Despite the recent boasts of Bangladesh Prime-Minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.to a correspondent of The Sunday Times, that he did not allow an Indonesian-style massacre of the left to happen in Bangladesh, reports received in London froin different parts of the country indicate that large-scale attacks spearheaded by the combined forces of Indian army and Bangladesh troops on the peasant-guerillas and industrial workers are under way. The myth that the Indian army has altogether withdrawn from Bangladesh has been exploded: Indian troops are conducting regular campaigns of murder, arson and loot covering a wide area of Rajshahi district, 200 miles north-west of Dacca, The Daily Telegraph (June 6, 1972) reported, "Bloody clashes occurred recently at Atrai in Rajshahi district when combined forces of the Indian and Bangladesh army using helicopters tried to dislodge a Naxalite (a popular terminology used by the government Mujib'3 return after liberation of Bangladesh SCOTTISH MAOISTS APPEAL The 81 Years Appeal Committee has been set up to further the appeals of William McPherson, John Doran, Matt Lygate and Colin Lawson, who between them received a total of 81 years imprisonment on charges involving bank robbery. These sentences were the highest ever meted out in a Scottish courtroom, and there seems little doubt that the savagery of the sentences was not unconnected with the fact that three of them were members of the Workers Party of Scotland. Lawson and Lygate were finally associated with the robberies only on the evidence of a single witness.
Money is urgently needed for the appeal, and all donations should be sent to: Bank of Scotland, 464 Victoria Road, Glasgow S.2.
The Appeal Committee can be contacted through the Secretary, John Carlyle, 36 Albert Road, Glasgow S.2.
*PABLOISM' AND THE SLL The SLL has always been rather endearing both for the amount of time it spends exposing the evils of the "Pabloite liquidationist Centre" of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, with its supposed theories of "mass pressure" and reformist organisations leading revolutions, and for the way in which it tries to wrap up its own complete reformism in the most extreme ultra-left phraseology.
In the recent period it has, through these manoeuvres, succeeded in making two great "contributions to Marxist theory. The first is the "discovery' of the category of apparently classless "basic' rights. The second is the raising of the completely revisionist slogan of "Labour to power - on a socialist programme". This demand has no precedent anywhere in Marxism and is a classic example of the SLL's reformism. After tying itself in knots for months by trying to explain that this demand was impossible to achieve but nevertheless the working class should struggle for it, the SLL leadership now appears to have given up the ghost and is actually for any peasant-guerrilla) group from their stronghold. A village was burnt to the ground and scores of people killed on both sides. And Dacca's daily, Dainik Bangla, reported on June 6 that the 45-year-old peasant leader and a top-ranking Communist leader of Bangladesh, Abdul Matin, was seriously wounded of the frontier. in a recent gun-battle and taken prisoner in Rajshahi.
The Indian Government, throwing all 'legalities to the wind, has been blatantly interfering in Bangladesh affairs from the beginning in a desperate bid to keep Sheikh Mujib's regime from disintegrating. As one Communist spokesman claims, "the comprador character of Sheikh Mujib's government is laid open to the people of East Bengal".
Dacca's press has further reported that a large contingent of Indian troops is permanently billeted in Chittagong Hill Tracts, eastern most region of Bangladesh bordering on Burma. Observers confirm activities of Indian army saying that the Labour Party can destroy capitalism. In its May Ist statement we were informed that the Labour Party could carry out a series of transitional demands. Now in the June 19th issue of Workers Press we see they have gone the whole hog. We now find that "the central task is to mobilise the industrial strength of the working class to make this government resign and replace it with a Labour government which will be forced by the strength of the working class to nationalise all major industries without compensation under workers control".
Apparently the SLL now believes that the Labour Party, a party which is not even centrist but was defined by Lenin as a bourgeois party, can be forced to destroy capitalism. Indeed the pursuit of anti-pabloism takes one in strange directions.
ACTIVIST FACES DEPORTATION Mike 'Sirros' - Turkish and a revolutionary community activist - is now awaiting deportation in Pentonville prison. The Home Office order - allegedly for overstaying his permit (by five months only) - means that he faces two years imprisonment in Turkey for avoiding military service there.
This is the third time Mike has been inside in six months - each time the charges have been dropped. The Special Branch say he is connected with the Angry Brigade but "haven't got enough evidence". What is true is that while over here he has been involved in many community struggles. Mail etc. for Mike should be sent to: Mike Topuzoglu, 208424, Pentonville Prison, Caledonian Road, London N.7.
RENAULT MURDERERS Pierre Overney, a young Maoist worker at the Renault car plant in Paris, was shot dead by a Renault security guard on 25 February (see The Red Mole, 38, for a full report). His murder was not forgotten when M. Georges Basiliou, the managing director of Renault, paid a visit to Leeds on 16 June to open a new garage and showrooms of Galway Smith Ltd., Leeds Renault distributors, in the presence of 500 cocktail-sipping guests. Members of Leeds IMG, together with other comrades, prevented The militant Bengali weekly Gonoshokti, edited by a prominent underground Maoist leader, Mohammad Toaha, recently carried a full front-page news report that Indian planes using a Bangladesh base had heavily bombarded the rebel Mizo-held territory astride the IndoBangladesh frontier. The Chakmas, another tribal people of the area, have also become the target of constant Indian army attacks. Indians are carrying out these operations with the military objectives of sealing off the country's eastern border with Burma and also of making the Indian might felt across the Burmese side While the Indian army is operating openly inside Bangladesh, New Delhi's special division in charge of espionage and counter-insurgency -the notorious Research and Analytical Division (RAD) - has heavily infiltrated Bangladesh society. RAD has set up a wide network of "messengers" and 'friends' in Bangladesh who maintain a direct link with New Delhi. Under RAD's guidance armed gangs of Bengali youth, who received full military training in Indian army camps near Delhi last year, are roaming the countryside killing non-A wami League freedom-fighters and left-wing workers.
