Socialist Challenge No. 129, 10 January 1980
The scan: sc-n129-jan-10-1980.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive)
Uncorrected machine reading of the whole issue. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from the scan and has not been corrected or cut into articles. Each page gives the headlines first, then the columns in order, so one article runs on into the next. Expect misread words. Use it to find things; quote from the scan.
Page 1 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge NO STEEL SHALL PASS
Strike a blow against the Tories
THE latest offer by steel boss Sir Charles Villiers to the unions is an insult. Backed by the Tories he is refusing to put any more cash on the table. His 8 per cent offer is, as Len Murray said, 'festooned like a Xmas Tree conditions. demanding that jobs are sold for wages.
If ever proof was needed that co-operation with the bosses doesn't pay, me steel suike nas provided I. Union leader Bill Sirs has agreed to compromise on pay, productivity time and time again. The Tories see this TaS weakness and Villiers when he says that no extra
FLYING pickets discussing the steel strike with a lorry driver in Rotherham, Yorks.
cash in available.
been organised Sheffield and Wales.
Villiers The stakes
to curb effective (ie. picketing. jobs and
sign of
SOUTHALL SATURDAY
B.MYA
success.
The only way to win this strike is to be as ruthless as Villiers and the Tories. Flying pickets have already
in Scotland,
are high in this dispute. The steelworkers are not only taking on BSC management but the Tory government itself. Already the police have been brought in to try
secondary)
Steelworkers are saying that their all win. living standards are more important than the bosses' profits. Their stand is one that every trade unionist can identify with. Solidarity is the key to
SUPPORT LOCAL ACTIVITIES
ch
It is not only steelworkers' pay that is at issue; many steelworkers will end up on the scrap heap unless they can establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with.
Thatcher thinks she can teach the trade unions a lesson by smashing the steelworkers. The British labour movement can turn ine tables and strike a massive blow against the Tories by giving the steelworkers the solidarity they deserve. If they win we
ORGANISE TO WIN: * Make the strike solid - strike committees in every area should be 19 JAN
set up with representatives many unions as action. Wives of strikers should be contacted and involved struggle. media should be countered with Ine demana tor ine rignt or backed by
* Solidarity key. movement of steel, make the strike solid in the steel industry, get the craft unions out, close private steel plants, refuse to touch steel. meeung in your workplace to raise money for the steel strikers. * For international solidarity from
KICK OUT
STEEL strikers in Motherwell on a 1,000-strong march on Monday
-OTECS possible taking
the Hostile reporting in the Welsh reply action on jobs pickets where BEAS its Stop the campaigning
that day.
get dockers and railways to Organise a
out of office.
NATION WIDE DAY OFACTIVITY TO RAISE €10,000 FOR THE SOUTHALL DEFENCE FUND
No 129 10 January 1980 20p
THE TORIES
T DEBRID
JOINT UNIONS COMI
European and American steel unions in boycotting British industry.
* The TUC must lead the fight - not only wages but jobs are at stake. The TUC has called for Wales on January; the TUC should be giving fulles! support and •UU and COWA •INE country for national strike action on
* This Tory government has shown what it intends to do to the British labour movement. The only way It's going to be stopped is by forcing it
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SOUTH WALESTA
'This is the biggest issue ever faced by South Wales'
OUR POLICIES
Capitalism is in crisis. The Icaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions ofter solutions that are in the interests not of the but of the capilalist ctass.
Socialist Challenge believes that the two vital tasks confronting revolutionary
* In build broad-hased class struggle tendencies in opposition to class-collaborationisen labour movement. These should
non-exclusive character, grouping together militants hoiding a wide range of political views.
To begin to fight for the creation unilied demucratic revolutionary socialist organisanon nica lat.
application of united front tactics. hegin to De seen alternatise thousands workers engaged in struggles.
Such an organisation should be based on the understanding that:
The struggle for seeks 1o unite the tight of
A workers against the with that of other oppressed layers
of societs. women, black people. liberation. This soctalism can on!! struggling
beachieved by creating new organs
of power and delcating
necessary means the power of the
capitalist state.
(ur socialism will • infinitely more democratic "than what caris Mora
todas. fall rights for
political parties and currents that
do not iske up army against the
The Stalinist models
of "socialism' in the ISSR and
Fastern Europe have
socialism in the eres of millions of
workers throughout the
We are opposed to them and will
support to all those
tighting for socialise demeeract.
The interestsot workers and drapitalises are irreconcilable on a world vale. Capitalism
has n01 only created
market. has created
politics. Thus we fight for working
class unil! on an
scale. This unity will in the long
run he decisive in defeating both
the imperialist regimes in the West
and the brutal dictatorships they
sustain in Latin America,
and Asia.
In Britain if implies demanding
the immediate withdrawal
British troops from
letsing the Irish people determine
their own future.
The C'ommunist parties in Kurope are in crisis. Neither The 'Furocommunist
the pro-Moscow wings have any
meaningin salts.
merthron of the capitalist state.
den resolutionary socialist partes
are more necessar!
Conditions today
more tasmurable than over the
preceding three decades. But such
Darlito can an!!
rejecting sectarianism and
internal democraes not as a lusur!
hutaxe vital necessity. This means
the right to organise factions and
Tinatalit
Ii sou agree with these principles
and
activities by Socialist Challenge
supporters in your area, fill in the
torm below and send it to us.
interested
information about activities in my
"ГІЯ. • I would like additional liferature and enclose 50p to enver costs. (Delete it not applicable)
Address.
Socialist Challenge 10 January 1980 P
workers
IF the Tory government has its way South Wales will be farced to return to the 1930s. people left Wales employment.
steel industry, which accounts for the jobs of one in ten people in Wales, an unemployment rate of 12 to 15 per cent is again being predicted. and Cuts in steel mean cuts in mining, rail transport, throuch engineering firms.
as an
of Tories. On 21 affiliated to the Welsh called for a general strike •South Wales
socialism
on long enough and they
bosses beginning to
living. Nine their
Port Talbot.
with Cut and run
The has given a boost to. pay. dockers and fighting to protect jobs. all
Welsh steelworkers voluntary redundancies. -discredited run'.
world.
world world
international
Africa
Ireland and
nor
for the
are
beili
irring involved
in more
STRIKE NEWS
Then, half a milion search of
Today, with the rundown in the
small
This is why the labour movement in Wales is preparing to take on the
January, 17 TUC have
the largest concentration of steel workers in the British Isles. The normally co-operative steel workers have been trodden
are just flex their muscles in striking to defend their standard of
thousand SUIKEIS reported on Monday to mount mass pickets on the private steel plants al
The stand of the steel workers over
miners, railwayworkers
After a decade of lost battles to save Ebbw Vale, East Moors, Shotton and Corby the Tories are hoping that
will for "cut. and coal
But in attacking the steel industry in South Wales the Tories have come
THE SOUTH WALES community faces devastation if the British Steel Corporation's plans for cutting back on steel production go through. BSC government that its cuts must be made by 31 March or else!
The Welsh estimates that the total number of jobs going in steel will be 15,000. This in turn could lead to the closure of 21 out of the 36 pits in South Wales and the loss of 21,000 miners' jobs.
Union of Miners. They are committed against the powerful National to fighting the rundown in steel and defending miners' jobs.
The Tories have also to confront the Welsh people, who are beginning to protest at the decimation of their community.
Even the Tory local paper, Western Mail, said: "Wales is destinec to become an economic wasteland and remain that way', So the call for a regional generalstrike on 21 January is likely to gairi a good deal of sympathy from the people of Wales:
The initial focus of the struggie for jobs started with the dockers' action blacking coking coal imported from Baltimore.: AS the British:
Corporation buys more subsidised
from America and countries to try to reach the breakeven targets demanded by the Tory government, more and more miners'
ALL OUT 21 JANUARY
Miners call for a strike on jobs
has been told by the Tory
Trades Union , Congress
jobsare put on the line. The BSC says it plans to import a million tonnes of cheap coal, mainly from the USA. Subsidies The Tories are refusing to give BSC any extra the steelworkers' and miners' jobs, even
though it is Common Market policy to subsidise the production of coal. The miners, dockers, railwayworkers and steelworkers in South Wales are adamant about defending their living standards. They want to confront the non-interventionist • Tories by demanding a £33 million • subsidySteel The Welsh labour movement has a
tradition of resistance.
EEC years ago it forced
government to back down in its attempts to sack 40,000 workers at Port Talbot, Velindre and Trostre should subsidise our coal. first step to total closure.
Steel at Llanwern.
alone last year!
A LICTE
we want 10 -
South Wales is likely to become industrial cemetery if the steel cuts go through - many ancillary industries will be affected This is why the trade unions in Wales, and particularly the powerful National Union: of Mineworkers, have taken the extraordinary step of calling for a general strike in Wales on 21 January. This call is backed by the Welsh TUC.
PAUL HIGHFIELD
COULTAS were in South Wales last week.
mills. response, miners,
defend jobs. money to save the Welsh
necessary
policies industry. short-sighted.
Only four the to the changes wide.
DON HAYWOOD, Administration Officer, South Wales NUM: 66 The British Steel Corporation is importing coal from the USA at a
rate of £10 a tonne cheaper than South Wales coal. If this continues then many collieries in South Wales may close. What we're saying is that as all coal industries in other countries are subsidised - in Germany it's 29 times more than our coal industry — so the government
South Wales produces the best coking coal in the world. We're members of the EEC and our industries should get the same subsidies as other EEC countries. Just before Christmas the government and BSC decided to cut back at Port Talbot and Llanwern steelworks. At least 15,000 redundancies are expected. The steelworkers action is understandable with the insulting offer of 2 per cent, but I'm of the opinion that the offer was designed to take the minds of the unions off jobs. Partial closure of the steel mills now is the
The two ships in Newport Docks are being blacked by dockers. They contain coal produced in America by scab unions [many American miners are on the dolel. The NCB has recently agreed to allow five million extra tonnes of coalinto South Wales through Newport Docks to besold to the Electricity Board, but the unions have not agreed to allow the coking coal in these particular ships to be imported by BSC to produce
BSC are quite happy to see 10,000 tonnes of Welsh coal going to the floor each week. In fact they're making new contracts for cheap foreign. coal so I can see all of the coal we produce going to the floor. We're only asking for £33 million to subsidise our coal to make it competitive and the Tories refuse to do it. Yet BSC paid out £138 million in interest rates
This is the biggest issue ever faced by South Wales. The National Union of Railwaymen handles 35 million tons of freight for mining. The Coal Board spends £55 million a year on purchasing goods. Small engineers, hauliers, coal merchants will lose their jobs. €500,000 in rates to Newport. Every Welsh family will be affected think it will become a national issue in mining — coal imports can close pits in Kent, Durham, Staffordshire and Northumberland.
