Socialist Challenge No. 146, 8 May 1980
The scan: sc-n146-may-08-1980.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive)
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Page 1 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge No.146 8 May 1980 20p
ALLOUT
14 MAY
KICK OUTING THE TORIES
Page 2 scan of this page
STRIKE A BLOW AG
The Employment Bill:
What's
going on...
NEWPORT Assemble 2.30pm, at Transport House, Cardiff Road, march to John Frost Square for rally.
MANCHESTER Assemble 10.30am, All Saints, Mancunion Way. SALFORD Assemble 10am, Liverpool St (near Gasworks) to join Manchester demo.
STOCKPORT Assemble 11am, Heaton Norris Rec.
ALTRINCHAM Assemble 12 noon, for open air rally at Broad Heath Industrial Estate.
TRAFFORD Assemble 10.30am, at Old Trafford for Car Cavalcade. ROCHDALE Assemble 12 noon, at the Shopping Centre.
PORTSMOUTH Assemble 10.30am, Alexandra Park, march to a rally in Guildhall Square.
BOLTON Assemble 10am, Queens Park Spa Rd.
BURY Assemble 10am, Town Hall. LEIGH Open air rally, Library Square.
BATH Assemble 11.30am, to picket Pitt House, Tory Party HQ, Laura Place, Bath.
HEMEL HEMSTEAD Assemble 10am, at Gatesbridge Park to march to a rally in Times Square. EDINBURGH Assemble 2pm, at Waverley Bridge to march to a rally at
MIDDLESBOROUGH Assemble 1pm, for mass rally at the Town Hall. Public meeting 9 May at 7.30pm at AUEW Hall called by local Campaign Against the Employment Bill. Speakers include John Deeson (Defend Our Unions), Dave Carter (secretary of Cleveland Trades Councils), Cyril Wheat (ISTC). John Gains, Secretary of AUEW, will be chairing the meeune.
BRISTOL Assemble 11am, at Canon's Marsh.
LONDON
NEWHAM Assemble 1pm, from West Ham Recreation Ground march to Central Park. HACKNEY Assemble at 10.30am, at Hackney Town Hall march to Victoria Park for rally. EALING """- ble 11.30am, at Hamadi Clock Tower march ao Southal Part for rally.
JUDD ALSOP, Bolsover Colliery, Nottingham area NUM < The miners should have
come out with the steelworkers, never mind on 14 May. The trade unions are divided all the time. It's solidarity and unity we need.
Same as for the 14th. It's the rank and file who have to push for this. While we don't have total recall, the trade
mobilise people. J won't bother to IAN HARRISON, Markham Colliery, North Derbyshire What should have hap
pened was a national call for strike action on 14 May from the TUC leadership.
They could have mounted a serious propaganda campaign around the pits but haven't. Militants have got to get together to force the into action.
B MAUDE, Faceworker, Bolsover Colliery A shan't be going to work
'on the 14th as the 'grabbers' will (the 7 day week men in the pit). The executive should have called everybody out.
A STEVENSON, National Graphical Association, Benrose Printers, Derby Fresh from being locked out over his national wage claim, Slevenson was very bitter about the Tories.
• They're just looking for an
excuse to attack militants come out on 14 May. 2 — everybody should THE Tory through the House of Lords at the present time will turn the clock back to the beginning of this century if it becomes law.
Make no mistake about it, despitehaving been sold to the British bringing 'common sense' into industrial relations, the Bill brings the courts back into industrial relations in Britain — with a vengeance.
the Taff Vale judgement, ruled that a trade union could be sued and compelled to pay for damages caused when in dispute with
Gesture
In 1906 Parliament courts when it passed the Trade Disputes Act wilen gave trade umons legai mamunlty from civil proceedings as long as they were 'in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute'.
Put simply, tected from paying damages to employers when engaged in industrial action. James Prior's new Bill tries to take away this legal immunity. the British trade union movement when it stands together and fights (as it did under
and deputy Mickey Boulter have asked the march and rally called by Hackney Hamlets trades councils in Victoria Park.
they will be campaigning to get as many trade possible out on strike on that day. 'Although £235m deductions the received "only" sharenoe are more money. In a recession this can only mean one thing — cutting labour costs, making sure the workers and not the shareholders suffer.' Abroad
La few BOC workers think they are 'untouchable' because they supply 80-90 per cent of the gas to British industry and if they strike would come to a halt.
ment Bill goes through, when they import gas from abroad the dockers will not be allowed to boycott it and BOC workers will face imprisonment if they picket the courts.
Mickey and strong feelings about Len Murray's role May. 'Every Lèn Murray for guidance. He's figurehead Employment Bill going
public as
In 1901 the House of Lords, upholding overruled the
trade unions were pro-
Frightened by the collective strength of picketing
Labour and Murray
must give a lead
THE British Oxygen depot in Hackney, East London, will be closed on 14 May. Every worker will be out on strike. Convenor John Walsh
Convenor
workforce to join the under the Tories
and Tower
Through the trades council
unionists
BOC made Realise profit last year, after shareholders £19m. BOC baying Employment Bill,' 'they'li soon realise only government down.'
who are pushing for
John Walsh points out that
country everything Mickey TGWU: 'But what. people have to
Mickey members
John have
in building for 14 union looks put its mind to it.
back to Taff Vale
the Heath government), the Tories are out to reduce picketing to a mere gesture. Trade unions will no longer be immune from the law if the courts can prove tha either the 'motive for the extraneous' or the tactics used are not *reasonably capable' of furthering the 'union's side of a dispute.
Sympathy
Judges will be asked to decide what is and what is not 'lawful' industrial action. Given their lack of sympathy for the trade union case the likely outcome to Prior's law is that unionists, as with the Industrial Relations Act, will end up going to jail if they picket at all effectively.
At the heart of this dispute over trade union law is a basic democratic right — the be sunke ne a group r workers have gone on strike and closed down their own factory, employers immediately respond by attempting to break the strike in
Imports from abroad are used; goods are brought in from other factories; the police are brought in - even the army and always, if possible, the courts. only weapon workers have to combat 'secondary' production
The steelworkers. soon realised that there wasn't much point in standing out
movement, John argues. 'He knows the extent of the cuts, he knows how people are suffering
leader and he should lead.
'If he got out the facts there would be no problem. But what does he do? He's not prepared to stick his neck out and say that 14 May is a political issue. He says: "I'd like you to come out but I'm not going to tell
would be a general strike" '
'When people feel the full effects of the Tory cuts and the
Days John, that the way to stop this Tory bring The TUC's vacillation has not only given ammunition to the Tory press and the bosses
injunctions to stop people striking on 14 May, but it has encouraged some trade union leaders to be indecisive. This even applies to the largest trade union in the
which John and are members of, the
'Moss Evans has not said "I round am calling mv members out".
says. 'He expects
believes that the 'left wing' na- respond.' He The tional executive of the TGWU had some members on it wne were too soft on the Tories.
Labour
John, as a life-long Labour voter, insists that the Labour Party could play a vital role in making 14 May a success - if it
Ine
"Callaghan has not shown a
abroad.
dispute
ficult to challenge,
strike
bill. They
are incentives. Blood
Thatcher has
The
"secondary'
from that.
great deal of interest in building for the Day of Action. It seems as if they don't want us to come out. Even in Hackney where we've got some left MPs like Ernie Roberts, they' ve not been enough helping to get understand the issues involved.' last Labour government was very unpopular with the BOC workers in Hackney • because it refused to carry out Party policies. John has a clear answer to this: 'If the Labour MPs who've been elected to Parliament to oppose Tories and carry out socialist policies don't do their job properly then the people in side British Steel Corporation plants when their employers were importing steel from
A tiny number of pickets can be easily driven through by scab lorries and treated as 'unrepresentative' by the local police. A much larger body of workers is more dif-
as the salley Jalt picket showed during the 1972 miners'
Closed shops are also threatened in the
will require an 80 per cent majority to be effective (the Tories won the election with 33 per cent of the vote!) The press will gain even greater influence over trade union affairs as secret ballots
through financial
Already the employers are screaming for Len Murray's blood for daring to organise a political strike on 14 May. If this Tory Bill goes through such Days of Action will become a thing of the past.
made her clear. If she can get away with Prior's law she will definitely return to the 1901 House of Lords ruling and make it the law of the land that unions should pay for strike
their OWI funds. Trade unionism will take a long time to recover
the trade unions have got to do it for them
Industrial action has to be used to make the voice of working people clear, he added.
But John and Mickey are also interested in creating a new labour party 'We need a . people's party?, says Mickey.
'The militants in the trade unions will eventually have to form their own party, adds John, 'The socialist groups will have to join up with the trade unionists form new workers party.
'We've got to join together because we're not going to get anywhere Tune Tories we're doing it separately?
EDDIE COULSON,
Divisional Council
Chairperson, NUPE
Ain the year since the Tory
government was elected, it
has presided over an infla-
tion rate that has doubled,
unemployment that is likely
to reach over two million,
cuts that are destroying
many of the basic services of
our society and legislation
designed to emasculate the
trade unions and set them
back 70 years. By striking on
14 May the mood of the
trade union movement
should deflect the govern-
disastrous course. J ment from its
GRAHAM DOLE,
AUEW Shop Steward,
Rover, Cardiff (This Tory government is
-the most reactionary one
we've had for a long time.
The cabinet is the richest
one we've ever had.
Democracy in the country is
and ruled by the
media. Only 33 per cent of
the electorate voted for the
Tories, so what gives then
the right to impose on the
other
Page 3 scan of this page
AINST THE TORIES 10 reasons to strike
14 May TUC Day of Action.
pages to attacking 'Lenin
leaders who call for strike action.
give heart to the Tories.
The Tory dingernment has no
mandate to carry out its present
pelicies.
and a halt million people on the
dole. an intlation rate of 20 per
destruction of the
Helfare dale and tl DrescrIp-
2.
lames Prior's anti-union bill.
which y going through
House of Lords at the present
time, threatens one of the mood
rights
people in this country have
the right to stribe and protest at
unfair treatment by emplorers.
allowed 10 with one
another. with ine ponce. fat
The government is led by big business and they make the decisions. All trade unionists should take the day off on 14 May and turn up at their local rallies.
I see 14 May as another tepping stone to a genera trike. No way is the Tory government going to change its spots.
STEVE PILLEY, ISTC National Craft Coordinating Committee &I think MacGregor's just
been sent in to de nationalise steel without having to go through Parliament and get a Bill on it. They plan to sell off all profit - - making firms to private industry and a lot of jobs will go in the
If you're a millionaire you're Ok at the moment, but if vou're normal working people you're not. The Employment Bill's going to get rid of union power and the solidarity of the working class.
If people don't show their solidarity with the unions on 14 May the government will tink ten aron Is not very strong and when their next pay rise comes round the employers will think they're
WITH one week to go, the Tory establishment is becoming more and more hysterical about the
MPs have urged employers to sue trade union
regional secretary of the South East Region TUC, summed up the importance of the day for the British trade union movement when he told the Dail! Mirror last Thursday: 'A major response will be a morale-
booster to our members. A poor response will
Below Socialist Challenge gives ten reasons why you should be striking on 14 May as the first step to kicking out the most right-wing government Britain has seen since the war.
acton eat lace Hopesonne
The first British
unleashed a ferocious allack on female equalit!. women are being hit particularI! hard. thes three limes men: despite the Equal Pay del their waues are falling in com parison with men's: and the cuthack in social services working naratris hone school meal and school milk nas no women parnal. hard.
The Emplesment Bill contains clauses that will mahe it them or touch and take y them on.
ROWENA WOOD, teacher at a comprehensive school in Southall
‹The Tories in Ealing are attacking education by cutting down on staff - 184 jobs are going. Even the Tory council admits this will worsen educational standards. Dinner staff and cooks are going to lose their job, as well as teachers.
Teachers feel very angry about these attacks. The NUT is refusing to cover for unfilled vacancies. Last term ine union neid two nan day strikes in protest at Tory policies.
NUT members here have already voted to support the TUC's Day of Action. Last week in Nottingham a teacher was sacked for carrying out official NUT policy on class size. 40 more teachers have been ldsked out in the same county Teachers are shocked by the scale of these attacks and are being forced to take a stand, despite the NUl s claimi to be "non-political.
return to her job after having a child. 4.
The Tories aim to make blach people's lives a misery. Immi-
has realed O the Tories intend to keep blach l'amilies apart and to stir up racial black people already selfled here as a way of directing the
from the real unemployment 5.
The much talked about concessions" that promised have furned oul lo Ne an excuse tor income redistribution from rich. While those without work will have their earnings-relied benefit chopped, Those at the other end of the income seale will receive massive las conces-
6.
government While the lines are ward Horking publicly-on ned industries mus
are squandering t2 million for faster than capitalis who will receive his money only if he successtull
the dote. helps. tree
7
Ine new Housing passing through Parliament il
present time landlords renen ed powers over
JOHN BOTTING, POEU London
Any call from the trade
unions for all-out strike ac tion should be supported by the workers. get rid of this government is Workers themselves. 2 by mass action by JOHN WATTS, POEU London
It's the only right we've got
left - the right to strike on 14 May. The workers have
got nothing and the Tories
have got it all. They even want to take away our right to strike with their legislation. The TUC call for 14 May
is not enough but it's a start.
TONY HARDING,
Deputy Chairperson, BOC, Hackney
l've voted Labour all my
life. We need a Labour
government in power but in
fighting the Tories we've got
to show the Labour Party
that when we put them back
we want them to fight for the
workers. thev' have to do
what we elected them to do
already been
THATCHER
against
workers ini!
cause - the capitalist
'Tas the Tories
ine poor 1o ru
houses.
to find homes. 8
ment benetits.
Tories claim that
and that the related benetits
services or an american
enough deelworhers on
sall emplosed while
Bill that in who could
gives private year. in mid-stream.
The only way to staff, Llanwern
rocketing -
9.
Carter's war
defence billion.
DION
SIIP
10.
This
Ires of Britain
latest
one year in power. private tenants and, along with ine collapse in counch nouse building and the sale of council
will make if more and more ditficult for young people
rich.
For the tirst time since the "30% those who are thrown out of
protest work race a cur i unempio!
and carnings lorr have the right are scrapped. Clothing grants are being discontinued and addi- The fional allowances tor laundr and heating costs for the elderl! and intirm have been reduced.
So concerned are the Tories about saving mone! That ther are employing i thousand nev
'inoop the saching civil servants in the inland revenue
'snoop' the thousands of businessmen who COUCH
and not change course
MARLENE TOVEY,
ISTC non-supervisory
/ Locally, Caldicot people are
complaining about the
price of school dinners; at
50p a time; especially if you
have three children, it's an
awful lot and also the threat
of redundancies in steel.
Prices of food are • things go up
every week. The cutback in
education is going to mean
more children are deprived
SOCIALIST
CHALLENGE AND
14 MAY
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE will be out early next week in time to be sold on 14 May. All IMG branches must consult the national centre on the size of their order and delivery to their area. and ask for SC distribution.
