A lot of rubbish has been written in the papers and not only those of the ruling class, about what the 1970's have in store for us What most of the articles have in common is that when they try and look into the future all they can see is the past! What is worse is the fact that the last people to display any understanding of the past are the cabinet ministers, bankers, priests and trade union bureaucrats and other parasites that float to the top of this decaying society and sell their wisdom to the gutter press. Unfortunately for them fewer and fewer young people can spare their ideology anything more than contempt and as the 1970s progress many a British "gentleman' is going to wish his children had never been born, not to speak of the sons of the working class. But we should remind ourselves of some of the other deeds of the British ruling class that it is going to very much regret over the next months and years if the new generation of revolutionaries plays its caras right. For if we, the thousands of young people fighting the system at this moment on many different battle grounds up and down the country, can organise ourselves with a common strategy, then the 1970s will be the time when the chickens of British ruling class come home to roost. In fact, if we look around at this moment we can already see some of them coming.
First and foremost is the crisis of British imperialism in Ireland. For 50 years-we could say for 500-the British ruling class has been viciously laying the basis for the present civil war in the North. The Tory leaders and Whitehall ministrators, suppos their o cicy of silent ar Policy of silen repression in tne worn could last maelivery they were no doubt fooled by their own chauvinist propaganda into thinking that the rish people were too stupid, lazy and servile to ver mignt back. blue wonder ney are scream ing with rage now in the face of this heroic struggle by the people of the Bogside and the Falls against the army of British imperialism; they couldn't imagine that the young workers and school children in Ireland would show the same courage and skill in defying the troops night after night in street warfare as has been shown by the revolutionary youth in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East. Neither the Labour nor the Tory governments can provide any answer to the problems of British imperiaism in Treland except ruthless repression of the Catholic community in the North The crisis in Ireland will continue through the 1970s. It is the urgent duty of young people in Britain to respond to British imperialism in Ireland in exactiv the same way that we must answer American imperialism vietnam. run sougar with the struggle of the Irish people for national no British troops in Ireland: release all Irish political prisoners. We must build up a massive movement amongst British youth that will help to undermine the strategy of both Tory and Labour leaders in relation to Ireland. Black Workers But if the Irish situation is the most dramatic example of the crisis of the old order, equally threatening signs fo crisis are looming up on the domestic front. We must ensure that the British ruling class pays the full price in the 1970s for profiteering out of black labour in the past. Not content with its super-exploitation of the colonial peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, British capital thought it could o one better by importing Black labour into ritain and using it for two main purposes first to provide a pool of cheap labour which could be exploited without the refinements of manipulation now necessary to handle British workers; secondly, to use the Black people to divide the working class politically setting off one section against another, and setting up the black workers as a scapegoat for the chronic problems of British capitalism. Already, the ruling class is seeing how this mouth-watering prospect can turn into a nightmare: far from being the docile labourers they to be, more and more young Black people are recognising that their social, economic and political problems can never be solved within a decaying capitalist s stem. Far from becoming the easiest section of the working class to push around, they are showing their potentiality to become the most militant fighters against the brutalities of our society. We must ensure tha he 1970s become the decade when the blac population, far from being a means of creating bogeymen for the workers, become a revolutio nary example to the wore class and tue bogey men of the bourgeoisie. We must help to turn their present isolation from the white labour movement into a guide to British workers to break from the bankrupt reformism of the party of that movement, by boding a ter pot the will fight for the revolutionary interests o whole proletariat. We can make a start along this road now by combatting the racist attacks on black people, discrimination against them, intimidation and victimisation of black youth in the scroos anonactones ane screets we mus demand the immediate scrapping of the racist marasion legsation. and exoose the racismi of both the major political parties. Finally, we must act in defence of all the arrested and jailed Black militants and of the vanguard organisa tions in the Black community being witch hunted by the press, police and courts at this LOLCHE Combat Bureaucracy But the problems of the ruling class don't end with the threat of a million and a half Irish and another million black people rising up in revolt in Britain. The rot has also begun in earnest among our very own British youth. However much they may have succeeded in the past in dividing one section of the population and in brainwashing successive generations of young people, it's no longer working. The bourgeoisie needs some fancy ideas to justify their irrational system, so they tell us at school about democracy and freedom But for the Vietnam generation they should have thought of something else to talk about. They try to frighten us with the terrors or toe •mainst states ano scare scores about the British Communist Party. But the real solution to the degeneration of the Russian workers state has been shown hot by the butchers in Vietnam and in Aden, but by the young revolutionaries in Czechoslovakia and öther East European states. And as for the fairy tales about the British Communist Party, they can fool hobody who has seen anything of the harmless reformism of the C.P. and its youth organisation. As for the institutions of the bourgeoisie, the monarchy, the Church, Parlia ment, the City of London and the Tory Party, It would be alcun to una a student or young worker in whom they inspired enthusiasm. Even the Holy of Holies the family-is now under attack, and we can expect to see millions of women rejecting the role assigned them by the capitalist system. It is the job of young revolutionaries to carry on a merciless struggle against this moribund ideology of the bourgeoisie and the institutions of education that transmit it. We must ensure that the generation of young people now leaving the schools are won to the struggle for socialism in the 1970s. The Labour Movement But our job is not simply to concern ourselves win tae probiems or youth. because, wnethel we like it or not, the fate of the revolution in the 1970s will be determined by the organised labour movement. And it is onlv the short-sighted that lack confidence in the potentialities of the working class. For the absence of big political struggles on the part of the British labour movement during the last twenty years has another side to it. During the boom years he working class has step by step built up it trade union strength. The blinkered monopolists could only see the prospect of quick profits while the boom was on and abstained from trying to crush the growing shop stewards move ment rather than hold back production for longer term interests in the class war. Now they are reaping the harvest of their neglect.