The most prominent peasant-guerrilla commander of the north, Tipu Biswas, who earned popular esteem by his heroic stand against the Pakistan army in defence of Pabna town and whose daring exploits are part of the folklore of the entire country (see The Red Mole vol 2, no.11) was foully murdered by the Indianinspired thugs recently.
The weekly Haq-Katha (Truth), published by Bangladesh's well known peasant leader, 95 year-old Maulana Bhashani, exposing RAD's murderous plot said recently, "Its target is to kill well over 125,000 leftist workers in the country, without doing which the tool of oppression cannot be left intact. By leftist, it means those who believe in Marxism-Maoism, are against US imperialism and its agents, against Soviet revisionism and its influence, against the oppression of the Indian bourgeois class and rulers, and also those true nationalists who want to see an oppression-free worker-peasant state in Bangladesh."
Having pacified West Bengal, the Indian rulers now occupy themselves with aiding Mujib to do the same in the East. However, all this is not happening in Bangladesh without the people noticing. Recently, Durga Prasad Dhar, the agile Indian diplomat who heads the Bangladesh desk in New Delhi and is a director of RAD's operations, Basiliou from speaking as they distributed leaflets expressing their solidarity with those French workers continuing the struggle against the bourgeoisie. Blood thrown over the showroom window symbolised the murder of Pierre Overney. Three comrades were arrested in the course of the action.
BUILDING WORKERS STRIKE The employers, having made their best ever national offer to workers in the building trade in terms of percentages, must be feeling surprised at their consistent rejection, particularly by the UCATT bureaucrats. However UCATT know that what is on is a fight for the leading positions, in which they are being strongly challenged by the leadership of the militant Building Workers Charter group.
On 26 June the struggle moves a stage further with the implementation of selective strikes on key sites. The IMG is holding a national building workers caucus in Birmingham on 24 June to prepare its programeof intervention in the strikes. A full report will appear in the next issue of The Red Mole.
ACTION IN EQUITY For the first time in a decade Equity, the actors"
union, is on the verge of industrial action. If West End managements do not meet the demand for £30 per week basic minimum there will be considerable pressure on the Equity leadership to call an official stoppage. And it seems unlikely that the latest offer of £25 (and £1 more per year for five years!) will be much increased.
The resolution calling for strike action and the establishment of a Fighting Fund if the demand is not fully met was carried overwhelmingly at Equity's Annual General Meeting on Sunday, 11 June. But it is not clear at this stage if any strike action would be carried beyond the domain of Shaftesbury Avenue.
Much of the AGM was spent in utter confusion over the issue of whether Equity should be "political' or 'non-political" - an issue posed in this way by the right wing led by Marius Goring with the aim of preserving the status quo and isolating the left. What is clear however is that strators who used such slogans as Go Home, Dhar' and 'Bangladesh is no Place for You.
While the Indians are trying to discipline Bangladesh, their protege, Sheikh Mujib, is finding it difficult to control his avaricious cohorts, guilty of widespread corruption. Foreign relief goods, foodstuff and essentials intended for the poor and hungry are finding their way on to a brisk black market operated by local A wami League leaders. In Mymensingh, Faridpur and Khulna, incidents involving angry mobs trying to raid foodsheds belonging to the government partymen were reported. Hungry peasants and unemployed workers are pouring into the towns and cities of Bangladesh everyday in their thousands.
To complete this grim scenrio, the government has recently promulgated an emergency ordinance banning all strike actions, gheraos (encirclements) and sit-ins by the industrial workers now engaged in various government-controlled industries for a period of six months. As a result, the country's 750,000-strong organised labour force is seething with anger. Abul Bashar and Kazi Zafar, the two labour leaders holding the key-centres of Chittagong and Tongi respectively, denounced the government ordinance as a blow to the basic rights of the working class people and blamed the regime for provoking the Sensing the militancy of the workers, Sheikh Mujib himself has ordered the formation of a fascist-style labour brigade, deceptively known as "Lal Bahini" or "Red Brigade", in order to create confusion in the labour ranks. At the head of this armed force is Mujib's own bullyboy, Abdul Mannan, who previously made quite a name for himself by organising attacks on the workers of Dacca, Narayanganj and Tongi (see The Red Mole, 27).
To prevent any real criticism from being voiced the government has promulgated measures to silence the opposition press completely. Most of Dacca's newspapers are now fully controlled by governmentappointed agents. Whatever is left of the opposition press is now under a shadow of grave danger. Mohammad Toaha's Gonoshokti. office was raided early this month by the police. His paper was finally banned and a warrant of arrest issued against Toaha. His young daughters were also manhandled by the police in Dacca. This is merely a glimpse of Sheikh Mujib's "democracy"....... Khaled Yousuf. with 93 percent unemployment actors simply cannot afford to be 'non-political' And as a first step it is essential to ensure that the fragmentation and isolation which results from this is broken down, and that knowledge about all issues affecting Equity (particularly on the hotly debated question of registration under the IRA) is transmitted to the whole membership rather than just between the Council and the lucky working 7 percent.
The issues presently facing Equity will be covered in greater detail in future issues of The Red Mole.
IRISH CITIZEN FORUM: History of the Irish Working Class - Peter Beresford Ellis speaks on the subject of his recent book on Friday, 7 July at 8 p.m. in the General Picton, Caledonian Rd. (Kings Cross tube)
EDITORIAL BOARD: Tariq Ali, Dave Bailey, Robin Blackburn, J.R.Clynes, Peter Gowan, Alan Jones, Pat Jordan, Branka Magas, Martin Meteyard, Bob Purdie, Daniel Rose.
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