Thatcher is the most out pohen European supporter of timmy
drive. Despite 'hard times, she has increased
"spenditure invited America 10 160 Cruise Missiles in Britain and is pushing Britain into a new cour war
•never endorsed by the industrial cen-
the North. south Wales, and scolland. 1 mon its 'majorit!' trom voters in the South of England. The
council elections have contirmed popular discontent
policies after onl
Ordinary people in England can see what this government is out to do. I wants to mate
DeODie suffer the hrunt of the economic recession. It is indeed a government ot the rich. by the rich. for the
Wendy that 13 million trade unionist do have the right to
Donels • m fioverument. thes strike ind demonstrate on 14 Miss
Tories have laken no notice "hatsoever of the polite and feeble protests that Labour MPs have made in Parlament It a government ignores the wishes of the vast majority of
people theredith one thing te
get rid of il
14 May must be a huge sue cess to build a movement that can hich ou this reactionary
landlords and businessmen and the "Oman who wandeat their hand
of a proper education. My personal grievance was witt the mortgage rates when they went up to 15 per cent in January. I think the in crease in medical charges is disgusting.
I think we should stand together on 14 May because the Tories are trying to create a two class society and I think the only way to combat this is to support the TUC on the Day of Action We've had no directive from our union yet, but I will be coming out and going to demonstration. / the Newport Ring 01-359 8371
HOUNSLOW Assemble at 12 noon, at The Grapes, Hayes march to Southall Park.
HILLINGDON Assemble at Uxbridge Town Centre at 1lam, march to Southall Park.
LAMBETH Assemble 11.30am, at St Mathews Meeting Place, march to rally at Imperial War Museum.
Lambeth NUT rally at 10am, Ritzy Cinema, Brixton. Lambeth NALGO rally at 10am, ACE cinema, Brixton. SOUTHWARK Assemble Camberwell Green, 11.30am, march to rally at Imperial War Museum.
CAMDEN Assemble 12 noon, Bidborough Street, march to Hawley Rd, NW1.
ISLINGTON
Assemble 12 noon, Archway,
march to Peoples' Festival a Highbury Fields.
BARKING DAGENHAM Ford Workers are assembling
at 12.30pm at Mayesbrook
Park, Goodmayes. Checkers
Lane to march to Mayesbrook
Park for a rally where Len
Murray will be speaking.
NORTH-WEST
LONDON
Mass rally at Wembley
Stadium, 1pm. In Barnet
assemble at Burnt Oak Broad-
way/Stag Lane; in Brent at
Willesden Green tube, , and in
Harrow at Harrow civic centre
- all at 10am.
BERKSHIRE
Mass picket at Chix 6.30am
followed by rally in Slough at
10am.
WESTMINSTER
Print unions assemble at
12noon at Clerkenwell Green
to march via Fleet Street to a
mass rally at Central Hall at
2.30pm.
HARINGEY/
ENFIELD
Assemble at 10.30am at Mid-
dlesex Polytechnic, Queens
Road to march to Pymme's
Park, Edmonton for rally.
SUTTON/
CROYDON
Assemble at 11.30am at
Thornton Heath Clock Tower
to march to rally at Croydon
Technical College.
BEXLEY/
GREENWICH
Assemble at 1lam at General
Gordon Square march to
Charlton Park for rally.
BROMLEY
Assemble at 11am at HG
Wells Centre, St Marks Road,
Bromley.
LEWISHAM
Assemble 10.30am at Clock
Tower, Lewisham High St
march to rally at Douglas Way
SE8.
HAMMERSMITH
Assemble Shepherds Bush
Green for rally.
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 3
Page 4 scan of this page
INTERNATIONAL
embassy
siege
John Leadbetter THE ICE-CREAM vans and hot-dog stalls down by the Albert Hall were doing a roaring trade over the Bank Holiday week-end. A constant trickle of curious sightseers picked their way round the police cordon surrounding the Iranian Embassy.
Everyone seemed to be supporting someone; but nobody seemed to give second thought to the Al-Nassar martyrs, holed up in the Embassy and facing organised strength of the Metropolitan police and, as it turned out, the Army.
Yet behind the rumours and
which round the seizure of the Iranian
lies the collull struggle Iran's national minorities against the Tehrar government.
Outlook
Whatever the political outook or le activists wild seized the embassy, the Arab movement in Khuzestan (the area they refer "Arabestan') is a just struggle by an oppressed people attempting to shake off the shackles of Persian domination.
This oppression has been with the Arab people since the British government Insted Reza Khan as shah in Iran in 1924.
The oppression of Arabs in Khuzestan is linked to the existence there of the majority of Iran's Oll reserves. FOr turies the Arab people formed a majority of the area's population.
But the development of the oil fields by the Tehran government and British and American oil companies led to a massive influx or skilled workers and managers from the dominant Persian stock. Arabs
Arabs were pushed down to the lowest positions and vicious policy of tion' was imposed on them, pushing their culture underground and outlawing even the right to have an Arab
The overthrow of the Shah led to an upsurge of Arab struggles in the area. Demands for complete cultural freedom were linked to a desire for greater regional autonomy tor a programme of development for Khuzestan to provide jobs and schools, to be financed out of oil revenues.
Bombs
Khomeini and Bazargan couched their reply in the shape of gunboats and bombs. Hun-
killed, many others imprisoned and summarily executed Islamic kangaroo courts. Among those imprisoned were the 14 Trotskyists in Ahwaz.
wave repression retarded the Arab struggle for the rest of the year. But since. January there have been growing signs of renewed activity.
Demonstrations have again taken place in Khorramshahr Socialist Challenge
Behind the
and demanding the return of a religious leader who disappeared last July.
In Masjed-e Suleiman, unemployed youth demonstrated in front of the government offices demanding jobs, and they have fought pitched battles with the pasdars (revolutionary guards) sent to disperse them.
Oil.
The resurgence of the Arab nationalist movement coincides
with the renewal of workers,
struggles throughout
with strikes sur- demonstrations taking place in
the oil and steel industries in
Ahwaz.
The government in Tehran
has attempted to discredit the
demands of the
ment bv talk of iradı plots to
take over Iran's oil fields.
much the same way, the strug-
gles of the Kurdish people have
been slandered by Khomeini,
Bazargan, (motozzen
Bani Sadr, who accuse them of
being CIA spies, agents of US
imperialism or of Iraq.
But while it may be true that both movements material aid and support from other Kurds and Arabs outside Iran, both movements seek to rectify years of oppression by fighting for their emanicpation within Iran itself.
Socialists around the world should not for one hesitate in supporting the just demands of the minorities for the right of self-determination against Islamic government.
Embassy
But the occupation of the embassy also raises questions about methods of struggle. The
Al-Nassar Martyrs however briefly, plight of Arabs in Khuzestan and more particularly drawn attention to the overfilled jails around Ahwaz and Khorram-
But Marxists should ask how far the activists who were in the embassy have carried forward the struggle in Khuzestan. Their demands have brought
of Hassive
against Arabs from Foreign Minister
Ghotbzadeh. Rooftops
The liberation of the Arab
people from oppression and ex-
ploitation will not be won on
the streets and rooftops of Ken-
sington and Knightsbridge.
They wilbe
mass activity of
masses sizesta WCIC together with the oil and steel
workers, the Kurds and Azerby baijanis, and all the working
people of Iran.
What can be done in this
country is for British socialists
and trade unionists to say No to
Us and UK aggressions against
he Iranian people, and at the
same time to refuse to condone
the repression of all national
minorities and the oppressed by
the islamic government.
8 May 1980 Page 4
have the and
Arab move-
and
second
national
Iran's regime in Saudi Arabia.
have, raised the
for the showing of the 'IRAQ seizure bassy in London and probably provided support for the operation.
produced to substantiate this claim in sunday s won bv the But what is Iraq's role in the the Arab crisis
itself, the Guardian Siddam Takriti of Iraq is out to 'present his regime, if not as America's gendarme in the Gulf, at least as the guarantor of stability in the vital oil-rich region'
Just what amounts to is two-fold. First it is to drop the 'progressive' impression which Hussein has unrecently create.
Cairo®
EGYPT
Jeddal
:N.YEMEN SUDAN
ETHIOPIA
KENYA
* Saudi Military Bases
Needed the storming
of the House of Saud
OF ALL the events which have happened in the Middle East and Southwest Asia in the last turbulent twelve
frightened Western imperialism most was the storming of the Mosque in
It was because this apparently bizarre „example of infighting between the various branches of Islam was the first sign of open revolt against the despotic royalist
rest of the Western Alliance, need the present ruling clique in Saudi Arabia more than any other regime in the entire world. The grovelling way Tory Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington apologised to the Saudis
'Death of a Princess' is just one example of the lengths to which imperialism will go not to offend the House of Saud.
The reason can be summed up in one
«courte
The Iraq connection
masterminded the of the Iranian em- into
logistical Communists,
No evidence has as yet been recently,
renegade, Observer. has broken over Iraq'.
South-west Asia?
According to an article in
In February, Hussein tionists.
Most
Shi'a this 'stability' of khomeint.
Irac
• Tehran
ÍRAQ Baghdad
IRAN
latral Batin [BAHRAIN
Riyadh*
ARABIA Khamis Mushait
'SYEMEN SALALAN
Aden (Soviet Base BERBERA
SOMALIA
É MOMBASA But the time has gone when the regime in Saudi Arabia could be relied on to do anything the US told them to.
Iranian revolution changed all that. First, it showed that whatever the level of US backing for an unpopular regime it was not immune from being overthrown. Second, the revolution itself has affected popular feeling throughout the Saudi Arabia is not Iran. It is less industrialised and consequently does have the same level of urban poverty which helped fell the Shah. But there have been signs that the Saudi princes are not as free as they once were to act as imperialism's puppets. The events in Iran have caused disturbances in Saudi's Eastern Province. The breakout of internal dissent expressed in the events in Mecca last November was rooted in the same anti-Western feelings
Saudi ruling clique. Sheik Zaki Yamani, the oil minister has referred to 'young
In turning his regime more
perialism, Hussein is turning on
erstwhile allies the pro- hoped, Soviet Communist Party. The
Hussein said are ' rotten, atheistic storm that of the
This statement was accom panied by a fierce campaign of repression against not only CP is arming members but against all opposi-
recently has most manifested itself in the expul sion from Iraq of members of
branch of Islam, is not which in Iran is the power base
But expulsions are not just Foreign aimed at preventing the spread
Not shia radicalism. flau
U S S R
Kabul
AFGHANISTAN
PAKISTAN
MUSCAT
OMAN_ MASIRAH
THAMARIT ESALALAH U.S. Seeking possible air force/naval facilities E Diego Garcia (U.S.Existing Base, coully.
American Congress.
They are also seen as helping to spread chaos in Iran itself vast innux or rerugees wal, ll ls
increase the problems facing Khomeini.
This is the second part of Iraq's role as the 'stabiliser' to 'de-stabilise' Iran, not just out
HICCOLS …ot the radi regime, but out of the interests as well of Western imperialism
In pursuit of these aims Iraq
assistie all!
Iranian oppositionists to Kho meini. Sabotage teams are be ing sent into Iranian oilfields,
of which lie In the Khuzistan area of Iran.
The campaign against Iran
confined. to . creating havoc internally. The attemp
of Iranian Minister Sadegh Ghotzbadeh while on a tour of the
stale. last week was
Islamabad
Delhi®
INDIA Turks' in the kingdom who want to halve the amount of oil being produced in the
For the survival of the regime some of the young princes feel that Saudi Arabia has to distance itself more from the US.
At the same time the government relies on US backing more than ever. It is this contradiction which means
ment has been happy to welcome Iraq in a new partnership to promote Western interests and oppose the Islamic revolu-
councils Saudi Arabia and Iraq now tend to speak with one voice. But in seeking a unity of Arab reaction the popular hostility the two regimes are now storing up for themselves may, in the final
almost certainly undertaken by Iraqi agents.
Where does the United States fit into all this? Obviously the US shares with Iraq the 'destabilise Iran' aim. But the links between the US and Iraq are more concrete than shared opinions.
It has now been suggested that the team given the primary role in freeing the American hostages in Iran, backed up by ill-fated. US forces, , was trained in Iraq in association with the CIA.
Six weeks ago White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan paid a secret visit to Iraq as part of the build-up to this opera tion All of which makes it very clear that Iraq is no friend of ally other
Page 5 scan of this page
Anti-imperialism, not neutralism
LEYLAND- NOT
The growing international crisis is bring-
ing home to people in Britain the danger
of nuclear war. No wonder, then, that a
campaign
nuclear alliances is being seriously discuss-
ed on the left.
Not only the international situation, but the
siting of Cruise missiles in Britain, and the rise
of the anti-nuclear movement has promoted
this trend. Socialist Challenge has argued con-
sistently that the threat of war arises not merely
from the existence of nuclear weapons,
from the
posture of world imperialism — and especially
the United States.
A new campaign has just been launched
which aims to focus the increasing alarm about
the possibility of nuclear war. This campaign,
'For a Nuclear Free Europe', has been launch-
ed by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation,
with the support of a number of leading Labour
MPs. The prime movers of this campaign are
Ken Coates of the Russell Foundation, and E P
Thompson, well known historian and author of
the recent CND pamphlet Protest and Survive.
There is absolutely no doubt that a cam-
paign against the United States' war drive and
the placing of Cruise missiles in Britain is vitally
By Pat Hickey
WITH the return to work at
Jaguar last week, the main
fight against
management's imposition
of the 5 per cent pay deal
and the 'slaves charter' is
ended.
Yet the fight is not completely
over. The company has not yet im-
plemented all aspects of the docu-
ment u ne blanls
At Cowley and Longbridge, for
example, has
careful• to Hlove sluwEy
reduce the likelihood of a BL-wide
However, with the
struggle ended,
Call
ancaa inrougnoul tne comoine.
The successful imposition
the document represents, a major
in its attack on shopfloor organisation at BL.
Staffing
Line ena or mutuality on such
questions as manning levels
mobility will seriously undermine
SHOD stewaros.
The stewards have been traditional-
for negotiating all aspects or staro leves ano conci. nons in their sections. The docu-
ment goes a long way towards en
ding that role
l removes oargaline on many
such issues, not just from section
level but also from plant level. All local agreements and practices are superseded by it.
quote the 92-page document: "The agreement is in full and final settlement of all outstanding claims. supciscucs agreements, customs and practices relating to within, except those resulting from
rcievant acreements perweer
and Engineering Unions Engineering employers
other words, negotiations that Leyland want to engage in are at a national level
Joint Negotiating Committee.
Clause
1 ne document also contains a compreensive strike which has been reinforced by conctons oi une reluro TO WOrk.
Although the action has been taken
all procedures had been exnausted, the company threatened o sack nose on sinke
This is unprecedented in postwar trade union struggles.