Margaret Thatcher wouldn't get four votes here if she stood in an election. How can she spend £9,000 million on armaments and refuse us £33 million to protect jobs? Either we sit back and take it or we stand up and be counted. We're taking strike action and we're calling for a national delegațe conference in the NUM. about 30,000. We're fighting for the younger generation, redundancies mean selling jobs. We're going to strike and picket where
- the Tories are going to have to put 30,000 miners in jail # they think they can stop us. The difference between the situation here and the situation in the steel community in Corby is that everyone is involved. — dockers, miners and railwayworkers — and we're going to win.
an and VALERIE
They know tha united led by steelworkers and demanding that jobs come first will stand a good chance success. The labour movement should back them to the hilt in their fight to
But George Wright, Secretary of
Trades Union Congress, says that he is not in favour of no redundancies': Some cuts are
'because modern industry demands change'. He also strongly urges the government to look, into import controls as a long tern solution to the problem of Welst
We think that his views are fathe
Closures in steel and mines are du international economi recession and the massive technica
that are underway world It is not possible to protec . Llanwern pays We : were 107,000 miners in South Wales. Today there are
voluntary
- steelworkers,
Page 3 scan of this page
KES ON THE TORIES
STRIKE A BLOW AGAINST THE TORIES
ROGER TOVEY, blast
furnace worker, Llanwern: for here is the future of WHAT we are fighting the industrial commuuulty South Wales and the people of South Wales must take the lead in that fight whilst canvassing support from other That's why the strike on January is important.
People are nervous about taking on the government but
British or Weish industry from the effects of this crisis challenging the dictates of the drive for profit.
The ruling class has shown how Clever It IS at dividing labour movement in the fight against redundancies in the Corby and Shotton remained isolated so they lost the battle.
The Welsh TUC is demanding a stay of execution for the steel plants,
investigation into
our only
The Llanwern
steel.
subsidised steel. we're co-operation
21 won't operate unless CLULUHIL
without
British of foreign workers.
steel industry Tories who
defend jobs as backward, against change.
the BSC rather than on of the pits that could close
weapons our
numbers and our organisation.
workforce
young and it wants to produce
We must press to subsidise
either steel or coal like they are
doing in other EEC countries,
and load British Steel plants
fully and restrict the import of
My personal opinion is that
with & Labour government you
only get the same medicine as
the Tories in smaller doses.
As long as political poweris
in the hands of the business and
financial institutions there's no
going find to solve the
problems of the steel industry
- for instance, micro-techno-
logy. A shorter working week
will winto pree morens and
allowed we change the and politicall
and an investigatiot into imports and import controls. It conia ena wo Isolaung brusn sucer workers and miners by demanding job protection for them at the expense
This plays into the hands of the
portray the struggle to insular, Tariff barriers encourage brush workers to place their future alongside British bosses
workers 1n other om the USA
countries.
The Tories are serying the interests of capitalism worldwide assault on our living standards and rights.
The British labour movement has to break with its nationalist traditions to resist this assault.
Workers in Britain and internationally have no interest in opposing the introduction of new technology as long as these changes can be used to improve conditions. Labour, capital, produces the profits out of which these changes are financed, so why on earth should workers accept any SCOTCHC all? changes could be used to shorten the working week, through worksharing, rather than to make redundancies. Ruthless
When Welsh miners argue for a subsidy it should be based on this argument, to defend workers' living standards and jobs, not to protect British bosses' profits.
Welsh miners could widen their support if they used these arguments because it shows how a united assault on Tory unemployment policies could begin. It's not just Welsh workers who face the workers throughout Britain and the wester world
The common interests of workers - for a decent living standard and a shorter working pitted against the ruthless drive of capitalism to sack workers as soon as profits fall. Regional, national and international solidarity is the key, not protectionism.
their
GEORGE WRIGHT and hold markets.
not until 1982.
other EEC countries inquiry into import controls.
country attack. mistakes in the past.
unions affiliated to the
committed to this.
stee
must
Electrician
LE MANSI
acrimony unions, the and the ISTC. let them divide and rule.
Computer
worker they needed
enough — we want to get involved. no divisions now
will be very welcome.
Union leader
Secretary Welsh TUC:
66 We Beof the vize ment
BSC should be investigated. They've never attempted to win markets
We want a stay of execution
• We went the ! management investigated, and we want subsidies on British coal and steel in line with all
and an imports
You have to accept some cuts but the workers of this
under serious We've made Now I think we should fight it out.
On 21 January we want a mini-general strike. All the 17
Welsh TUC involved in steel are
massive
Ebbw Vale: 5,000 jobs lost
DEREK is a member of the
AUEW at Port Talbot:
THE Tories are out t
smash the unions. If th plans of BSC go through Port Talbot will be a ghost town Everyone has to stand up and
Management is relying on
between the craft Blastfurnacemen We can't y
MARLENE, a computer
worker and ISTC member
at Llanwern:
66 ISTC said they'd call on
women for picket duty if them but they willing claim they don't need us at the
This is not good
STEEL SHEET
Steel Sheet is produced by rank and file workers at Port Talbot and now at Llanwern steel plants. It is committed not only to fighting for higher pay but also to oppose the redundancies in South Wales, As it explainec in a sheet produced last week:
'In every plant rumours are rite. Are they going to close Lianwern OR close Port Talbot OR close the finishing end in Port Talbot and the heav end in Llanwern? Will they hive off Trostre and Velindre to private ente The rumours are helping to divide plant from plant. There must be
plants and the union to act as one.
If you're a steelworker in South Wales and you are interested in Steel Sheet write to: 9, Maes-Y-Bettws, Cwmavon, Port Talbot. Donations
Steelworker
RAY DAVIES, steelworker,
Llanwern:
YOUR strike is about th
- dignity of the steelworl ers and justice.-Two years ago we gave 5 per cent our income back to the nation when we accepted less than the going rate. Last year we accepted 8 per cent when everyone else was getting 15 per cent.
We've given management
co-operation, even to losing 40,000 jobs, but we're nọt going to go on our knee and grovel. BSC seems to hav the opinion that we're a weak force because we've co-operat. ed in the past.
Now we've been forced to fight back. This is why the strike is about justice and thi digrity of the steelworket,
If we win on pay we'll be in a position tolfight to keep the steel industry in South Wales The government is a tragedy of monumental proportions as far as the people of South Wales are concerned, and we're going to need not simply regionat but
and solidarity to avoid y becoming isolated.
Docker
DOCKERS at Newport quayside:
- No plckets are neede
• here because none of th dockers will touch the two ships with the coal for Llanwern.
We think the dockers should support the miners even if they're the only ones who are
to take on the government over jobs. The miners are taking a stand and they hope everyone else will come behind them. — the only way for us to avert disaster is for all the Socialist Challenge 10 January 1980 Page 3
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"The Tories picked us out as a weak union, but they ve made a mistake
SUPPORT THE STEEL STRIKE
STRIKE NEWS
By Clive Turnbull "This dispute will be won by stopping, every ounce of steel in the country, according Brian secretary of. the Stocksbridge Tinsley Strike Committee.
-In South Yorkshire the strike is 100 per cent solid. We're leaving only token pickets on the BSC plants, and concentrating on the rest firms, stockholders, and ports.
As wé spoke in the local strike headquarters; pickets- were organised for the ports of Boston and Kings Lynn.
Dispute
'Sirs' position is contradictory. On the one hand, he's saying that only BSC is involved in the dispute, and on the other, that no steel should move.
'Our position steelworkers should be out. the EC rejects our position, we will go ahead with mass pickets.'
Brian outlined the position of the South Yorkshire Divisional Committee on the claim.
'We are for 20 per cent index linked, with no productivity strings at national or local level, and no more redundancies. We've sent telegrams to the EC explaining this.'
Future
In reply to the Tories' argument. that the steel strike threatens future of the industry, Molyneux explained:
"You don't have to argue on an economic basis, but on a social basis as it affects our members.
CORBY, in Northamptonshire, also been the scene of immensely solid strike action. The recent defeats in the struggle to defend steel jobs in the
town have not sapped
шні алсу. MALCOLM IMRIE
MARIANNA NAVA were in Corby
over the weekend and spoke to MICK
SKELTON, ISTC co-ordinator in the
How solid is support for the strike in
Corby after four days?
Most people in Corby
Scotland, so New Year's Day here is
more of a celebration than Christmas.
I had the shock of my life when 200
blokes turned out for
dawn on 2 January, many of them
coming straight from parties.
It's getting stronger all the time.
We've been sending flying
every day to Kings Lynn and now to
Boston (where private firms are still
trying to get steel
Scandinavian ships).
How much effect is the strike having
at a national level?
They picked on us because they
thought WC were weak,
wouldn't go ahead and
wouldn't get support if we did. They
thought we'd accept
because we've accepted 8½ and 7 per
cent over the last two years, that we
were the weak link. But
the
ASLEF locally, and the TGWU has
gone to the brink of calling a total
strike.
How can anyone in their right
Molyneux,
&
- private
being
that all
Even if branch
Strike
charge.
Wales.
Brian
standard of living.
We start 'The lories
Feeling confident in Corby
has
workers'
and
come from
the picket at
pickets
through from
and the closures.
Why has there
that? that that What happened in someone set cent
we've goi NUR and works open • 10 January 1980 Page 4
BRIAN MOLYNEUX (top right) with the Stocksbridge and Tinsley Strike Committee is the secrelary of the Stocksbridge smelting shop ISTC
also secretary National Constitutional Reform in the ISTC.
He was sacked by BSC on Thursday 6 December for what management claimed were 'persistent breaches of works rules'. Management claimed that he had attended an 'unofficial' meeting but provided no evidence to back up the
The response of the workers was an immediate strike, with a vote of 293 to 7 in favour, despite it being just a few weeks before Christmas, and with the prospect of a national strike in the New Year.
Brian Molyneux has been hounded by following the publication of Steelworkers and Reform, a pamphlet by a number of ISTC branch secretaries from South Yorkshire,
With the national strike over pay, the local dispute has been suspended, but only until the wages fight is over. from their need for jobs and a decent naîve; the say they
must think we're
mind not think it's a political fight.
It's 100 per cent political, both the pay
been such a poor
response to the threatened lay-offs at
Corby [5000 jobs are to go in March]?
Will the support for the strike change
Corby is that the hare running.
NUBF (blastfurnacemen) gave up
there was no way they were going to
support us - and without them we
couldn't have made steel anyway.
But we were trying to keep the behalf of tube
workers, steel and iron workers. We
knew that severance pay's no use to
→ a job's a lot more use. And
Park
Liaison Committee
management since last May,
Scunthorpe, and South
fompare BSC with other countries. "don't get the subsidies that they do. the town itself was pushing the fact that if the works went, it would be decimated.
But when it went public that one section had given up, Ine Hale wa. away. We had to redundancy payments even though acceptance was against instructions, simply because so many people wanted the money. But even if we're going we have to support those who'll be left holding the baby.
Things can change though. Before the strike Corby was like a ghost town, despairing. thereare two factors coming into play. First, if the strike continues the metre furnace at Redcar might take six months to recover, which would mean in effect another six months life for Corby.
