THE COLD WINDS of 1975 began to blow through the workers" movement last Friday with Har social con tract, backed up by sunny promies of the belie er world awaiting CONFRONTATION Wilson's speech represents much more than just another "betrayal" by this arch-misleader of the workers" movement it is the first step in a sharp turn of the Labour Government away from persuasion and towards confrontation with the rank-and-tile of the working cluss.
Throughout 1974 the Labour Government tried to perpetuate the myth that the crisis of Brilish capitalism could be solved without cither the capitalist class or the working class having to make major sacrifices. All that was required, they said, was for workers to accept that their standard of living would have to stand still for a year or two, and all the troubles would blow over. Meanwhile Labour would make sure that the burdens were evenly distributed within the working class and reward this spirit of sacrifice by taking steps to solve some of the most pressing social problems of inequality, bad housing, inadequate health care, and education.
But the logic behind the social contract was to tie the fate of the working class securely to the capiTalist system. And wast this system demands is not just a freeze in working cuts. It demands that the refloating of bankrupt British capitalism must be financed out of workers pockets.
In case the Labour leaders bad forgotten this truth (which they were frantically trying to hide from the working class) a series of economic blows came as sharp reminders at the end of the year: a gigantic trade deficit, the plunimerting of the pound, and the tortering of the British Leyland empire (to be followed in rapid succession by As ton Martin and Burmal Oil.
At the same time the latest figures trom the wages front indicated that the working class was far from swallowing the pie-in-the-sky of the "social contract" With wages rising at an average of 2618, most workers were managing to keep their beads above water, even if with growing difficulty.
But this good news for the working class inspired nothing but gloom in the Labour cabinet. For it meant that the workers were successfully clawing back a big slice of the £3000 millon which Healcy' s budget planned to filch out of workers pockets to fill the coff ers,of the bosses, At the same time the bosses were screaming that they needed almost twice Healey's proposed hand-out just to scrape through through. The time had clearly come for a change in approach.
American President Theodore Koosevele had a famous recipe for maintaining the power of US impenalism: walk softly and carry a big stick". But so far Wilson has had to stomp up and down in the hope that no-one would notice that his hand were empty, But since Labour have talled to convince the working class to commit hara-kiri they must move quickly to equip them selves with the big stick" necessary to do the job some new form of ancomes policy. Wilson's speech is just laying the ground for such a Labour's next majoe step has already been mapped our by Denis Healey in his last budget: a series of measures that will try to cut back on inflation by allowing unemployment to risc. This policy has the additional advantage that Labour can avoid the impossibly expWilson has besten Benn to the punch on schemes to revive failing industry ensive business of bailing out the food of timus that will be thrown into financial trouble over the next year, and, at the same time, blame it on the irresponsibility" of the working class.
But increased unemployment done will not be sufficient to black So the Government as a whole is certain to adopt one or another of the incomes policy schemes which the Labour right has had on the drawing board for some time.
This now incomes policy will not be a repeat of the Tories'-for that would meet with terrific resi stance from the working class and the mass of Labour voters, who remember the oft-repeated pledge nesome scheme of using a combination of the price code to penalise emplayers who grant wage rises above some fixed figure, and the taxation system to claw back such rises from workem who receive them, is likely to be adopted.
siderable share of the hurden for policing the incomes policy on individual employers, and involve a big hotting up of the level of the class struggle. This is undoubtedly the reason why the authors of such schemes are also the most steadfastly opposed to any relaxation of the picket laws or the granting ofany concessions to the Shrowsbury 2. they understand that the employers are going to need the Backing of the police and the courts in the coming year, and that the power of the state must not be eroded one jot in the face of such a prospSET WE shout wage restraint..
the tinke weapon .
WELLE BE. the combativity of the working class. ver to return to such a policy. Instead Such a scheme would place a cun- British Leyland, tical suicide
gift to Bangladesh was the declaration Parly) - a breakaway from the Awami weapons which they refused to hand AMONG THE MANY political pris er languishing in the jails of the Minh dictatorship are two milite1 - Eva Forest and Antonion Durwhose lives are in grave danger.
Arrested last year supposedly in connection with the bombing of a cafe in Madrid's Correo Street, they have now been charged with Involvement in the assassination in 1973 of the Spanish Prime Minister, Admiral Carrero Blanco.