Locemner Wilhe VIC timisation of Derek Robinson, it is a major attack on any attempt
even verbal opposition to BL plans.
There can be clearer demonstaton or me treacherv oi the trade union bureaucrats. They have not merely refused to fight but
against nuclear weapons and
but aggressive military
neutral, BL been
of and A.E,U
ETU
N.S.M.M.
only
actively connived
hold the working bureaucracy will be broken they have beer exposed. tunately for this view, the response of most of the plant leaderships has not been to contest the bureaucracy but to go along with it.
The Morning Star hailed Mos •valis sc-our oul as a victorv. an leading Communist Party venor Jack Adams refused to call
needed. The upsurge of imperialist militarism is being reflected in the increasing proportion of the British budget being spent on defence by the Thatcher government.
But the campaign proposed by the Russell Foundation is seriously misguided in its approach; it threatens to seriously demobilise any attempt to build a movement based on anti-imperialist opposition to militarism.
The statement Foundation says: 'We do not wish to apportion guilt between the political and military leaders of East and West. parties.' In line with this, the statement appeals equally for disarmament of both the USSR and the USA, and appeals for a
and pacific Europe'. completely misunderstands the nature of the world crisis and how to fight the war threat. CND Experience
In fact the campaign of the Russell Foundation is an attempt to resurrect the politics of the early CND; neutralism and pacifism. fact these politics are a regression from the political stance which many CND supporters came to adopt in the early 'sixties.
CND started in 1957 as a movement which
LONGBRIDCE
BeM.S.M.WS.
ITISH
acnieving out Longbridge.
The agreement between BL and class of the bureaucracy the unions will strengthen the hold when Negotiating Committee and will invorve micil and tne plant icadersnip • in participation.
Taken in weakelle SIOD organisation, the net result will be 9. increase vus caulial ! dent shop floor activity.
The struggle.
Congolese mercenaries, hostilities liberatión circulated by the Russell
anti-imperialism.
Guilt lies squarely on both
Solidarity 'united, This approach
defensive.
But in The
OVER YET
AUSTIN
JOINT SHOP STEWARDS COMMITTEE
UNITY
STRENGTH
EDWARDES 1
T021 fightback in the Joint tremely hopeful
implementation of the deal.
conjunction with the stewards welc on strike role of the prospect that and reduce indepen UCS DILC LiC build a
concentrated on the intrinsic evil of a particular
type of weapon. But in the early sixties, after
the US blockade of Cuba, the US-backed inva-
sion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the murder of
Patrice Lumumba and the repression of the
revolution by CIA-financed and the re-starting of serious between the Americans and the Vietnam,
numbers of CND's supporters moved towards
This transformation was completed by the
decline of CND and the rise of the Vietnam
Campaign, which broke with the
politics of appeals for 'peace' and militantly
identified itself with the Vietnamese struggle
against US imperialism.
The equals sign that the Russell Foundation
draws between the USSR and the USA is com-
pletely wrong. However much we oppose the
ruling bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, the
arms effort of the USSR is overwhelmingly
revolutions in progress
Nicaragua and El Salvador threaten not the in-
terests of the USSR but those of American im-
perialism. It is the United States, not the USSR
which wants to resurrect its role as world cop,
LEYLAND
fightback in BL is made harder by
betrayal ana aereal. Yer
:has to be built. . sign was response of BL membership to th‹ Union
Evans
Within a week of the 19 April deadline more than 18,000 workers came
would be shut down within a week, the lacre was ever whole of Bi by which took action.
nauonal orniciais
From the beginning, Engineer-
large
United States.
the major
United States Iran,
don on 22 June was
•LONGBRIDCE.
spent spect
N.U.V.B N.U.S.M.W.. C. T.G.W.U. U.P.A.
mains ed the
thai
ing Union president Terry Duffy had openly scabbed by instructing his members to accept the deal and arruss luc bicker mes ransnor general secretary Moss
refused to call a nationa strike and attemoted to achieve the
thing as Duffy, although Evans appeared to be more militant combine.
promisilig to back any section
When this showed every sign of leading to an all-out strike, direction.
trampling on progressive movements the world over. The Russell Foundation appeal complete ly fails to register the differing social systems in Russia and America which lead to a completely different military posture on a world scale.
Which campaign?
The campaign that needs to be built against the threat of war is not the one being launched by comrades Thompson and Coates. The threat to working people in Britain arises from Bri tain's membership of NATO; it arises from Britain's increasingly strident alliance with the ma-
imperialist militarism the
The fight we need is not one of appeals to
powers to disarm, but a campaign which unites those in Britain prepared to fight for opposition to the placing of Cruise missiles; British withdrawal from NATO and complete hostility to the military adventurism of the
These are the slogans, and not those of uto pian pacifism and neutralism, which need to be raised on the Labour Party demonstration against the Cruise missiles taking place in Lon-
issued a call to return to work.
Behind the bluster, the truth that the the plant leadership were prepares to face the political problems poser nearly seven months negotiating to avoid such a proAt the end of the road, when Edwardes issued his ultimatum, the convenors conterence suiu tence to call a strike, and left the decision the the rying out its sell-out and was able to derail the struggle at a stroke The sell-out is a defeat. But the trade union organisation in BL na not yet been destroyed. As the response of the membership showIne basis or a nigniback re
Building that fightback will re quire much more than more militancy Firstly, its objective will have to be the replacement or ine present leadership the plants and the establishment of a combine leadership. 1. ne oreser leadershij unreformable and must be replac A combine-wide response is essential adequate fight against bawarde.
Second, , we must develop the political answers to the company's propaganda that all this is essentia 's survival.
for the crisis and nationalisation of car and component industry under workers contol In the coming months deepening crisis of the industry wi anderine une arguments or bou the reformists and the company sacrifices today means LOmOTTOW BI alternative to the policies of th Pormen leadership a new one can be The Leyland Action Committee played an important role in th struggle against the document an
Ret the longer com propict o
building al opposition acros o • longer-tern The national conference calle by the Leyland Action Comutte for 7 June will be a first step in thi
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Pare 5
Page 6 scan of this page
time to take the offensive
HOMENEWS
tions about what to do next.
Leeds on 17 and 18 May.
For the past months the attention of pro-abortion campaigners has been concentrated on defending LIC against the encroachment planned by anti-abortionists.
Unlike previous campaigns against restrictive legislation,
against Corrie lute campaign began to realise the potential to win support labour move cal for Woman's right to choose'.
essentially • a Although defensive campaign, it organised thousands of people and
supporters, WOn particularly in the labour movement.
The fact that the TUC was torcea to can a acmonstrauon on abortion on 28 October not an issue of traditional trade union concern — is a major advance for the whole working class in Britain.
For women fighting their right to choose, it opened up the possibility of campaigning in a new way. Abortion had the TUC'S approval legitimate area of trade union concern.
The existence of the Tory
government was a prime factor
in pushing the TUC to fulfill its
national
DI Use
demonstration against attacks
abortion rights.
Despite Corrie's Bill being deprived of the official support of the Tory government, speedy progress through early stages in Parliament was facilitated by the large number of Tory MPs and the tacit support of a high proportion
Thatcher's cabinet.
anyone really thought that Tory woman
minister would improve
general position of women, the
Corrie Bill rapidly disabused
tem or chat nonon
WOMEN
inaction
again Me
WOMEN in Action has pro-
duced fundraising
badge, in pink on purple, 20p
plus 10p påp.
The spring issue of Women
in Action is still available cost
25p plus 10p p&p. The next
issue is planned to be out in
August, focussing on
woman's right to work.
Both are available
Box 2, Sisterwrite Books, 190
Upper St, London N1.
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 6
Abortion:
AFTER the successful conclusion to the campaign against Corrie's anti-abortion Private Member's Bill, the proabortion movement is faced with some important ques-
This issue will be at the centre of the discussion at the National Abortion Campaign conference to be held in
Women's jobs, health, aid with childcare, all under attack.
Tory ministers make no secret of thinking that women have a cheek to expect to work rather than staying at home.
Even the defeat Corrie Bill has not stemmed the attack on abortion rights. The Department of Health has been using various back door means to limit the functioning of the '67 Act The Advisory Service has had its licence. renewed TOI months — on the trumped-up grounds that it did not have written authority for its advertising!
If the pro-choice movement sits back and rests on its laurels after the defeat of Corrie it will not before for limited rights to fertility control
are once more unael attack.
The '67 Abortion Act does not give women a legal right to choose when or children. The restrictive in that a woman has to prove to two doctors that she has 'grounds' for having an abortion; Tne right abortion in any circumstances ceases after the 28th week of pregnancy, and the National Health Service is not required to provide facilities for aborthe tion.
This is before considering the restrictions on the right to choose that flow from inadequate contraceptive or tion information, unhelpful or anti-abortion prime tors, and so on. the The inadequacies of the
present Act have led most pro-choice campaigners to see the fight for better legislation as a necessary step towards winning real choice for women.
NAC has been committed principle to fighting positive legislation to create a
law. Now is the time to reall! start campaigning for it.
The Abortion Law Reform
La Private Member's Bill that would provide choice up to 12 weeks. association is prepared to concede ground at the upper end of the present time limit and may favour limit on legal abortion.
The problem with such a Bill, and ALRA's position in general, is that ground on foetal rights.
a It does not seek to extend
the present time limits because from: the foetus would be 'viable'; it
may even agree to a reduction of LUIC limit
and incomes
Many
of the Pregnancy
HUSE women's
restrictive bill.
SEVCIC foetuses are
earlier.
to survive earlier and earlier, rather than whether
Act women more right to choose
about children, they have less and less right to choose.
An ALRA-type although it might embody a save limited gain, is very dangerous to women in the long term.
NAC is in favour of legisiation that completely decriminalises abortion and choice entirely woman.
There is still a long way to go to win general support for
abor- NAC's positions on a woman's
right to choose doc- It is highly unlikely that any individual MP would agree to take up such a present political situation. It is unlikely present composition of Parliament such a Bill would even get through its first reading.
for such a Bill would have a real chance of becoming law choose the Labour Party, or a future
Labour government, ported it and if there was also widespread support for it in the aims to introduce trade unions and the broad
labour movement.
wolel s
The agenda labour movement on posiuve iegistation, planneu a 24-week for early next year, should be a
major focus for this fight The NAC should endorse the call for this concedes conference and begin the fight
for delegates to it over the
the new year could once more put the fight rights on an offensive footing.
occause
Anna Raeburn and Maureen Colqhuon protesting outside the Houses of Parliament earlier this year against John Corrie's
now "viable'
As science allows foetuses clear position
this allowing NAC Call from
tion rights Bill,
Labour Partv
dynamic propaganda leaves the up to the
tivity cannot be
to choose Bill now
Bill In the fought for now.
The that with the of abortion
The only situation in which
is if nity health councils.
sup-
abortion women's choice, link up Iț is the fight to win this fighting
service.
NAC. conference might focus
possibility. demands conference
the labour movement.
St the
A really big conference in of education
soon be on the agenda.
there is.
the main strike has very consuming,
IOMAN'S of
Second,
which materials to
urge blacking
strike speaker for union branch.
It could also put pressure on the Labour Party to take a
blegum) women's choice in its next manifesto.
make capital the increased commitment to the struggle for abor-
MPs, such as Jo Richardson, to step up pressure within the
Positive legislation can be a
NAC'S and education work. The opportunity should not be allowed to slip by.
Immediate campaigning ac-
focussed preparing for a woman's right
- such a Bill is the object of a long-term fight. But there are possibilities of improvements that can be
mandatory provision facilities on the NHS could be accomplished by a change to the 1977 NHS Act.
There is definite support for a campaign to this end, from Jo
to local commu-
It would not only expose the inadequacy of the present legal and medical provision for
the need for but it could with those forces the health
campaign on taclities Private Member's Bill if that became a
It could place on the present government and aim to win mass support for such a Bill in
NAC conference commits itself to a programme
and activity or these issues then another step towards women's choice could
EC1.
Solidarity
wins Chix
strike
THAT would be a great headline to see — if only it were true! Many people reading this article might think that there is nothing they can do to help win this strike. But
The Chix strike is a strike of tion Asian workers, mainly women, for union recognition. One of Help
probiell. the reality! been in trying to make it a national issue in the same way that Grunwick and Trico became national issues.
A step towards overcoming this can be made by circulating strike bulletins and collection sheets as widely as possible in the Labour Movement. Collecting money for the strikers isn't
difficult or time, but it makes a lot
difference and women on strike pay of only £10.50 per week.
you can develop the blacking of goods going into Chix, which continues to be run by scab labour. Below we Ltd), publish a list of
supply goods and Chix. If any of Ltd., these firms are in your area, discuss how you can make contact with the workers there and
Third, you can write to the
committee get your local trade
Even the smallest contribu- pliers) Support Chix!
* Join the picket, from 6.30am each day. Chix is on the
Farnham Road on Slough Trading Estate.
* Get Chix boycotted by shops (sweet cigarettes and bub-
* Collect money for the strikers
* Raise Chix in your trade union or LP branch, take collec-
tions and send messages of support.
* Organise in your area to get people to support the boycott
of supplies to the factory.
* Organise a support committee in your area.
Donations and Messages of support to: Mohammed Anwar,
271 Goodman Park, Slough, Berks.
Information and offers of help
Regional Official, GMWU, 154 Brent Street, London NW4.
Tel: 01 202 0071.
14 May - TUC Day of Action DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE CHIX starting at 10.00am Organised by Slough Trades Council & Berkshire Associating Trades Council.
WOMEN'S PICKET AT CHIX Wednesday 21 May, from 6.30am. National Women's Festival
WHEN even glossy magazines like necessary to run feature articles on 'Why Maggie Thatcher is a menace to women', then it is more than time for women to forcibly express their opposition to this anti-woman and anti-working class government.
A 'National Women's Festival against Tory Attacks' is being planned as a major step in demonstrating this opposition
The festival is planned to take place in October and is organised by an open planning group supported by NAC, Rights of Women, Women in Action, Fightback for Women's Rights and other local and national women's campaigns, groups and organisations
The aim of the festival is to bring together all women in trades unions, women's groups, students' unions, young women organising in schools, campaign groups and so on which are fighting back against the Tory attacks. The festival would illustrate how all these attacks are linked to the Tories overall policies.
