Socialist Challenge No. 74, No v, 1978
The scan: sc-n74-nov-30-1978.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive)
Uncorrected machine reading of the whole issue. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from the scan and has not been corrected or cut into articles. Each page gives the headlines first, then the columns in order, so one article runs on into the next. Expect misread words. Use it to find things; quote from the scan.
Page 1 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge
Workers' answer to the newspaper
crisis
Our lit there these her bach ot The lockour imposed by Times Newspapers was defied by the workers in Printing House Square in the carly hours of this be produced for and by the working class in our •Our Tir Crowds welcome
elected
editorial board
EVER
work.
'Two divers drown as
control is the in rescue bell floods
the management
caller Chatte Times, page 2.
UNDE
WORKERS
CONTROL
WERE BETTER INFORM WISHED
Crisis in the Communist
Party of Great Britain
Disabled at
OUR TIMES
Bank clerks uncover removal of flbn by Iranian elite Death toll in Sri Lanka cyclone exceeds 500 Fourth International Anniversary Council blocks oil celebrated
Abdication papers
Evidence that Christians harassing po
The conditions of Chilean refugees
UN commander accuses Israel of impeding Lebanon role ekeeping troops are receiving outside support
Labour facing critical Ford sanctions vote
Maze prison deputy governor killed we future for Lord Chalton OP
No. 74 30 November 1978 15p
Water talks on EMS
Order from PO
Box 50, London N1.
Page 2 scan of this page
London leadership's proposals rejected Communist Party
OUR POLICIES 2
EDITORIAL
Socialist Challenge, 328/9 Upper Street, London N1. Editorial 01-359 8180/9. 01-359 8371.
lockout
THE PROUD boast of The Times is that for 170 yearsto 1955—it was published without interruption.
Street's presses were brought to a halt.
interference by printworkers in the bosses' press.
OCCasIOns when printers
their union.
industry. Their wage levels attest to this fact.
for bigger profits is at the top of the agenda.
The new technology offers this in abundance
Frogramme for ACHon up in negotiation with the press barons.
time-honoured way of demonstrating that they
taking unorncial achon.
new coor.
numerous publications at relatively low cost.
higher profits -two or three years.
their own members. to win the backing of other workers.
Thomson's would hit the group's money-spinning
spectrum represented by the national press.
the rest of the printworkers in Fleet street
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Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 2
Distribution/ Advertising
Fighting the Times'
Those include 1926, which saw the General Strike when most of Fleet
The General Srike had been occasioned by the refusal of printworkers on the Daily Mail to handle an anti-union editorial, and it resulted in an unwritten agreement between the press barons and ine print union leaders: that there would be no editorial
The concordat stands virtually intact to this day, and on the few
have stopped the presses particularly vicious article or (more correctly) demanded that there be a right of reply, they have usually faced disciplinary action from
The barons were prepared to pay a certain price for their freedom of the press. The print chapels on Fleet Street have gained a degree of organisation scarcely to be equalled anywhere in British
But the barons are now anxious to call a halt. The growth of television as a major purveyor of the ruling class's ideas and the passing of the ownership of almost all the Fleet Street papers into the hands of multi-national corporations has meant that the need
printworkers agree to go quietly; a prospect which their leaders are willing to face. A couple of years ago they put their signatures to
• a plan for mass reounaancies arawa
It was thrown out by the chapels. Now Times Newspapers, on behalf of the Thomson Organisation (expected profits this year: £126m) and the rest of Fleet Street, is attempting to implement it.
The lockout scheduled to begin today is simply the capitalists'
"mean business'.
The business in hand is to eliminate a quarter of the 4,300 jobs on The Times and the Sunday Times, together with big penalties for
As Jake Ecclestone, the journalists' father of the chapel at The Times, said on these pages last week, there is great potential in the
For the workers in the industry, the streamlining of production techniques could mean a shorter working week, longer holidays, and higher pay. For the working class as a whole, it makes possible
None of this, needless to say, is in the minds of the bosses. As with automated techniques in other industries, the objective is
— which will be accompanied by longer dole queues.
The Royal Commission on the Press estimated that for an investment of €50m (including redundancy payments), Fleet Street could scrap 7.000 ions and save tzum a vear, silicon brought in elsewhere, according to a report prepared by the Department of Industry, will mean 3½m unemployed in the next
The plans of the print union leaders to confront the lockout at Times Newspapers are largely a matter of rumour, not least among
The f5 a week levy on printworkers in Fleet Street to support those locked out is one of the few positive measures. The decision of NATSOPA to hold a mass rally last Tuesday is another.
But demands have not been clearly formulated. Little has so far been done to bring together the various unions involved, and little
The strike that the NGA seems likely to bring throughout
papers. A complete stoppage on Fleet Street (one of the rumours) would locate the struggle on the doorstep of the managements who would benefit from a defeat of the workers at Times Newspapers.
More boldly, defiance of the lockout by bringing out The Times under workers control would vividly expose the narrow political
Even if this is not possible printworkers and journalists should jointly produce a daily bulletin ('Our Times'?). For this they will need the support of
-from 1785 years
THIS MONTH has seen the Communist Party noiding a number of district congresses. CLIVE UNDULL artended the one in London on behalf of over a Socialist Challenge.
Here he looks at the CPGB OHIC after Congress became Eurocommunist'.
The London District Congress of the Communist Part produced result. The perspectives of the outgoing leadership rejected.
ALTERNATIVE if the Instead a series of branch amendments which had been composited into an alternative set or proposals were presenica to the congress.
the hard-line Stalinists and the London party leaders
The London District Committee document was slated as being timeless: *It could have been written at any time in the last ten years'.
Sue Slipman described it as "pre-British Road to Socialism' — "it didn't reflect the thinking of the new draft the November 1977 National Congress.
The 'campaign proposals' it put forward could be generously described as example all it said on racism Was. tion to the importance of the *Pay
fight against racism in every sphere of life.'
On local message was: 'Prepare in good time for the next round of GLC and Borough Council chips tions.
In political alternative resolution was not qualitatively merely pointed out the obvious steps that would be needed to take up the fight against racism or to prepare in good time for we ections
DECLINE
It certainly contained noth-
ing that will reverse the party's continuing decline in London - paper membership has fallen from 4,124 in November 1977 to 3,762 today. provincial The congress, provided an object lesson in bureaucracy and manipulation by the outgoing leadership.
After a clear vote (126 to 107)
District Secretary Gerry Cohen to reject proposals, there were repeated attempts decision.
class.
revolutionary socialists are:
1
Diack Deone gays -
THE FIRST WORD
its 25th when it formally
unprecedented
were These were adopted at These were aided partisan
banal. For *The congress
particular atten- with some
the district leadership.'
elections the
the whole day.
Elec-
terms the
different. however,
motion moved by
alternative
this offer solutions that are in the interests, not of the workers, but of the capitalis
Socialist Challenge believes that the two vital tasks confronting
To build broad-based class struggle tendencies class-collaborationism in the labour movement. These should be non-exclusive in character grouping together militants holding a wide range of political views. * To begin to fight for the creation of a unified and democratic revolutionary socialist organisation which can, through an application of united front tactics, begin to be seen as an alternative by thousands of workers engaged in struggles.
sation should be based on the understanding that:
The struggle for socialism seeks to unite the fight of the workers against the bosses with that of other oppressed layers of society - strupaline for their liberation. This socialism can only be achieved by creating new organs of power and defeating with all
ssary means the power of the capitalist state
crisis deepens
comment
Another sign of the crisis in the CPGB is the latest issue of Comment, which includes a section from a critical work on the USSR by French CP members plus'what we have said statements in 1937, 1956, and 1978.
the chairing other, to coneress ov wick ricks. ever the Morning Star report noted tee,
Was maEkee ScOTCLary by lively and sharp discussion,
delegates extremely strong criticisms of
This was so much the case that the Sunday morning closed session had to be extended to
perspectives.
Attempts were made on the one hand to reverse the defeat Delegates vote at the CPB congress in November 1977
3
opposition to
STALIN- THE MISSING
10,000,000
-AND US
EIVCS CPGB
of the day before; and on the
change the composition of the District Commit-
the District
At the end there wasn't time
complete CICCLIOIS leaving the outgoing leadership to organise the counting of the votes! The amended draft itself was referred back", leaving the London District without any
The ban on tendencies and factions meant that clear
rank ete.'
Our socialism will be infinitely more democratic than what evists i
"socialism' in the USSR and Eastern Europe have discredited socialim in the eyes of the millions of workers throughout the world. Weare opposed to them and will offer full support to all those fighting for socialist democracy
The interests of workers and capitalists are irreconcilable on a world scale, Capitalism has not onlv created a worid market, it has create world politics. Thus we fight for working class units on an internationa scale. This unity
imperialist regimes in the West and the brutal dictatorships they sustain in fati America. Africa and Asia.
In Britain it implies demanding the immediate withdraw al wl-British-roop from Ireland and letting the Irish people determine their own future
The Communist Parties in Europe "Euro-communist nor the pro-Moscow wings have ans meaningtu strategy for the overthrow of the capitalist state socialist parties are more necessars than ever before. Conditions toda
are more favourable than over the preceding three decades. But such parties car
only be buile by rejecting sectarianism and seeing internal democracs not as
luxury but as a vital necessity. This means the right to organise factions an
alternative political positions could not be presented.
Party members, let alone branches, were not able to circulate alternative documents - to those of the leadership, to meet and organise how best to
different political alternatives
Instead debate is confined within a constitution which
monopoly one PLO permanent faction the leadership.
The commission on 'inner party democracy established from the national congress has yet to make any report. makes it even more likely that its role will be to present a few cosmetic changes, as with the Morning Star report
The decline of the CPGB over the last year has been dramatic. Party membership in June this year stood at 21,i45; 4,148 down on the figure in November 1977.
SOLUTIONS
The politics of the party's Eurocommunist critics offe no solution to this crisis. On the main issues of the class struggle in Britain they are, if anything, to the right of the leadership.
From no section of the
there socialist alternative being offered which bases itself on the consistent defence of working class interests.
However, the 10 November
discussion manice care
discussion article Bumber of criticisms pat number criticisms revolutionaries have made of the CP's practice in relation to building the self-activity of the working class and oppressed
Bloomfield called for 'much more capuasis to grass Foots
and file movements' we mus occonne a central ingredient of our work'. He commented:
*At practice
present suggests we see rank and file groupings as adjuncts to the official movements. EMIS Is inadequate.
BREAK
*They must be encouraged as vigorous, independent forces in their own right, vital to the struggles on wages, employment, cuts, alternative plans,
But unless such proposals are accompanied by a break with the policies of class collabo ration import controls. participation, etc. - there will o
no adequate basis for building a socialist alternative to the Labour leadership. will in the long run be decisive in defeating both th
-are in crisis Seither thi
Page 3 scan of this page
Here's how they treat
HOME NEWS
Chilean
refugees
By DAVE HAYES
THE press has smothered us
pictures of Frankie Howerd, Pearly Kings and heroic English sea captains clutching Vietnamese refugees.