"They claim BSC is bankrupt, which then gives them a beautiful argument hiving denationalise.'
Suspect
This point was underlined by local MP Allen McKay, who suspects that the BSC decision to steelworks in Scunthorpe, under (Yorkshire and Humberside), is a step Orton towards denationalisation.
He fears the dispute could end in the government abolishing BSC and assuming temporary control of state steel through the National Enterprise Board.
The industry gradually hived • off, capital allowed to take 51 per cent of any part of the corporation.
I approached BSC chairman Sir Charles Villiers about this plan, and told him that it closely resembled the
operations of the old privately owned United Steels Company', McKay. 'He agreed with me.' Knackered
Brian Molyneux added: 'If we didn't strike the trade union
movement would be knackered. This
isn't just directed at the steel industry.
The Tories have picked us out as a
weak union,
mistake.
'This dispute is causing a minor
• revolution in our
Conseryative, branch
becoming militans. This is going to be
a different union after the strike.'
to realise that the closure will fast be a
reality uniess they
When you're all together on strike,
you start to feel negotiate confident.
The more successful the strike is,
the more chance we've got to re-stari
the fight against lay-offs
Sweet Charity!
rapidly
The ISTC has given its seven divisions Now just £1000 each
dispute. 14 In South
£3000 in the first day alone.
The assets of the
£10½ million of which £3 million is in
liquid assets.
off, to
put together South Yorkshire and
the new BSC
been
with local
pit-head collections. would then be
with private
called for in
said MI Hallam
for strikers. nurses from
and sandwiches.
but they've made a
union. Even officials, are
By Dave Carter
area.
[Socialist Challenge] 12,000
at the South
OODWARD picketing'.
import frustrating continental steel.
Steel
Photo: JUDE
Frazer
And people are suddenly starting January.
something. Australia Redcar
different, more
The beginning contradiction
Haulage laying Region has
to finance
Yorkshire, they spent
ISTC run
SOLIDARITY
IN SOUTH
YORKSHIRE,
SOLIDARITY with the steel strike
widespread in the area.
Arthur Scargill has held two meetings
ISTC representatives to give advice on picketing.
Yorkshire NUM have given £2000 to the strike fund and agreed to
The NCB has also been contacted, and instructed to buy no steel during • the dispute. Similar solidarity is being
and engineering plants throughout the country, by rejecting any steel deliveries.
Rotherbam, the Labour Council has broadcast over Radio
social security payments, tax, rent and rate rebates
At Stocksbridge local Middlewood Hospital have been visiting picket lines with tea
..AND
THE NORTH
EAST
BOTH the main steel unions report complete support for the strike in the
That means that out of 25,000 employees, 19,000 are on strike.
The mood is bitter, since cuts of
jobs been recently declared in the area. The Consett plant is threatened with complete closure and other jobs are threatened
Tees Works and Redcar with its giant new furnace.
The first meeting of the District Strike Committee decided, in its own
organise secondary Transport workers at the big steel point at „Hartiepool attempts to import
stockholders are being
picketed throughout the North East. Lorries are being turned away from
the largest steel stockholder Robert
Tyneside,
leaving 600 tonnes of steel stranded.
Pickets in Middlesbrough told us
that railway workers have said that all
steel will remain where it was on 1
Likewise a coal carrier from carrying a cargo for the steel plant remains strike
bound till the end of the strike.
effects of the strike are to bite rapidly in to propaganda
being promoted about the invinci
bility of the employers.
contractors have been off. British Rail Eastern been badly affected,
losing the £0.5 million per week that it
gains from BSC custom.
A local pay offer similar in form
to that being negotiated nationally
has been rejected by local officials.
They say that they want to settle
nationally and the 17 per cent offer
has too many strings attached.
Page 5 scan of this page
Why the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan
By Tariq Ali
WITH the entry of thousands of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, bourgeois commentators — notably those who justified the French interventions in Chad and Zaire, and the South African invasion of Angolanow shedding tears for the plight of the Afghan people. The object oi the exercise is to portray the Russians as an untamed power hell-bent on reyolution by Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is a basic difference between Soviet foreign policy and that of the United States and other imperialist powers. different modes of production which exist in these countries.
The Western powers are determined to use all available means to preserve societies resting on the private ownership of the means production. They realise that seeking to resolve their own economic and political differences through direct military conflict (as in 1914 and 1939) risks weakening their common front against the working class. But the struggle for markets within the imperialist world continues apace, combined number of neo-colonial states for the cheap production of manufactured goods.
The soviet Union 1s not an impenalist power in this Leninist sense. The expansionist dynamics of imperialist
INTERNATIONAL
SOVIET invaders in Kabul. Inset: Babrak Karmal, the newly-installed prime minister
removed
leaders and Soviet different.
'expansionist" conquest.
soviets.
This relates to the Caste
of
caste. oi a years
exploitation were Tass supplied this photograph from Kabul on Saturday with the following caption: "Afghan people resolutely support the measures of the new leadership in Afghanistan aimed at defending gains of April revolution of 1978. Afghans read newspaper Truth of the April Revolution 1978.
•with the expropriation capitalists after the 1917 October revolution -a gain which has never been reversed. It is not the dictates of private capital which determine
foreign policy but something
The ravages of the imperialist-sponsored civil war which followed the October revolution drained the energies of the small working class and crippled the democratic institutions of political power it had established: the system of
This allowed a bureaucratic championed by, Stalin to seize the reins of political power in the USSR.
In place of the policy of defence international forward by. Lenin and Trotsky, States and his working
co-thinkers substituted the idea of socialism in one country, The interests of working people throughout the world were henceforth to be subordinated to defence of the Soviet Union . as the basis for the rule of this bureaucratic
Thus Soviet foreign policy for the last fifty
has been determined priority: the preservation of national security within the framework status quo. Its overall hallmark is caution and Conscals. Any developinchl
of the this framework
very
Nazi-Soviet
waste down: the replaced it
of interests. its essentials. by one basic
of the international
into HUYC
justified
, determine
word than on two
civil war of 1918-20.
Robespierre
oppression.
military measures.
international class struggle which jeopardises
has to be avoided necessary, stamped out.
Hence the periodic adjustments in the Stalin era which were necessary to bring Soviet policy into line with the changing status quo. 1930s, Stalin inaugurated the Popular Fronts to defend the bourgeois powers against Nazism From 1939 to 1941 he made a few changes and accepted Hitlerite rule in Germany via the
pact. Finally, through agreements at Yalta and Potsdam,
Communist International with the theory of 'spheres influence', by which the Soviet Union agreed to prevent social upheavals in Italy and France in return for the West's accentance of Stalinis * hegemony over Eastern Europe.
Soviet foreign policy has not altered since in
Andrei Gromyko, Stalinist diplomat and Foreign Minister, wrote in Pravda on 28 June 1968 (two months before the invasion of Prague): 'Our foreign policy is
O. Do you, as the former head of the Red Armies, feel it was necessary for the Soviets to
Ine Baltic states, Finland, Poland, to better defend themselves against aggression? Do you believe that a socialist state
in extending socialism neighbour state by force of arms?
A. It cannot be doubted that control over the military bases on the Baltic coast represents strategical advantagés. But this alone cannot
the question of invasion neighbouring states. The defence of an isolated workers' state devends much more on the support of the labouring masses all over the
taree suppiemellar. strategical points. This is proven incontrovertibly by the history of foreign intervention in our
said that people do not like missionaries with bayonets. Naturally that does not exclude the right and duty to give military aid from without to peoples rebelling against
For example in 1919 when the Entente strangled the Hungarian revolution, we naturaliy had the right to help Hungary by
This aid would have been understood and justified by the inasses of the world. Unfortunately we were too + weak... At present the Kremlin is much stronger
Soviet I people,
coasts and air
security of Soviet citizens.
This absence was, however,
one such manual, internationalism.' Coherent
national nationalism Czechoslovak mass
Stalin
whether Brezhnev
LUULSC
imperialism.
Union and other
Said.
Ambitions
thus motivated or,
that exist in Yemen, Ethiopia In the
religious rebels backed by the
the HILCIeSLS he closed installed Karmal in power.
and
of
WARACIO. and bureaucratic bully: could
a veteran forefront of the historic stage'.
now Brezhnev's
TROTSKY ON BALTIC INVASION, 1939-40
and country and abroad.
there WYCIC USSR; the accompanied by to a
equality; if the
masses, Moscow
of
the road of union with the USSR.
of the USSR, particularly minorities, by majority of the neighbouring countries from invasion 01 the Red
labouring
than advantages to the USSR,
and will continue to be characterised by resoluteness in defending the state interests of
safeguarding inviolability of our land frontiers, maritime
space, and in protecting thi dignity of the Soviet flag and the rights and
Even the ritual reference to the struggle of the international working class was lacking.
not allowed to remain in Soviet textbooks on foreign policy. In
dedicated exclusively to Soviet foreign policy, the authors (including Gromyko) wrote: *Soviet foreign policy reflects the harmonious connection of the internationai interests of the Soviet state and of the Soviet people with the international duties of the working class which has come to power. Soviet
oreign policy combines patriotism and servic
o the interests of the Soviet homeland wit
The first quotation is at least coherent. The second is confused gioberish. There can be no foreign policy based on both a narrow-minder
chauvinism and proletarian
The driving force behind the USSR's role in world politics is its domestic preoccupations. Any event which weakens the power of the buraucracy vis-a-vis the masses inside the Soviet Union is to be dealt with rapidly and brutally. The crushing of the Hungarian and
uprisings are a case il point. Tito got away because he threatener
with a protracted guerrilla war and armed the Yugoslav workers. It is questionable
would have invaded Czechoslovakia if Dubcek had taken a similar
But all this does not mean that there is no objective tension between the Soviet Union and
The very existence of the Soviet workers states nOW comprising a third of the world - limits the • ability of imperialism to rule at will and creates a situation of permanent confrontation. In turn this means that when social classes and political groups at their head seek to free themselves from domination by capital, the soviet Union 1s often forced to provide military and economic
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan is
neither by imperialist ambitions' nor by a decision to transform the country into an Outer Mongolia. Its aim is to institute a government not dissimilar to those
Angola, Mozambique, South The Russians were clearly worried that the excesses of Hafizullah Amin were handing the country on a platter to the
West, Such a regime, they believed, would threaten Soviet
hence lncy moved
In one of his last writings Lenin displayed extraordinary foresight. He expressed concern at the consequences which the policies of the
- the Great Russian chauvinist have among those hundreds of millions of the peoples of Asia who will in the near future move to the
Stalin's treatment of China and Iran, and
entry into Afghanistan, indicate that the price paid will be a high one.
from a military point of view. However, it has lost the confidence of the masses both inside the
Soviet democracy in the technological progress the increase socialist bureaucracy were witherine away, giving place to the self-government of the
would represent such tremendous power of attraction, particularty for its nearest neighbours, that the present world catastrophe would inevitably throw the masses of Poland (not only Ukrainians and White Russians but also Poles and Jews] as well as the masses oi the Baltic border states on fe
At present this important pre-condition for revolutionary intervention exists, if at all, in a very small degree. The strangling of the peoples
of the national police methods repelled the toiling masses Moscow. The Army is seen by the populations not as an act of liberation but as ar act of violence, and thereby facilitates the mobilisation of world public opinion agains the USSR by the imperialist powers. That is why it will bring in the last instance more har
Socialist Challenge 10 January 1980 Page 5
Page 6 scan of this page
WHY SOVIET TA AREROLLING A
massive influx of Soviet troops?
prepare the intervention by the West.
world.