The next planning meeting, to which all women are welcome, will take place at 5.30pm on 11 May at 374 Grays Inn Rd, London
can help tip the scales against the Chix management.
make the headline
Organise to get these firms to black Chix supplies. Gloy Starn Transport Chapeltown, snellelo Tom Broom Transport, Leek
Brown, 11 Edge Hill Rd, Leek, is a TGWU
FaM Dobson, F Dobson Group,
Meadowiela Inaustrial Estate Ponteland, Northumbria. (Sweets)
Thamesbrook Transport, Buckingham Avenue, , Slough Blonds of London, 800 Le Bridge Road, London E10. (Sweets)
Alma Confectionary, Lido Works, Esplanade, Kirkaldy, Scotland. CPC (Division of Corn Products
Trafford Prk., Manchester, (Starch)
Croda Food ingredients Group
Moss Bank, Widnes, Lancs (Gelatine)
Crompton Electricars/Oxford Electrics (Division of Hawker Siddeley), Oxford (Engineering). Country Storage, Farnborough Aho-S Nutt , Slough, (Engineering)
Unit 4, Newbridg Ind. Estate, Whitby Road, Brisl ington, Bristol (Pig Food Sup-
to: Jerry McMullen, Company find it
Page 7 scan of this page
HOME NEWS
airline.
The four daubed the offices on Tuesday of last week in solidarity with the protests being staged in Amsterdam concerning bad housing and the extravagance of the Cul ulalivll
e arre ae rrer dramatic car chase London's West End. chargea in London were squatters champion Piers Corbyn, Bernhart By Jenny Flintoft
to recover.
But CvCl serious threat looms: parents, Meena and Juno, face an impossible, agonising choice
leave Sonu here alone or take him back to India, where doctors think he is unlikely to
Although thev are in Britain remarkable lack of concern tor Rail workers
at the junction
By Robin Duncan NUR and Stuart Horton NUR THE press has tried to portray the railway pay settlement of. 20 per cent as a massive victory for ra1 workers. In fact, rail remains a low pay industry.
For years we have been at the tail end of the pay scale, and we have now been forced to settle for less than everyone else.
The NUR executive was concerned productivity trom tne nanonai pay agrcemenls, but such deals are on the way.
The '79 and '80 agreements involve cosure o ciut varas ald parcel depots.
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980
The writing on the wall
FOUR people were held in custody in various London prisons last week. Their crime? — writing the slogan 'Housing not Crowning' on offices of the Dutch-owned KLM
Malz. _LouISa Ferguson, Ricard Jiventas.
They were not released Friday morning. arter charged with criminal damage.
Amsterdam itself people took Those demonstrations against the coronauon. over qu lowns in conano saw some sort of protest action.
"Illegal immigrant'-
the concept has to go
SONU Varkki is six years old. A happy child, the only shadow over his life until recently was a visit to India, where British-born Sonu, lacking immunities, contracted several serious diseases, returning home so ill it took him 2½ years
port be removed, lilay his bewildered and heartbroken. 'he Varkkıs. naturalv feel bitter that, while white Commonwealth citizens nike lnemn, ds lourists, neguenlly obtain permanent residence talk about the open station con cept, which involves witnarawai or ticket collectors and some booking CICIKS orec n co zne wn! refused to accept extra commercial GULICS forced manacener Guards at King's Cross have found themselves in OVCL UIC-OC.SOH operation ot th: new local electric trains.
Along with management, NUR leadership believe that salvaLON JOr LaC railways lies technology and greater cy', with a consequent huge reducfallen by half since nationalisation
The pay deal will be turned into a cov ora ee ceoę∞ or whether the rank and file can force Page 7
and
until
being
over part
By Hilary region NGA IN PORTSMOUTH • last week 40 printers from the local evening newspaper occupied the press room and stopped the printing of the scab paper.
Many pickets belonging to the National Association have been arrested picket lines country after being locked out by management .The lock-outs followed the breakdown in negotiations between the NGA, Printing Industries Federation, the Newspaver society.
The CHlO ti is minimum . and a 37½-hour week.
are
.entering,
been taken on for several years.
are working during the lock-out. back
UnOR
position
solidarity we can gain in our fight
the
to protect lobs to strike ona mav The lead giver 'efficien-
corelary oa wernic las nol occ cerr. wite nemmauy caled tor a full strike on 14 May he has now backed down and merely endorsed mne oes vue roboc. members have been stay at work. The strike has to be all out.
Printworkers battle
over pay and hours
Driver, London
action and
La lot more at stake.
The
Wing in new technology. lnis tney need organisation Graphical unions.
Although around the
Line brusn line.
demanding flared basic wage of £80 newspaper the Wolverhampton
SCAB EXPRESS
'IT's a sign of the times,' said one of the Prolverhampion Express and Star on the
While other local papers have either settled with the NGA or ceased printing, the Express and Star is the only one being produced with
Management has used its Wolverhampton monopoly and high profits to introduce some of the newest printing technology in the country. Up to now this has been done with NGA
While the compositors are well paid and do a 372-hour week — one of the demands of the
wiln no new
By smashing the power of the print unions, Express and Star management could introduce even further automation which would need on-
Tele-ad personnel have already been trained
That the issue is one of union power can be members coming from far and wide - pickels.
The police have also realised the importance That's why we have by NUR general Saturday afternoons.
Some resistance instructed to
Dalicils.
While the issue of pay and and Star, the hours sparked off the industrial Press,
subsequent lock- Portsmouth. outs, under the surface there is
employers want to restructure the industrv to br. closed shop.
To do orenk the of the print tion of the majority of employers in the printing inaustry Have now made interim dispute agreements with the NGA, the Newspaper Society bosses who
press are taking a much harder
This is why the dispute has
around local • publishers, such as Express
WOLVERHAMPTON'S
of the dispute and have tried to smash the pickets I ney are punea violenuy vans or they have their heads smashed against van doors. In the first week of the lock-out 36 people have been arrested.
But the picketing is having an effect. While the paper is being printed it is reduced to a
photographs and reprints of old adverts.
Support for the NGA is growing. Soon after the lock-out 27 members of the National Union
disobeying their union's directive not to work
On Friday morning SLADE instructed its members not to cross the picket line. 'That night the Labour group on the local council passed a resolution to break off all relations with the Ex-
Alec Bowater, the NGA father of the chapel on the paper, thinks the lockout will soon be over. He considers they will be going back vic and that the struggle technology and protection of jobs will then be HCOEHHOBLCI *IPC, the magazine giant, is among those hit by the NGA dispute. schedules disrupted, the company has cut its wage bill by locking-out 1,500 journalists.
The journalists had been working to rule UVCE resisting the lock-out.
Books are weapons
'BOOKS are weapons. Don't let the Tories disarm you!' That's the message on a placard outside the central library in Hemel Hempstead, which for the past few weeks has been occupied on
Libraries are just one of the targets for the council's cuts, with a cut back in opening hours, the closure of branch libraries, and the reduction of the rener cervte o roe o oe dav a wech
The occupation is being used to publicise all the Tory cuts, and to build
Hundreds of signatures have been collected during the occupation, and the Dacorum Campaign and the Cuts, which is leading the action, is involving local organisations and broad participation in the campaign.
HM Government may
kill these patients
By Geoffrey Sheridan THE Merton, Sutton, and authority has a plan. It wants to move over a hundred elderly patients from St Benedict's Hospital in Tooting, SW London, to the nearby Bolingbroke Hospital.
It has to be said that this is not out of consideration to the
Last October the authority decided to cut £6.5m from its spending plans, involving the loss of 730 beds.
South London and the News in
The Tory Employment Bill will strengthen the employers oy wnucrmmg une pre-culy
Unfortunately, the print unions have been weakened by the craft-consciousness tradi-
ululs Although SOGAT, SLADE and the NUJ have become involved in the
their response has generally been uncoordinated.
re nece or a ae mou in the print industry is burning.
Whatever the outcome of the present dispute, lack of unity will mean that it is likely the DOSSeS W SuCccco HE resume turing the industry at the expense of the workers.
away from the dent
day
serious
sued.
Wandsworth health
From the Tories' point of view, it has done quite well. It nas arcady laia waste to tne Putney Hospital, the Cumberland Hospital, the BelUTO N Children's Unit, and
Queen Elizabeth House.
Four other hospitals in the area, including St Benedict's, are waiting for the axe to fall.
The statt at St Benedict' s are not waiting patiently. On 15 occupalul. collie: accevl ay cu troms
1c olcoculallol Secretary. Row over rape debate CHARLES Kennedy is the sta-
union president Glasgow University. Last Fri-
The authorised a debate in entitled . 'Rape Female Fantasy' tons aincusion nd at
; discussion' and figured in the title merely to a crowd', Kennedy met position from , 200 students university and violent cla
Tim Heath, one of the testers, said: 'At least fow have been raped aromnd cent months'. He did not t rape victims world fim OTOL-AL-KN
Page 8 scan of this page
EXPOSED! BRITISI
intelligence officer.
to the Tory Ireland, Humphrey Atkins. THE story November the British Army regimental commanders the North of Ireland were summoned to special security meeting at Stormont Castle, the administrative centre for the British government in the North of Ireland. brass were subjected to a speech Tapping Once there, the Army toD from Sir Maurice Oldfield, the former boss of MIt who had recently been appointed security supremo.
Oldfield promised audience that within six months the IRA would be well on its way to defeat, thanks to changes in security he was making.
That was six months ago and the attack on the Army spy in
the false offered Oldfield.
Computers
Yet according to the fantasies conjured up in spy thrillers, the IRA should have been defeated long ago.
There is the fact that British occupation forces in Ireland have four spy agencies operating: the police special • Dranch. (Military Intelligence 5), (Military Intelligence 6), Army Intelligence
These are backed up with a vast array of technical equipment. Most notorious Army computer at its headquarters at Thiepval barracks, Lisburn, seven miles Belfast.
Details of over 60 per cent of the population of the North of Ireland are on 'tape' in the computer's memory Everything from the colour of their wallpaper to their national insurance number is recorded..
One of Oldfield's innovations is to set up military posts which, it is hoped, will amass new information for the computer. The aim of these is to spy on entire communities.
An post has recently reciterock area of Belfast, which been set
overlooks the Catholic ghetto of Turf Lodge and Ballymurphy. Similar posts have OCCI structed at the Royal Victoria Hospital on the Falls which was one of the causes of the recent strike by workers at
Helicopters
Backing up such 'information gathering' units, the Army has increased the use
accopiels - a pracuice recculy
introduced by the police
Britain when tracking
photographing demonstrations.
Such activities are not, strict-
ocialist Challenge 8 May 1980
INTERNATIONAL/ IRELAND
A BRITISH Army captain was seriously injured when his booby trapped car exploded in the North of Ireland town of Enniskillen on Wednesday of last week. The captain was no ordinary soldier; the British Army has admitted he was an
He was also reported to be one of the select intelligence officers who have had direct access
Secretary of State for Northern
The Provisional IRA has claimed responsibility for the explosion, but the severe wounding of the unnamed captain has once more highlighted the presence and role of British spies in Ireland.
Drawing on material so far unpublished in Britain, GEOFF BELL examines this spy network.
goes that last ly speaking, illegal. They can be classified as 'surveillance'
In are Army activity on the ground. supported
This mainly takes the form of raids on houses in the Catholic community. In a raid earlier this year Ine Army admitted that ir one session alone 604 were 'visited'.
This figure was quoted in a recent series in the Irish Times, which went into some detail conhis cerning the activities of the real, professional spies. Most of their activities certainly are illegal. For example: 'Ordinary mail is intercepted on a large scale. means is used ... One ingenious method employs a needle which is inserted through a gap in the by envelope; it is then rotated at very high speed, rolling the letter un so that it can read and replaced.'
Other such include the inspection of social security files, obtained through 'contacts' social offices, the tapping of telexes, and the examination of bank accoullts.
MIS Since all this is illegal, information 1n these and cannot be made public instance, in attempting to gain a Convicul court, though those courts are in the North of ireland. other 'evidence' manufactured. Informers One former army intelligence officer is quoted Times: 'When you had an arms find you simply retained some pistols and ammunition. there was somebody you sure was a Provo, you house search and Then the Provo would be given a choice of going inside or working for intelligence.'
The planting of evidence is fairly common in most countries, but the special characteristic of its use by the British Army in the North of Ireland is that such practices are officially arranged by brigade intelligence units; in 401- other words it is official Army policy.
Road, Despite such 'fittings-up' and the complex machinery employed security services, the claims that it is informers who supply 80 per cent-of the information which they find useful.
According to one of quoted in the Irish Official IRA members are par in icularly useful if passing on in and formation on the Provisionals and IRSP' (Irish Socialist Party). This would tie in Page 8
and uniformed A variety of
be extracted,
operations
Theoretically,
limited to foreign countries.
ways poor quallty - for internment juryless Accordingly Around 20 vit spies
— are also used.
in ine Irish
When were branch of British intelligence. did
planted it.
IRA members. in Lambeth.
technological
by the Army with the partitionist policy.
source community in general or the ProTimes, visional movement in particular which are the targets of the dirty tricks' employed intelligence
Republican
fond of tapping the phones of
The agencies
Military Intelligence 6 (MI6)
MI6 shouldn't be operating at all in the North of Ireland; its briet is
But the agency was drafted in after the
of Special Branch and Army intelligence had been exposed during the
operation in 1972, when than a quarter of those picked up in the initial swoop were members of the IRA.
operate in the North at any one time. They usually come as civil servants, although other covers - post office workers, journalists, insurance agents
MI6 also operates in the South of Ireland where it is particularly keen on phone tapping. It has extensive files on Southern Irish noliticians and has informers and agents I the Irish police, army and civil service.
The 'Six' is regarded as the sophisticated
It is more concerned with monitoring the Provisionals and evaluating political developments than simply securing the arrest or liquidation of
It was MI6 which recruited the Little. john brothers to infiltrate the IRA in 1973. The brothers were subsequently arrested for armed robbery in the South of Ireland.
The London headquarters of Ml6 is at Century House, near Westminster Bridge,
Military Intelligence 5 (MI5)
MIS was deployed in the North of
Officials' pro- bourgeois
It is not just the Catholic
by British Paisley.
The RUC Special Branch is
foreign countries
Ireland in 1973 after MI6 had been discredited in the Littlejohn fiasco. Many of its operatives are former They are seen as the "plodders'.
Its staff are scattered throughout the North of Ireland; most of the agency's officers serve undercover in police civilian liaison.
MIS is meant to have a special responsibility tor spotting British VIPs, or bombing Britain, but in this it has been singularly unsuccessful.
The Five' has an office at British Army • HQ at Lisburn, near Belfast, but its own centre is at Rover House, Belfast.
MI5 agents tend to be very right wing Both tney and MI6 have 'doubles' in each others agency to keep an eye on what the others are up to.
British Army Intelligence
Intelligence in the British Army operates on a number of different levels: 1. Each battalion in the Army (about 550 personnel in all has an intelligence section. This is made up of 35 soldiers, including three officers and six NCOs. of this the three North of Ireland brigade areas have a permanent intelligence unit, which is about 20 strong and usually headed by a major.
In overail control is the headquarter's intelligence unit at Army HQ in Lisburn. This is around 50 strong and is commanded by a hieutenant-colonel or a ful colonel 2. Special Military Intelligence
Among those who have suffered in this politicians way are Social Democratic and Ireland. Labour Party politicians, John Hume and Gerry Fitt, as well as from Loyalist -figures such as
Further afield, MI6 - the espionage outfit responsible for
- has a long
This is mainly
police officers. 3. Special
plots against using campaigns in observation posts
murdered
High Street, shot Boyle in the back. 4. Special
run special projects.