This has alternated with tales of gifts of bread and toys from businessmen overcome emotion at the sight of children fleeing 'communist' tyranny.
All that seems a long way from the damp walls, rotten wiring and families in one room 31 a Notting Hill refugee reception centre.
No teams of photographers or exclusive interviews with the people who rescued refugees they are Latin American exiles. They irom countries turned into OTISON houses with compliance of international capital.
Their ESCUCTS doughty English sea captains but thousands of rank and file trade unionists and others who fought get -ine SADOUT government to accept Chilean refugees.
Since 1974 nearly 3000 Chileans have been resettled, 500 more are expected within the next year and possibly several thousand Argentinians when Videla opens his jails.
UNFAVOURABLE
The Labour government, pushed by the action of the solidarity campaign, received more political prisoners straight from prison than any other country. But the
still collbare unfavourably with similar ones in Holland and Sweden.
Processing of visas TAKES Six months, forcing people to stay on in bad conditions. We know of one or
Remember how they feted
the boat people....
two cases where people waiting have "disappeared'.
From programme has been dogged by inadequate funding and uncertainty of finance. Money comes via the Voluntary Services Unit which is a last resort financier for projects not linked to any one government department. with Money received in
month hand outs which makes any long term impossible. Without the internationalist response of many volunteers the would have faltered badly This year the Joint Working Group for Latin American relugees asked tor and was offered £137,000 these part of which is supposed to
cover the E9000 deficit of last fled year.
the SHORTFALL
Why the shortfall? aren't obvious reason is Labour's lack
of consistent solidarity.
Another is a very KUVCEIIIICHI what resettlement involves. The immediate reception of exiles is only a small part problem.
A person arrives usually Trom prison, speaking the language, having to find a job in a country where there are 2m unemployed and a where there homeless. You can't sort it out in a couple of weeks.
One of the refugees told me: has 'It isn't easy adjusting to a
new country. There's everyday The newspaper stories "Chileans taking our council houses." The difficulty finding a job in your own skill. often Living on social security when
you arrive here with nothing. But it's not much worse than a lot of blacks and many workers
beginning the
SiX
planning
programme
£216,000
One
"narrow"
of
of the
There have to not Leaving Latin America doesn't solve workers problems with capitalism international struggle.
Most of the Latin American are Im
exiles are active in the solidarity and labour movement. the last few years they have enriched that Perhaps that's why they aren't Fleet Street's favourite refu-
local gees.
You can help defend Latin
about
American refugees of their conditions: * Support the Joint Working Group campaign.
JWG, 21 Star Street, London W2 (01-262 4926) for leaflets and information.
'Damp walls, rotten wiring and families in one room.
put up with
adopt
that's
Come Over
University. movement.
tion campaigning
refugee charter, improve right while here.
Contact could be tionally organisations.
THE fascism in regime.
fact
er', not shown
intelligence
* Support the campaign to
Argentiniar political prisoners. Contact Committee or ruman kignis In Argentina, 1 Cambridge Terrace N1.
to the British Argentina Campaign Conference, 2 December, Liverpool
* Discuss in your organisa-
for the implementation of some sort of
November of entry and security As a first SICID, Three implement the UN provisions in British law. This campaign
organised interna- sondanity through workers
staring distance, November
DOTECES,
News
nowhere
'Get The Windsor
Connection
ATTRACTION the Thirties for sections of the British ruling class is an established fact.
What is less well-known is that a British monarch, Edward VIII, who later was forced to relinquish the throne, was strong admirer
A TV documentary shown last year carefully omitted this
lest present-day occupier of the throne was embarrassed in her jubilee year.
In reality the main reason for abdication was not the issue of marrying a 'divorced common-
but the fact that the question had been an intimate of the Nazi ambassador m London, Ribbentrop. This, coupled with the
Nazi SynDales Edward, made the marriage a dubious ponucal proposinon
In the year preceding his
WaS state papers relaung to brusa derence ano
operations. Even
off to the Bahamas during the war for fear that if he remained in Europe the Nazis might use him as a Quisling King after they invaded Britain.
The researchers who uncovered these facts were politely told to keep their mouths shut.
•This appeared in NfN in our first issue. We thought it worth reprinting in light of the current TV serial on the subject.
Scenes from Irish life (Glasgow)
SCENE ONE, Wednesday 15
members of the International Marxist Group meet in a cafe to discuss
events Irish prisoners. In the middle of their
card discussions two young men sit down at an adjoining table
Both are wearing blue shirts, both have short hair. They sit
saying nothing but with heads inclined towards the three members of the IMG
The three leave the cafe. The two listeners follow, and are joined by a third colleague They attempt, without success to follow the IMG members when they split up.
The IMG members had only arranged to meet 20 minute beforehand, on the phone.
SCENE TWO, Thursday 16
Two punks, Revolution sup-
are returning home after leafleting a school in the mates. Gorbals for a showing of the film Home Soldier Home.
A police landrover pulls u and two cops get out. They asl the punks: "Was it you who wa leafleting those kids?'
The two punks, both Sham Army members and well used to police harassment, walk on. One of the cops shouts, 'Right c--t, come here'
from
The two punks are searched. a leaflet is found, a cop says
fuck, yOu papist bastard' and kicks one of the punks.
The two are taken to a police
but finally released without charge.
The last time
READERS WILL recall how anower acarn tonowed In une East End after the poisoned
killing the Bulgarian emigré Markov. A Bulgarian exile was found dead at the bottom of the stairs, and Fleet Street immediately jumped to the conclusion that Zhivkov's agents were at it deal!
Speculation was rife. But the coroner's report revealed tha the dead Bulgarian had a heart condition and had died shock.
It was later revealed to the press that he had been masturbating when he suttered the attack. This information was also given to Fleet Street, but it was dutifully ignored Victorian morality? Hardly More likely embarassment that their attempts to pin this one on the Bulgarian secret policy had backfired in such a fashion.
Clash of interests
RECENT visitors to Glasgow were me crash. On tour in Scotland and stopping off in Glasgow to promote their new album. GED of Glasgow's Sham Army takes up the story.
When the Clash put in an appearance at a local record shop, me and me mates in Sham Army and Revolution got on to Joe Strummer (lead singer of the Clash for all you BOFs) asking how he felt about the under 18-year-olds, non-students, who wouldn't get into their gig at Strathclyde University,
To which Strummer replied they would get in because it was an open gig. Which we told him was bollocks, 'cos a couple of
- mates naa tea to ge tickets and were knocked back "cos they didn't have a student
Strummer didn't believe it, so we asked him to come up to Strathclyde and see if he could buy a ticket. Off he went on someone's motor bike and we ran up alter him
Ten minutes later back he came and stormed in shouting "the gig's off, someone's being telling lies'. He'd been refused a ticket himself when he tried to buy one
Strummer explained it all to the rest of the group wh agreed to call it off. Strumme promised an alternative venue would be arranged as soon as possible
But it's not so easy with the Clash not playing the Apollo cos of the bouncers who are notorious for their violence
Anyway we look forward to seeing Joe and the rest. Thanks
ERNEST MANDEL
will be the main speaker
at a day school on *The revolutionary alternative
to Eurocommunism Saturday 13 January
Holborn Assembly Rooms
London
Full details in next week's
Socialist Challenge
Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 3
Page 4 scan of this page
The socialist alternative
HOME NEWS
RO
DEAL
SEL
NUT
calculated risk.
to take the risk.
GROGAN.
If Scanlon and Jones had painlessly gone along with the social contract, then surely their SUCCeSSOrs would prove to be even more pliable.
Callaghan's entire project has been based on the following formula: use the political weakness British working class to dissipate and contain its economic strength.
The Ford workers' demonstrated that can be destroyed by the solidarity and determination of sections of workers. PENALTY
The full demands of the strikers were by no means met. clauses, in particular, will hang over their heads. But for the rest of the. working class they impressive victory against management and government.
The gains at Ford will without a doubt encourage rank-and-file worKEIS HOLCESCCLOIS.
An important qualification needs To be acceemed alcy. One major reason determination of the Ford workers was clearly the fact that Ford is a highly profitable venture.
WOrKers could afford to pay without closing down lactones or mrcatening mas. redundancies. SOLUTION
M
In that sense it would be extremely foolish to expect that this form of
militancy will become general over the next period.
In other words, calls for more and more militancy are not seen by an
A recent Communist Workers Movement publication 'A clearly, sometimes amusingly,
"socialism and how to get there'
A 'devastating critique'.
Reprint. Still only
available.)
Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 4
After the Ford strike
to Labourism
CALLAGHAN's decision to postpone the general election was a
The Labour Government was clearly aware that maintaining industrial peace would not be easy. Nonetheless it was prepared
Why? Because it had enormous confidence in theates BRIAN
union leaders to deliver the goods,
moderate solution.
BACKBONE
golden industrial militancy (1969-74), strike has proved wrong. incomes policies necase
powerful Leyland workers in one example.
Vauxhall workers to reject mendations by The penalty they should strike is another.
have scored an
rethinking.
however. for the British WOEKCES politics.
BURDEN realised that it
is Labourism ideology ar une best or times,
and economic crises.
'national interest,
WHY PAUL FOOT SHOULD BE A SOCIALIST The case against the Socialist Workers Party
written
*A serious critique of the politics of the Trotskyist tradition.... Doing this in an amusing and readable style (another first for a Marxist-Leninist group), they at the same time give a clear outline of their own politics. The Leveller.
, Undercurrents. €1.20 (200 pages).
October Books, 4B Temple Court, Liverpool 2. (25p p&p, trade terms
overwhelming majority of workers at this particular time as offering a real
Those who thought that the Ford strike was the harbinger of a return to SHOE
of DCHIOU JUSE" YY CL and acted accordingly, have already been
the militant leader of the Drews Lane
harm Birmingham.
The decision of the
union officials that
Those political currents who glorify rank-and-file militancy, and do not understand that what gives backbone to the hold of the treacherous trade hygiene. union leaders is neur pomacal une clearly have to engage in some serious
We have consistently argued that nasty. the election of a Labour government in 1974 on the heels of a powerful working class offensive would expose the most vulnerable feature of the
its HOVCHICHL
It is not that the organised working class is apolitical. What holds it back
La weak and sickly but cancerous in periods of grave social
Labourism in office defends the
strikes capitalist economy in the name of the
produces measures which burden of the crisis on the backs of the
contribution to the debate on
All good bookshops, or by post from
working class. It explains that a *lightening of the belt is necessary in order to save democracy', but what it means is that workers must accept sacrifices to save capitalism.
It furthermore argues that Labour
office is the soft option workers. Unless they're careful they might get Thatcher - and then where would they be?
These views are accepted by an overwhelming majority of workers. The alliance of the trade union leaders and the Labour government enables tem to be put unto practice. Labout continues to win by-elections!
all these reasons, government and the trade bureaucracy have been able to seal off the Ford strike as an isolated gain. The decision of the Ford convenors to present their claim as a 'special case" further aids this view. Nor will it
the Labour government's electoral chances.