By Charles Lister TWO MONTHS AGO, a secret sympathiser of the Parcham (Flag)
Democratic Party of Afghanistan [PDPA] told me that they would be back in power months. I didn't believe him.
Kabul at that time agreed that Parcham had been totally liquidated.
Babrak Karmal is back, this time as leader of Afghanistan.
Karmal, in his fifties, is the son of a senior army officer.
Afghan politics. Under the King, Nadir Shah, he held the post of Minister which he was ousted in 1965.
About a year later he formed his Parcham faction within the PDPA. Relations between the two factions of the party - the other being the Khalq (Masses) faction — were stormy from the start. Whereas Khalq_ leaders like Hafizuliah Amin and Mohammed Taraki found their inspiration in the Communist parties of the USSR and India, Babrak Karmal was Pakistani petty-bourgeois parties such as Wali Khan's National Awami Party.
It was this political difference, rather than the personality clashes observers, that between the factions.
Great Divide
In July 1973 came the Mohammed Daoud, a bourgeois figure who had been deposed as prime minister ten years earlier, came back to monarchy.
proclaimed. Arguing revolution' entered his government. This effectively split the PDPA, as the Khalq remained in clandestine opposition.
But soon Daoud decided that he had no further need for the left-wing veneer provided by the Parcham ministers. They were deposed and many were arrested. Parcham was temporarily wrecked; it was in organisational disarray, and (Khalq leaders condoning actually arrests of Khalq members by Daoud's German-trained police.)
But Daoud's government was in crisis too. His great modernisation programme had come to nothing. Seeking to break monopoly of Soviet assistance to the country, he had opened the door to Western aid. One part of his new programme was the signing of a treaty with the Shah of Iran sharing the waters of the Helmand river. Karmal prominence at the head of mass demonstrations opposing the scheme. Decaying
In April (Saur) 1978, Daoud's decaying
regime was overthrown by a lightning coup.
Neither faction of the PDPA expected it so soon.
The coup was in fact an armed preventive strike
against a wave of repression that Daoud was
expected to unleash. But
further. Daoud was killed in his palace and the
PDPA took power in a 'ten hour revolution'.
Taraki was the new regime's number one,
Karmal number
crumbled as
orientation of the new 'Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan'.
remains a matter for conjecture.
The PDPA was strongly Stalinist in its origins
aad traditions.
WHAT were the events in Afghanistan which led to the overthrow of Hafizullah Amin and the
This is not a question that has greatly concerned the media. They have preferred to denounce Soviet 'expansionism' in order to
way for renewed CHARLES LISTER was in Kabul just a few weeks before the coup. Here he reports on the background to the event that has shaken the
of the People's
within Everybody in
But today Parcham leader
He is a well known figure in Planning, from much closer
highlighted by Western underlay the persistent feud
great divide.
overthrowing the The first Republic of Afghanistan • LACE Daoud's forward, Parcham lers had hacused pariano us. accused encouraging, the West Calle matters went much
But the alliance soon the government divided on the What these differences were
Debare on democratic lines was Differencts mere traditionally settled virtual lack of pril 1978 coup up in she was
bei
military supporters and the masses. Reportedly Karmal was put bodily on his plane to Prague by the military. Soon they were summoned back to Kabul to face charges of high treason. Few, if any, responded. Most sought political asylum in Eastern Europe.
The Khalq enjoyed a brief period of stability. A five year plan was devised, number of popular reforms (such as the abolition of debts to absentee landlords), and the party felt strong after the purging of the Parcham leaders. Taraki was confident that Soviet aid would soon
the quality life Afghanistan.
But from February 1979 the internal situation began to deteriorate rapidly. Delicate reforms on women's rights, the land reform, the campaign against illiteracy (espocially
Hard-line
Taraki decreed a
tribal, feudal
had to go.
•affected
women), were often rammed through by Khala cadres and Soviet advisers in brutal, ruthless ways. Many of the rural areas began to resent these intrusions on traditional values, and the Khalq regime rapidly found itself confronted by a series of Jihads (holy wars).
• The Iranian revolution did play an important triggering role in this. A new course was clearly needed. Taraki, in collaboration with the Soviet Union, decided that his hard-line deputy Amin
But unfortunately for the Soviet Union the coup backfired. . After a shoot-out at the presidential palace, Moscow confronted with Amin as head of state.
The Soviet bureaucracy only resumed its aid
the reforms prepared
never intervene.
largely Afghanistan,
faltering Amin regime.
found itself
above
after it had received assurances from Amin thi
Taraki would t Dy implemented. While rumours of friction-betwe the Soviet Union and Amin were rife, _ W
tril enter interest the Soviet Unio
cannot . control countryside. The Russians know that.
The fact that the Soviet Union did interves does not demonstrate their concern for the
peasant population but rather their feat that t reactionary pro-islamic and monarchist querit would win big military victories against
The stability of the Soviet Union's bor and therefore of the position of the M bureaucracy, has always been a guiding P
beyond thoughts of pr
Page 7 scan of this page
Socialist
Challenge
WEY FAILEDHE PAY SACK THE BOARD THAT WE SAY
FICIAL STRIKE RANS COMEBANO
STEEL STRIKE
SPECIAL
STEEL
WORKERS POWER ON & SIRL TRADES CONFER OFFICIAL STRIKE
Page 8 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge PAY THE STE
STOP TH SAVE C
Page 9 scan of this page
ELWORKERS
ECLOSURES OBS - SHARE THE WORK CK OUT THE TORIES
Page 10 scan of this page
Throughout the Western world STEEL'S GROWTH INDUSTRY - SCRAPYARDS
By Geoffrey Sheridan THE DECADE has opened with two kinds of metal competing for the escalating price of gold registers the panić of the wealthy in response to the deepening crisis in the West. The plans to cutback steel production in virtually all the advanced capitalist countries indicate the depth of that crisis.
The means alone in seeking to shrink its losses by shutting plants and
although, goverriment, it is ahead of most other Western countries in the pace at which it aims to slash its steel-making capacity.
With the bulk of steel production required for the construction, industries, demand is closely tied to the ups and downs of capitalism's economic cycles. graphs for each of these industries presently resemble a ski slope.
Post-war boom
In the early '70s, when the governments in the West crossed their fingers and hoped they were still riding on whatever the temporary setbacks, BSC set itself a production target of 30m tonnes a year
Production in 1970-1 was at a peak of 26m tonnes, and the new target required a massive programme of modernisation, part of which has now been achieved. The problem is that sales have not met these expectations. BSC 1S now planning for an annual production of 15m Lones.
The story is repeated in the rest of the Common Market. Until a few years ago the EBC believed that in 1980 steei output in the hine countries would reach 228m tonnes. That projection has since been levelied to below 140m tonnes.
Steel workers
There has been a corresponding drop in the consumption of steel in the EEC, which fell from a 1973 peak of 126m tonnes to just over 100m tonnes last year.
The Economist spelled out the implications for steel workers in West Europe.
EEC should sensibly aim for by the mid-1980s make gloomier reading newsnaner expected.
'If productivity is by then 500 tonnes per man year much better than now, acceptable by something like 200,000 jobs out of the present labour force of 510,000 (not including staff) should go':
This figure, the Economist added, is based on the 'most optimistic assumptions'.
The prospects States, where stee consumotion estimated to have dropped from 99m to 90m tonnes. United States Steel, the second largest steel company in the West, laid off 13,000 workers, and more are expected to go
The problems facing Nippon Steel in Japan, the West's largest steel company, indicate the scale of the crisis affecting the steel industries in the advanced capitalist countries.
years ago
Socialist Challenge 10 January 1980 Page 10
headlines. The
British Steel Corporation is by no
down under the Tory
car, and machine
The the post-war boom, 500-
450-
400-
'The latest
of the sort of steel capacity 350
than even this
but barely world standards - that means
are similar in the United last year • IS expanding
ceiling."
die 35-
тыва CONSUL
¡roductivo Potential 1001 Onsumption chairperson of Nippon Steel, said: 'From now on, there won't be much incentive for rapidly
steel-making capacity.
advanced economies have reached the point
where so-called prosperity has just about hit the
Nippon Steel's new, advanced mills need high operating rates to realise the economies of scale which the mills
are designed to achieve. Unit costs rise sharply Yoshihiro ‹ Inayama;) as production falls, which is the prospect now
Wir
fordern
Stunden-Woche
GERMAN steelworkers on strike last year for a 35-hour week and higher pay. The graph, showing the West's 'surplus' capacity, indicates why demands need to cross national frontiers.
facing Japan.
The
product. technologically countries.
This arises not simply from the domestic effects of the economic crisis, but the declining demand for Japan's exports of steel, make up about a third of its sales
A : major reason for this expanding steel production of the neo-colonial
Several of these countries have established the basic industry which first underpinned the industrial revolution in the West -
the world.
the long run,' the Financial Times
producers.'
Shrinking
countries, faced compention between
to their crisis taken from the
the ensuing depression.
government is known as
Protectionism
which specifies produced
steel production throughout Market.
Headlong
the problems DIUS CHILY
this new philosophy that profits
The FT is
us as long as capitalism, wracked by controls.
Protectionism
queue
no loss of pay. which When, of the the
steelworkers in
with . campaign would be a tragedy.
'threatening results for capitalists in this part of
In the past year Brazil has increased its stee output by 14 per cent, India by 10 per cent, and South Korea and Taiwan have both registered rises of nearly 70 per cent. 'Little can be done in
• noter l months ago, 'to preserve the world markets of Europe, the US and Japan against the new
The response from the advanced capitalist
with shrinking the industries, and imports from the Third World, has been protectionism — yet another solution
portfolio of remedies which led up to the crash of '26 and
The method employed by the United States
the trigger price mechanism, which blocks steel imports if their price is calculated to be below production costs.
and restraints on compet ition are part of the EEC's Davignon plan,
prices for steel within West Europe, as well as for imports. The other part of the Davignon plan are the mass redundancies and closures, to cut
the Common
And the logic for this headlong rush to solve
'so-called which the working class barely glimpsed? The Financial Times says it all
"The combination of Davignon and the US trigger price does seem to have brought about
more desirable than tonnes of steel produced.'
wrong, though, about the originality of this philosophy. That's been with
which scars a world material need with ever-deepening cycles of 'over-production'.