The team.
Robert Nairac, who
Armagh, . On top Duties Team.
Special Branch
formation
Unit.
record of spying on bourgeois
in the South These spies usually operate under diplomatic cover
the British Embassy Dublin, although other disguises have been used.
file MI6 operatives in Dublin have is on Charles Haughey, the leader of
centred at the RU Castlereagh barracks — infamous for its u of torture. SMIU is especially responsib for liaising with the RUC.
Air Services (SAS). presence of the SAS was first acknowledge publicly by Harold Wilson in 1976, althoug it had been operating for some time befor
The SAS concentrates on surveillan
undercover patrols • and 'forwar
It was a unit of the SAS which last yes
John Boyce who went to
SAS, aspering chan been o
, suspecting him of being a 'terrorist closely associated with the AS, but send Duties Teams. These
received a good deal publicity some years ago when they wel discovered running a laundry, bookshol and massage parlours in Belfast as part ‹ their 'information gathering' operations
All were spotted by the IRA. Captai
was captured subsequently executed by the IRA in Sou
was a member of the Speci
The Special Branch is regarded as bein the most incompetent of the lot. It uses th less 'sophisticated' techniques to extract i
such as torturing suspects.
According to an answer to a parliame tary question given in 1978, there are 2' members of the RUC Special Branch.
the 'Republican' wing of th ruling Fianna Fail party wh recently became the prim minister. Extensive details Haughey's private life are ap parently on file.
Occasionally MI6 agent have been caught. The mos notable example was •Inat • John Wyman, who was expose
Page 9 scan of this page
ISPYS IN IRELAND
in 1976 for trying to bribe information from the Southern Irish Special Branch.
But some Southern police officers have been very cooperative. A senior member of the force apparently passed on Irish police files on Provisionals to British Army intelligence.
Most of these activities officially santioned by the British government. But the intelligence agencies have often implemented their own political 'line'. example was the Loyalist strike in 1974 which brought down the "power-sharing' government. former intelligence officer told the Irish Times:
'We didn't want to get caught in the middle between the Prods and the Provos ... we advised (Merlyn) Rees not to against the strikers ... some of us also hoped that the strike would make progress and wison and Rees would be defeated.
'And we hoped that if powersharing failed, the Kingdom population would say Ulster nad nad its last chance politically and would advocate an all-out effort TOT military victury. Wilson
In pursuit of this general proLoyalist line, MIS has often fed British politicians 'disinformation'. When internment being phased out, the Army and
comolned falsify figure of ex-internees who were supposedly engaging in violence. The real figure of between 20 and 25 per cent was doubled in an attempt to persuade Kees to halt the releases.
On another occasion MIS fed Harold Wilson details of an IRA plan to simulate Loyalist attacks on Catholic areas and thus spark off large-scale street fighting.
Wilson told the House Commons, on the basis of this information, that the IRA had a
*specific and calculated plan... by ot ruthless and discriminate violence to foment Irish inter-sectarian hatred
chaos.
What MI5 didn't tell Wilson, though they knew this to be the case, was that this IRA strategy was envisaged as a contingency
are plan to be put into operation
only in the event of a wholesale Loyalist attack on the Catholic ghettoes.
One
Network
A As one former British spy in
Ireland has nut it: "Sometimes we told the Secretary of State we knew things that really we didn't; sometimes we pretended not to know things that we did. From move an intelligence point
politicians quite easily.'
United Was
of
inlimited and
over COSI
Someone
ditterence this wav. tend to they're the type
gospel. Some
various spy
whole theory
of view can be manipulated same year, believing he was too hard on the Loyalists.
the
simply
filtration.
The
ghettos are
Truth
the
Times: above all else. world
courts.'
Britain's spying network in the North of Ireland is at times
effectiveness because of differences between and he the various branches. There is no
between Army Intelligence and the Special Branch, nor between MIS and MI6.
who worked with Britain as well. both MIS and MI6 described the
'Five does be very right wing who read the Daily Telegraph and think it's Saturday
in Six take the Guardian, on the other hand...
The competition between the
agencies one reason for their limited success. Arden. But it is only a minor one. The
intelligence mittee for opeation is that if the right informer is found here, the right c/o Youth dirty trick done there, the right SW1. member of the IRA assassinated Harold Wilson pictured here, in 1974 with General King, at the time the head of the British Army in the North of Ireland. Intelligence officers in the Army plotted against Wilson's Irish policy in the
somewhere else, all will be well and the 'enemy' will be defeated.
But when that is applied to
Republican-minded community in the North of Ireland the theory falls apart. It is not
that the Provisionals" much-publicised 'cell structure' is an effective guard against in-
main point is that the British Army is so detested in the Catholic ghettoes that however many letters in and out of those
opened, however many spy posts are erected on the edges of those ghettos, however many raids are mounted, or false ammumnon plantea, me aeler' mination of the inhabitants of those ghettos to resist remains.
James Bond may be able to defeat the individual gangster, or his counter part in some othet intelligenice service, but he cannot defeat a whole community.
In one way the relevance of
British spy machine Ireland lies in Britain itself. As an MIS operative told the Irish
'Be clear on one point The intelligence not answerable Secretaries of State. It is accountable to nobody — not the Prime Minister, not Parliament, not the
And in this context an article last Agust in the Daily Mail, written by its defence correspondent, stated 'But the truth is that the Army has had to go into the Big Brother business in Ulster' and, concluded the article, the British Army officer 'does not forget his skills when he leaves Ulster.
'The result has been to produce a special breed of Army officer... he is politically conscious
is quite prepared t criticise his political directives.' Not only criticise them, but act against them as well. And not only in the North of Ireland, but in
Voices for Withdrawal 'A forum on Northern Ireland
14 June, Hall, Red Lion Sq, London WC
Hain, Bernadette Devlin-McAliskay, John
Delegates £2, Observers £1. Details from the organisers: Com
• Withdrawal from Ireland National Ubera Club, 1 Whitehall Place, London
Who's Who?
Office, officially in charge of 'politics and information'
widely suspected of being a member of MI6. under Foreign Office control
tainly in Ml6. Wyatt served under him.
SIR MAURICE OLDFIELD is former head of MI6 and now 'security coordinator' in the North of Ireland. Appointed last October and taken out of retirement at a time when tensions between the Army and RUC, and the Army and the British government were at their height
post-war Malaysian 'emergency' when he oversaw ac tivities of MI6. the Army, Special Branch, and police
people including an RUC assistant chief constable and an Army brigadier. He also works at Stormont Castle.
COLONEL B M FRANKS is head of the British Army's Special Air Services (SAS). occasionally performing operations on its behalf.
BRIGADIER JIMMY GLOVER is the Army's No 2 in the North of Ireland and Commander of Land Forces
assumed to have overall responsibility for Army intelligence in the North of Ireland.
of the IRA saying that it would be able to raise violence ... to at least the level of 1978 for the foreseeable future'
miles from Belfast. Known to enjoy watching films of demonstrations
DENIS PAYNE and spearhead MI5 operations in the North of Ireland in 1973.
They took over from two Mi6 officers, and Denis Payne, who were the scapegoats for the LittleJohn fiasco. charge of MI5 in the North is unclear.
DAVID WYATT is under-secretary at the Northern Ireland
He is on secondment from the Foreign Office and is
which is
One of Wyatt's predecessors in this post was James Alien. who held the job in 1974-5. Allen was almost cer.
The post of under-secretary in 'politics and informa tion was created in 1972 when MI6 was first drafted in to the North of Ireland. Wyatt works from Stormont Castle.
Oldfield piayed a similar 'co-ordination role during the
Oldfield now heads a 'think tank' made up of about 20
The SAS has links with Mi6,
Glover heads the Defence Intelligence Staff and is
Glover was the author of the famous 'Document 37' leaked to the IRA which detailed the Army's assessment
Glover is stationed at the Army HQ in Lisburn, seven
IAN CAMERON were sent to
Craig Smellie
Whether Payne and Cameron are still in
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 9
Page 10 scan of this page
The Labour left
HOMENEWS
Last week we explained the impasse faced by PLP-based left. It tries to base itself on constituency activists, who are the weakest section in inner party struggles. headlong into block vote. It is forced into compromises by the which leaves the right wing a free hand.
The left can only break out by linking up with the trade union rank and file, in a struggle which is directed not only against the right Parliamentary Labour Party but also against the trade union bureaucracy. This is what the NEC lefts, including Benn, refuse to do: which is why the 31 May conference will confine itself to tine woras without any acuon.
But does this mean Party should be ignored? It is in deep crisis. A far-reaching debate on policy and democracy is going on. fects is this having? Will new currents emerge which can break out of the old impasse?
Struggles
Of course these struggles have happened before. Every Labour Party leaves office there is a furious post-mortem. there are important differences.
The capitalist COSES sharper. There is less
reform'. Working pressure for radical change is much greater, and is coupled to a mood of struggle. Workers are not prepared to accept left reformist excuses for a lack of action.
Until 1974, opposition forces were led by the Lialson Defence of Trade Unions, which built an alliance of left parliamentarians, left bureaucrals, and rank and ne trades unionists. But this opposition never broke free of the political hold of the left leaders.
When the PLP-left fell in behind the social contract, no movement ex-
that could - challenge betrayal.
But by 1978, many workers were fighting Labour's austerity policies regardless of the lack of leadership from either the 'lefts' or the Communist Party. This was particularly the case in the public sector, which has a big impact on the Labour Party because of its connection to both central and local government.
This effect has been heightened by the cuts. Local Labour Parties face the awkward fact that they can only
against central government. ting minor concessions from the local state by winning council posts is less and less effective. Cuts committees are taking Call ever promising stand towards councils.
Discipline
But does this mean that we should fight only in the unions, and not try to discipline the LP? This is the perspective of our comrades in the Socialist Workers Party.
The error of this policy is clear once we ask ourselves what is needed in the unions. The urgent need of the hour is a massive, united left in the HIS - • a new vimonty Movemenl. The scabbing of Duffy, Evans makes this an absolute priority.
Such a elt. especially
organised presence, would not fall prey to the manouevres of the reformists if it was based on a commitment to struggle and equipped with policies to defeat the Tories. The SWP recognise this itself in its approach to unity with the CP in the unions.
But such a left cannot afford to ignore the Labour Party! Isn't social democracy just as important as the CP, and in fact more important given its size, the decline of the CP, and the
CP only acts as Labour Party's 'industrial organiser' in any case?
But if rank and file democratic workers are to take part in organising union resistance, essential to draw the Labour Party into the work of organising unions. Trades unionists must try to Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 10
the traditional
It trade union
bureaucracy,
the
the Labour
What aftime the
But this time
much
room for
Cass Committee
this Extrac-
uncomLabour Sirs and
with revolutionary
partially Labour left join in.
Labour Party
Ordinary Labour want to ghetto in which the prisoned them.
social
hundred attending 1ctoir, conceite in the
and the
A SPECIAL Labour Party conference will be held on 31 May, and a lobby of trade unionists, backed by Socialist Challenge, will be calling on the party to make a commitment to build and support mass action to get rid of the Tories.
Socialist Challenge also supports the
ordinating Committee that direct links weaken the hold of the Labour right action, in the unions and ensure that the
To do this we need to link up with
activists who prepared to back us. A mood exists in the constituencies for such a link-up paigns,
Party militants break out of the electoral the PLP has imThey want to see a
That is why the initial meetings of the Labour Co-ordinating Committee have been so successful, with several
each successive policies,
The LCC was the only left current that committed itself to some form of
trade unions
between however limited. Its draft policy statement opens:
'We are committed to fostering rank and file action throughout the Labour movement, believing that it is primarily through local CLP
shopfloor struggles, and the mobilisation of working people that a movement can be created to through the necessary changes.'
We believe that this declaration expresses a widespread desire in the united action by the unions and the Party, against the Tories and all their
which should be positive form. That is why we support the call for a lobby of 31 May, for a trade union conference to follow, and
the Labour union activists should be encouraged to plan direct action.
In the second of two articles, ALAN FREEMAN looks at why we argue for links between trade unionists and Labour Party activists despite the limitations of even the 'left' leaders of the Labour Party.
all other actions that can turn this desire into a real and living move-
Even more movements of women. cam- youth have sprung themselve NAC and the ANL. The Labour Parpush behind them, has had to
them, but forced to support them.
In short, Social Democracy faces a tOT serious challenge to its leadership of important mass movements.
This combination of a crisis of given perspective. and loss of leadership has made the Party's crisis much more acute. Local activists are being drawn into mass
campaigns
demonstrations.
anti-racist
These
gle.
Party and trade
working class
chance. Force
We
commit itself.
mand groups cuts. We affiliated
the block would place our ment.
Party.
Oppose
That is
machine.
Tories, needs.
develop
dramatically, mass
• blacks and its demands up, expressing
trail uncomfortably New Titles powerless to control
increasing mass action,
01-226 0571
righis, and the cras. Councils have racism,
•begun to organise or release their
employees to take part in anti-Tory
The Labour Party has taken initiatives to identify with political mass
called
November anti-cuts demo. It backs
• aemos and is callng an anti-war march in June. Callaghan
was even forced to come out in support of the 14 May day of action.
moves must be welcomed
They add vital new forces to the strug
Millions of Labour supporters
can be won to take part in actions
where they would otherwise hesitate
But a simple question arises. Why
wait for such developments?
The Labour Party commands the support of the unions. It is the only
party able to forn governments or council administrations. Its presence in struggle, when that happens, gives an enormous added boost. It is wrong to leave this to
say that trades unionists should fight for the Labour Party to
We should use our right to send delegates to local party bodies to force it to put resource: behind our struggles. We should de
that council Labour refuse to collaborate with should fight non unions, like NUT anc NALGO, to affiliate to raise the same demands. We should fight to control
vote, paid for by political levies and abused by our leaders without a thought for the rights or needs of their members.
Above all we should demand that the Labour Party come off the fence and jourf in a united mass movement to kick the Tories out now, without waiting until it is too late
What do the rest of the left say and how do we view it? Of course there are dangers. If we give unconditional support to Labour, and simply become embroiled in a purely internal struggle to change the party.
future struggles at the mercy of the PLP once more.
We would lose vital weapons -our ability to determine the demands of the struggle and to impose them on the leaders. We would lay the ground for another social contract govern-
That is why the fight to discipline the Labour Party must begin from the organisation of the trade union rank
must be go com promise for the sake of some inner-party or parliamentary manouevre. The needs of the working class must come before the needs of the Labour
why we oppose any strategy, such as that of the Militant, but also of the Labour left, that tries to direct the movement into a fight for • a left parliamentary programme, conducted through the party's electoral
We need policies to defeat the this is true. But those should be policies for action, not for procrastination. We should not concentrate on what the next Labour government may do, but on what the present Labour Party is doing. . The commitment we demand of a future government flows logically from our present
The most important task is to
struggle around those needs, and to create such a movement in the unions that the next government will either be forced to recognise
For cede to another government that will do so.