What is of crucial importance for Labour are the public sector claims which are due to come up in the New Year. A prolonged strike by dustmen sewage workers, etc., could well entai the use of troops to maintain public
But it is one thing to put out fires quite another to keep the shit off the streets. The situation could become
Whatever the outcome, it could cripple the Callaghan regime.
Accordingly all the efforts of the government and a bulk of the TUC are now devoted to preventing such a strike from taking place.
The General & Municipal Workers Header. Rasnett. has already suggested that public sector wages should be inked to the lowest increases in the private sector, i.e. shopworkers! This is what gave meaning to the abortive TUC-government declaration.
Whether Callaghan enough to prevent public
still remains to be
Though the Tory about-turn on incomes policy (itself brought about by Heath's bold defence of the 5 per cent limit) can only aid the Labour government
In other words, what we suggesting Is that
assessment of the political situation at the moment would be misguided.
Till the next general election the situation is ikeiv hedged with a host of uncertainties -not just for socialists and the working class, but for Labour and the ruling class as well. The only guarantee of a generalised counter-offensive is the emergence alternative to the fiver-percenters class
AGAINST THE 5/., FUKO WUKKEKS
ARE FIGHTING FOR EVERYONE
Given this over-riding objective, socialists in this tasks mapped out for them. First, we HUSI avoid any "readjustments" of strategy and tactics under the pressure for of media propaganda and
polarisauon Labour and Tories as the election craws seas Whilst standing the return government, the necessity to stand candidates to the left of Labour on the basis of a programme for taking the class struggle forward remains a key the task union It is an important way of projecting
our socialist alternative, popularising the main elements of an alternative class struggle leadership in the unions, and challenging Labourist politics. In this regard the decision of the SWP leadership to overturn the decision of as as conterence and nor stand all candidates at all can only be regarded as a short-sighted response to the political conjuncture.
Secondly, that the decision of Callaghan to postpone the election and press ahead with the 5 •per tainly created a new amongst more advanced sections of workers. This means that the struggle to build class struggle tendencies in the unions acquires a certain urgency. The task of such tendencies is to link workers who are prepared to fight regardless of their political affiliations. Such a tendency is the concrete application of the tactics of the united front in today's conditions in Britain. The example of the Anti Nazi League (in a broad sense) should be applied to re-building the left in the trade unions. The experiences of both Liaison offer Defence of the Trade: Unions and the sector Rank & File groups are extremely seen. instructive in how not to engage in
such an operation.
The emergence Workers Group (Combine) shows that it is possible to lay the basis for the development of such tendencies
are are prepared, euphoric occasion demands
initiatives independently of the will of the trade union leaderships ine so-nour sations, the struggle against racism are all issues which could unite broad sections of workers in the coming period.
The whole discussion on alternative plans is the clearest indication yet of a struggle certain mood amongst many shor
stewards throughout British industry.
period have their
impressionistic
overall FOUL
the between The far
unconditionally
Socialist
CUCSLUIS deliberations.
In
combating we must acknowledge
has seen
cent has cer-
awareness PRIORITIES
OD CCLIVES,
Left Labour
Committee for the
every
of the Ford
when take OUS ability
week, nationali- regroupment
in the elections,
unions, nationalism.
The point is not whether this plan or the other has certain pitfalls. What we have to grasp is that the attraction of the plans lies in the fact that they have emerged as the main alternative option to syndicalism and the moremore-more militancy syndrome.
left will ignore these debates at its peril. They allow a crucial opening for projecting overall solutions to the crisis centred or workers control demands.
It is for this reason that the next
Challenge Trade Union Conference in March will make these
central part of its
addition to the obvious importance of developing alliances within the unions, there is the task of
policy of the British state. In recent years we have seen a real absence of initiative by left social-democratic MPs in the sphere of foreign policy
In the old days there were vociferous band of left MPs who opposed the cold war. However they tended to fellow-travel with the Soviet bureaucracy. The post-1968 situation
La decline of interest in "foreign questions.
Socialists have to re-insert these questions into the heart of national politics. Iran and southern Africa are the major priorities at the moment.
If left social-democracy had any fight left it would have organised a campaign of civil disobedience in Parliament on Iran and Zimbabwe.
MPs should have threatened a withdrawal of support
government unless stopped arms shipments to the Shah. tney nave notaone so
So here too the burden falls on the shoulders of the socialist left outside
We must make Labour Minister know what we feel on Iran and southern Africa. This means an audacious campaign on both issues (Anti Apartheid please note!).
To conclude: our strength lies in
to offer socialist alternative. In that sense we must continue to struggle for a principled
of the far left, a vigorous Socialist Unity intervention
La non-sectarian approach to alliances within the
and an obstinate inter-
For it is on these questions that revolutionary socialism will build in the coming months.
Page 5 scan of this page
Police lay into bakers' pickets
Journalists set for all-out strike
HOME NEWS
bread in the shops.
picket lines.
JUDE WOODWARD reports.
In Birmingham bread workers at ten bakeries are on strike, and at all the plants the strike is nearly 100 per cent solid.
Thirty women rejoined the
so from the point of view the Bakers Union the strike is strength-
The problem has largely been with the
DOlICe.
One of the worst scenes Violence has been at the West Bromwich bakery in BirmingПаТ.
One bread worker had his nose broken on the picket line last week, and -LEE Friday morning 'the police just went berserk, in the words of the branch secretary. This led to another arrest.
ARRESTS
In Coventry, the police have played a similar strike-breaking role al sultons bakery. Last Thursday there were arrests police against the pickets.
In one bakery the police were in direct communication with ahead. the NHS ancillary
against inflation.
reports.
The government is certain to offer 5 per cent, though it may add in tew SUDS (bonus payments, etc.) to try to keep the public sector quiet until the more militant sections in the private sector nave gone back to work
The National Union Public Employees is playing
ALL ROUND the country the bread workers know that their strike is solid. But there is no real shortage of
The reason? The absence of support from other unions and police support for management on the
management through walkie-Bikies In Manchester, Was Tenored Lo police for brandishing a gun at the strikers. The response of the local police was: It's He's got a licence for it.
But police violence dividing the strikers. When the bread workers become aware of of the kind of harassment that
strengthen the picket lines.
ALCH Hass discuss the strike and a report on- DOlICt Denaviour, regular picket bakery ın Manchester increased in size from 15 to 60.
Bread workers around the country have expressed particular anger with the drivers which have instructed their members to refuse to cross picket lines.
Brother Olgiati, otticer for the Bakers Union in three Birmingham, explains: *We are not getting any other unions. We are particularly disgusted with TGWU.
Journalists, like the bakers, may soon have to confront police on the picket line again if the strike goes THE GOVERNMENT will be replying next week to
workers' claim for a consolidated basic rate of £60 per week, a 35-hour week with no loss of pay, four weeks annual leave after 12 months service, plus fringe benefits — all protected
PATRICK SIKORSKI, East Birmingham Hospital branch secretary for the health service union COHSE,
right into the government's hands. Its full-timers are being instructed lo ensure thal all the public sector claims pile up in запшату.
But no public sector worker can afford to play a waiting game. The present back-room talks must be broken off now.
Already NHS ancillaries are
*They just say: "The drivers are doing their own jobs". But they're normal jobs. They are bringing in yeast and flour which they don't normally do."
The Bakers organising flying pickets to the maior flour mills up and down
their the country to help strengthen
Une Suke What does the TUC say? 'We
picket
the have sent a circular to all the
UnIOnS them that the bakers are on
okay. strike.
And we have passed on a is not request from Sam Maddox
general secretary of the Bakers Union - for the other unions to stop at the picket lines and to it tends to support the strike.
'That's about as much as the TUC can do.? - mecung to
PICKETS the Sharrocks
The TUC has not helping to organise the flying pickets. It has not threatened the United Road Union with expulsion from the TUC if it continues to ignore HOL one stake.
It has not strongly recomregional mended ASTMS
stay out of the bakeries support of ine strike, support trom the TGWU
drivers on the right side of the the picket lines.
Bringing forward settlement
OURNALISTS •
NHS ancillaries push for action
virtually bottom of the 31 fully grades that make up the manual
workers ancillary's basic pay is now al
least £10 below the government's official poverty line!
NHS workers
Midlands are organise now for the NUPE district and divisional committees have been discussing which sections of workers they will bring out if action is called.
The COHSE Pay Action Committee has organised ten mass meetings in hospitals in the region, and 30,000 leaflets explaining the claim. Most importantly, it has called picket negotiations on 8 December.
OFFICIAL
doing just their
-BAKERS'
Union
concerned informing
been
Transport
WOrKCES
For told
keep
MEMBERS of the
Bolton Evening
cent limit.
demand the ¿CrUSS KATHY LOWE.
employers'
the national whether
mincemeat of the
senior wage). they stressed, Whitehall's approval.
SANCTIONS
earlier this month league. unions then
claim. in the West beginning
claim.
money patient.
The
distributed
to join the picket the
dates and striking now against to delea the 5 percent, and organising Other joint actions through local pay organise action committees would aid all those the Government hopes
CALL National Union of Journalists at the campaign
News were sanctions, locked out last Friday in the union's battle against the 5 per
cannot
Journalists on provincial and
disruptive local newspapers are now set undermined for an all-out strike to win their
for a f20 increase beard, reports printworker:
The first offer from the
association, the Newspaper Society, was only 5 Dinted at a possible improve- But they ment after they had looked at
situation' (i.e.
Ford and other
workers were going to make
5 per cent
Two weeks ago the NS upped Their orero y per cent a mere £2-3 before tax on the average
But even this, depended on
sector
A national delegate meeting
of NUJ chapels (workplace branches) general threw out the offer and voted
Employees.
mean
An impressive mobilisation of workers from all the NHS
will encourage inter-union co-operation in the localities in the fight for the
This fight must also include demands for a stepping up of November the campaign against the cuts
order to counter the idea that excessive wage claims will eat into the
available for the
outcome of the ancillaries' claim will determine the outcome of all the other claims of NHS workers. So all NHS workers are being asked council
on DHSS, Elephant and Castle, London.
and Our
workers should with the bread strikers wherever they
through meetings, by 4 to l for the CUrren
hard-hitting to be followed if necessary by an all-out strike.
The problem, however, that journalists on their own
stop papers. Their action can be and they need non-union the backing of NGA and SOGAT
make strike action bite.
the NUJ said: leadership is dragging its feet over strike action. tHey navi failed to set a deadline for the end of sanctions and the start of
can't afford a strike because its
Public sector
campaign in Bath
HAD THE TUC agreed to the
proposals on wages, workers in the public
would have been hit particularly hard.
Who says so? Alan Fisher, than
secretary of the National Union of Public
He argued that the proposed principle of comparing wages in the public sector with those in the private sector would
comparison with industries 'which have scandalously low rates of pay.
Undoubtedly Alan Fisher made a good point. But what about the battle against low pay by his own members?
