THE FIGHT AGAINST REDUNDANCIES IN BRITAIN, W GERMANY AND FRANCE Also: Prescott • India - Pakistan Ceylon Students Television: Seize the network
Red Mole The division of the Indian sub-continent by British imperialism in 1947, which was the result of the native bourgeoisie's historical inability to carry through the unification of the country, has been the key manoeuvre of British and world imperialism in that part of the world. With the help of the opportunist policies of the Soviet bureaucracy and Indian Communist Party this manoeuvre has been partially successful for nearly a quarter of a century. Anti-Pak chauvinism in India and anti -indian chauvinism in Pakistan have been used again and again as a means to divert discontent of the super-exploited toiling masses away from the revolutionary mass struggle against their own exploiters.
The famine in 1966-7; the revolutionary upsurge in Pakistan in 1969; the national uprising of Bangla Desh in 1971; all these have upset the relative equilibrium established on the sub-continent as a result of the abortion of the 1946-7 Indian revolution. The mass revolutionary upsurge in East Bengal has not been crushed by the ferocious repression of the Yahya Khan military dictatorship. The guerilla struggle which has emerged from that repression has led to a gradual radicalisation of the Bangla Desh freedom fighters; the bourgeois-nationalist Awami League leadership being subjectively challenged or objectively by-passed by broader and broader layers. Independent revolutionary groups are already active in the struggle.
It is under these conditions that the leading cliques of both states have launched a war, the criminal ounter-revolutionary character of which should not pe any marxist.
JAKE PRESCOTT: AVictim of British Class Justice The effects of the growing instability which characterises British capitalism today are by no means restricted to the economy alone. Their repercussions on other spheres of the state machine should under no circumstances be underestimated. The judicial system in particular, which is responsible to the bourgeois State for safeguarding property and defending bourgeois legitimacy (i.e. the divine right of the capitalist class to govern indefinitely) feels the developing strains much sooner than other levels of the political superstructure and, as a result, responds to them more sharply. In certain circumstances the old liberal mask can be thrown away completely so that class justice is not only done but seen by the class to be done.
The Red Mole 12th Dec. 1971 Page2 DOWN WITH COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY WAR Indira Gandhi, who has launched the war under the pretence of assisting the liberation of the Bengali people, wants to instal an Awami League Government in Dacca in order to keep the liberation struggle under control. She regards this control as essential, not only to stop the struggle growing over into a social revolution, but also to prevent it spreading to West Bengal, where a pro revolutionary situation has been developing for several years, and eventually all over India. Yahya Khan, in dread of the collapse of the artificial state of Pakistan, based solely on the link of religion, desperately wants to destroy the operational base of the Bangla Desh liberation struggle on Indian soil, before the mass upsurge breaks out in West Pakistan too.
The Soviet bureaucracy, afraid of the consequences of a second Vietnam in South Asia, supports the Indian bourgeoisie's manouvres in order to avoid a generalised revolutionary crisis on the subcontinent. American imperialism and the Chinese bureaucracy also want to defend the status quo, but by different means: by having the artificial state and the Yahya Khan clique's rule consolidated. But all these governments' manoeuvres are in clear opposition to the interests of the broad, toiling masses of India and Pakistan, which demand the overthrow of the rule of the bourgeois-landlord alliance ruling both India and Pakistan. All these manoeuvres will be in vain. Whatever the outcome of the military operations, the situation will become more and more explosive on the whole sub-continent.
The sentence of 15 years inflicted on mised for his political views. dict is meant not so much to teach sands of other young workers coming that the latter (even more so than ordinary "crime") does not pay. The record of Justice Melford-Stevenson and morality. The evidence on which Jake was convicted is flimsy by any of course, the things he is alleged to have said to the 'hero of the hour'— tatorship a year and a half ago.
well be recommended for a Vitoria pursuit of the class war!
Number 33 12th December 1971 Jake Prescott is a more recent example of this process. A young revolutionary militant of working class origin is victiThe verPrescott a lesson, but also to warn thouinto contact with revolutionary politics remains unblemished in the eyes of the class which appoints him to his wretched position as an upholder of bourgeois law standards: the testimony of two informers planted in Jake's prison cell, plus, Chief Superintendant Habershon. Apart from this there was no evidence against Jake except, as Melford Stevenson obligingly pointed out to the Jury, his political views. We are convinced that it is on the basis of these that Prescott was found guilty of 'conspiracy (even the jury was forced to admit that Jake had nothing do do with the bombing of Carr's house). Our friendly Judge accordingly, inflicted the 15 year sentence. Stevenson is the same Judge who inflicted the vicious sentences on the Cambridge students who demonstrated against the Greek dieA few more cases like the present and he could Cross, for undaunted persistence in the The whole manner in which the Purdie/ Prescott case was conducted points out to a serious failing on the part of the revolutionary movement in Britain. Because The Fourth International calls upon the peoples of the Indian sub-continent not to be taken in by chauvinist propaganda of the ruling cliques of New Delhi and Islamabad. The duty of the revolutionaries in both countries is to stand for the defeat of their own bourgeoisie and for transforming the counter-revolutionary war into a socialist revolution. In Bengal, this means that the Bengali freedom fighters should continue their struggle for BanglaDesh.
Twenty-five years of bourgeois rule in both states has not solved a single key problem of the sub-continent. The ruling cliques have maintained the legacy of mass starvation stagnation, backwardness, national oppression and extreme inequality, inherited from centureis of colonial domination. These bankrupt classes have no right to and no possibility of taking upon themselves the solution of the problems of the Bengal people or of any other ethnic minority. The debt-ridden poor peasants, the rural unemployed and labourers, the super-exploited industrial workers, shall take their fate into their own hands and re-unite the sub-continent on a socialist basis.
DOWN WITH THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY INDO-PAK WAR!
FORWARD TOWARDS A UNITED SOCIALIST FORWARD, TOWARDS THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT REVOLUTION!
5 December 1971 The United Secretariat of the Fourth International there is no joint activity by the revolutionary groups on the elementary basis of defending all victims of the class struggle, individual militants are left to organise their own defence. This often lands them in the hands of politically hostile lawyers and leads to sloppiness (as in the defence of Jake) or a total unconcern for other victims as in the case of Purdie's lawyer, who in his summing-up stated boldly that meaningful evidence existed against Jake and the other Six, but not against lan Purdie. The latter cannot, of course, be blamed for his lawyer (who did after all manage to get him acquitted), but the lack of any legal defence network on the part of the left as a whole is an extremely serious weakness which we have to remedy rapidly to prevent repetition.
Also it must be admitted that not a single revolutionary group initiated or participated actively in a political campagn even on a propaganda level, to demand the release of Prescott and Purdie (and here The Red Mole, as the journal of the International Marxist Group must share part of the blame), despite the fact that there were obvious political differences.* This situation cannot be allowed to continue. Given the political situation in Britain today an increasing number of political militants will be arrested, tried and sentenced. Many of them will be blacks, many Irish and we are certain that some British militants will also be victimised as the judiciary gets more and more panicky. This necessitates a clear-cut de fence strategy on the part of the revolutionary left. In future issues we will attempt to outline such a strategy.
* Apart from the political views of Purdie/ Prescott we will in a subsequent issue explain our differences with the political concepts of organisations such as the Angry Brigade.