The battle for wages and jobs, and still more the world-wide struggle to put an end to the capitalist system, are in no way enhanced by one of the favourite remedies of the Communist Party and the left in the Labour Party: import
will sustain the productive capacity of the British steel industry. But it would help to put steelworkers in the rest of the West and in the Third World on the dole
Aboveall, the raising of this demand by the labour movement would help to stave off a nightmare of the bosses: a campaign across national trontiers to counter the sackines and closures with the demand for worksharing with
within the past 12 months, the German steelworkers struck for seven weeks for a 35-hour week and higher pay, and the French
Longwy led hundred thousand-strong march against the closure of possibilay of an hine national sectorkers anything char cuts actoss the
Page 11 scan of this page
VIL & GAS • FINDS
NKS
¡AIN
evolutionary advance. Such stability might be treatened by the effects of the guerilla war (which
distance from imperialist powers among the fibes that are found on both sides of the fairly ibitrary Afghani-Soviet ontains many more Islamic communities along ¿southern borders that are a continuous source
- and, it must be said, a target for LA-backed subversion.
Evidence But will the Russians impose a
tem in Afghanistan? The evidence points the
t way. The new government is not even going
be Parcham old-style. The only link between
Parcham and today's
AFGHANISTAN
HAZARAS _HINDU KUSH
PESHAWAR
Khalq."
support).
Soviet Inion -
and them. influence'.
governments
government.
large financial
The USSR Done. by
way
movement,
regime. socialist
Karmal is bureaucracy.
INDIA pronounced tendency towards opportunism. The new regime includes three former close associates of Taraki: Watanjar, Mazdurjar and Qlabzoi all army officers and treer top cadie of t
ley are hardly likely to undergo südden conversion to the politics of Parcham. The Soviet Union has placed in power a team which it hopes will benefit from past popularity (both Karmal and Watanjar enjoyed genuine
But the prospects for a return te the 'old days' — a stable bourgeois government friendly to the
appear remote. With units of the once-solid Khalq army fighting soldiers from the 'Great Socialist Brother Nation', with a confused
powerless PDPA membership, possibility of this government winning the trust of the Afghani people seems out of the question.
What will become of the gains that were mad in the April "78 revolution'? The five-year plan the campaign against illiteracy, the institution of women's rights and even the limited land reform programme are gains that should be defended That's why the favourite brick-bat Western press - 'Russia's Vietnam' — is so fa from the mark. These measures did have the potential to win over the masses, and for the masses themselves to take action to promote
Czechoslovakia
Even more perverse is the comparison with Czechoslovakia in 1968. Cynically the bourgeois press argues that the Afghan affair is more serious than that of Prague as it affects a region previously considered to be outside the Soviet zone of influence. But all the imperialists are worried about
The fate of the Afghani people is nothing to them.
Nor were they overly concerned with the crushing of the Prague Spring in fact. Western
were informed Russian action prior to the invasion, but did not see fit to inform Alexander Dubcek
The United States is now ready to commit itself to 'defence' of the reactionary and fanatical dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan withheld. Many of these weapons will find their American arms
directly into the hands of the (Islamic Brotherhood). The imperialists will do all they can to favour such a
which would have the by-product of easing relations with the Khomeini
The Soviet invasion, far from defeating such a counter-revolutionary bid by imperialism, promises to assist its development. measure of the bankruptcy of the Moscow
By Geoff Bell currently
camp after the as th genic bacteria, 'malignant Rudimentary
'thaw', Kennan frontiers.'
and inspired minorities',
by fare eyell
Second World War.
the led the
right-wing
of the impending
and his
previously presentation of the
Ikwamis
reactionary
valuable
circumstances where the exercise vy 'freedom' the pressure in prepared it endorsed Inat 1s a
The cold war
—as it was
leave detente as dead as the 1970s. The only argument is not whether the world has returned to the cold war but whether we are on the road to
Certainly the image Western propaganda is
putting over is comparable message that was being broadcast from the same
Second World War:
But was this true after 1945? Someone who
name o Until 1946 nenlal
Kennan made speeches describing communism
parasite', outbreak explaining how the US had to cleanse the world of this terrible disease.
But 20 years later, in the period of cold war
acknowledge the truth concerning the image he had helped to create of the Soviet Union bent on conquering the world. In a speech in 1965 he said:
*It was perfectly clear to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Russia of that day that the Soviet leaders had no intention attempting to advance their cause by launching attacks with their own armed forces acros
The real 'threat' according to Kennan was, "conspiratorial action of the Communist-trained
who hoped to seize, 'dictatorial powers in their respective national orbits". What Kennan meant by this is illustrated
precipitatel declaration of cold war — the civil war being fought in Greece in which America intervened in 1947. The background to this conflict provides further evidence of how limited a threat to the capitalist order the Soviet Union posed after the
Greece had figured in the Yalta talks of 1944 when the allies had divided up parts of the world into spheres of influence. Although Communists
anti-Nazi resistance in Greece Stalin agreed that Britain should have a free hand there. By Churchill's owi account, 'Stalin. adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement'.
But despite Stalin's attitude the British-backen posing vis a goery end it was this failure government had difficulty which brought American intervention. President Truman asked the US Congress to Greek government 400 million dollars worth of military aid and accompanying his call came hi
"Truman doctrine', which gave the ideological gloss for the cold war. This pledged US support for any country of free peoples' who 'are resisting attempted subjection by armed minorities or by outside pressures'.
This general principle applied only in those
'subjection' was being the lett. thus in the name US supplied its own 'outside Greece and as thi was the French bombing of Haiphong in 1946 in which, in a single afternoon,
revelution from within.
General: Eisenhower to the
putting down of any such revolt.
Imaginery
Again the imaginary. In
of the Truman doctrine.
Marshall Aid, and
'The critic thought the objective of
nation from falling Assistance
Financial
from the United States,
of fascism
subterfuge meant by 'changes'
called 'political
McCarthy "purges'
McCarthyism could only Intervention
planned attacks, it launched them. 19503 Western
communist strategy
government still in power.
CIA-organised assassinations
more recent events in Angola, Iran countries show world has had in i order where it likes being out his 'doctrine' of cor
the greatest threat to bamanity.
In other words what lay behind the cold war was not Soviet expansionism but the fear of
This fear of revolution was the dominant characteristic in the attitudes of the capitalist world as the Second World War drew to its close. In January 1945 the US military beadquarters of
issued a directive on internal security' which alerted troops in France to the dangers of 'internal disorder and strife' due to 'economic and political factors'. The directive went on to outline procedures for the
issue of a Soviet threat WAS post-war France, on Stalin's instruction, the Communist Party sat as junior partners in conservative, clericalist governments, until they were forced out after the presentation
Accompanying the cold war rhetoric came Marshall Aid, the declared aim of which was to create "political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist'. Millions of dollars were ploughed into Western Europe in an attempt to buy off the threat of revolution. Investment in the cheap labour market was also good economic sense for US business, but the essential aim of
later 'foreign sid', PAS • political. Desmond Fitzgerald, a leading light of the post-war CIA, explained foreign aid this way:
was to get economic growth, and this wasn't the objective at all, The objective may have been to buy a lease or get a favourable vote in the UN, or to keep a
apart or to keep country from giving the Russians airbase righits.'
assistance wasn't confined buttressing the capitalist world's definition of "free institutions'. While fascist Spain was, for the sake of appearance, denied Marshall Aid, the US financed franco in another way by leasing military bases there. Spain has nothing to fear
US President Roosevelt towards the close of the Second World War, a war fought, supposedly, to rid the world
Roosevelt'ssuccessor, Truman, explained US policy by saying 'we cannot allow changes in the status quo by such methods as coercion, or bysuch
as political infiltration'. What he were changes in a leftward direction but the identification of the enemy
infiltration' served another purpose, that of witch-hunting anyone suspected of not swallowing the cold war ideology in the US itself. The practice reached its height with the
in the early 1950s. be sustained if a "foreign' threat could be posed, if socialism, radicalism, even liberalism could be portrayed as pro-Soviet, as putting 'national security' at risk.
But it was the US which posed the greatest threat to many people's security. When NATO was launched the threat of a capitalist war on the Soviet Union became a real possibility, for as George Kennan later said NATO was a 'defence' against 'an attack no one was planning •
The US and its capitalist allies not only
The early CLICHELO in Korea Guatemala, Iran and elsewhere. The theory was summed up by Allen Dulles, a former head of the CIA: "We cannot safely limit our response to the
_of take-over solely to those cases where we are invited in by the
Dulles's definition of 'communist take-over' was somewhat wide-ranging: it meant that any leftist government anywhere in the world was liable to US invasion, economic pressures, or
Yet in many instances US policy met with failure. The revolutions in Caba, Vietnam and
the difficulties
But the Soviet invasion of Afghanista change the fact that it is that doctrine whick
Page 12 scan of this page
Belize presence aids Carters war drive
INTERNATIONAL
By George Kerevan
PRESIDENT CARTER is mounting a war drive in the Caribbean to isolate the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions.
Tul-ume maltary 'respond rapidly encroachment in the region. Its first exercise was a massive mock assault on the US base at Guantanamo in Cuba - an example of military encroschment if ever there was oner
Among those who have moves are former British colonies in the Caribbean such as Grenada and Jamaica. This raises the danger that Carter will call on the Tory government to exert its considerable political and military presence in the area to stem further revolutionary developments in its ex-colonies. Though little known to the British public, the Thatcher government has formidable army naval and air forces in the British dependency of Belize on the Guatemalan border, only a short distance overland from Nicaragua.
Belize 1973 lies on the east coast of America and is the second smallest country on the American continent, with a population of 130,000. A stooge so-called People's United Party has controlled Belize domestic affairs for 15 years. British Troops
Yet this obscure corner of the world is 'defended' by 2,300 British troops, a massive
latest Harrier jump-jets, Rapier missiles. Army detachments including Irish Guards and Gurkhas are rotated every six months. They have support from nuisault helicopters, and Scout helicopters. The heavily defended Belize International Airport has accommodate American-built C-130 Hercules
journalist "There was no sign of the Harriers, which I was to discover later in camouflaged reinforced blast pens, but the RAF Regiment, responsible for the instaliations at the airport, makes no secret of
By Don Thomson
THERE IS growing concern within
trade union movement the TUC's international programme.
This involves allegations that, in some cases, funds have been used to DOLOSE real and workers' movements overseas.
is also concern about Foreign Office links with the TUC's international
department.
So far the TUC has failed to make a detailed repiy to these charges. The main cause for concern, however, which Is nol in dispute, Is the TUC's failure to make its overseas
At present the TUC's overseas bill
amounts to about £600,000 a year;
including an annual £180,000
the Foreign Office. No details are
provided to the
JACK COLLINS [NUM]
sponsor of the meeting
ocialist Challenge 10 January 1980 Page 12
Last up to any attempted military
opposed these • known as British Honduras until
Central
government under the
the runway
1979|
batteries of
big Puma British smaller, America been extended to
recently reported:
hides with
protection vital control
TUC overseas
work under fire
purpose.