A public meeting in Bath on 9
showed what possible. ANNE CHESTER TON, a member of Bath Trades Council and a NUPE shop steward, explains
A Socialist Challenge sup- for porter from NUPE (ambu lances) put forward the idea of a campaign against low pay at a NUPE meeting, and afterwards it was taken up by the trades
A group of activists ther built the meeting using NUPE
leaflets and
raising the strike in their union branches and
-trade
flying pickets and those at the bakeries.
But events are overtaking them. On Monday a 200-strong mass meeting in London voted unanimously fight immediate strike action in their chapels. Journalists Hornsey Journal/Camden Journal/Islington Gazette group have already come out.
As North London • branch chairperson Howard Hannah
•We must be out on the picket line in order to get NGA and SOGAT to help us stop our papers. We must strike now, our managements can bring out the profitable pre-Xmas issues." posters, by getting in contact with unions in low pay sectors A lot of personal contact was involved
The response was far better
expected. hundred and thirty people turned up, which is incredible for Bath.
There was tremendous militancy, and a very strong dissatisfaction with the union leaders was expressed because of the way the previous claims had been handled
We hoped . the campaign would argue the case for a E60 minimum wage and a 35-hour week. we wanted to build inter-union solidarity, especially for the coming public sector pay claim.
These ideas were widely supported. The sentiments from the floor were distrust of the union leaders and the need
unity to defend living Sears
A steering committee was set up, but the campaign is being run by rank-and-file unionists -from many different sectors.
The campaign can be contacted via: Alan Davis, 120 Holcombe Vale, Bathampton, Bath, Avon.
Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 5
Page 6 scan of this page
From strength to strength
Penalties and sanctions
HOME NEWS
positive ideas expressed at the conference.
JUDE WOODWARD reports.
Outside the conference, held at Caxton Hall, Westminster, a
- holding their emotive sensanonausca placaras mauc no impact on the delegates in the hall.
The conference, organised jointly by the Abortion Campaign and the Labour Abortion Rights Campaign, was sponsored by five national unions, and delegates representing branches came from a huge range of unions -the public sector and health, engineering and transport
tobacco workers, and miners.
An impressive platform of trade union leaders addressed the conference and called tor an extension of abortion facilities, work.
ROB McCRAE,
The company had originally proposed a 'phased' return to work.
Birch complained that this was
divisive tactic, SO company agreed to everyone going back together last Friday dILCE the Wednesday meetings.
Not much was done Friday. In one section of the body plant at Dagenham there was a walk-out because of the Cole Worne ConutOns
How to fight the
government
A FIRST step towards ensuring the of the second Socialist Challenge trade union conference next March was taken in Leeds two weeks ago.
A local conference of trade unionists attracted 25 people from a wide range of unions.
Members of the engineering and transport unions, from the public sector, teachers technical staff discussed the implications of the Ford strike Combine)
WOTKCIS MOYCHICHL
Hospital Occupation Committee) * And more! (All speakers in a personal capacity)
NI 2XP.
Socialist Chaflenge 30 November 1978 Page 6
Union conference on abortion
ABORTION is an issue that can and must be taken up in the trade unions - that was the overwhelming conclusion to be drawn from the conference attended by nearly 500 trade union delegates last weekend.
Months of work, arguing, discussing and fighting for delegates in hundreds of union branches thoroughly vindicated by the militant feeling and
together with a strong response to any attack on women's present abortion rights. and Alan Fisher, general secretaof the Public Employees Union, which has a membership workers, made a fine, militant speech.
BASIC 'I am neither for nor against abortion, he said. 'That is not the issue for trade unionists.
Abortion, the right to choose, is a basic right of our women members which we must fight even for.
Fisher pledged himself to ensure that the TUC's policy of against any restrictive legislanon is impiemenica.
Back to work at Ford
HAVING driven a coach and horses through the 5 per cent pay code, the 57,000 Ford workers are back at
La press shop worker Dagenham plant, looks at what happens now.
situation in the factory. The 16½ per increase Reg through the strike has left the workers confident and strong.
CONFIDENCE That strength and confidence will be increasingly needed as on the effects of some of the other aspects of the settlement felt.
The first of these has already surfaced. Throughout
The walk-out symbolised the negotiations Ford refused to
and how to fight government's 5 percent wage Various different TenacHec on the lett represented, together large number of independent socialists.
The regional conference gave backing to the projected and national conference on workers' plans and workers' control next spring.
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE TRADE UNION CONFERENCE 2
Our alternative to Callaghan *The Lucas Experience, with Phil Asquith (exec. member, Lucas * Workers Control in Iran, with a speaker from the Iranian * Closures and Workers Control, with Carl Brecker (Hounslow
Saturday 24 March at Digbeth Civic Hall, Birmingham Tickets £1 from SC Trade Union Conference, PO Box 50, London
was large health
Berry Beaumont, a doctor from the NAC Steering Committee, spoke from the platform.
said that this depended on the degree of support at the base of the unions.
Judith Hunt, organiser of the Engineering Union's staff section, demonstration gave particular attention to the
need extend But he
consider the snorter working week Now the company is going in the opposite direction and has at the instigated a drive for increased
overtime. 1,200 workers on the Dagenham estate alone, the company won
is looking to overtime to shore uD sourc capacIL The Joint Works Committee announced that, (JWC) struggle for the 35-hour week, no excessive overtime will be worked.
But while the unions didn't
are get the shorter week, manage-
ment OlGI WIR
the clauses against
strikes. regarded these crucial, arguing that elimination of unofficial strike action was a high priority.
A test will come sooner or later. unions and the JW are serious Whether
in their opposition penalty clauses
the measured by how they seek to
prepare that event.
But rather than launch a political were with a
THE NEXT important state rISI peoins magistrates court, London, on Monday 4 December, PIERS CORBYN.
It features 14 people charged under the Law' for resisting eviction at the Huntley Street mass squat. Some 650 Special Patrol Group with riot shields, bulldozers,
to end the squat by 160 women, men and children on 16 August at a cost of public.
health service.
leaders dragged up metaphors leading troops that are miles down the road.
by the labour leaders?
The
among the
AHEAD
were obliged to
official women's influence to
TASS,
out-patient question of a
against imposed by With a shortage of government.
profits. political than economic.
Dagenham has ing to justify
as part of the
sector companies
ATTACKS SLAC Denalty unofficial The company always
clauses as
week and avalist union organisation. not the left-wing to the will be
brought you ABC...
'Criminal Trespass which
broadest possible way.
police, many
BARRICADES pickaxes
£50,000 to the
wiuer l scope
strong resistance to cuts in the
But nearly all the trade union
the old about 'generals four
many times has this stale cliché been used to justify inactivity
conference clearly showed that a large current
"troops' was not four miles down the road at all.
There were a large number of teachers at the conference, who
attend observers because their union's
position that abortion has nothing to do with teachers. In the NUT, as in many other unions. the troops are way ahead of the generals!
trade unionists tee ALAN strongly about a woman's right to choose - now we expect Ene leaders to use their position and in November
turn into concrete activity: to build mass actions to extend and defend women's rights to abortion. We
Alan Fisher led 70,000 public sector workers on a massive campaign on these questions, the union leaders have joined the campaign by the company
TENC Labour
The sanctions mean little in terms of their effect on Ford's
Their job is more
The government is attempt-
-Ine stand intends to make in the public sector over the per percent by showing 'firmness" with private
The workers in Ford have no interest in collaboration with the company against sanctions. Their only interest is to struggle for policies like the 35-hour
It is these questions which the
*Ford Workers Group' will be looking at in the coming weeks as part of the fight for a political alternative both inside and outside the stewards organisation in Ford.
From the team that
The trial is the first large scale use of the new Criminal resisting the Trespass Law (part 2 of the Criminal Law Act, 1977). The signs are that the prosecution will attempt to set a precedent
establishes 'resistance' under the new lecislation in the
trade groups,
The arrests and charges do not appear to relate to specific activity at the barricades on the day of eviction, but are much
that it was
lead
with general FISHER secretary of NUPE. demonstration against the cuts
1976, and then left them with nothing to do while the leaders went to do some parliamentary lobbying.
don't want that on well fighting for and helping to
TERENCE BECKETT, Ford UK boss.
charged with Sheriff in the execution of his duty between 26 July and 16 August'. One of ine cerencants was not ever present at the eviction, but was picked up later.
The Huntley Street Defence Campaign is already backed by a sizeable list of trades councils,
unions, community and number of Labour Party branches.
The Labour Party National Executive stated in debate at the Labour Party conference
*very concerned
build any demonstration, the union officials should take the
educating their members
We expect to see a TUC leaflet explaining TUC policy
abortion.
Fisher is the leader of a union
health service workers it is particularly important that ne lakes
kind of speech he made Saturday to the members of his
He should be encouraging
day-care abortion facilities and Ignung curs in the DEEVILE
SUCCESS
The TUC, Women's TUC, and the union leaders need to be
providing material support for the National Abortion Campaign, and organising pro grammes. of meetings and picketing of hospitals with inadequate facilities.
The conference was a big success. Let's ensure that the trade union leaders take us on from strength to strength. about the Huntley Street situation.
the defence committee is calling demonstration at 10am on Monday 4 December outside Marylebone magistrates (Edgeware Rd tube).
FILM
A film of the eviction and background is also available. Further details from c/0 Camden Law Centre 146 Kentish Town Rd., NW1 (tel 01-267 1456/01-701 5691).
Page 7 scan of this page
BRIEF
NAN BAILEY, a leading black militant of the US Socialist Workers Party, will be among speakers the Socialist панелее Day School Racism and Black Liberation on 3 December in London Contact your local group for details or ring Colin on 01-359 8371.
A ONE-DAY conference on 9 December has been called by the National Campaign
the Supplementary Benefits Review. The review, published by the DHSS in July. proposes a system of rough justice' which includes things like no benefit for school
for THESE months of unemployment.
Birmingham University
(El fee except for claimants) -details from: Jason Copeland (NCASBR), c/o Harlesden Advice Centre, 25 High Street. London NW10 (tel. 01-965 2590).
THE Garners Strike Committee, together with the Greater London Association of Trades Councils and TGWU Region, organising "stake-out of all Garners
London
Lurn up to the haymarker restaurant between 12 and 3pm and from 5.30pm onwards for allocation to a restaurant by the strike committee. or ring them beforehand [240 1056].
THE Socialist Unity steering committee meets this Saturday, 2 December, at 1lam at 328 Upper St., London N1.
ESSEX University Students Union is organising a one-da) mass picket of the university on Monday 4 December after eight weeks of rent strike against a 19.8 per cent rent increase (grants only went up by 8.9 per
and for adequate accommodation. Students from elsewhere are being asked to join the picket.
ISLINGTON Campaign Against Kacısm and Fascism have called a demonstration this Saturdav. 2 December. In response to fascist attacks by supporters oune Front and British Movement in Спарет магкет. the demo include 15 Labour councillors, the trades council, the Asian centre. and the ANL. It assembles at 11.30am near Chapel Market to move off at noon.