We can understand why if we look back to the dock strike. What was obvious about the strike was that the TWU bureaucracy sold out the dock workers, refusing to fight not only against the Devlin productivity deals but even for the £20 basic wage. But less obvious and just as important was that the fact that an important wing of the ruling class regarded the agreement as a total sell-out on the part of the one which offers a way out of the impasse. In a number of countries we have seen the creation of organisations of youth which, from the very start, clearly defined themselves politically. They adopted Leninist norms of organisation, and by allying themselves with the Fourth International, which maintained the political traditions of Leninism from the degeneration of the Communist International until the present, they clearly placed themselves in the historical current of revolutionary Marxism. Starting from the neces sity of building their organisations from the revolutionary battalions of youth, they have seen their longer-term task as strengthening the sections of the Fourth International in their countries and developing an orientation towards the working class.
The best-known of these organisations was the JCR (Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire) of France, which was able to play a huge role in the student movement in May 1968, and subsequently played a major part in establishing the Ligue Communiste, which is beginning to implant itself as a serious force in the workers' movement. The Young Socialist Alliance in the United States, by waging a principled struggle to build a mass movement against the Vietnam war, has also become very strong, and similar organisations have developed in Belgium, government. In other words in the perioc are now entering the ruling class is findin increasingly difficult to co-exist even wit wretched class-collaborators who run mo the unions; they are bracing themselves n merely for a war against the militants, bu a confrontation with the labour moveme whole, bureaucrats and all. In this situati is certain that elements within the TUC rather make crippling concessions to the government than stand up and fight. It is therefore crucial that all socialists should themselves for action in the big workers struggles which lie ahead. We must first s developments on the industrial front clo and then prepare to mobilise as many pe as possible when the time comes to act. ] addition, wherever a rank and file comm in defence of trade unions exists, studen young workers should try to maintain ec and work within it. Where none exists w ry to make contacts wilocal shop-ste committees or individual militants to org such a defence committee.
Seize the Time If we seize our opportunities, organise o effectively, and build a centralised, revo youth organisation, on the left of the es ished political parties, the 1970s will be sive decade for the socialist movement i Britain. We must link ourselves with the revolutionary forces in the rest of the w particularly in Europe, and be ready to i everything into the struggle in the likely of a revolutionary crisis in Spain or Frar Italy. We must build up the movement i darity with bae peoples of Indo-China a other parts of the Afro-Asian world and collaborators who talk of progressive ro the "national bourgeoisie and "peaceft coexistence with imperialism; we must bat all notions of peaceful and parame roads to socialism in Britain; we canno the degenerated Soviet state to be passe socialism; last and most important we m of the revolutionary vanguard. If we do things, and we must, then one more chi will come home to roost, this time in th of the labour movement and in the forn LEON TROTSKY Peter Gov Canada, Denmark and elsewhere. The S League places itself firmly alongside the nisations. We aim to build, from the stri the student, anti-imperialist and other f strong revolutionary Marxist organisatic youth. Alongside the International Mar Group, the British section of the Fourt national, the Spartacus League offers y militants in colleges, factories and schoc alternative both to the treachery of the and Communist Parties and to the dead anarchism and hippydom.
In doing this we will always be conso being part of an international movemen just in sentiment, but in actual practice this spirit that we are preparing to parti the "Red Europe" Conference in Brusse November 21/22. Called by the Ligue C muniste of France and the Jeune Garde liste of Belgium, it will bring together th of young revolutionaries from all over E discuss a continental strategy against E capitalism and the struggle for a Sociali States of Europe. The Spartacus League play its part in preparing this conferenc will take a large contingent to it.
Forward to a Red Europe!
Murray Smith