pet calls of the capitalist press.
To top it all off, anti-Market Ministers have been toid that they will not be allowed to express their views during the debate in Parliament on the EEC MANOEUVRING This comes just after the skilful manoeuvring of Wilson and the pathetic capitulation of leading Labour "efts" has prevented the machinery of the Labour Party from being committed to the fight against the Market. This decision of the Labour Party NEC fies in the face both of the needs of the working class and the views of the majority of Labour Party and trade union militants. It simply serves to show once more how the social democrats bankrupt idea of moving towards socialism through Parliamentary activity prevents them from consistently defending the interests of the working class. For it is the left's fear of "disrupting' the Labour Government and jeopardising its position in Parliament That Winon to club their pathetic opponers into impotence.
But it is not only on the question of how to fight the Common Market that the lefts are bankrupt on, but aiso the question of what to fight for instead of the capitalist EEC.
The programme of the lefts for THE NATIONAL FRONT suffered yet another defeat on Tuesday 25 March when they marched through Islington. London in an attempt to defy the ban imposed on their use of the Town Hall by the local Labour Council Despite a national mobilisation, the NF tumed out barely 400 union jack waving fascists. And as they passed the Town Hall their drums were drowned by the deafening chants of a counter demonstration of well over 1000 antifascists organised by Islington Trades Council This was supported by Southwark, Hackney, and Batterses 8 Wandsworth Trades Councils, along with North London Teachers Association. Isington NALGO and various other trade antion branches. Among the political organisations represented were the Labour Party Young Socialists, ComLUDE PASS, HHREIMHIEMARIST Group, 15 and the Workers Socialist League.
Speaker after speaker from the platform erected by the Trades Council stressed the need to drive the fascists off the streets, and seven Labour councillon waliced out of the Council Meeting in progress at the Town Hall to thank the demonstrators for turping up in force. But for the presence of 2000 police (an all London mobllisation with must have cost tens of thousands of pounds) and. the wariness of demonstrators at the posibility of provocations, in light of the recent remarks of Sir Robert Mark, the Inscists would have suffered a yet more crushing defeat.
BREEDING GROUND
Unfortanately many speakers from the plattorn missed the point by not SHE KEE THE SHOU C WOn LAE fascists breed It was left to Ted Coxhead of the ING to point out thot it was the nationalistic campaign being waged by the Labour left ugainst the Common Market which actually provided te launching pad from which the National "after withdrawal" is totally confused. and the right have been able to rely on The biggest item they have been stressing recently is a scheme of Import controls -but at the same time they argue that a free trade agreement could easily be negotiated with the EEC once we got out! Moreover, while they slate the BEC for not doing enough about the position of Third World countries, their chauvinChauvinism of Labour lefts encourages groups like these Lancashire textile workers to demand action against cheap imports-an attempt to export capitalism's problems onto ism and chatter about stopping 'forthe Lancashire textile workers to demand action against cheap imports. from Third World countries.
REACTIONARY Comic difficulties through import controls is both absurd and reactionary. In so far as it involves excluding ism is strictly a loser. imports.
Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report)
cign competition inspires groups like The Economist The idea of solving Britain's econexactly the same to us. In that sort of trade war, backward British capitalSo the result of 'import controls" under a capitalist system would be the throttling of British exports, resulting in an even worse economic crisis and mass uncmployment, while the cost of living would be pushed up by the substitution of more expensive home-produced goods for cheaper The sort of problems that British capitalism would be faced with if it was forced to withdraw from the Common Market could only be dealt with in two ways. From the standpoint of the capitalists, they could try to smuggle in by the back door what the working class had booted out by the front: by negotiating a free trade agreement with the EEC they could Try to continue the integration of the British capitalist economy with that of their European capitalist partners, hoping that this process, and the strengthening of the Common Market's political machinery in the meantime would eventually suck Britain back in again. This is the view already being propounded by that leading representative of the capitalist class, SOCIALISM The other solution the only one in the interests of the working classis the creation of a socialist economy. based on the nationalisation of the the international division of labour forged through centuries of capitalist development. On the contrary, the socialist control of foreign trade would aim to exiend and refine this inter national division of labour with a view to producing the most mutually beneficial world division of labour and pattern of trade: it would be a policy directed towards the development of a planned, socinist economy on a world reaie.
In relation to those countries bled dry by imperialism, instead of trying to export our problems to then through capitalist "import controls' socialist policy would seek, through aid and trading agreements based on relations of equality, to stimulate their economic development and thus our mutual trade. Been more important for the development of a world planned economy would be the establishment of close cconomic and trade links with COMECON the economic federation of the workers states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Such agreements would stimulate foreigo trade and allow us to take into account the international distribution of natural and social resources to produce the world's necessities in the most ellicient and cheapest fashion, thus ensuring the smoothest and most rapid growth of the living standards of ail of humanity.
Chris Balfour