dominic Behan's "Rifles of the I.R.A." contains this message to General (shoot to kill) Freeland, and his army of occupation:
"We're not free yet, but we won't forget Until our dying day.
How the Black and Tans like lightning rar From the rifles of the I.R.A."
Bob Purdie 001, elfas tlet And three singles:
Way to cades".
OUT029.
thern nville Incident at the Notting Hill demo: one salient incident, witnessed by scores of people, was that of a white brother who was dragged into a police coach (after going to the aid of a black ister who was being held by four policemen one of whom was punching her viciously in the stomach), thrown onto the floor and brutally beaten, punched and kicked by six policemen, one of whom was shouting "You fucking bastard." A white photographer outside the coach began to take photographs of this incident and was in turn punched in the face and stomach by Police Constable X 563. There are several witnesses we can provide Information supplied by Vijay K. Singh (Indian Marxist Leninist Organisation)
We would recommend to readers seriously interested in developments in Asia to study carefully a new journal which has appeared on the scene: Journal of Contemporary Asia. It is edited by Dr. Malcolm Caldwell and is available from: P.O. 49010, Stockholm 49. wage bargainin and Productivity Bar T&GWU, Transport following "carrots" in the and conditions.
Despite this, the new The Red Mole 15th September 1970 Page 11
combat the europe of the monopoly capitalists! RALLY OF EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONARIES Capitalist Europe is today in a crisis. The economic difficulties: inflation, the capacity to overproduce, inter-imperialist competition, recessions, are becoming more and more serious. The workers are reacting by sharpening the class struggle: the May'68 upheaval in France, the "hot" autumn and winter in Italy in '69-70, the wave of unofficial strikes in Spain and West Germany, in Britain and in Belgium. Even Sweden, the "social-democratic paradise", has been involved in the dynamics of the class struggle and the militancy of the miners and dockers there has reached a new peak. It is clear that the conditions for a new revolutionary spurge on a European scale are ripening.
The crisis is a deep-rooted social crisis. The whole of the relationships of capitalist production are being shaken. That is why the struggle against these relationships of production and of exchange is not limited to the traditional industrial proletariat, but is beginning to involve broader layers, namely, technicians and intellectuals, not to mention the student revolt which is becoming more generalised. The right of capitalists to own and dispose of men and machines and all the other forms of exploitation, oppression and alienation is beginning to be seen as more and more of an anachronism; the increase in unemployment, misery, social inequalities, appears even more scandalous and outageous; the waste of resources, the colonial wars of oppression (Indo-China, Angola, Chad, Latin America, etc.), the threats to human environment, appear all the more barbarous particularly as we are living in an epoch when science and technology have created the material conditions necessary to allow everyone to enjoy the rights and privileges which extend only to a few.
The bourgeois class of Western Europe is frightened by the mounting crisis and it reacts in its own way. By trying to consolidate and extend the Common Market, by reinforcing its military apparatus with the view to create a European nuclear force under the absurd justification of "Many hands on the nuclear trigger are better than one." It prepares to pool together its military and econom ic resources in order to face up to the challenge of rival imperialisms (United States and Japan), the threat of the masses in motion and of the bureaucratised workers states of Eastern Europe. Because the costs of all these operations will undoubtedly be borne by the workers, the bourgeoisie uses its repressive force to try and pass anti-trade union legislation, laws against unofficial strikes and "violent" demonstrations, and thus begins to prepare itseit tor the possibiity or setting up a strong stater of the type that exists in Greece and Spain.
Since the mid.'60s the growing crisis of bourgeois ideology has produced in Europe a new vanguard composed largely of youth in virtually every country in Europe. The main inspiration of this vanguard has come from the anti-imperialist struggle. An inspiration which crystallised around the international movement of solidarity with the heroie Vietnamese people and their fight against American imperialism. This vanguard has assimilated the struggle against imperialism and has learnt from it the need to develop an anti-capitalist consciousness. The Vietnam solidarıty movement has helped it discover the social contradictions The Red Mole 15th September 1970 Page 12 which are tearing apart the fabric of European capitalsm.