POLICE were ordered to pay Brick Lane defendant Stephen Wright's costs on Monday after he had been cleared on appeal of a charge of threatening
months jail sentence.
Ine next appear comes up on 6 December and the defence campaign is again calling for a picket of Knightsbridge Crown Court (1 Hans Crescent, SWI) at 10am. A regular mobilisation every Sunday in Brick Lane is also being restarted
THE charge of conspiracy to cause explosions' has now been dropped completely in the case against six anarchists arrested this summer. The charges have now been reduced to conspi-
BLUS two possession of explosive substances. Four of those charged are still being refused however. Further details from: Persons Unknown, Box 123 182 Upper Street, London NI
THE Campaign Against Immigration Laws (CAIL) is organising a day school 'Immigration Laws They Are and How to Fight Them' on Saturday 9 December, 10.30am-5pm, at Institute of Education,
Way. London TOTU Admission (50p earners). Details from: CAIL, c/o Box 133, 182 Upper Street, London NI.
AStu-
Saturday.
No.1 to racism.
In 1924 the Trades Union Congress passed a resolution STOLEN continued employment ninese Cane cheap Aslam labour on British steamers, and
approach the Government with a view toa bill being brougnt in to make such
make arrangements for the repatriation of unemployed Asiatics.
RESEMBLANCE
As a resolution. this onc from COLLIESS lett-wing reputation bears a CIOSC current politics of the Nationa Front.
But just how far has the TUC itself gone in repudiating such Flame'. JULIAN arguments.
EWE The ESOS
article is the interview with A.
Institute of Race Relations.
There is no doubt that the left owes a considerable debt to Sivanandan. His 'Race. Clas and the State explained the parneular nature or the black immigration into Britain in the clearest terms.
MUDDLED Yet the most insights can also be muddled up
of with mpressionism, as when
the it pact of the projected 1976 Race Relations Act caused bail, him to write: Racism dies in
order that capital survive.
Sivanandan returns to this theme in the interview, when he
the explains mar longer needs Caro als
on racismn out nas cone nommg until the rise of the NF as an What
within the working class.
Sivanandan attempts
the
underpin these views politically Бe(- with a simplistic and dangerous WCI.
analysis of class forces. non- According to this, modern
Caba ane us too me abou Party, wants to get rid of
HOME NEWS
ANL trade union conference
Mass action
needed to
fight racism
THE ANTI NAZI LEAGUE holds its first trade union conference in Congress
It has a lot to do, argues RICH PALSER, in the
light of the past attitude of the trade union leaderships
sentiments?
The report of the General against une Council to this year's TUC, for of instance, pointed out that due to luc pressure ine government has further reduced the quota of work permits in the hotel and catering industry for Tereian workers employment The quota, 8,500 in 1975, was only 2,061 this year.
Among the members of the notel and catering committee of the TUC are such supposed lefties as Bernard Dix of the National Union of Public Employees and Harry Urwin of with the Transport Workers.
They and others 10 the principled' reasons for seeking a reduction in the work permit quota in hotels and catering cling the super-exploitation of workers in these industries.
A close look at
fascism and racism
'A CLOSE Look at Fascism and Racism' is a pamphlet consisting, in the main, of reprints from 'Big
ATKINSON
controversial racism. Out-dated free enterprise capital and ol ine Party, on the other hand, play the racist card.
There are two failures in this approach. First,
trade unions just as instruments of bourgeois rule rather than as contradictory organisations both bourgeois and working class.
This approach makes him see Grunwick enlightened capitalists since a important *non-union black spells danger for the system.
The second weakness is that the obverse of this coin can be read — moment is being read might mean that the first stage of the fightback of the working class, after "historic 1975, is to form an alliance with 'enlightened" institutional ainst 'out-moded" in spire or tnese weaknesses Sivanandan hits the target squarely when he argues the necessity of placing anti-racist activity in the struggle.
One omission pamphlet is a serious discussion on how an autonomous black hoeration movement tits into the struggle against
House, London, this
Wretchedly low
Trust Houses
solution.
which stood at CONDITIONS
industry the insecurity of
do work in the industry.
A campaign LULLIOIS offer
to these problems.
worst example examines its
further
the Tory
black Sivanandan self-determination
early 1960s Malcolm
got that far.
AUTONOMOUS as a failure for the
The workforce could be
and in Italy at this
COne
defeat' in
agcapitalism. repeat
moves towards state? anti-fascist
trom the satisfactory
together fascism.
pay and abysmal working conditions do apply in such organisations as description.
Forte But cutting down the employment opportunities of foreign workers in the industry is hardly a
TOR
Dais
The problem of conditions in When catering and hotels is two-fold:
the work perm system, and tne icar or victimisation among those who capital and
against work
for and support to unionisation entry into Britain. would be the positive solutior
The policy on work permits displayed by the TUC is just the
of a general
We still have to defend the simple concept of autonomy against its detractors, but it is time that we clarified our ideas
The brutal fact is that the British revolutionary left has Just about caught up with the refinements to Trotsky's work
nanonalism and that the American SWP made in the
when considering and the Black Muslims. And some have not
13 14 overall -criticism that made is that the 27 28 pamphlet is not more than the sum of its individual parts. This is not just a problem inherent in a collection of articles written at different times, but rather
the level
poline ste of the NF at this
period of British history is not dealt with. Is it destined to be a
performance of the 1930s, or does fascism in this period gain its importance from decrees
the strong ConDoners
Only Sivanandan raises these points, and his answers are not
The problem of how the autonomous movements relate
• in the overall class struggle is scarcely broached.
BILL KEYS, of the TUC equal rights committee, declared at this year's congress that action is needed now by the police, the a Commission for Racial Equality, thanked the print union NATSOPA for withdrawing a motion to support the ANL.
attitude. Pious statements and little action is an accurate
When the fascists march to
violence, leaders of the TUC do not call
counter-mobilisations by upon the unions, they call for state police.
are being USed against the left as well as the
Thatcher whips up racist sentiments around immigration, they deplore her use of the issue to make political
do nothing to mobilise pickets of the jails where the prisoners of race are kept under suspicion of illegal
Instead of challenging institutionalised racism by affir mative action for more black that teachers, more black journalists, more jobs for blacks, they
MAY 1979
M W S
15 16 17 18 29 30 31
1979 Anti-Racist Anti-Fascist Anti-Nazi Calendar. 13 stunning
poster-size prints - 17ins by 24ins -
and contemporary anti-fascist and anti-racist themes
Get yours now. £1.50 [plus 36p p&p]. Ten or more copies, £l
post free. Rush your order to: SC Calendars, PO Box 50, London
NI 2XP. Cheques to "The Week'.
There is no master plan that
that the varIous
class fit harmoniously together
like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
requires the conscious
to fight against all forms oppression within the working class and for the interests of the whole working class.
and the government, and
say that the Race Relations Act must be strengthened to halt racist outbursts - as it the reality of racism can be ended by a battle of ideas alone.
In short, they urge reliance
CUYCIHHICHL and the courts rather than reliance on mass action by the labour movement.
STARTING
As a campaign which has consistently stood for action against the Nazis, with massive support in the • labou BOYCHICHE the ANL can provide the starting point for a united movement to demand
the union leaders, and fight for
undertaken by the rank-and-file now.
M T W T F 7 8 9 10 11 12 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
- on historical, international,
The June anti-racist, antifascist conference, when some of the women denounced the men present for their sexism whilst some blacks denounced the women and gays for their
and SO110 unionists denounced the middle-class present. TOI their pelly-bourgeois deviations.
Socialist. Challenge: 30 November 1978 Page 7ce
Page 8 scan of this page
luta
da
bresche WiE HACER?
Photo: G.M. COOKSON (Socialist Challens
Group in Britain. DAVID JONES reports.
The only way revolutionaries can raise money is by supporters. The IMG has decided to launch an appeal to raise £20,000 by May 1979.
Bob Pennington's plea for money the rally went off like a bomb. explained that a certain percentage would be given to the Iranian comrades so that they could produce a weekly newspaper.
It was the focus on Iran that began to empty pockets. It was the international caracc or tne rally tat made peopie go for their cheque books.
We TCly on Pennington. •We have TECOUTCCS The response was impressive.
Pennington kept up a steady barrage. Here he polemicised with a sectarian,
explained now Central Committee section of the FI had been imprisoned under the dictatorship. minutes the fund appeal was ended.The total was staggering.
In tenners, fivers and humble pound notes £817 flowed in. Cheques totalled €1,507 and a further €101.72 was collected in coins
French francs, German marks, and a few greenbacks also found their way to the collection buckets.
PEPS/TSA calist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 8
ST. PANCRAS Town packed. Twelve hundred people were present to celebrate anniversary of the national.
Outside there were paper-sellers and slanderous leaflets [first prize again to the WRP: 'Supporters of Tariq Ali and Mandel a Establishment'].
Inside there were banners proclaiming solidarity with different struggles around the globe.
The first speaker was Nan Bailey, the ONE OF the features of the Fourth International rally was an appeal for funds to aid the development of the Iranian section of the Fourth International and the work of the International Marxist
£1,243 in IOUs appealing to their
fifth of the at He increasing our flow regularising our
you', said no other IMG FUND DRIVE
the entire of the Spanish Drive.
After 45 Name..
Address.
to 'The Week"
There was
proletaria rouge
Hall was
the fortieth Fourth Inter-
the usual distributors of
party of the adresses supplied. The total collected with Names and amounted to a staggering £3,747.16p.
In other words, we collected nearly a
total. Our supporters responded well to our practical needs.
The £20,000 has been earmarked for
pamphlets, journals, stabilising Revolution (widely recognised as the best youth paper on the left), and improving our own printing facilities. In addition we will be able to have political organisers in key regions.
So we appeal to Socialist Challenge readers to help the organisation which took the initiative to launch the paper.
Tenclose a donation of £... to the E20,000 IMG Development Fund Post to: IMG, PO Box 50, London NI 2XP. Cheques should be made payable
Detroit organiser
democrat.
Harry Gelderen spoke
Harry founder Trotskyism.
left unity in Britain today.
Left to right: Ernest Mandel,
Hormoz Rahimian, Harry Wicks,
revolutionary
happening is Peru,
Revolutionary Workers Party [PRT].
came about and why it was necessary.
Che Guevara, the Latin American
who said, Either socialist revolution or
carcaluc ur revoluton e ons
OCtoDer yOr
On 8 October, 1978,
Revolucionario de los
was founded. But it didn't begin from
than two years of unification efforts by scratch. The PRT is the fruit
several revolutionary groll course, not everyone agreed to a
unification. There
remained behind,
difficult for them to abandon their
sectarianism. But
around.
FIR group tri have te ic dare the
TIN-N
Socialista Group, the Natalia Sedova
Circles, and part of the PST. Now we
are a party.
We are the Partido Revolucionaric
de los Trabajadores, fighting for
*A government of the workers of the
city and the countryside.