This even the idea
time the global
representative There HOTE workers link up across frontiers.
Meeting
work membership. from within membership about
LAJaLILY They include:
Ayland (TUC South Western Council], INUM national executive
Maynard MP, [CPSA], George
Trades Councill.
Sunday
Hall, Red Lion starting at zom.
be directed lo: Don
MEXIC
Tehuantepec Quetza lango•
PACIFIC!
OCEAN
its presence, with a Rapier unit on the side of which tracks every approaches.' [Air International,
When added to Britain's naval presence in the caribbean spearheaded by a irigate. the obvious question arises: just what is it Thatcher is so anxious to 'defend" in Belize?
The official story is that Britain is defending Belize from Guatemala. The true story is that imperialism grabbed colonial Spain. When the Spanish colonies in fought for and achieved independence, Britain hung on to Belize as a little insurance that the free' Central American republics would fall within Britain's trading empire. Guatemala has demanded for well over that the British get out. Belize effectively blocks Guatemala from the sea. In 1859 Britain forced Guatemala to sign a treaty in which the latter recognised' over return who receives all this cash and for what
secrecy. makes impossible workers' international solidarity. At the same
recession and unemployment and erosion of trade union rights makes it
than Cycl that
As a result a group of concerned trade unionists are planning to hold a public meeting in London in February to launch a national labour movement
make the TUC's accountable to the
A number of prominent figures the labour movement, well known for their campaigning work on international issues, have agreed to sponsor the meeting in an individual
Reg Williams [CPSA national executive commit- the lee], Jack Collins [Kent NUM), Tony
RegPeter commilteel. Ernie Roberts MP, Ken Coates [Institute for Workers Control], Joan
Stuart MacLennan Anthony [North London AtLEW], Stan Vewens MP. and Roland Sheret [Secretary, Stirling
The meeting will lake place on
10 February in the Conway houare. London.
May I appeal for trade union support and parlicipation and ask that all inquiries abour the campaign
Thomson, Cambridge ferrace, London NWI.
Tika
GUATEMALA
GUATEMALA
Lake OCITY EL SALADOR
Atitlan
SALVADOR aircraft as it
November never built
The Belize from
their very potent threat.' *stable repressive British following 144] 1 1979 By Ed Murphy
SHORTLY after midnight on 21 December the Czechoslovak Appeal Court announced unsurprising verdict. Al the end of a 16-hour session it rejected the appeals by six members of the Committee to Defend
Unjustly Prosecuted against sentences iotalling 23 years for their activities in defence of civil rights.
Despite the regime's efforts to keep the whole thing secret, a number of lawyers and journalists from the Wcst were in Prague to observe the proceedings. Among them, on behalf of the London-based Charter
Commitec, was Platts-Mills QC.
Platts-Mills is president left-wing lawyers' Haldane Society,
vice-president of the Federation of Democratic Lawyers. In 1938 he was active in the campaign Britain's sell-out of Czechoslovakia, and in 1948 he was expelled from the Labour Party for speaking out in
BELIZE UATEMALA
EL SALVA
construction of a cart road from the Atlantic coast to Guatemala City. The British of course
the road, and 1945 Guatemalans rightly tore up the treaty.
current massive British build-up in Belize stems from 1977 when the Guatemalans threatened to take back their territory by force, and the Labour government under James Callaghan decided to send in the modern equivalent of the gun-boat Harrier jump-jets. But as the Air International reporter noted: 'The Guatemalan Air Force's one squadron of Cessna A-37Bs does not pose a
In fact Britain keeps a military presence 5,000 miles from home in Central America for quite different reasons. It is an insurance policy for heavy British investments in a part of the world where Britain has been unable to impose
nep-colonial governments independence. For instance, insurrection A SMALL crowd of demonstrators outside the court in Prague on 21 December
Lawyers barred from Prague court
favour uf the Communist seizure of power.
All but accused were courtroom. Platts-Mills other lawvers who had a letter ot introduction person, Ms Dojcorova, were stopped in the foyer and told that she was busy (VONS) but would try to see them at the end of the hearing Not satisfied with this, PlattsMills and an Austrian representative of Amnesty International then to see the Minister of Justice. But he was too busy It was anniversary, explained his secretary, • 77 and besider. the budding was being John repaired. But if they returned to the court they could Ondrej, president of the Czechosloof the yak Bar Council.
Due lo an
Soviet- however, they. were met not by Mr Ondrej arrested them and took them to the stop Central Police HO Two hours later the police had obviously realised the implications of their
way.
has seen increasing signs
Said and denounced
September saw right-wing riots.
and order, courtesy of the CIA. campaign to get British troops
Nutters of this capitalism in Britain itself.
the A SMALL military campaign
Christmas wnen
For Death.
Edinburgh
further activity
organisations in Nicaragua
Grenada aid campaign for Nicaragua. four relatives of the highest refused entry to the misused
and five
to the court's chair-
On
distance
went
This wedding
The speak fact,
unfortunate error,
police,
senior officer
overthrew the pro-Western dictatorship of Sir Eric Gairy. Other tiny and impoverished island statelets are rumoured to be going the same
Even Jamaica, relatively stable until now,
Prime Minister Michael Manley has accepted Cuban
the American troop build-up at Guantanamo. This has provoked an American inspired de-stabilisation plan, and
AT ObVIOU ploy might well see British forces rushed to "friendly' countries facing a break-down of law Me while the British fores in Belize are
training.
International correspondent reports going on a practice operation with Forward Air Controller 'Russ Nutter' and watching the Harriers drop bombs, fire their 30-mm cannon and let off air-to-ground rockets. It is not yet possible to get that sort of training in Belfast or Derry. But if British workers don't start an immediate
out of th Caribbean, it is only a matter of time before the
world are used to defend NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY
contribution to the worldwide support of the Nicaraguar revolution was made in Scotland just before
over • 140 people attended showings of the film Nicaragua, Free Country
The film tour, co-ordinated by the IMG in Scotland, covered Paisley, Glasgow, Stirling,
Aberdeen. colleges Paisley and Aberdeen students are planning
in conjunction with the Nicaragua Co-ordinating Committee, and in Edinburgh organisations sponsoring the tour called for the formation of a local solidarity campaign aimed at linking labour and student organisations with the newly formed workers
Through the tour a network of activists has been built up to take part in the NCC's regional
apologised to Plaits-Mills and assured him that he was a person of the character had been by unscrupulous people.
With this he was released.
Minutes after leaving the police HQ, however, he was accosted by a man who asked him in fluent English if he wanted to change some money. being rebuffed the • man then followed Platts-Mills ai a discreet
Czechoslovak policemen may not.. bevery imaginative. But they make up for it in numbers. No less than 12 of them werc used later that afternoon to arrest Charter 77 spokesperson Zdena Tominova as she was speaking to Platts-Mills in a calé trial was characterised, in by the harassment of Czechoslovak citizens who tried to ensurc an open hearing, the closing of the court 1o all but a handful of and the arrest or toreten lawyers whose only wish wasto attend ostensibly open proceedings. Increasingly the Western labour movement is asking: what is it that the Prague authorities are trying to hid
Page 13 scan of this page
Atkins hopes thạt something will turnup
BRITISH hypocrisy bounds. While our endlessly about the foreign troops [in this case Russians] in a small country, thing is happening in a country for which they Zimbabwe.
Several thousand South
troops have been operating there for
some time. Now magazine reported in
early December that 'there is a battery
of South African
Chirundu on Lambesi muzzles pointed at Zambia. There are armed South African guards on the railway line north of Beitbridge,
least as far as Rutenga, and perhaps
beyond.
"There are South African pilots at
the controls
hunting Patriotic Front guerillas deep
in the Zimbabwe-Rhodesis
There are patrols of South African
soldiers fanning
Hills, north of the Limpopo.
When the ceasefire was signed the
British assured the Patriotic Front
that the South
withdrawn. But
happened. Moving In
According to ZANU Robert Mugabe, "20 truckloads of South African troops into the country in the last two days or so.. The British told us that as soon as the Governor set foot in Salisbury
any foreign troops,
African ones, would go. appears that these troops have come
into the country at the invitation of
Britain.'
Confirmation of the continuing
South African presence also comes
from Financial Times
Bernard Simon. In last Friday's issee
IRELAND
THE TORY government's constiterional conference on the Ineland finally got under wa! Monday. The only thing going for it is that no-one expects it to succeed.
Allending the conference are lan Paisley's Democratic Unionist Parts, the Social Democratic Party led by John Hume, Alliance. Parly, whose leader is Oliver Napier.
The only one of these guaranteed to dance to any tune North of Ireland Minister Humphrey 'Dumpiy" Arkins chooses to play is Alliance. The most mays does ith best to please. B. it always does its best to please. Alliance is a minimal force in Irish politics, having received just 6 per cent of the vote in last year's election for the EEC parliament.
Neither Hume nor Paisley can afford to be seen to take a conciliatory line. Hume only agreed to take part after securing a six-point agreement which widened the basis of Atkins' original proposals.
Carefully
A British government declaration that it a Northern Irish indicated a wish for a change in their consțitutional status, then Malesty's Government stand in the way of such a change' enabled Hume 10 persuade the SDLP executive to changers mind and back the conference. But the party leader needs to tread very carefully in light of recent 'greenward' shifts in SDLP attitudes.
Paisley faces a different problem. He surprised many by backing the
Fi dave a contac boycott attitude of Unionist Party. He now prove that his gamble worthwhile. Again this taking 'hard-line' attitude insisting upon unfettered Loyalist rule for the North.
The : Official Unionists have already called for as much in a policy slatement issued on the eve of the
INTERNATIONAL
knows
LUCK go on
presence
responsibility
African
howitzers
their of Puma helicopters,
the Mateke he dismissed as suggestion that South would be withdrawn.
Africans would be
has not they will de
Simon, concerned about the
president to recentl communication"' have moved So while
including South
DuL NOW I
off
I•II Tha
North
James Craig.
and Labour
and the Protestant Protesant State.
Overboard
support. away
and eventually all-Ireland republic'.
MP
which make the compromise
intriguing
"majority
This 'Her particularly would not
Turies'
North of
Wilt as Alkins
Pym and Lord Hailsham. Influential
the Official
needs to
was ninch will mean
question.
knowing how
Bellast this week.
- The foreign
invasion the
Tories are
backing En
'mest unlikely' the African units
Although the South Africans say nothing to hinder the
settlement process in Rodesia', wrote
they are known still to be safety of what
Prime Minister P.W. Botha referred
"our vital lines of
the Patriotic Front
guerillas are cooped up in assembly
camps supervised by the British, the
South Africans are able to roam the
countryside without restriction.
