AnTI Michael Brooks, a Belfast councillor and Orangeman, is to contest the con stituency of Govan in Glasgow for the National Front in the clection, It is ironic that this first open attempt to mobilise a reactionary current inside the working class takes place in Govan, for Govan, along with Clydehank and Scotstoun, 15 the home of the famous UCS yards, whose struggle over redundancies came to symbolise the immense strength of the West of Scotland working class movement.
But however strong the masonry it is uscless if the house is built on foundations of sand. The NF realise that the key to bringing this particular house down, or at leust opening up huge cracks in the Noor. is the issue In the past the Orange Order and the trade union movement have co-existed in the old industrial areas of Scotland, albeit rather uneasily. Ireland, it was argued, was about relig ion and thus irrelevant, or even dangerous, for the organisations of the working class.
The initiative of the NF in Govan is therefore only an attempt to deepen and widen the already existing political split inside the heart of the organised working class. If the workers movement fails to take a position on the question of Ireland and politically confront the reactionary nobsense of Loyalism the poison of fasc ism will gain its first footholds un contested.
It will then only be a short step from winning such support at the polls to building up an active fascist movement in the streets of Scotland.
bank Trades Council, Scottish im migrant Labour Council, IMG and others.
Thursday 3 October at 7.30 pm in Mac Lellan Galleries, Sauchiehall Street.
working class ther the Ladoor Partythat false friend of both-should be in office where its true colours are beer vitibie. This is bracisery Wet Als Jovies argued in his article when he wrote af the ICRA campaign that it will nor help the class strangle in Baren but nether will it help it in Ireland; and that a dofeet for Labour would weaker the posifion of the trish people and not strang then it.
To roduce this to stupid remanis about lecturing' the trish on the seed to wait for the British working ciess to act is to do a serious dünervice to constructive polere our this important poiHAMI TEELA Labour in thir way is much more effactive than the moral gesture proposed by SCRA, ernment is elected.
decisive question.
our Party-to keep Britain in.
terns, mon Market remains intense.
bership on virtually any terns.
working class remains. would really be amongst the pigeons.
plement it.
view with equanimity. siderably weaken world imperialism.
ClasS. ship.
oporation on a European level.
*For a Enropcan Congress of Lahour.
Alan Jones LABOUR AND THE The outbursts of Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins over the Common Market are not unexpected, but they do give a very good indication of what is going to come after the election-particularly if a Labour Goy It is clear that for the most important sections of the British ruling class, membership of the BEC is a They will pull out all the stopsincluding getting the Jenkinsites to bring down a Labour Government, and if necessury split from the LabCertainly they will exert the most intense pressure to ensure that Wilson & Co.-having got themselves more or leas impaled on the referendum hook merely Tudge up a few tiny changes in Britain's terms of memhership, and then declure these to be a great victory justifying a YES vote to stay in on the renegotiated"
Wilson and Callaghan can be expected to excel tbemselves in servile obedience to this project.
However the BEC remains a time bomb which is ticking away beneath the Labour Party. The opposition of the working class to membarship of the ComBecause of this a large group of bureaucrats, right up to the level of the Latthe direct interests of the ruling class and oppose memNo maller how nuch Wilson may wrigde and manoeuvre, the reality is that the two sides of this particular puzzle simply will not fit. Even if the bureaucrats can all be whipped into line, and it is far from sure that this can be done, the opposition of the HIGH RISK For the ruling class there is a frighteningly high risk that any referendum, no matter how it is worded or what Wilson advises, will result in a vote against membership of the EEC. If that happened the cat Imagine the reaction of the working class if the referendum had a majority for withdrawal and then the capitalists cobbled together some government which refused to im However if no referendum is held then there is no doubt that a row is going to be unleashed inside the Labour Party on a scale which not even Wilson cun Faced with the importance of such an issue and the fact that the campaign on the EEC is a tool for developing the internationalist consciousness of the working Class, it is vital that the revolutionary left hus a clear position on tie question of the Common Market. Despite appearances, the EEC is a fundamental clers ques tion of not merely national but interpational dimensions, and for this reason it is capable of polarising British sociely pontically in a way no simple industrial struggle can, IMPERIALIST SYSTEM The EEC is a key part of the world imperialist sys tem. It represents the development of a much stronger European competitor to US imperialism. This is why the EBC plays an important role in an inter-imperialist competition in wlich the working class should take a position of 'a curse on both your houses' But the Common Market also plays a vital role in strengthening the imperialist system as a whole. It is for this reason that the United States did not oppose but supporied the formation of the EEC The collapse of the EEC and the reduction of European capitalism to unintegrated individual capitalist states, breaking the structures necessary to create a European concentration and integration of capital which constitutes the essence of the EBC, would conIt would alter the world retation of forces in favour of the colonial revolution and the workers states even leaving aside for the moment the question of the European working For this reason socialists must be for the weakening and destruction of the EEC, and against Britain's menbership. In this struggle the revolutionary left must *Immodiate withdrawal of Britain from the EEC *The expulsion of Jenkins and the pro-Market MPs from *An emergency Trades Union Congress and emergency Tabour Party conference before any referendum on the Com mon Murket in order to decide upon a vote againat member*For a working class united front for witbdrawal from the BEC-Do co-operation with bourgeois lonces.
*For the establishment of rank and file workers' co*For a United Socialist States of Europe.
Red Weekly 3 October 1974 Page 3
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STOP THE NF IN GOVAN! Public meeting sponsored by Clyde
Misions of TV wiewe.sew MiG member Brian Grogan haul Harold Wisen over the coals on ecland at an election meeting in Hornsey last Friday. Taiting the fight to