*Factories into the
WOLACIS, HOL LEC Ca DILaTSLS
we do not believe any secuien or tit
of the American Socialist Workers Party. She stressed the struggle against racism and sexism, noting that Carter was not a real
Wicks and Charlie van on behalf of the Veterans against Stalinism. Charlie had been a young delegate at the founding conference of the Fourth International,
of British
Harry particularly praised the role of Socialist Challenge in fighting for far
Nan Bailey and Francis Murphy
NTERNATIOI
AO YEARS
• IT IS possible to overcome sectarianism and division on the
left. And one place where that is successfully which recently saw the formation ef the
In an article which originally appeared in 'Combate Socialista', the party's paper, HUGO BLANCO explains how the unification
the Partido Trabajadores
•STOLSKYIS Lo acneve un.we
those who oCCausC WaS differences
they will • come agreement.
Saste •ane misunderstandings Combate We are still not
-uncy Can Df
of joint activity
hands of the differences
bandiera
rossa
who had dictatorship.
the Iran revolution.
His speech,
THE FOURT
Hugo Blanco on Pert
capitalists will fight together with us against imperialism. The workers must maintain tneir class independence
We believe that workers throughout the world should join with us in the Stueric atalnst cabiansm. Ins s wil we are part of the Fourth International
At first we thought we had to full discuss our tactical differences in orde
wastee a OLO time and made very little progress this
way hile conchan tor ischad.
continuing dIscusS WE carned -OU JoIni activity in those areas where there was
This helped us progress CUI through many
finished discussing.
But the differences are not so great, and
workee ouE witnin the unified party. The discussion is now much more fraternal in the atmosphere
Our congress will take place in three The nost importan politica ise s el the most important political issues.
still exist. -une discussed and voted on at the congress,
COMB
The high point of the evening was the speech of the Iranian revolutionary, Hormoz Rahimian. He described the developing tide of revolution struggle in Iran, explained the possibilities that existed for building a revolutionary party, and mercilessly assailed those
collaborated with the
He appealed for the support of the British working class and ended by stressing the international character of
delivered without the slightest trace of demagogy, received a
and the party will carry out thi approved by the majority. This is democratic centralism; we discu PUSILIUH democratically, then out the line adopted by the maj We call first of all on the comra the PST who did not want to uni well as on the comrades of the PO to join us in forming one big Trots party in Peru.
the PST TUL HOW. WC WIL WOrK LOLeLRE and the POMR to stren te roccr and to make it-ar stronger organisation fighting government and socia with no alliances with any sectors o DOUECO SIE And what about the rest of the When these companeros under: that the WUT ACTS CallO! sectors O tne posses: when understand that the bosses are u against us; when they understand uc onlv way to tree ourse ves imperialism is to sweep away capita - when that day comes, we will fo single party of all the workers ag all une explorers As long as the companeros o other left parties don't understanc we cannot form one single party we Will Sil work with them activities that advance : the in favour of demor wilnin the mass movement with a of unity and without sectarianism slogan shall always be, "The left ur will never be defeated"
SÜREKL
Page 9 scan of this page
10-part programme for European elections
spontaneous standing ovation amidst
chants from the
Iranians ['Death to the Shah', 'Owen
Out', 'Long Live the Fourth'].
In conclusion
sketched out the
International. It was still small in
comparison to the
confronted it, but its strength was
based on the 'rock of internationalism'
which had guided
foundation.
*The believers of socialism in one
country are confronting each other on
the Ussuri River', thundered Mandel,
H
NAL
ON
international submit this for by the workers pay for the crisis.
down and
control.
sliding Against crisis, a plan of
foreign trade.
Against
are the
DEVRİM
klassen
strijd
large section of
Ernest Mandel gains of the
tasks which
it since its WE WILL campaign in the elections to the European Parliament on a single
programme. wye discussion by organisations adhering to the workers
We call on them to discuss it and consider a common campaign on the basis of the essential points of this programme, which defends the point of view of the workers and the socialist revolution in these elections.
1. Against the austerity policy imposed
bourgeoisie to make the
For co-ordinated trade union action on a European scale to win the 35 hour week with no loss of pay or lay-offs.
Against redundancies and factory closures, the workers' power of veto, confiscation of businesses which close
their re-opening nationalised enterprises under workers'
Against the inflation which goes hand in hand with unemployment, a
scale of and social
the capitalist economic workers SO LEON elaborated by the workers' movement, onentea principany cowarus sausayuig the needs of the masses, based on the
of large industry, the credit sector and
discrimination against mant we principal victor
principal victims unemployment. Absolute equality of
007 7117010
'and on the border of Cambodia and
Vietnam'. A tragic vindication of the
theses of Trotsky.
mass revolutionary parties throughout
the world. 'Not just in one country', he
said, 'but throughout the globe'.
and you are objective you will see who
was right and who was wrong on how
an International will be constructed.'
He ended by describing the inspiring
meeting he had attended in West Berlin
in solidarity with Rudolf Bahro:
*A resolution was passed at the end political and trade union rights.
2. For the complete equality of civil, political and trade or chauvinist legislation limiting the free circulation of workers. Against the racist and neo-fascist offensive, unity
Whole movement to defend persecuted or threatened minorities. 3. Against neo-colonialism European imperialisms and aggression in Chad, Sahara, Djibouti, Zaire and elsewhere. Solidarity with all the liberation struggles of the colonial peoples. Leave NATO.
4. Against the oppression of national minorities in Europe itself, such as the basaues HOr unlimited right of self-determination.
an independent united Ireland.
Withdrawal of all British troops from the North of Ireland.
5. Solidarity with the struggle of the masses of Eastern Europe and the USSR for their democratic, political, trade union and national rights.
Warsaw Pact troops out Czechoslovak Socialist Republic!
6. Against the pollution and threats to the environment caused by the system of profit and competition.
Against the construction of nuclear power stauons. Closure Or-all power stations in operation. The whole truth on the current risks from nuclear power
republic
acorporst UNFREE CITIZEN Mandel stressed the need to build
*If you make a balance-sheet today
stations must attention of everyone.
union rights for
Special measures workers' in training and to the double working day. and the their laws professional
the constitution'.
freedoms and the right to strike.
their Convention which is
states of Europe and the world.
of the
regard to the state.
capital, capitalism
socialist Klasse.
one who indelible part working class movement.
killed by Stalinism and the fascists.'
have heard its
in German, and in English. be brought to the
7. For support for the struggle of women for equality of rights and in law. Free abortion and contraception on demand. Equal pay for equal work.
to compensate women for the effects of discrimination
employment. For proper collective facilities to put an end
8. Against the increase in repressive
proscription from posts in the Federal Kepublic of Germany of opponents of Uncompromising Ligue
and unrestricted defence of democratic
Against the European Anti-terrorist Italy:
-HOL terrorism but at the radical wing of the workers' movement and which will tomorrow be used against the workers' movement as a whole. For the free traffic of people and ideas between the
9. For the unity in action of all parties of the workers movement. Against any pact with the bourgeois parties. Total independence of the trade unions with
Spain:
To find a way out of the crisis of
HUSU OVer thrown, the road to socialism must be opened, the workers must take power. 10. Against the integration of
коросмотьки
kampen
with the signatures, of the Italian CP and SP, the Spanish SP, and the Fourth International. Yes, today there is no
can deny that we are an of the international
It is the posthumous victory of all our comrades who were slandered and
Amidst loud applause the International was sung. A careful ear would
strains in Persian amongst the front of the audience. But it was also sung in Spanish, in French,
Portugal, Spain and Greece into the Common Market and the Europe of the trusts and big capiar. ror a Socialist States of Europe.
Republic of workers' councils.
Organisations in the EEC member countries: . Britain:
International Marxist Group France Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire Federal Republic of Germany:
Gruppe Internationale Marxisten Belgium:
Revolutionnaire des Travailleurs/ Revolutionaire Arbeiders Liga Netherlands:
Internationale Kommunisten Bond
Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari Luxembourg:
Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire Ireland:
Movement for a Socialist Republic Denmark:
Revolutionar Socialistischer Forbund
The campaign is supported by sections in the countries governments have demanded entry into the Common Market:
Liga Comunista Revolucionaria Portugal:
Partido Socialista Revolucionario Greece:
Communist Internationalist Organisa tion of Greece [OKDE].
ОЛОФРАГМА
klasser
kampl
Socialist Challenge
All photos: G. M. COOKSON [Socialist Challenge
Was run URETHION
For the Uniter
whose
ефпрериба
Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page!
Page 10 scan of this page
MASON SUBMITS LEON
Long live Peoples Democracy
IRELAND
Ireland Secretary Roy Mason.
The march,
In this context
GEOFF BELL.
Roy Mason did what the Unionist government of North-
years ago: he directly prohibited a political demonstration in Armagh in the face of threats from Loyalists led by Paisley.
Ten years ago the demonstration had been organised by the Civil Rights Association. followed police attacks on the Historic civil rights march Derry on 5 October.
When plans for the Armagh
Paisley was
the leading 'hardline' Loyalist
- demanded that the North of struggle took place in Dublin last weekend.
with People's Democracy.
The new organisation Democracy title struggle in Ireland.
the latest edition of newspaper of the fused organisation.
People's Democracy
October 1968. Its prime movers Were Young Socialist Alliance, formed in Belfast in June 1968.
On 5 October 1968, 40 YSA supporters went to the Civil Kights march in Derry and were in the front rank when the RUC baton-charged the protesters.
COME Gays outraged students tried march from Queens University to the City Hall in Belfast, but were stopped by the RUC. The students were frustrated and demoralised.
VIGOUR
YA members took iminauve and proposed the establishment of a permanent Civil Rights organisation. The People's Democracy was born.
PD was a mass democratic organisation modelled on the student/worker assemblies in Paris earlier in the year. The organisation was naive
the vigour, energy and flair of the Paris upsurge.
PD quickly became driving force of the Civil Rights struggle, participating countless marches and protests, and turning out a constant stream of leaflets and posters.
Most dramatic was Belfast to Derry march January 1969, organised by PD and viciously attacked Loyalist and state forces
Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 10
Armagh, ten years on
TO PAISLEY
LAST SUNDAY thousands of people defied a ban on demonstrations in Armagh City imposed by Northern
organised by the Relatives Action Committee, was in support of political status for Republican prisoners and in commemoration of a Civil Rights march held ten years ago in Armagh.
Roy Mason's prohibition Sunday's march has a particular significance, reports
Ireland government ban it.
He Secretary William Craig, who had authorised -Ine attacks on the Derry march and was soon to be sacked from the Ian Unionist government for being too right-wing and sectarian.
REFUSED But even Craig refused to bow down to Paisley s inreats. and he allowed the march to take place.
Ten years later it was again Tan Paisley who demanded that then the authorities the shape of Roy Mason and the Labour government - stop the Armagh march.