But that's not surprising when you
look at who's responsible for security:
the Rhodesian police. To get the new
the right foot they
murdered no less than seven guerillas
on 1 January. There was so complaint
UTTA DELTATE
La linionis: minister in the 19304, whe said: I am an Orangeman first and a politician
All I boast is that we are a Parliament
The Official Unionists are reliving stch traditions in an attempt to win
from Paisley. Their Jeader, James Molyneaux, has gone overboard with allegations that the 'whole object' of the conference is 'to devise a mechanism to shift Northern Ireland just one step out of the UK
turn it Into an Fellow party Enoch Powell has said that Atkins' 'eyes and affections' are 'on Dublin, on Brussels, on the Vatican'.
It is such publicly stated positions
possibility settlement most unlikely. For many observers the most
question IS what will happen when the conference fails.
speculation has been fuelled by recent revelations about the make-up of the
cabinet committee on the This group headed by Thatcher hersell, and as
contains Lord Carrington, Willie Whitelaw, Francis
Each ot these figures influential in the Tory establishinent, and lie suggestion is that Thatcher is
more seriously than Callaghan a 'settlement' of the Irish
But having the will to 'settle' and
are different things. That is the first ihing Humphrey Atkins is likely to learn in
Army. They are supposed to confined to their bases under the ceasefire, but immediately Christmas they were authorised to patrol along the Mozambique and Botswana borders.
Within days they were murdering guerillas - with the full approval of the British Governor, Lord Soames. Now it is proposed that they should be used to make a 'sweep? to 'mop up' guerillas who failed to reach assembly points in time.
Finaliy there are the government "auxiliaries' — the official name foi Bishop Muzorewa's private There have been many reports of their continuing activities, which included the killing of two guerillas in an armed clash on 31 December. But nothing has been said by Soames.
On the contrary, the Governor is doing everything in lis pomer to boosi Muzorena's faiiy chances in the ENOCH POWELL accuses Atkins of looking to the Vatican
be
after
This insistence that the Joshua Nkomo should postpone his
arrival from last Sunday Should not clash with a mass rally organised by Muzorewa! army. The purpose
onery sees imperate to
country safe for breaking down the ness of the keepin
"Brit creat
SOUTH African troops on patrol near the
February elections. Most blatant was | surround us and encircle ms.
ZAPU leader
of the British been reluctant
imperialisan military effective Patriotic Front
dano
an anti-
unless the warning.
Like Bloody the British
The [formerly
subsequent Challenge court in April.
their
border
Once elections are held and the people rate us into the government, Britain leave the country and me will be fac to face with the South Africans
That is why so
Boody Sant
archers i Dam s
The British Aren that they were fired on farsi the troops would bener fire
had giver But only last несі paratroopers were killed 'acciden ally" by their own side in Arach
Sunday this illustrated Army's real polic? of "shoot now, ask questions later.
Movement UTOM] are organising transport for the demonstration from a number of centres. Further detaits in
issues of Socialist
Women's trial
adjourned again
THE Irish feminists who have becom known as the 'Armagh Eleven' had their trial postponed again last week. The women are now due to appear in
This will be over a year since the original incident when demonstrators were set upon by the police during au International Women's Day protest oufside Armagh jail while expressing
• solidarity with women political prisoners held inside.
The trial was adjourned last week because of the "sudden illness' of a presecution lawyer. The accused have now said they have no intention of returning to the court in April. Socialist Challenge' 10 January 1980 Pags 13
Page 14 scan of this page
INTERNATIONAL
ON THE EVE of the Fifth World Congress Since Reunification of the Fourth International (Eleyenth World Congress), two groupings, the
Haction Trotskyist Tendency', split from the Fourth Interational. The World Congress adopted & statement on the split on 17 November extracts of which are printed below. THE FOURTH suffered a split which represents a serious blow do Dui Hloycllicl...
The leadership of the Bolshevik Faction and the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency have publicly attempted to justify their split by charging that the majority of the forces International have 'abandoned Trotskyism" by their defence of the Nicaraguan revolution and that World Congress democratically prepared. otherwise.
The charge that the majority of the Fourth International is 'liquidating' Trotskyism by its reyolutionary response revolution, by its analysis of the present stage of the Nicaraguan
fraternal attitude to the fighters of the FSLN who led the revolutionary overthrow imperialist-backed. Somoza absurd. "Any other stance would amount to sectarian abstentionism in the face of the living • LevUluliol... Rejected
The BF and the LTT had full rights to
present their views on Nicaragua and other point on the Congress. A section of the LTT which rejected the split course has in fact leaderships of the BF and LTT make the same excuse that there wasn't enough time to begin the discussion on Nicaragua at this Wörld Congress since the overthrow of Somoza four months ago. On the contrary, a fevolutionary organisation such as the Fourth International has the duty to react rapidly to events of such importance as the Nicaraguan revolution...
The right of the LTT and BF to present their views inside the International was not and is not challenged. Their split justified and was therefore unprincipled.
The origins of the split go back before the
Nicarazuan revolution.
Bolshevik Faction has been functiogina.as a
more or less open public faction, without regard
to the decisions or norms of the Fourth International. Increasingly, it sets itself up as a parallel
formation. to the
organising splits of our forces in country atter
apparatus and financial system in competition
with those of the international, and moving their comrades from country
without regard to the interests of the sections involved and not under the control of or even in
consultation with the regular bodies of the International.
Public
Before the Nicaraguan events, they
warned that this World Congress would take ine necessary measures to put a halt to this public factional operation.
functioning reached a criminal culmination in the operations of the 'Simon Bolivar Brigade'
in Nicaragua (see statement by the United
Secretariat of the Fourth International on the
Simon Bolivar Brigade in the 22 October 1979
issue of Intercontinental Press/Inprecor]...
'Ine criminal adventure of
Bolivar Brigade was bound to end in disaster,
and it did. At that point, the Bolshevik Faction
leadership switched its
attempting to cover
prestige of the FSLN, to public attack on the
FSLN as the instrument of consolidation of a
bourgeois state in Nicaragua. This set the stage
for their bloc the
Tendency and the Organising Committee for
Fund
Drive
This week's fund drive got off to ar xeren crı ver tar cme m. Cadwallader sent £3 saying: benefit. The only way to fight the cuts is to tell beoole what is napoening Wish could afford Thatcher and Co keep on putting up prices. Keep the good. work.
Oxford IMG one of our regular and best fundraisers sent us £100. But where are those fund-raising events in Socinlist Challenge 10 January 1980
1979,
INTERNATIONAL has
of the Fourth
has not :been The facts speak
Nicaraguan
reyolution, and by its
of the dictatorship, every agenda of this World
aone. so The
was not politically
For some years the
Fourth International,
setting up their own international
to country were
This method of the Simon
public line from
themselves Wiln the
Leninist Trotskyist Birmingham, supporter month in taking
invalidity against une ores
50, London NI 2XP
more but
HMS and A Agnew M Lomax G Cadwallader Bart, Cardiff Page 14
TIrE THESPEITIN
the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI).
Both the LTT and the OCRFI reacted in a sectarian fashion to the Nicaraguan revolution. There is a parallel here. with the Algerran Cuban revolutions.. revolutions were led by revolutionists who did not have the full Leninist programme, these sectarians deduced that the correct stance was to denounce them at all times as betrayers, irrespective of what they were concretely doing organisation of the masses, the scope of the Colles 01 the
Manchester and Glasgow? Weican only hope that their New Year's resolution was to false money so that our paper can fight not ote name men cenmot Dak
That's why our 'E5 for Socialist Challenge Fund' is so vital. We appeal most carnestly to every reader and
help your paper. this home the battle
Send us a fiver to the following address: Socialist Challenge, PO Box
Our thanks this week to: 10.00 AI.U 3.00 4.00
THE FOURTH
INTERNATIONAL
Statement issued by world congress
Victorious Sandinista querillas in Nicaragua. Woren played a prominent role in the revolution. We are against 'sectarian abstentionism in the face of the living revolution...
taken, etc. • Such
and che revolutionary .From the fact that these
against imperialism,
moblisauou and revolutionaries.
Rob, Cardiff CEvans Cardiff IMG Sale of stamps Preston IMG Anon L. Irwin G Ryan Oxford IMG Swindon SC
Sale of stamps
(Two small corrections Dicvioos cinlics, apologies Jay for not being credited for £50 in issue 126; and f20 profit was made from the sale of wholefood and not the figure mentioned.)
Aníbal Yáñez/Perspectiva Mundial
anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist measures
La sectarian stance can disastrous consequences, deeply discrediting Trotskyism in the eyes of the masses engaged in
process..Any revolutionists make, including on any violation of workers democracy, must be in a different framework — that of unconditional solidarity with the revolution, defence of the revolution
which will attempt drown it in blood as it advances, fraternal attitude toward the
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Under the
from
United
temporary factional
contribution toward Destination
Fourth International .
International and organisation.
the Fourth International. rule, that is, democratic centralism.
Internationa along inese. unes.
hundreds of valuable cadres.
world DOLLI
attempt on whatever
but in their own countries... Reverse
OCRFI, the
COlsc Argentine Partido
the Bolshevik
We maintain our general question of tegroupments.
lead
to the existing nucleii alone, criticisms of necessity
and with a Nicaraguan and will be revolutionary capacities...
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE EVENTS
Sat 11-12 pem)
Whitechapel tube, Sunday 10.30-12.00 Bric meDinE Ciss in e sie industy hurs ic Jan, Speaker former ISTC branch chairperson Friendly and Trades Club, Northumberland St,
LAMINETH: SC ire drailable at Kiosk Brixton
IADUSE tube, Ovaliube. Herse Hil British Rail and Tetric
Torin ucs 22 c , 7 in.
DILHUI V COLENTE fibe
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Fridas
impact of the Nicaraguan revolution, the OCRFI reversed its line toward reunification with the Fourth International.. They de facto excluded a delegation from the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationa
the discussions at their international conference, to which they had originally invited decided ted site eta riat confereie he tey Secretariat. addition, and BF, that is, to support the open break with the Fourth International by the LT1 and BF...
What this reversal by the OCRFI amounts to is a short-sighted policy of seking supposed
advantage. To do this. they turned their backs on the objective need of pursuing a course of exploring the possibilities of a principled unification with the Fourth International, which would represent a major
solving of revolutionary leadership in the coming class battles. in a number of key countries...