The Other Book Shop
Arguments Within English Marxism
1 Anderson Verso Editions, £3.95 Writing by Candlelight by EP Thompson Merlin Press, $2.70 328 Upper Street, London N1. Tel
Page 11 scan of this page
Why we left the Young Communists
AGENDA
stay in that position.
membership at the beginning of this year.
socialist ideas, reduce its left 'activist' profile.
longer.
Why did you join the YCL?
Martin: Because the YCL is more
LA DONT Young Socialists it is often the first organisation
People think of communists as having a tradition of struggle and only hear of the Communist Party.
At first you just don't hear about oner tell organisanons.
But it is only in name. When I joined the YCL I knew I wasn't goNewsline, paper of the Workers' Revolutionary Party, has launched a new slander campaign against Alan leading militant in BL's Cowley and a leader League.
he smear tactics or the wRe amount to the suggestion that the WSL is not a political tendency, but a bunch of provocateurs.
Two documents have Newsline to suggest that Thornett is a vocateur who is 'loving up to the Pabloites'. Both of these documents have been stolen, one from Thornett himself, and one from the inter-
house in December 1977 was a letter from a police college asking seminar on connice m sociely. suca leuers are sent to numerous people in public life; it is ludicrous to suggest that Thornett is in any way either friendly because he received such a letter.
The document stolen from the IMG headquarters was a personal letter from Thornett to Tariq Ali, enclosing some political documents INTERNATIONAL
Val 5 No2
THE YOUNG Communist League, the youth section of the Communist Party, is the largest youth organisation to the left of the Labour Party. It is not finding it easy to
Its membership in November 1976 was 1,976. A year later it had fallen to 1,663, and it fell again to 1,282 in 1978. Little over five hundred people re registered for
Assessing that this decline in membership simply proves that young people in Britain are not interested in
the YCL's response was to still further
Diluting its class politics, however, has not retrieved the YCL's falling membership. Two members of Revolution, NIGEL WILSON and MARTIN WRIGHT, used to be members of the YCL. They explained why they aren't any
Wing to join the Labour Party, like Party my mum and dad. something Cold the YCL would be sometning delter.
NIGEL: My reasons for joining were sullar. 1 tougnt ine YcL would be more active and political.
There is another quite common reason wa / young people join the YCL, which is that their parents are members of the Communist Party.
Saturday/Sunday 17-18 May
REVOLUTION NATIONAL CONFERENCE
The University of London Students Union Malet Street, London WC1 (5 mins from Euston Station)
Guest speakers; discussions; workshops; films; gig and disco; and
much more besides.
Defend Alan Thornett!
Thornett, entry factory
been published in lo or an acent or the ponce OUT NOW! New International, IMG theoretical journal. Contains major ticles on the Labour 'Alternative Strategy, 'Beyond Fragments' and Italian Communist history. Also reviews and a reply to the SWP on the crisis of the European far left.
Single issues: 85p. £3.50 for one year. From The Other Bookshop, 328 Upper St, London N1.
Did the YCL live up to your expectations?
Martin: Once you are in you find unal it cives vou no bonucal eauca tion the meetings organisational. There's lots of talk about acuon but notning ever nappened.
The sions were after the meetings. The meetings never discussed Ireland or things like that.
You really that a lot of YCLers are just asham. ed of their politics. Many of them don't take Holscuse aboul acmoclausu, luc police and forging alliances Guides and Boy won't talk about it.
Why do you think the YCL is so inactive?
politics are so It. had to be dynamic. For example thought that
out, so it hasn't got anything to get out and fight for.
Alam to get our now. basis we organise demos, pickets of army recruitment centres,
YCL ignored when the rest of the left was mar ching in places like Lewisham and Brick Lane Leicester they with the Church and MPs while the rest of us staved to fight Also they politics malvalal peopie, ratner tnan getting out on the streets and involved in struggles -really change their ideas.
Nigel: They have the conception of building allance chumming up to people establishment.
girl guides, Young Liberals and the Church by tant arill lascisi spend all your time running around after these people instead of getting across to working class youth.
and details of a public meeting. After the disappearance or mis letter,
was found.
Why is the WRP reverting to these slander methods? The answer has to be sought in the fate of a once-Trotskyist organisation which has degenerated into a lumpen sect. More and more the WRP has come to rely on funding by a few petty-bourgeois 'super-stars'.
The distance between the WRP and reality has become greater and greater.
WRP is becoming a transmission belt for some of the cruder aspects of petty-bourgeois Arab nationalism and the Khomeini regime in Iran.
Combined with this political degeneration, the WRP is becoming enmeshed in a paranoid wonderland of spies and provocateurs. frenzy is an attempt to cover up the political crisis of the WRP, previously leading members like Royston Bull out of the organisation.
The slanders and smears of this vile sect against a serious revolutionary like Thornett is contemptible. The time has come when the WRP can no longer be regarded as a part of the workers' movement, let alone anything to do with Trotskyism.
issue of
arleft's
Economic
the ple of Brent and Lambeth.
Subs:
usual next week.
The YCL
are all really
mOTO are purely "ultra-left' tion and Rebel
political discus-
inherently get the impression
seriously democratic alliance'.
WILT
Scouts, so they sucialist
Nigel:
Martin: The main reason is that its •
boring and unon Ireland, Call LOODS do things now.
Martin: Youth
In Revolution we fight for Bri-
militant answers one 20 on tea!
sent clear
Or again on anti-fascism, the
they demos
pushed off When youth they increasingly see Icading attempts as a matter or convincing
Nanona which is how people Students.
'broad Martin: It
aemoc ac ane unis reav means DOLLIC. the course that
You won't get an alliance with
the time. getting involved in milipeople, achos
is active and evidence of forcible Cartes
NICARAGUA
Today the in Council of State
This Intercontinental chronic Press/Inprecor which has ledLatest
plus 10p postage.
14 May issue
Special Sales Drive
EXTRA sales promised so far for next week's issue covering 14 May amount to 650 copies. Nottingham IMG has ordered a further 50 copies this week to follow the exam-
But that still leaves us a thousand copies short of our
sold on othe 9 March Tud dent by the issue which was
on the 9 March TUC demo.
IMG branches must get their extra orders in by this Friday, 9 May, as the paper will be distributed earlier than
We still have not heard from our Scottish and Nor thern branches about extra orders. Rush in your orders and help us break our sales record.
thinks that Young Liberals, and even young fories
at heart. In fact they think they can
people ene 'right' than from what they call the
groups like Revolu-
They don't think anyone to the left of them has anything to say at
Martin: The YCL's kind of politics
boring. The thing they say is that you can't have the working class seizing power because it will annoy everyone else
• nence me neea lor tne broac
Instead of fighting for a real
alternative you compromise with people like small capitalists so that they can get uni-
Everything has to be 'gradual' and 'slow change'.
Dul youl aren i altracted ic everything being slow, they want to
aren't inspired by CHoose. you want dermite
way or the - it the let aoesnt pre uncompromising attitudes some will turn to the fascist:
Lots of older people think tha wu l get socialism lifetime. But us youth think that we will, and we want to fight for it
the YCL apec lead something it has to hold back the
alc they sabotaged organise actions, demos, and so on when they led the
Union School it e nationalist Comsomol Why did you leave the YCL?
wasn't so much the effect the
connected politics, although I didn't see it at
Also the YCL is full of older
whereas Revolution • a youll orcallisation. I joined Revolution because it
militant and I got ponnically caucated once i Joined. the YCL?
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Sney said Iney were • inter and had links with (the Soviet Ine. weren't
really interested in what was hap-
pening there.
Take Afghanistan - they look
at what's going on with interest but
they don't think it will affect them
We've had a real discussion abou
Argnanistan in kevolution
Revolution approaches things
from a completely different angle.
What should Revolution do about
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It is in united action tha
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Page 12 scan of this page
SWAPO: 20 YEARS OF
Behind the Cuban refugee crisis
INTERNATIONAL
By Paul Lawson AFTER the victory ZANU in Zimbabwe, which established black majority rule after 80 years of white oppression, attention increasingly turning to the liberation struggle Namibia.
Namibia, or 'South
Africa', was a German colony, given to the South Africans as a League of Nations Protectorate in 1919. Despite the country's present legal status as a protectorate of the United Nations, the South Africans have kept a firm grip Namibia's diamond and uranium wealth.
Since the early '60s, South West Africa People's Organisation SWAPO has been waging an increasingly successful armed struggle defeat the South African occupation. This year marks the 20th of the founding of the movement. Minerals
The turn of the nationalist movement in Namibia to armed struggle and the impetus for the formation of SWAPO closely followed the Windhoek 'shootings in 1959.
exploitation Namibia's mineral wealth depended on a system of forced contract labour imposed black Throughout Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 12
STRUGGLE
1959 a campaign took place, of organsce Iorces, against the removal thousands workers to the new township of Katatura.
Beer halls
West Workers were placed under rigid control in township and the move was to entail massive increases in rent and transport costs. The resistance campaign culminated in December 1959 with a boycott of municipal beer cinemas, and transport. On 10 December police opened fire on the demonstrators, Namibian workers and wounding 52.
In the aftermath shootings nationalist were imprisonea. ordered out of regroupment of forces led to the founding of SWAPO.
The beginning struggle proved a long and difficult operation.
clashes SWAPO guerillas South African forces did take place until above all it was the events of 1971-2 which transformed the Namibian struggle.
The general strike of 1971-2 began the Katutura compound and lasted over two
nationalist 20,000 workers. forcible sector
of immediate cause of the strike were the low wages and appalling living conditions which the contract workers endured.
Most of returned to once there the workers organised themselves meetings, the
mobilised support among the people.
Ine South ponded with massive repression and the strike halls, broken. But 1971-2 had carried the libera tion struggle on to a new stage, killing 13 SWAPO. consondaling Together
liberation of Angola, it made
of the possible a considerable exten-
sion of the armed struggle.
leaders banned, or Windhoek. Regime nationalist
of armed and international imperialism
both realise that the time has The first come to make some kina ol
between "settlement'. and the Britain and the United Nations
not are working towards 1966. But ment which would include the
holding of elections, and the establishment militarised Namibia and bases in Angola.
LAST month, Padilla, the who was briefly imprisoned for ideological back in 1971, left Cuba on a three year exit visa. I was told by the director, Santiago Alvarez, who was in London recent•ly, that specifically requested to be allowed to return to Cuba, and the agreed.
This shows that Cuba does not usually attempt to prevent people leaving, porarily or right to leave Cuba is not the issue Wiln tne recently crammed Peruvian embassy In Havana -to the capitalist press, 3,000 according to the Cubans.
Last January, at the time of the first few incidents around the Peruvian embassy, tne AmMassacor issued a that was published in Granma (the Cuban 'Pravda') saying: 'We are not a travel agency'.
However, such statements cannot hide the fact that more than one the Peruvian, political asylum to people who can hardly be described as entitled to it.
Before the present problems with Peru the main offender had been case the issue is part of the wider problem of Venezuelan conflict with Cuba over policy in Central America. For example, Venezuela's Democral accused of giving assistance to the
months, involving more than government is
from every of the economy. The
UN will accept. Intact the workers their homelands;
local committees and border between
disarming Africans res-
was eventually the cycles of huge
support for This with the would
tutelage.
Large
South The South African regime
in Namibia.
La sellieand be
of zone between the SWAPO
However the South African ment.
Cuban poet
offences
Latin America Cuban film
Padilla had
government had the chief cause.
either tem- of El Salvador.
permanently. The Venezuela to withdraw
other's ambassadors. people who the compound
- 10,000 according migrants from
grounds that they
those
statement in Havana.
the Embassy month. including was killed.
sales Other
Venezuela. In this
be socialists.
Christian government stands
military Christian
proposing
series of amendments, which it
appears that Britain and the
These include: 20 of the 40
South African bases along the
Namibia and
Angola being left intact; the
of SWAPO;
SWAPO forces being excluded
from Namibia; and the integra-
tion into South Atrica of tne
Walvis. Bay base area,
which is the main port and has
easy access to Windhoek.
kind of settlement amount to keeping
Namibia under South African
rule bers of South
African troops would be left in
Namibia; the Rooikop base in
Walvis Bay would provide the
Africans with an air-
strike capacity inside Namibia;
and the SWAPO forces would
be effectively demobilised.
"Free' elections in these cir-
cumstances would be a fraud
The south Africans would con-
tinue to have effective control,
able to sabotage the
electoral process. In this situa-
tion, the struggle of SWAPO,
both political and military will
continue. So must the solida-
rity of the British labour moveCUBA has not been exempt from the new waves of cold war propaganda that have been sweeping through the West.
The several thousand people who have invaded the Peruvian Embassy in Havana, claiming status as political refugees, have been used to smear both Cuba in particular and communism in general, especially in
Peru, in the midst of an election campaign, has used the arrival of Cuban refugees in the country as a ploy against Hugo Blanco and other revolutionaries standing in the elections. 'They want to create another Cuba here, and people just want to get out of Castro's Cuba,' they say
It cannot be denied that a large number of people want to leave Cuba at the present time, but, contrary to what the capitalist press would have us believe, the repressive nature of the Castro regime is probabaly not
In this article, MICHAEL CHANAN, a frequent visitor to Cuba, gives his view of what lies behind the situation.
Democrats in the government
This kind of who conflict recently led Cuba and
each
The USA has refused to accept a number of would-be im-
Cuba on the were common criminals. It is clear that the same is true of many of
now jammed into the Peruvian embassy compound
The trouble started around the Peruvian Embassy when six people crashed a bus through
gates early this Cuban guards changed shots and one of them
Following this incident the Cubans removed their own guards from the embass!
people wanting leave Cuba are largely attempting to do so in response to a speech by Fidel Castro in which he said that Cuba didn't want people who weren't willing to
He meant Cuba didn't want people who weren't prepared to accept and share the hardships as well as the benefits of a plan- the
SAM NJOMO, political leader of SWAPO
that
ned economy. Some of those
want to leave are discouraged by the country's current economic ditticulties arCe
The hardships suffered in Cuba are nothing compared to the sufferings of the popular classes in virtually every other Latin American country. Cuba has rationing, but this is mainly due to the economic blockade of the country kept up by the USA for the last 20 years. The main aim of the rationing is to ensure an equitable distribution of food and other goods that are in short supply.
The capitalist press never fails to mention the rationing but somehow forgets to mention the blockade.
In the last few months Cuba has lost considerably through damage to its coffee, tobacco and to a lesser extent sugar
The culprit disease, but the losses in strict economic terms are likely to be recouped by the recent rise in world sugar prices.