Militants and organisations of the Fourth International are in the fore front of the world-wide fight to save the lives of Forest and Duran. The following are excerpts from a recent statement of the Spanish sympathising organisation of the Fourth International, the LCR-ETA (VI):
Eva Forest and Antonio Duran will soon be brought to trial by the War Council (military court| that is to deal with the "Carroro affair. This will be the culminating point in ont of the mont sinister political farcos staged by the dictatorship in its whole history.
The first act of the farce was the pol ke propaganda campaign around the Carmo Street attack. The BPS (Political Socll Brigade, the political polices, with the ENTERIVE COLOTOCK DETAC DOLLECOL sews media and the silent complicity of mcrous workers orginisations, pros mand Eva and Anlonio as being respon Today we know that this was nothing but lies, the crudes slanders Jewsched winst a handful of militants and againsr he Spanish Communar Parry and the ETA - V [Basque nationalist group/ The Correo Street attack does not even fore in the pre-rial hoaring opened agnine.
In their statement to the police nel ther they nor any of their comrades have acknowledged the slightest participation in these sets, or in the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's New Year draconian laws were passed and BangIndesh, like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, is now governed by emergency regulations. The vice of the strong state has the whole of the South Asian sub-continent in its grip.
For some time now the ruling Awami Loague has been beset by the endemic corruption which has mainly benefited Awami Leaguers, the Government has lost some of its senior members - such as the Finance Minister Tajudin Ahmed, who resigned on 26 October last year after making public criticisms of the Governent and the Awari League.
For several months Sheikh Mujib has heen discussing with close advis i ers the possibility of making Bangla desh a presidential republic and dispensing with parliament. The state of emergency, which gives the Government anlimited powers to arrest, detain and sentence dissidents, could well be designed to provide the legal backdrop to more permanent constitutional changes.
MASS OPPOSITION The chronic criss confronting Lle country has begun to drive important sections of the masses towards the lett Five leading trade wsions have called Carrero.
It was only through the nessure ol terrible physical and inocal torture, which gravely affected the healtle of those com rades and espocially Duran's health. that. the BPS was able to stablish the existence of hiding places, that is, perfoctly legitImate instruments For protocting revolu called by the JSD (National Socialist of an official state of emergency. New League, whose leaders, all heroes of the liberation struggle, are now in prison- was a big success despite in timidation and harassment by the thups of the Awarmi League.
The JSD has now decided to organise clandestinely, and no one disputes its experience in this field.
serious political problems. Apart from direut links with the masses, and also tionary action from the repression of a bloody and tyrannical dictatorship. But what is the use of evidence when it B the francoist anny that is in change of Justice'? The Francost army - this pot ential instrument of civil war, this acte Instrument of the colonial war in Spanish Sahara, this apparatus for beating in back after independence.
La civil war.
What worries the Government further developed. By their tail-ending of the of a fight for socialism. Moreover, is that many of the JSD militants have Awami League over the last three other groups on the left.
SOCIALISM tition"
have underground arsenals containing bound together by Stalinist idcology The state of that sense both the isolated armed emergency and what follows it could struggle carried out by the Maoists well provide the spark for a new war- and the tail-ending of the Awami The fact that even the pro-Moscow groups are distancing themselves from Bangladesh's Chiang Kai Sheikh show's strong atate can only be successful how far the mass discontent has now years the pro-Moscow communists nothing else. es for socialism.
ways rights adatical". to line, humibating, and reprosing Sparish youth. What good is orienee when the laws, judges, and courts are just auxiliarics in the repression of evolationar les, when the news modia is controlled and manipulated with impunity' Few, vary few voices, ours among have contributed to the repression now being carried out against the left ana whole. As u result the pro-Moscow student organisation recent ly sulfered'a split wheir some or its leading cadres lert in disgust to join What will be decisive in the coming period will be the programmatic hasis of the struggle which will devclop. The JSD have up till now had the co rect position that the struggle must be for socialism, and not for some vague, ill-defined, "democratic revolThe Maoists and the pro-Moscow groups, fighting each other, but still refuse to acknowledge this fact. In League by the pro-Moscow groups lead to the same impasse.