THE FIRST major fusion between two left-wing groups that Ireland has seen in the last ten years of
The Movement for a Socialist Republic, the Irish section of the Fourth International, has joined forces
is adopting the - a name which has a rich history of
This history of PD is taken from a longer article in
'Socialist Republic',
was notably at Burntollet just a few miles from Derry.
The following month eight PD candidates polled 23,000 votes in the Northern Ireland general election.
BARRICADES In August 1969 the Stormont LOVCEHTHCHI unleashed RUC, B Specials and Paisleyite 3,000 gangs to antack une carnonc to shettos of Bellast pond Derry, people responded setting up barricades set up Belfast' and produced a daily resistance paper. Both boosted morale in the ghettos and PD its first real roots in West
the Belfast.
Two months later formally committed itself to a Workers Republic and moved awav from the University to establish itself in working class
It also established Free Citizen as a regular weekly and journal of agitation propaganda.
LEADING the Over the organisation continued to play a leading role in the Civil Rights struggle well economic and social questions, both in the North and South.
In a sort of unintentional of compliment to the organisation eight PD members were among by those interned in August 1971.
The paper changed its name to
This time he found Roy Mason more obliging William Craig had proved; on November issued his ban.
Paisley immediately issued a statement and claiming a victory'. Plans for a counter-mobilisation, a
of
"church service" along the route of the RAC march, were called off.
INVADED Home
Ten years ago, when the Civil police Rights march did take place, it
was Paisleyite mobs invaded the centre of Armagh determined Paisley called 'the rebels'.
The Loyalists plastered the centre of Armagh with posters headed *Ulster's with the advice:
Warning. Board Windows and children from the city on Saturdav 30 November this time in
BLOCKED The invasion of the towr by the People's
the
Bridge,
BEne
*Rádio Free
Movement contingent.
Unfree Citizen, and members of the organisation took leading role in organising rent
PD and rate strikes in the first vital
weeks after internment. / In November 1971, PD took the lead Northern Resistance ment, which took the struggle back to the streets and raised the clear
and demand to smash Stormont.
PD worked Provisional Sinn Fein in setting up the NRM, thus becoming year the the first socialist organisation
to reject the then fashionable critique of the Provos as green as raising fascists.
Instead, along with Revolutionary Marxist Group (forerunner of the MSR), PD insisted that the Provos were a
Following the suspension of Stormont in March 1972, PD
2102n
Mason duly
BIGOTS supporting Mason
The agreed.
peaceful, who
SLOD Wildl promise
democracy?
Defenders'
PROMISE 'A Friendly
up your Remove all women
Loyalist bigots?
Paisleyites weekend.
months.
But the
the Move- government by the
uncertainty forward. closely By
of hundred militants.
was set up
Cine the SDLP.
was by anti-imperialist forces
be
effectively blocked the route of the demonstration. The police asked the Civil Rights stewards to halt their march before they reached the Loyalist mobs.
Civil Rights leaders
The march had been halted by Paisleyite bigots.
Ten years later, it was the RUC and the British Army who fulfilled the role the Loyalists had played in 1969: stopping "the rebels' from marching in a
political demon-
Remember how they used to
the government was in the North of Ireland to ensure the rule of
Remember how they used to promise that bruish troop: were in the North of Ireland to
from the
Such promises seemed a long time dead in Armagh last
ON
2,500 participated in the Prisoners Aid Committee march in London on Sunday. The march was in solidarity with Irish prisoners and two thirds of the demonstrators marched in the United Troops Out
kept up a hectic pace of rallies position, and marches for the next nine demoralsanon
overthrow of Stormont, the ceasefire by the Provos which followed, and the collaboration with the British
reformist •Democratic & Labour Party all sowed confusion and But
about CLIC way direction, Loyalist mid-1973, support for WHICHE marches was down to a couple
hard-line
A power-snaring executive
in January 1974, with the full participation of
When was brought down in May 1974 it
Loyalists, not the the
For the rest of 1974 and most of 1975 the Loyalists appeared Can alL!
consolidating their SHUELIC
PLE One
FLATS
HE
A SCENE from the Armagh Relatives Action Committee march on Sunday. 3,000 people took part.
and there was among minority in the North.
Countering the arguments of the Provisionals, PD insisted that victory was not at hand; the the organisation also warned against flirtations with "working class Loyalists.
Herring In the other PD argued that a take-over im-
At the beginning of 1976, when it was becoming clear that there could be no immediate
political differences within PD came to a neac ane mere was a senous split in the organisation.
This was partly over the make take-over theory, partly over
correct relationship between the Republican military
and the overall
The organisation was seri ously weakened by the split.
EVCI LOO" some important initiatives
PD was among the first organisations to raise the question of British plans to remove political status, and in May 1976 members of PD participated in the establishment of the Relatives Action Committee.
However there was still little support for mass struggle, and it wasn't until late 1977 that the tempo of popular protest again began to increase.
REPRESSION
It was in October 1977 that PD and the MSR voted at separate conferences to begin discussions on fusion
Both organisations played an SON important part in the Coalisland anti-repression con-
January 1978 Attended by 700 people, this showed once more the potential support for a united campaign against repression.
The increasing mass demonstrations over the last nine months have been further indications of that potential -demonstrations in which PD and the MR have participated and in which they have argued
value of united front activity.
CONFIDENT
The anti-imperialist movement, and PD with it, has come through the worst period of isolation and demoralisation. In the words of PD:
•We are confident that in a fused organisation with the MSR, and in co-operation with fraternal Marxist organisations
Fourth International, we will
equally vital contribution to struggle as we have made in the past.
•We hope well to contribute to that struggle's ultimate victory
Page 11 scan of this page
TELL US THE TRUTH
SOLIDARITY!
At the weekend there capital from the country.
Shah? And what will follow his fall?
Iranian journalist now in London.
IMAGINE the Archbishop of Canterbury telling the Ford workers to burn down their factories, and gentlemen in pinstriped suits and bowlers opening the financial books to UNC WOTACIS
It is an indication of the social CHISIS in Iran when Ayatollah Khomeini sinking lenran bank workers have done just that.
HANDOUTS
In that context it was not so surprising that Socialist Challenge should have found itself interviewing the equivalent of the deputy editor of the Times
this rerevdoon Gilani, deputy editor natal. leading Tehran daily.
Many of the journalists involved in recent struggles were once among the staun. chest supporters of the regime
since, Gilani reckons, about 80 per cent were taking handouts from the bureau-
His radicalisation has been less sudden: he has a long and distinguished Lal CCI reyolutionary poet and journalist.
More than once this has landed him in prison. Repeated torture has damaged his health
the SAVAK methods: beatings, crucifixions and the rest, carried out blindfolded so that ine victim could not report what implements were being used.
With such a history it is surprising that he should be allowed to hold such a senior position in the heavily censored Iranian press. Of course he has had to face repeated harass-
suppression stories.
17 December
SHAH Out! Owen Labour end support for the Shah! These will be the main demands national demonstration called
17 December by the Committee against Repression in Iran.
STEVE POTTER reports.
The GemonsTSHOn already received the backing of a numper of Labour Mrs and trade union leaders. CARI organisers are hoping for a big
from the student EUTHOUL movement fresh from
Iral conference the week before.
INTERNATIONAL
Interview with Iranian journalist
THE ONLY question which now surrounds the future of the Shah is when, not if, he will be toppled.
were further demonstrations. Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious Teader, made astonishing calls for industrial sabotage.
Striking bank workers have taken matters into their own hands and released information showing how the political and financial elite is organising the flight of
But what is it like to take part in these incredible events? Why is there such total opposition to the
To find answers to these questions RICHARD CARVER met FEREYDOON GILANI, a leading
But what his position shows above all is the intellectual poverty of the supporters. Or, more accurately, that any potential intellectual supporter of the regime would quickly be driven into opposition by and highhanded methods. and Gilani gives the example of how the Shan said in a speech that Iran's annual growth rate was 13 per figure was 11 per rather than contradict God's right hand man the monarch's minions altered every book, paper and in the count) ensure that neither the Shah nor anyone else would ever discover his error. of
OFFICIALS The press is run along the same lines: A minor officia would phone me up, Gilani savs. "and tell me what story to run, what page to put it on, pomE headline. 'A bit later a press officer from the Security Office would phone one of my colleagues and say, no, lake tnat out. story came from the Ministry of Information. they cared about the stories -they just wanted to show their power."
Why did journalists - the 20 per cent who didn't take bribes - Stay on.
STRIKE *We struggle. But we thought that if we moved out that would give them total control. stayed, and when journalists strike came they saw that we were right. of As a reporter Gilani is well placed to assess the present Out! The campaign in solidarity with the Iranian reached a high point over the last few weeks. for been organised in every major town with speakers from trade union movement and the left.
Links are being established between Iranians and dockworkers to Try ana acmeve te same degree of blacking of goods to Iran that was achieved in solidarity with the Chilean people. the Inside the Labour Party left NUS MPs are organising to put the heat on Owen and Callaghan's
massive
regime's
its dishonesty
Scenes of upsurge in Tehran
upheavals and the mood of the masses. He is highly critical of Inc actual the role of the religious leaders
cent, but
and points out how they have been dragged along behind the struggle.
statistical The day before a major
demonstration
September, he got a phone call from the residence of Ayatollah Shariat Madari, SCOTIC
That
wasn't that
had
So
the first
FEREYDOON GILANI craven support for the Shah. masses has The need is now for a broad
based non-exclusive solidarity Meetings have movement which can link up all
those people already Demonstrations organised nearly every weekend in London over the past tew weeks.
A big activity is needed to
worKers
launch that movement on
To do this, common practice of excluding people trom must be ended.
This is the main reason why the Communist
religious leader inside saying that
that day.
The next
three days Friday' another
the senior
Eon ratner wan active. organised
have been student
coming weekends.
CARI has committee to
are invited. the rather too
speakers from CARI, demonstrations
Free. 182
Party and
Iran, Kayhan Chole where report the Ayatollah as calling have on people not to demonstrate protests by
thousands of morning, hundreds of thousands poured -As In out onto the streets, there was
worried phone call, insensitivity asking the paper to say that the which Ayatollah had been in favour of the demonstration all along.
position of
LEOUS quite obvious
Gilani military
will,
Iranian army.
International Marxist Group have put their efforts behind the 17 December demonstra-
Israelis. these ronibe by the societies over the
organised this too." plan for the march, to which all organisa- The tions of the workers movement
Posters, leaflets, films and
can all be obfained Box 4, Rising Upper Street, boycott London NI. (01-800 8958). official unions
Gilani tells of
mullahs priests been forced to join literally tens of people arriving outside their door
the case of the intelligentsia, it was the stupid
the regime drove the mullahs towards the opposition. After press attacks on the mosque they began to preach against the regime. Workers thus begar to realise the value of the mosque as a sanctuary against police attacks on meetings.
They didn't gather in the mosques to hear the mullahs but to meet each other.
Ayatollah Khomeini has a
leadersmp only because of the political vacuum
Lance among the masses. Ultimately though this would be disas.