That is why this vanguard seeks to link itself to the increasing industrial struggles which are taking place. The failure of bourgeois ideology to maintain its grip on these youth and the complete disdain which these youth have for the traditional and ultra-opportunist leaderships of the working-class organisations (C.P. in France, the Labour Party in England) constitutes a major success for revolutionary Marxism.
However, it is necessary to recall that these vanguard elements which vesterdav were both large and active (such as UNEF in France, the SD$ in Germany) are today mere shadows of their own past and have been reduced to helpless impotence. Some of them have disappeared altogether, a victim to neir own Tanures to work our te sonica and organisational steps necessary to define a coherent revolutionary strategy both on a national and on a European scale, leave alone on an international scale. Those groups which have not disappeared (various "spontaneist" and Maoist currents in Italy and France are declining rapidly) because of their absurdly isolated actions which have no impact on the masses because of a total lack of strategy internationalisation of economic, political and cultural life; faced with the increasing grip of multi-national trusts on the life of the people of capitalist Europe; faced with the capacity of these trusts to rapidly transfer orders, investments and research projects from one country to the other. In this situation any response from the mass or its vanguard which is confined within national boundaries can only be a weak one. With the objective internationalisation of the class struggle, any organisation which sticks to a purely national routine will always be paralysed. That is why more and more revolutionary, organisations adopt revolutionary Marxist positions and join the ranks of the Fourth International-the only force really organised on an international scale. The only force which develops the theory and practice of the world socialist revolution, a necessity which has to be confronted by many individual militants and groups who regard themselves as internationalists but do not see the necessity for creating and building an international organisation.
has its roots botn in the retusal or their neo-retorm ist leader ships to confront capitalism either nationally or globally and by the new rise ot the anti-bureaucratic ponticar revolutior in Eastern Europe and the USSR. A crisis which started in mast berlin in vos. continueo in budapest in isoo and Prague in 1968, and is now knocking on the doors of the Soviet heartland itself. This crisis increases the chances for e political breakthrough of the revolutionary vanguard in curope ano imposes on tais vanouaro mne extra dury ol solidarising with and helping the vietims of Stalinist repression have signed this appeal think that it is necessary to analyse the practical experiences of the strugales of the working class the student and anti-imperialist movements over the last few vears in order to work out a common strategy for a Red in BRUSSELS. 'groups It is evident today that we are faced with an extended •Darracus Leaque 14 August 197C The crisis which shakes the official communist parties Name Address Faced with all these problems, the organisations which Europe. The conditions for the generalised success ot the struggle lies in the rapid organisation of a revolutionary vanguard, in its program matical and organisational unification and in the struggle for a socialist revolution in Europe.
That is why we call on all those who approve of the general line of this appeal to participate in:
THE INTERNATIONAL RALLY OF EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONARIES - 21/22 NOVEMBER 1970 -Ine wo main discussions will centre round the teme oni The Struggle for United Socialist States of Europe and The construction or a nevolutionary rarty. nere will be eignu commissions which will discuss: Workers' Control, The student movement. ine anu-imperarst strucgies in curone The Struggle against Bureaucracy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, The Struggle against the Dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal, The Struggle to build a Revolu tionary Vanguard.
The rally will try therefore to define a common strategy for the European vanguard in the next period in the light of the recent experiences of the working class and revolutionary movement. This strategy will have a view to smashing the capitalist system and ensuring the emancipation of the working class through its own action and organisations. DOWN WITH THE EUROPE OF THE EXPLOITERS! Forward to a RED EUROPE!
La Ligue Communiste (France)
Jeune Garde Socialiste (Belgium)
International Marxist Group )
j- (Britain)
Revolutionary Marxist Group (Switzerland)
Gruppi communisti nivoluzionarl iftary.
Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (Germany)
Revolutionere Socialister (Demark) (Initial signatories)
If you are interested in attending the International Rally and need information and details regarding costs of travel, etc.
please fill in the form below and post it to:
RED EUROPE (Tel: 01-278 2616) 182 Pentonville Road oncon muu
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forward to a red europe! 21-22 november -brussels