A struggle agianst the Mujibist dom if conducted within the framework at a certain stuge the struggle tor a socialist Banpladesh will have to be linked with the struggie for a united socialist Bengal, which means that it is necessary to develop broad links between socialists in both East and West Bengal. The links between the Indian and Bangladesh ruling classes should explain the need for this, if The declaration of the state of emergency is a sign of the weakness of the Bangladesh regime. But the left will have to take account of its own weaknesses in order to be able to mount a successful chailenge When this challenge begins to take shape, there will he many Bengali workers in this country who will lay the basis for a solidarity movement with the struggle of the Benguli massthem aww. mined aminst this Since an dejence of an itz victims. We say all and we stress the aard oll The Spanish Communist purty's total ahsence of responsinility for these acts has boon affirmed and defended hy all the workers orginisations, whileh aero apreed in denouncing this aspect of the campaige of the dictatorship. But in the detcoco of the ETA - whose respons ibility in the affair has never been prov ation itself a defence that was just as nec * Were was much relissace on the pa and jostified as the defence of th of certain arganisations, L not silence or most Implicit accusations. As for those who have been the main victims, those who most diructly suffered and continue to sufler the effects of the palico camp aipa, only two or throo organisations us sumod the responsibaltry and honour of defending them anconditionally against the hourgeoisie.,sticking to the principle that has guided the revolutionary solidar ity of communists in all pochs: Again hourgeois repression a revofutionary is of IT today the lives of Eva Forest and An tonio Duran are threatened in the Lamou affair. it is because solidarity with thera was insufficient, because the dictatorship thought that they had heen abandoned, left without any support. There is now an attempt to make of Cheri 2 bloody te tribution" for the execution of Carruro. a retribotion demanded and requined by the most reactionary political sectors, those who for that very reason had iden tified themselves most closely with the To abandon these comrados to their assassins would not only be a crime, f crimes, in cocouragement to repression it wouhd strengthen the «fecte ama monum try of these new crimes. And this increas 6f strength would and up by hitting al those liphting against the dictatorsalp, in cluding those who are wow encounter the dietatorship by their silence I'anyone thinks that we are exagger ating, that the death ponalty will not he requested in the 'Carvero affair or that lE it is requestod it will not be pranted, lee Them recall Salvador Prig Antich ISranish anarchist militant exccuted by the dictatorship Lest scarf If anyone bolieves that the danger of the death penally exit but that it uan be averted by pitlenne gnatures on protest and petitions, let Dient aso poseimber Sal vador Puig Antich!
I' anyone lhinks that nothing can be done, that if the dictatorship wants to murder Era Forest and Antonio Dur an it will do so, let them remember Izko and his comrades Basque militants sco tesood to death by a Spanish military court in 1970, but saved by missive wave of protest strikers both inside and outside Spedn| Yes, it is possibic to sour the lies or wave of protest strikes both inside and minute conne. Nor a second must be lour.
the brosdes and most combatire cangarens of national and interctionar solidartry wuer be orsemised?
Richi now we must hegin organising a united struggle of all parties, all work ens' organisations, all bodies of the vinguard in the factories, universities, institutes liheral protessions, le the workers comm Issions around the slogan: Down with the Тато - 10 153 101 1386 5 of Es Forest and Antonio Duran!
alion of a United Front Against Repressior in orior to begin a periment strene of airer the War Councils, the bloodiest instr uments of Francoist repression, the most striking example of the role played by the atiny in Lie dictatonhip, the most tangible pect nothing from the army but the most brutal repression -The scruggle against the repression will take the important place it deserves in the sent preparation of the general strike leed ing to the revolarionary general strike thi wil auerthrow Proncoum The strupple to save the Lives of Eva Forest and Antonio Duran can and must PC BETTERRE STEP BE CRUE SECCENE LU Carrero trial is a now chalienge to the warl ing class of our country thrown at it by tho dictatorship, Lel us rise to the challen Let as organise the reponse and call for i ternational soldarity?
Who will intervene to defend these tee morisis, the dictatotship asics itself, We an wer, and we will answer in action. We will the workers, aidews, doctors, profemors teachers, women!
Ex Forest and Antonio Duranare ow comrades He do wor heliere yow bes. Are have seem theatat our siles in mine Be Arre seen then in the 7908
for a movement to overthrow the Government, with the threat of strikes to launch it on 18 Jamunry.
The recent one-day general strike Corruption of Asami Leaguers contributes to starvation in Bangladesh arite in legeso, in the solidarizy ances with the Vatnamese resolution, to the consinuction strikes, on the strucele agains the Burgor Hor Conned for poors geo He wilt porobandon then!
led Armed Struggle is the Only Way to Resolve the Zimbahwe Issue atarmed struggle, The object of intensifying it at this psychologically optimum moment is not simply to take advantage of the enemy's psychologtacks those people who believed a new constitutional conference could settle the Rhodesian question satisfactorily:
"The only way to resolve the Zimbabwe conflict is the intensification of ically weak moment. It is also in ord-