Whichever way you look at it there has been considerable of economic disruption in Cuba, but nothing like the crisis that
Western press has been
talking about. Castro's speech indicated that these problems required greater vigilance and discipline from socialists. • This is precisely what many of those people inside the Peruvian embassy want to avoid.
Reports from Havana reveal that many Cubans testify
people from. . their own districts who have run to the Peruvian embassy are antisocial elements individualists who refuse to adapt themselves to the collective values of socialism.
Foreign correspondents who have visited the embassy,
that a sizedble group among these people fits that description: minor criminals running for cover. They are using the situation as an excuse.
If the Cubans have refused to cooperate with the UN High Commissione for Refugees this is because, first, they quite reasonably do not consider these people refugees. Nobody needs to flee illegally. Everyone can leave who gets an entry visa to another country. Therefore secondly, they regard the pro. blem as one of bilateral relations with Peru.
Thirdly, they have " themselves provided facilities to alleviate the discomfort in the compound. as well as sate
conduct passes to enable people leave, later.
and go home, and return Reuter has reported that many in the com pound do not wish to themselves of these facilities.
Reports explain that they don't want to run the gauntlet
their angry neighbours, while pressure from some of the more aggressive of them prevents others from accepting.
Page 13 scan of this page
BATTLE OF IDEAS
By Alain Brossat
FOR hundreds of thousands of young people who were about 20 in Sartre's ideas and writings provided an intellectual basis for a revolutionary commitment and an opening to Marxism.
This is what makes Sartre so radically different from other famous thinkers of the post war period, such as Raymond Aron and even Albert Camus.
1 ney never won anyone to revolutionary action and Marxism. Another Zola?
From a political and historical standpoint Sartre's character is thrilling because of his relationship to politics. He was not a left intellectual', a 'committed writer, fellow traveller, a Romain Rolland of the latter half of the 20th centurv. On the contrary, in his aggressive contradictory way he exemplified the crisis of this century.
What immediately strikes us about Sartre's Dason or bonucs is mar nis commitmeni occurred very late, at the start of the Second World War, but above all during the Liberation of France (1944-5). By this time he was already a star of the arts and philosophy and this warped everything. He tried to shake off the glittering fame he had won from the world of the arts, which gave an added appeal to his political views but he was unable to do so, even after 1968. This paradox dominated character of his commitment.
Furthermore when re-reading biography today it is striking how little impact the catalcvismic events of the '30s had on his intellectual formation. In 1932-33, living in berlin ne wrote vausea. Distractealy ne noted 'Some communists and nazis shoot at each other in the Berlin streets.
He vaguely sypathised with the Popular Front and felt some warmth for the Spanish revolution but these events, turning points in the century, did not captivate his intellectual energy. His writings during the period confirm that All his intellectual power directed towards une construction. philosophy of freedom within which a person's destiny and the individual's possible choices occupied conual positou Sartre's real politics are to be found in Erostrate, in Le Mur, and in the play Les Mouches.
The Group
Without a doubt the war marked the beginning of a decisive evolution in Sartre's relationsnip lo pollies. Taken prisoner in experienced the stalag: 'What I liked about the camps was the feeling of belonging to a mass. Communication without barriers. We spoke to each other directly and equally. It taught me a lot.'
From that period the relationship of the individual to the group, within the context of nistorical commitment and praxis, was a constant feature of his thought — see, for example, some very beautiful passages in The Critique of Dialectical Reason.
During the war Sartre's commitment to the resistance was base ey work or com bat and Lettres Francaises. When, agitated climate of the Liberation he threw himself into the political struggle, he found his philosophical system drawing him to explosive contradictions.
On the one hand his concept of freedom and his revulsion for all mechanical and heavily determinist thought compelled him to reject the Stalinist version of Marxism put forward in France at that time bv Garaudy, Lefebvre, Desanti, Kanapa, etc. That is the meaning of a text like Materialism and Revolution (1946) which was his first attempt to reconcile his own philosophical views with Marxism
On the other hand the radical character of his thought, which was sharpened still further in the post-Liberation years, took him beyond the new, national, political and ideological compromises that were being formed around the tigurehead of De Gaulle.
Through the Rassemblement Democratique Revolutionnaire (RDR) he found that it was impossible to chart a 'third way' between the two camps in the post-Yalta period. When the Cold War erupted his political thought was naunica DI the philosophical idea of the necessity of choosing his own camp.
This explained his break with Aron, Camus and Merleau-Ponty. It must be stressed that these were not personal quarrels but marked Sartre's political trajectory. His writings bear this point out. In all his polemics, including the one with Merleau-Ponty, Sartre exhibited a confused realism that was dominated by his conscious will not to establish relations with imperialism and those who instigated the Cold War. He raged against a philosophy of abstention, against sheepish moralism. for a commitment by which people would accept arrying tell hands.
1968, classic Sartre's
of 1940 ne In une Philostalinism The publication in 1952 of the first part of the famous text Communists and Peace ('an anti-communist is a dog, there is no other way to describe them') fell previous choices and defined him, as a fellow traveller of the French Communist Party (PCF). The paradox of this text is that of Sartre's relationship to politics.
On the one hand it is a long drawn out plea in favour of the 'objective intelligence' of the PCF but at a time when the latter adopted one of its most aberrant, sectarian and isolationist super-Stalinist lines, under the cover of left phraseology, suicidal actions, tions against NATO leader, Ridgway.
As Sartre was to later admit, in this article the magical power of coherence. a totally (PCF = working class, therefore...) and was augmented with furious against the Trotskyists.
He pleaded On the other hand,
point of the drift of the former "revolutionary' intelligentsia of the Liberation into the camp
'An anti-communist
is a dog, there is no
other way to
describe them'
its height.
within the logic of the , until 1956,
pedestal, and
and sometimes accompanied by like the famous demonstratual" who
words replaces abstract text Lenin, Che Guevara).
and false attacks Sartre's radicalism.
seen from the stand-
of the moment to
Hungarian reaction. bombers
Lullage. praxis, became organic
of the Cold War it is a text against the stream. It is a radical in a certain way given the formidable anti-communist campaign which was at
Here we touch the limit of Sartre's political thought just as we will again when examining his political evolution after 1968. His commit- ago ment stemmed from indignation and mora. reflex. It is not hampered by nuances or concrete analysis. It remained the commitment of an intellectual, whom fame had elevated to a
who, certain occasions, makes a gutt of his person to worthy causes He remained irredemiably outside the Group, Collective, Party, Class or Movement
Sartre's situation was counterposed to the figure of 'the organic revolutionary intellec-
assimilates her/himself to historical process by identitying with the praxis of a group or class (Gramsci, Luxemburg,
However, this absence of social roots in
gave him an ideologica and political mobility which made him un predictable. Two years after the publication of Communists and Peace, reacting on the spur
the smashing of the the greatest
revolution, he published an excellent anti-Stalinist text, The Ghost of Stalin.
Of course this text contained many illusions: in Gomulka, on the perspective of a popular front in France; but it did analyse correctly the dynamic and the potential of the Budapest Commune. It judged correctly the crisis of Stalinism in the wake of the 20th Con.
Not the Soviet Communist Party and criticised the intervention of the Russian tanks Irom a socialst stanapoli "it is socialism itself that your bullets and shells were splintering'. Sartre thus freed himself from the false alternative of either supporting the Stalinist parties as they are, or falling into the camp of
With this text the bell tolled on Sartre's days as a PCF fellow-traveller. The position he took on the Algerian war only deepened the divergence. His opposition to the colonial war has contributed more than anything else to his international fame as an intransigent radical. His hard positions brought forth the hatred of
ruling class, ot its pen-pushers and its
'Send Sartre to prison, 'Shoot Sartre'. But here again, behind the undoubted
we find a considerable lack ideological clarity
Sartre jumped with both feet into the boat of Third Worldism during the '60s. He accepted the idea that the Western working class had been bought off and the gross, theory of violence as the major exorcist of alienation and oppression. In this first moment of revolt it is necessary to kill. To shoot a European is to kill two birds with one stone. It is to suppress at •the same time an oppressor and an oppressed. A dead and a free man remain...' (Preface to The Damned of the Earth by Franz Fanon) Which Marxism?
Underneath his mobile political views a very deep philosophical coherence exists in Sartre. At the beginning of all action, all politics, all history there is the freedom of a person, of a
of a consciousness, mingled with the world. If Sartre's Marxism — its most complete form being in the preface to Critique of Dialectical Reason - has propelled so many young people to revolutionary action it is because at the time it was much more full of life than the heavy ideological artillery of Stalinism
It threw a bridge between a 'miserable' subjectivity, a state of gelatinous revolt, and a possible revolutionary activity. That is why there were so many 'Sartrians' in the Union of Communist Students during the sixties.
Sartre never pursued his assimilation to Marxism to its conclusion for the simple reason that he would have found it necessary to ques tion the very foundations of his philosophy.
This can be seen clearly after 1968. Shaken to the core by the passivity of so many intellectuals he questioned his own commitment. His response was twofold: a radical rejection of the role of the intellectual as such, and a re evaluation of the relationship between Marx ism and socialism which led him to varieties of libertarianism.
With the maoists
There is something poignant in Sartre's ultimate solution. Out of radical conviction he wethout scruples, used him in the service of Maoist traveller. their delirious politics. More than ever Sartre found himself as the decorative trump card for politics elaborated behind his back. At this moment he declared the death of the classical, committed. intellectua
He was the supreme caricature of the
intellectual, militant among militants, full of ardour • and anonymous ... Nevertheless the work with the Maoists had a rational basis. In the famous 'one is right to revolt', in the propaganda of symbolic actions,
of abstract radicalism, there is a whiff of the perfume of Sartrian philosophy of praxis and freedom
Beneath the failure of politics reduced to gestures we can see, again, a coherence stubbornly rooted in concepts forged half a century
Despite all we have said of the failures of Sartre's politics we will never join the chorus of small-minded Marxists who treat him as a dead dog. Firstly the importance of what remains of him, of his literary and philosophical work, will not lead to accommodations with a society to which he himself was never reconciled.
Secondly under the sinuous line of his politıcal commitment there is a basic questior with which he furiously struggled for decades - what can intellectuals do for the revolution as long as the social and historical conditions giving rise to their existence and reproduction as a particular group prevail?
Making an assessment of the political com mitment of the greatest radical intellectuals of this century and compare it with Sartre. YOu will see that in the midst of the heart-wrenching of the committed intellectual, Sartre was one of
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 13
Page 14 scan of this page
LETTERS
SCEVENTS
info ring p
RMINGHAM: SC on sale at The Ramp.
BRADFORD: SC available from Fourth Idea
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iday 4-5.30pm. Saturday 1I+$ EVFIELD: SC publie meetings.
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Sca ube Haine Hil riosk
OLDHAM sold Saturday
wal activites. Tel. 06T.6
every
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dor ds to appear in Whats Left. Sp Sar. prior to publication. Pay ment in adi ance
Sleeping Thomen festival A gainst Tory . 051-708 166. organise Individuals bar/food. El.
IMG NOTICES Apology
out from ast week ; columi
1 10 ma fraction at Vationai Cen i Franton Nationa: Cen.
May 10.0ram-5pm - national ieacher': aggregate. Saiurday con Saturda, 2 ann
liberation printed in pre-conference DB
copy and not on mailing list inform
tional Centr London Notices YOI. TH Against the Tores. Hackney and
iels Kevorution meet a Renant
OPEN ORGANISING MEETING TO PLAN BROAD LEFT
PHOTOGRAPHY CONFERENCE Feminist - Workers -
Connusty
Journalism - Documentary Date: Saturday, 10 May
1980
Time: 2:00
Place: St. Bride Institute
loff Fleet Street.
Near Ludgate Circus)
ALL WELCOME
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980
Politically
dishonest
omission?
IT SEEMS that some of the lvu s own members are less Inan enthusiastic for your organisation's much vaunted pursuit of icit unity. Al cast unal Is tne only conclusion to be drawn from Hilda Kean's report of the Nanonal union or leacners con-
It contains no mention of even une existence or kank ano rie Teacher let alone its central involvement in all of the activities at the conference reported by Ms Kean.
In addition to this glaring and pollically asnoest omission, lnc report contains a number of remarks that merit specific com-
I. The success of the 'left' Nelsons resolutions referred to was due in no small measure to the fact that
operated in formulating most of them. I here was also a large
fringe meetings at the conference;
2. Hilda commented: 'And we naven ever beaun me lak ol building a permanent opposition to the executive in the localities. weleave merlo soeak torie STA, but Rank and File has more than begun thai task
We have a national organisation of classroom teachers with 500 supporters and 50 supporters groups. Of course we have a lons wav to co. our we agree wilt Hilda that the tide is turning in favour of the militants in the union.
. There were indeed 'only two left-wing candidates elected in the recent execuuve elections. sur what Hilda omitted to inform your readers is that both Pam COrT ane wick Norm are kank and File supporters and SWP members.
If vour readers would like a less selective account of events at Blackpoo! we can only refer them to the article by Nick Grant ir ocus worker in wilcone made reference to the intervention of both the STA and Rank and re dr une conterence.
In conclusion we re-affirm the commitment of both Rank and rie ana ine swr to the only kind of left unity that matters - unity il allul.
JEANNIE ROBINSON, SHAUN DOHERTY, File executive and SWP teachers fraction, London N16
Getting
straight on
numbers
STUART PAUL (Letters, 17
April) describes as an error the
claim that the Socialist Workers
tionary organisation in Western
Europe or North America
because 'an organisation usuallv classified as revolutionary, one
that organises against the Spanish
state, the LCK-LKI, a section oi ine rourth international, is al
least twice the size of the SWP (UK)
That would give the LCR-LKI
over 7,000 members. Un-
fortunately, the LCR-LKI delega. tion al ine recent worle congress
of the Fourth International was
elected on the basis of only 1,500
mem bers - an ee /
in trying to cover up this fact
since the SWP (UK) were there as ooservers. All sucn. over.
estimations of our own forces in
fact do is to distract attention
from the political significance ol
the fight to build the Fl as the
only existing revolutionary Inter-
national
MARTIN METEYARD, London
E5
Building the
steel rank and file
I WAS somewhar surprised to set Sexualist Challenge printing a
24 Aprily chich indulzed in falie breai! beating about the Page 14
JIMMY CARTER'S
INDER DIF CIRCUMSTANCES role of the SWP in the recent steel strike.
Geoff Collier objected to my judgement of the Real Steel News (KON) project or ine swr as being a failure. He cited the local Scunthorpe case to prove the opposte. oul mus relerence to me
misses the point. title of the RSN
Kulletin
approach.
sirike committees.
leadership part of this Rank and movement.
aeveo •ments.
course not
made i more kev inal ce Steelworkers Charter, so dear to the SWP, might actually have been endorsed by the Stocksbridge strike committee as the comrade now falsely claims
Comrades in the growth of the real rank and
should get the new IMG pamphlet essons orine weet sirike anoine Fight Aguinst the Tories which will be out shortly.