The OCRFI, the LTT, and the BF have issued an appeal to set up a 'parity commission for the reorganisation (reconstruction) of the
Ins Is an operation designed to further split and attack the Fourth
world Trotskyism as an They have called for an 'oper conference' of those seking the destruction of
This 'open conference' itself will be nothing more than a talking shop with its only common denominator being opposition to bulding the Fourth International as a world party. It is clear that the OCRFI, the BF, and the LTT do not agree on the major issues of the class struggle today, and that they are opposed to majority
• ¡IclI Pla. will come to nothing, just as the OCRFI itself failed to build an alternative to the Fourth
It will only result in the demoralisation and destruction of
By these actions, the OCRFI, the BF, and •the LTT have turned their backs on burding the Fourth International as an organisation today. The need to: simultaneously build national working-class revolutionary parties. and the
of socialist . reyolution is a fundamental programmatic tenet of Marxism. This is the epoch of imperialism, an epoch of growing internationalisation of the productive forces and of the class struggle, an epoch .oi world revolution and counter-revolution. Any
• basis to build national revolutionary parties without at the same time working to build a revolutionary International will lead its practitioners to grave errors in the class struggle, not only on an international level
The Fourth' International calls the
Bolshevik Faction, and the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency to reverse their
The World Congress affirms that the Socialista de los Trabajadores, the largest grouping supporting
Faction, should become the Argentine section of the Fourth International.
orientation on the principled fusions and
We reiterate the basic concept that the bulding of mass revolutionary workers parties and a mass revolutionary workers Internationa! cannot succeed solely by individual recruitment
which are the Fourth International and its sections, but will
include fusions with othe! organisations either already existing or which will appear in the-course of the revolutionary struggle itself. It reaffirms its conviction that the way in which the Fourth International and its sections respond to openings for fusions is
important test of their
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Page 15 scan of this page
THEORIES OF THE SOVIET UNION
UNDER REVIEW
No escape
from
suburbia?
The Women's Room by Marilyn French Sphere Books Ltd 1978, pbk £1.95 IT'S IN the graffiti-covered women's toilet that we first meet Mira, a 38 year old student. at University Mira's life, Marilyn French exposes the mainstream of experience middle-class American women, in the decades following the fifties.
transformed from an intelligent, independent adolescent without knowing how happened, A few years, a husband and two sons later, she was drowning upwardly-mobile suburbia. intelligence found expression devising a filing system of rotated cleaning chores. Uptight
Her friends fared similarly uptight American mothers of the fifties, endlessly service their husbands clean house,
their demands for food, entertainment. Their conversations routines and cocktail nake boredora Divided fross bair suburban prisons oil dor ve we tich a bat of hep from their
The women suffered: dectrified;
Fi test saster in
dar=
HEE: ite
prison into are e ces I the young sudent:
She soon teamt the values casual clothes, interesting apartments with plants, bright colours and lots of different food. Mira studied English, had a lover, experienced orgasm. Her relationshin with her teenage sons improved. And, she developed enjoyable supportive friendships Explosion
Marilyn French allows the women to soar towards their freedom so as to more strikingly contrast The final pages of the relentlessly bury their optimism with one explosion after another (one of them literal and able to rival any sensational trash in descriptions). For all the possibilities opened up to Mira, she ends alone, bitter, thinking 'all truths are mortal ¡nesses'.
These events are seen filtered throught the 'old' Mira's eyes of acceptance, and len, benefit of hind-sight, friends look laughingly at the past. On the third level is the narrator s voice, raised anger against this oppression.
What happened in The Women's Room iș essentially a let-down. politics of The Women's Room are DOLACS. of despair. disagreement with the descriptions of women's lives we know only too well the despair of еколюте : аерепепсе, stultification, sexual rape.
But French's pessimistic conclusion is that there are no answers to and
Harvard retracing
for
had
Her working to mind
and petulant dothing, sex and
parties vill
it scarcely mcme.
Communist International Martha Revo cartified
UTTL of
most importantly,
and
with other
their fall.
novel no possibilities tion
macabre
distantly other forms women's oppression.
Mira and her
and hatred ruling class's
The their cut). does
There's no
that political
housework,
intellectual
oppression, a bestseller
fine, doesn't it?
STELLA KING
the of women's libera-
At the root of the political failure of the novel is her analysis of women's oppression which, despite its insight, is basically anti-male and little else. Although the material is all there (US imperialism, racism, gay oppression), she does not draw the links between
of oppression and
Like many of the student radicals of the late sixties, French does not notice it is a class society and the
dependence the continuation of oppression (which is not to say that various men don t gel
she draw from the experiences of history, and conclude
organisation of the masses holds the key to liberation.
Which is probably why a novel about the women's movement can be
La book which says, 'give up', suits the establishment just
Critical Theory of the Fami By Mark Poster Pluto Press, hbk £8.50, pbk £3.95 THRASHING out a coherent Marxist theory of the modern family is one of
most challenging problems facing the revolutionary movement
On the one hand the relationship between revolutionary Marxism and the women's liberation movement "depends successful resolution of this problem. On the other, the entire intellectual • Interlace between Marxism analysis which seeks to explain and operate on individual experience such as existentialism, and psychoanalysis, as well as large issues of consciousness, culture, and ideology
hinges around the problem of the family.
Large question marks hang over the continued vitality of the family in all social classes, even though it has been stripped of most of its economic • functions. Disarming?
Where does the family come from and how it sustained? interests does its continued existence serve? Is it true that by structurally oppressing women, the family offers men a limited freedom. make them complacent in their own oppression? Does admission that men as a whole have a real interest in the oppression of women in the family disarm the Marxist mavement?
Question marks over the family
la this tarasca of
clarify the issues is welcome.
Poster's Critical Theory of the Family is just that. Tools theoretical
ideological justification of the status historic which
sociological discussion of the family by providing the theory. He also wants to avoid the fulminating foggy rhetoric of some of the anti-family writers. Instead Poster and wants to provide the theoretical tools to dig into and changing nature of the family and its relationship to society.
clear and acute survey of most of the main attempts to theorise how the family fits into society. demonstrates weaknesses, unsympathetic to Marxism, contribution of Marcuse and Horkheimer, Parsons, Lacan, Laing, Bateson and the family therapists'.
Poster rightly
Whose developing a theory to explain the
differences in family form rather than the similarities, but he crucial question tending to differences have been
wrought.
for analysing the static form of a family and relating it to the larger patterns of power in the society it
SETTOES attempt
Mark
banal
characterises much
'critical'
WELL
understand the
Poster provides a comprehensive,
The book
the strengths and from a standpoint not
of the ALLI Freud, Reich, , Erikson,
focuses question.
evades the socialist historically
The theoretical tools he offers are
universalisation
Isay be process imbich intabits. It offers no : of stod class family was formed in of the bourgeois fatally in the of the 191h and 20th centuries
What the author •does Bol do
how changes in the not just to class as a static but as a dynamic one. How the has been formed in different classe. capitalist stevelopment sinal eat struggle be explained by the critical theor
some clues are suggested in ti four typological case studies offered employing the critical theory' of the bourgeois family, the pre-capitalist aristocratic, the peasant and the carty working class family.
Transformations
Clearly, these different fami forms and the differing psychological constructions they tended to produce
related to set of socia transformations To say that the history of the family enjoys a relative autonomy' from economic develoy ments, as Poster does; is to beg th
If the historical dynamic of the bourgeois family is to be uncovered, and the appropriate response of the
and feminist movements formulated, then discussion will need to be directed to the nature of the transformations which produced til
the privatised nuclear familv in capitalist society. DAVID HOLLAND
Socialist Challenge 10 January 1980 re 15
Page 16 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge
security of us all -- emanates from the it ts posed - to the same source that • 1t has throughout this imperialist powers, and in particular the ruling class in the United States. Isolation
The Soviet invasion should not be seen in isolation.
Before the Invasion of Afghanistan the 'Strategic Arms Agreement, signed by Carter: Brezhney in July had, in effect, been dumped by the US because of Senate opposition
Before the iavasion announced its decision to deploy 600 advanced US nuclear Western Europe. This means, for th first NATO land-bas hitting [gets hside the USSR Befone the invasion the US was negotiating for setting, military bases in Kenya, Oman and Somalia.
Before the invasion Carter announced that. • her: thad deployment of the new generation of mobile intercontinental 'HOW many kilo-tons of deatb did you say?.
known as M-X. This project cost 30 billion dollars and was described by US Senator George McGovern as 'the biggest single waste of public funds since the Vietnam war'.
Before the invasion the US had declared it would bump up its increase in military spending this year by 66 per cent.
Before the invasion the US had stated it was establishing a 'quick farce" to "respone to erises in Persian Gulf and other areas. before the 10Y790 US: member James Schlesinger predicted the US intervene in Saudi Arabia if it found its interests there threatened.
What the soviet men has done in Afghanistan does not help the fight against US war moves. But the Soviet Union is correct to say that the US runs far in front of 'the aggression.
Jimidy Carter is not in the least concerned that the principles of self-determination have been violated
STOP USWA
in er of thi
done
Limitation
and
NATO had a full-scale
missiles, record of iriyasions
strike teach the USSR.
And cabinet spending, its had would militarily
Iran. Nicaragua and elsewhere
withdrawn
'field for world where it has military
will really begin to recede.
of the story on the world crisis. its
AMERICAN soldiers on & Hawk missile site in West Germany
and CIAorganised coups the US has much to
What does worry the US is what has motivated its increased mallary
spread of nuclear missiles and its establishment of a 'task force' — the setbacks American imperialism has recently suffered in
Soviet troops should be immedia-
from Afghanistan.
But perhaps when the US withdraws from thé 64 countries throughout the
bases; perhaps then the danger of world war
• Now see pagos 5, 6% 11 for the rest
Liaison Committee for the Defence
of Trade Union# Saturday 26 January, 10.30ат, Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London Credentials from Him Hiles, 137 Wanst Ark Road, Bford, Essex. Reinstate Robinson Conference
Sunday 13 Jannary, 11.00aм, Digheth Clic Hall, Birrainy Credentials From Mr Colin Millet 20 yest wildlands B63
"Janata for
Lok Dal
Gandhi
but te average
been no
What
is that as far
record
What is problems
social
imagines.
•Union
London
isses lost
India Bread with Liberty.
It says a lot about this election that none of the three major bourgeon
arties - Congress(l), Janata,
- bothered to produc
Harre lastia Party defeated Indire
time not becaus supported what it it they wanted to the Emergen
Lament to satisi
And yet the election vistory of Indira Gandhiwillnot bring any joy to the masses: India faces a drought eul shortage, power shortage, a massly balance oi payments crisi
• office is to feather their own nests. The
salary minister diseounting bribes and perks, is 37,50 rupees a month: This is over 800 time the average wage of a worker.
Since mid-December there has
work, for agricultura labourers in the provinces of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. This means that 31 per cent of the population is unemployed In Tamil Nadu there have been reports that students are getting support trom the rural poor in some districts for the reviyal of a Naxalite-type movement.
will the new Congress government be able to do? The answe
as the masses exe concernedit will do nothing, as its past
clearly reveals. All indications are that in the next decade with the social and economic impasse which Indian society has reached.
needed to resolve the of India is social revolution. The 1980s will see massive
explosions throughout the country. The fruits of Indira Gandhi's victory may turn bittersooner than she
PUBLICMEETING
The History and Future of the
Indian Communist Movement
Speaker: Tariq Ali
Friday 18 January, 7,30pm,
Room S16, adjacent Student
Bar, Institute of
London WOl Nearest tay 20 Bedford Way,
Russell Square):
Used by
Commission, Interpatio
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