BRIAN GROGAN, London
LETTERS exceeding 400 words will normally be cut to ensure that the maximum number of readers can express teir views Anonymous letters will only be published in exceptional circulesences will be withheld from publication on request.
ECRPSE:
INNOCENT FEORLE
Women's
Fightback:
debate
about the recent 'Women's Fightback' conference. conference
build a broad strike oul o
Line sour the autumn.
Just alch
unal seclanlan.
to chalence
bulk orders to sell to their members or ine , wno are interested
tion.
steel strike
N1
Egypt-Israel
treaty
how fully Anwal ed towards the USA
PRECISELY!
THINK Or neir MAP READINI back the
1 AM rather surprised at Nelle
as nulled.
we did not in redercussions?
- WIlICIl 1
- was Zionist state.
College, Tacle c
Middlesex
, I suggest
who bought it at the Women's TUC, or the trades councils and
: union branches that take the
it at the TUC 9 March demonstra
PENNY DUGGAN, London
Unly a glus
complex issue
decade THE: article on "The Cairo Connection ( May) acmonsirared
• Sadat has turnIt also rencared ane monce d popular view of the Camp David Exypt-
J THEY .COULD • YOU'RE |
(END UP ANYWHERE! israe peace treav as a ola betrayal of the Palestinian cause'.
For revolutionary socialists
surely be to judge whether it sets
: class struggle in the , If we decide it does we chond monise as broad corce
possible to get the treaty an-
If the treatv is not a setback what do we have to say about it
will : which socialist ourlai
At the next , Birkbeck
Halil Hindi
Richard Pryor
review 'an
affront'
I AM writing to condemn your accison to ont ucury acuy. article on 'Richard Prvor Live Ir Concert' because it represents not
attack upon the sexuanty of black people, Dul also an affront to the work that. women, gays and blacks have struggied to carry out over une last
Cierry Kelly seems to see culture as citeanche ord implies that if it's laughable then it must he good; galvanizing his
pleas to the effect that 'even
Trotsky had the odd loony idea.'
1 am black, I am gay and I am a revolutionary Marxist and I do
issue because my sexuality is oppressed. there can be jokes about sex but if they are al affront upon my sexuality and my people, black people, then they
even though 1 am black,
gay and f they allowed Comedians' by
: I was nearly
by
They
thought that one of the aims o
reclaim the virility which 'had
'is a
ating' at all
White
ANTHONY FRANCIS, Manchester SORRY! The photograph on page 2 of the 24 April issue showing pro-abortion demonstrator heing arrested outside the House of Common was not credited. Il was taken by Linda Westmore.
Page 15 scan of this page
Generations of Resistance
A revolutionary love story
UNDER REVIEW
By Molefe Pheto PETER Davies' film Resistance deals with Soweto before and after the uprising of 1976, with a sharp change in tempo and mood following the events of that summer.
To my knowledge it is the most thoroughly researched documentary on the history of the liberation struggles in South archive material from the resistance to white rule.
The brutality, savagery of the white regime's officials, police, and soldiers comes across only too starkly. If it were not on film some of it would not be By Michael Chanan ONE WAY or Another, by the black Cuban woman director Sara Gomez — who died tragically from asthma as the film was nearing completion - is a revolutionary love story. refuses isolate the love between two people from the social world they live in, in the way that the love stories of bourgeois cinema tend to do.
sees personality something mysterious undecipherable, but as the expres
background, cultural Innertance and personal nowever. willloul suggesting that people can be reduced to abstract causes: people remain individuals each unique in his or her own way, be valued as dividuals. Otherwise socialism coent make scuse
The central protagonists are a worker at a bus factory,
primary
Yolanda. The film is also about the
problems arise for each of nem i these places UI WOrk particular workers'
assembly in Mario's factory is call-
ed upon to deal with the case of his
New magazine for gays?
OUT AND OUT is the
men as possible will attend.
ford, or Derek Cohen on 01-274 6777.
Generations of before. black laws hilica, using beginning of the
inhumanity, and animalistic off work for a few days. Humberto tells the assembly he his dying mother, but Mario knows that he went off to get laid.
The film is as much about the relationship between Mario and his buddy as about the love relationship. between Mario and Yolanda.
Humberto is both from Havana which was one of the first new neighbourhoods bullt by the Revolution to replace slums. The film is about the strug gle among the previously marginal classes overcome the habits, beliefs and values of the customs. old underdeveloped society, which in the context of the new socialist and ethic represents a variety of anusocial traits. class
Machismo
zinese Humberto's behaviour is that of an individualist with no sense of responsibility towards his workers. This provokes a solit with Mario it is a painful process, because he is bound to Humberto Mario, ov the codes or cose mae lovaily. "buddyism'. This turns out to conflict just as much core which demand a wider sense of collective and social responsibility.
break-up of one relationship, based
name proposed for a new monthly magazine aimed at filling a gap in the 'gay media'. At present there is no national radical news magazine catering for lesbians and gay men. Out and Out will have a committed feminist perspective and cover news, analysis, features, and reviews. Interested?
An open meeting to discuss forming an editorial collective and decide what the shape of the magazine should sie is being held at 10.30am on the 17 May in the Covent Garden Community Centre, London WC2. The organisers hope that as many lesbians and gay
Further information from: Sarah Ross, 34 Cowley Road, Ox-
believed - it is that gruesome. No doubt this is why such valuable material has not been shown
Generations of Resistance traces the black liberation struggle from shortly after the arrival of the whites in South Africa; a struggle which starts to take shape under Bambata, the great nationalist leader of the time.
The film chronicles the introduction of anti-
successive regimes, and how blacks rallied against them.
By 1976, the impatience of the blacks had become quite unapologetic. Moral considerations and hopes of a change of heart on the part of the white rulers belong to history. Representatives of the Black Consciousness Movement — although they are given little time in the who has skived on old patterns of behaviour, with
the formation of a new one whic
went to visit can only be built on the basis of
new values.
Yolanda comes from within the Revolution sent to the district from beyond. In spite of her own difficulties in coming to terms with inis sector alter society, she represents a challenge
district to Mario's macho
same macnismo wmen nes al tile root of his buddyism with Humberthe old So this is also a kind of feminist film but in a very special sense: it sees mocksmo among others ment and does not set up a straight opposition betweel which tagonistic solution.
There is a great deal to be learnt from this film about Also abóut political cinema: the
AFTER Sue hibition last year at Centre
with the new 181 in Hammersmith, press
revolution. comments
'revolting, appalling, totally the unsuitable for children' 'fantastic' and 'beautifully made — a real turn-on'.
The deputy Mayor of Hammersmith, Ettie said: 'I found it extremely ofthe thing is in bad taste. I think a number of women will be offended and men even if they think I am a silly narrow-minded old bat.'
provoked by Sue Brown's portrayal of a woman's place in a male-oriented society.
work is a description of how I
wants to be appreciating himself.'
the
South Africa today.
makers themselves.
OneS
ote or ure leacher. its own sake
It is an cubans call
habits the concept
underdevelop- inal is precisely
alic
requires an an-
discussion, Cinema the revolutionary process. Street,
8508/9.
Women in a male world
Brown's ex- have felt,
mother and housewife
ranged from
to
Crawford,
whole flaming
planners and the like
embarassed, about.'
This critical appraisal was
the Pentonville of herself: 'My Amwell Street,
Tel 01-837 9826.
— although they are given little time in the film - state their case succinctly.
As Harry Nengwenkulu puts it: 'If a slave
free, he must first begin by
The interviews, from Black Consciousness supporters and the earlier leadership — mostly
African National Congress doubt about the attitudes and the anger in
The fault with the film is that it becomes a propaganda vehicle for the ANC. . Through the commentary, too much time is allotted to this
- to the point of boredom. Filmshould let the images speak
Very little time is given to contemporary film mixes fiction and documentary, fictional characters and real
, but it never becomes obscure
dulges in aesthetic experiment for
example of what the cinema.
This is a political and dialectical
indicates the technical and artistic perfection are not political aims in themselves and that the political film is incomplete without the audience taking it ur and inserting it into political strug
the way this film should be used. It isn't going to reach you at your local Odeon, but you can book i lot showig a meetings where it can be followed
The Other 12/13 Little Newport London WCH 7JJ 01-734 being a woman, through the various phases of my life as a child, growing girl,
* accent that mv sculpture will not come across to all sections of the public, but equally I believe that some people • especially those who have given birth to children and who share my dislike of the way women are treated by the medical profession, health visitors, family
Fi— will sympathise with what my art is
Her new exhibition is called Soft Sculpture and can be seen from 1-24 May, 1lam-6pm at
Gallery, London ECI.
events in South Africa safety of shooting the film country. This mars authenticity.
To the Mountain revolutions, efforts,
the close-ups make the most impact.
It is a film worth seeing.
Generations of minutes and is in lómm colour, from The Other Cinema, for Centre, Bristol.
APARTHEID
An exhibition of photomontages by Martin Lovis MARTIN Lovis is an artist with a special interest in, and concern for, those affected by Apartheid. His latest work, a series of 30 col our photomontages, is an attempt to draw attention to the suffering in the area. His photo-journalistic style reflects the dogmatic justification of the supporters of apartheid and the harsh realities of life for blacks living under it.
The pictures will be exhibited at the University of London Union (adjacent to Dillons Bookshop), Malet Street, WC1 for one week from 6-10 May between 9.30am and 10.00pm.
If you would like to obtain the exhibition for your area contact Martin Lovis c/o Anti Apartheid, 89 Charlotte Street, Loadon W1, or telephone 01-580 5311.
One feels the implied from outside the
highlights were the Pondo the women's resistance and the Black Consciousness Movement interviews. Picture-wise this is also where
Resistance, which lasts 50 is available 12/13 Little Newport St, London WC2. Tel 01-734 8508/9. The film will be shown on 9 and 10 May at the Arts
London
Socialist Challenge 8 May 1980 Page 15
Page 16 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge
Registered with the Post Office as a newspaper. Published by Relgocrest Ltd: for Socialist Challenge, 328/9 Upper St, London N1. Printed by East End (offset) Ltd. PO Box 82, London E2.
ANN Marie Loughran, one of the 'Armagh 11', was jailed last week.
She was thrown into prison for two months for renato ray elle clooser on her after the Royal Ulster Constabulary attacked
women's prison on international women's day last year.
has attracted wide publicity in Ireland, Britain, and Europe. Graveyard Graphics 500
Maype, you
are beinc watched leit 4,000
1,500%
2,000
2,500%
Armagh 11 protester jailed
The women were attacked by the police for staging a their solidarity with women Republican prisoners
Aller a number or delays and adjournments the women finally summoned. to col over after the original events took place.
In orotest at the delay. the women refused to appear. All were fined in their absence.
Why would
That be,
Maggie?
Fought to Khar jaggies
HORRIBLE!!
Ann Marie was arrested on Saturday morning. She is
has joined the other women there in refusing obey DENU 'criminals. like their counterparts in H block, are demanding prisoner-of-war
The official reason for A MA the time given to her to pay her fine had run out. But nor-
(Why? Is
there some-
thing
measly Anon
MB
mally in the North of Ireland there is considerable flexibility between the deadline set for paying a fine and arrest for non-payment belief that anne nas been saged outrol pecial treatment is substar iated b the fact that of the
deadline had passed, she was the most vulnerable, having four children and being in a one parent family.
Pull Down
the Curtain
on the Tories
WITH this week's postbag our curtain takes a first faltering step to shutting out the Tories. Not before time we might add they HaVe around for one year too long already.
You can help to bring down the curtain by sending us a donation, or better still by organising raising event for Socialist Challenge in your area.
We certainly need the cash if we are to continue our coverage of all the major events in the class struggle.
Our total so far this quarter is a
£505.93. We need another £2,000 before the end of June to keep our paper afloat.
Our thanks this week to:
L Wadsted Camden IMG Bristol SC supporters
Swindon IMG
K Russell
WEEK'S TOTAL GRAND TOTAL €505:93
THE Special Air Service is the psychopathic scum of the British Army. murderers, sadists and torturers. This needs to be said as the Tory government and the British media call upon us all to celebrate the killing by the SAS of three 'gunmen' who had seized the Iranian embassy in Lon-
Whatever the that seizure, the 'victory' of the SAS is not one that should be hailed by working people.
Certainly the SAS was in need of some sort of morale boosting exercise.
Only last week in Belfast one of its members, described euphemistically at the time as a British soldier working undercover', Provisional IRA.
This followed the severe wound: ing of another such element in the North of Ireland town of Enniskillen the previous week. Mistake Ann This supposedly 'crack regiment'
has not had much success in Ireland of late. One of its last recorded 'kills' was on New Year's Eve in County Armagh. The only problem was the vic tim was a British soldier ambushed 'by mistake'.
Earlier in 1979 another 'mistake' was the killing of 16-year-old John Boyle - shot in the back by the SAS because he was unfortunate enough to wander in the direction of an IRA arms-dump.
The other recent deaths attributed to the 'Who dares wins' brigade have been of its own members, several of whom have died training' over the last year.
Nor does it say a great deal for the SAS that it helped to train the US soldiers who crashed into each other in an Iranian desert.
But although the SAS is, by and large, a rather incompetent band of been thugs its purpose is serious.
Half of them are trained solely for use in the North of Ireland. Their job
fund-
Britain:
Abroad:
£2 Name
£5 £20 Address £20.46 €8.50 £15 £3.50
Cheques, POs and Money £74.46
SAS- NO
HEROES
OF OURS
sore
of fire.
Oman issues involved in Britain
facing.
described 'restricted' , was shot dead by the Revolutionary But SAS, wrote:
arise... mysteriously 'in
tion rapidly.
Catholics today,
tomorrow.
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is to assassinate Republican suspects
part of Britain's 'peace-keeping'
A number of unarmed suspects have indeed been murdered by the SAS, as have been some passers-by who have strolled into the SAS's line
The SAS has performed a similar role in other countries with which
has 'friendly relations'. Specifically it was used by the Sultan of Oman in the early 1970s against a popular uprising this despot was then
The function of the regiment is
in Army's document "Counter says that one aim of the SAS is to run Operations' which 'assassination parties'
Now for the first time the regiment has been used in Britain itself. is unlikely that the full facts behind the storming of the embassy will ever be allowed to emerge. All that the public is told is that they have to ap plaud the heroism ' of the SAS
the main ideologue of the Brigadier Frank Kitson, once
'It is difficult for the British with their traditions of stability to imagine disorders beyond the powers of the police to handle but there are already indications that such a situation could
Us tomorrow
'If a genuine and serious grievance arose, and such might result from a significant drop in the standard of living, all those who now dissipate their protest over a wide variety of causes nignt concentrate wich cuorts..
Should this happen the Army would be required to restore the posi-
Fumbling at this junc ture might have grave consequences.
Which makes it verv clear that 1t the SAS comes for Arabs and Irish
Brigadier Kitson is very sure whom they will come to
e to "Socialist Challenge'
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