DUAL ROLE
*The mullahs have played the dual role of being opponents of the regime and at the same time in many instances be. it is Darner to tne struggie
that they connected to the ruling class and in the last analysis cannot lead the struggle.
points out that working class action against the regime started long before it was reported in the Western and Iranian press. The only source of information linking together the various strikes that were taking place was Navid, the underground Tudeh (Communist) Party paper, with a 70,000 circulation.
If imperialism tries a direct
intervention, Gilani says, they will have another Vietnam on their hands.
But it is unlikely that they
The claims, because American and Israeli troops are already operating with the
•We have pictures of soldiers on Black Friday with long hair. None of our soldiers have long hair - they were Americans or
*I read in your paper that the on Shah's speech was drafted by the US ambassador. I believe this and the people understand
problem the workers face is the absence of political or even trade union organisa tion. More militant workers such as the better-educated oil workers, have long fought to
the SAVAK-run
They have organised discusSocialist Challenge 30 November 1978
sion groups at the workplace which are gradually forming a network. The desire for independent class organisation is there.
Gilani reckons that the fall of
relatively short period continued bourgeois rule: "The problem at the moment in irar is that we do not have a strong party and you know wal tac two conditions of a revolution are the objective conditions and a strong communist party.
*The Tudeh Partv deceivec us. At the moment 25 years ago when they could have taken the country they didn't. This is not the party that can lead the workers.
Gilani stresses the impor
of international solidarity, particularly to counter the regime's propaganda - "If people know what is going on they cannot remain indifferent
- and to present a different image of the opposition: The voice of the Iranian people internationally comes through Khomeini and he does no represent the real forces that could liberate Iran.'
CONSCIOUS
Trade union action is vital: 'In the journalists' strike they were going to arrest 40 peopl
- including me - and the fact that the NUJ in this country som protests actuary prevented some of these people being arrested
Other unions should do this sort of thing. For example it should be possible to organise dockers' blacking the export of arms.
Gilani's own plans are to return immediately to lran, despite the obvious risk of
I can't do anything here. When -VOU Speakers Corner there are many people •here more corscous taila! when they talk. But it is not a time to talk. It is a time to act.
FEREYDOON GILANI will be speaking at a rally in London
Monday 4 December, organised by the Committer Against Repression in Iran.
Other speakers will include Russell Kerr MP. recently returned from Iran, Fred Halliday, author forthcoming book on the Iranian crisis, and a representative of the Campaign for the Liberation of Women in Iran.
The meeting is at the Pancras ; Assembiv Hall. Eus ton Road, London NW1.
Page 11
Page 12 scan of this page
Detente' versus solidarity
"The recreation of the Aryan race
THE plane connection between London and Beriin did work. writes OLIVER MAC DONALD, and I had to spend the night in a Dusseldorf hotel with other travellers: the defence correspondent of the Observer' and a British executive who does big business with East Berlin.
executive seriously explained to the journalist how typically German East Germany was - authoritarian, efficient and sd explained with amusement how the regime deals with "its own kind" - the Marxists.
An economic expert he had known had been jailed for eight years for writing a Marxist criticism of the regime. name, lasked.
*Bahro, Rudolf Bahro the rubber industry, grinned.
CONCERT
The next morning I arrived in West Berlin for the biggest demonstration of socialist solidarity with opposition Eastern Europe ever held in Western Europe: HEnC national Congress for Rudolf Bahro, organised by the Bahro Defence Committee in Berlin.
The conference funded through a concert with Wolf Biermann three weeks
attended by neo-Nazi organisation.
The slogan Socialism.
RICHARD CARVER follows up revelations with a closer look at § posed.
Federation of European
National Action (FANE Federation d' Action Nationale
At * particularly offensive. glance the name does not seem
Less offensive, anyway, than
World Union
LIC
National Socialists (WUNS), of
which was
offshoot.
However, the slogan on its
poster and its sordid publica-
tions show that it has forgotten
nothing from the days when
Europe's aSCISES
under their proper name.
WHAT'S LEFT
publication. Payment in advance.
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Nyaradzo (Zimbabwe-
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Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 12
INTERNATIONAL
. Successful Bahro conference
people. When the concert was the radio the streets across the wall in the East were deserted population had tuned in.
PLENARY Some three thousand people crowded into discussions of the conference and the nine working groups discussing vanous aspects Rudolf Bahro's book Alternative, a Critique of Real,
He Existing Socialism (just out in
hardback here from NLB).
Ernest Mandel Fourth International debated an official representative of the Italian Communist Party on the significance of the October
His Revolution for the struggle for
soda Is today.
Jiri Pelikan, Czech Socialist journal Listy, along Mihaily Vajda, a Hungarian Marxist, discussed the signifiof •In slovakia with representatives of the Western Rossana Rosanda Manifesto and Rudi Dutschke. The last night of the congress was devoted to the character of socialism and speakers included representatives of the Jusos the West German Young Socialists OLICE organisations
7,000 Europe and socialist REMEMBER our exclusive page 3 feature last week.
We and rosity also a male companion on one
- and possibly also a male companion— on one
on the other in an advertisement for a European
on the poster reads: For National
last the French-based fascist party for which the NF members
An organiser of WUNS's French section was Jeanne, a former member 33rd 'Charlemagne'
casual the
Division. One of his collaborators was Francoise Dior, the fashion heiress for whose hand of National Front leader Tyndall once (unsuccessfully) indirect competed.
After changes in the name of the organisation (Aryan National Front) and its collapse in the early 1960s, Yves Jeanne turned up as a leader of paraded the FANE, which grouped a
number of neo-Nazi
own room to rent in
1-986 4045 (evenings)
REVOLUTiONARY translators needec ine Latin american rraction or me mu nas material TrON reanslated trom organisations, Transidica spanish/Portugu into English.
PICKET GARNEKS
every day
Circus; 40-41 Haymaker: 36
Oxford St. Donations urgently needed strike pay is only £6. All donation Strike Fund Cio GWU 3C2. 01-2201056. 84, 12-13 Henneta oI.. Londo SOCIALIST CHALLENGE now has a two designs; red, women offices ices or 21.25 cluding påp RACISM'
the
the plenary
The
from -Ine
editor of the Opposition
with
Czecho-
including
of
Rossanda on the right. sitionists from Eastern Europe The congress ended with a rally of about 1500 people in socialist Western the centre of West Berlin after it had unanimously adopted a week's FANE, the
Yves
SS
John SEEN here selling this woman posed for a poster advertising the FANE. particularly in France and eventual Belgium.
FANE's main founder was Marc Fredriksen, sect numbered about half a sects, dozen, Didier
01-359 Sundays) or Jor
from our offices, or £1.75 inc. p&p
CAMPAIGN RONAL
isations. to cae
to women's HOuS
approx £160 per lease apply in writing giving previo ork and orner experrence l Camden Rd, London NW
at noon, 399 T-shirts.
über RUN BAHR
Bahro.
Hubert Kohler.
organisation with the British NF.
For all
Romano in Italy.
In 1973
Notre Europe:
NF papers,
WHOse OWI
Renaud -aDO
white cotton with red design DAY CARE
Meeting to nandaton , if in doubt order a large). £1.50 Dec, NA
ABORTION
activities, demos, usefu Tiberatior with Cornwall. state. relationship and the state Great Britain
Questions implications
THE Berlin Bahro Congress: Mihaily Vajda is on the left, Jiri Pelikan fifth from left and Rossana
resolution in solidarity with
the event demonstration
The West German media gave extensive coverage to the
While maintaining his FANE affiliation, Kohler was later to become a member of the Front life,
the French fascist loosely linked
its European aspirations FANE is essentially a French organisation. But it does have good relations with the Movimento Tradizionale
the two groups organised a meeting modestly shirt!…" entitled The first assembly of all the fascists in the world'. this This is how the gathering was advertised in the FANE paper
"The need of the moment is to unite everyone in a single European and world organisa- Islington tion. Clearly we are not new thought of it. fascists but traditional fascists.
Fascism is one, one our creed, and one the word coming from publication, us This hierarchy of values, the week,
Auschwitz true theocracy of the future, Auschwitz). will assume the direction of a
abortior Monty DISCUSS abortion raciiities Amoassadors Harambee
Hedruin
follow ideas and discus
the West.
with proceedings at the congress and
was powerful against the desperate measures taken bi the East German Politburo to society misled by anti-fascist subversion and will lead it back to the road of a healthy ethic of
social Justice the harmonic order of Nature and a clear spiritual evolution of the human being, to the superman, the recreation of the true Aryan race, following to the greatest degree spiritually, and therefore biologically, the maxim of
"Mens Sana in Corpore Sano"...
We must don the black
(Emphasis in original. For
text, as other information in this article I am indebted to Patrice Chairoff's Dossier Neo-Nazisme.)
Heady stuff this. It would be interesting to know what our
Wunderkinder
Interesting too to hear their opinion of the FANE's major
mentioned last Le Mensonge of
This was originally written in have been?
Speakers: David Fernoac Johnstone, Gunther Minner Thompson, Raymond
liams. On Sat 2 Dec, 2pm to 5pm
Place London W. Admir Hotel, Woburn BRITAIN OUT of Ireland! PAC and RCG
are starting a new series of forums or
the war in ireland inese torumis
Tom PAGa ation from: PAC
Blacks Britannica
gration and prisons.
rogressive bookshops c
82 Upper S
orders can be arranged - discount for
orders with cash
WOMEN, IMPERIALISM, racism and
to oration Open me tino days en
educationals. Women working in these the two
areas will menomes ente
silence Rudolf Bahro. But its significance was much greater
It drew together militants of
Fourth International representatives of other Marxist organisations, left social democrats and one official representative from the Euro.
- the PCI communist Parties spokesperson.
front of this scope, committed to mass action in defence of the anti-bureaucratic oppositions in Eastern Europe, could begin to change
the political map in Europe Furone
disorganising the military and repressive lobbies East and
Fastern
REVERBERATING
It could begin to replace a *detente of the regimes against the working masses of Europe
growing political solidarity of the socialist forces
This is not a prospect that
the Eurocommunist parties or the social democrats.
numbers of supporters not only on the revolutionary Marxist left but at the base of the mass parnes unemscive.
Rudolf Bahro's lonely stand for socialist democracy in the GDR is reverberating across the continent.
German by Thies Christophersen, another So alumnus. According to Christophersen, Auschwitz W2S NOTE like Butlins than anything else. He even describes in loving detail the romantic liaisons between inmates and SS officers.
And if that doesn't make you vomit, he claims that a total of only 200,000 Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, not six
million, and suspects that the gas ovens 'were built after the
war'.
Encouraged by the reluctance of the French state to
implement a ministerial order banning this publication, the
FANE embarked on a nev series of 11 Nazi classics works with names like Christ
was not a Jew The Talmud
Unmasked, and Jewish Ritual Crimes.
The series was printed ir not surprising ir
Belgium
view of FANE's past connec
tions - and Britain
Now who could the printers
REVOLUTIONARY Communist
fate Speaker
Totten ham cour
Roebuck 108
Roebuck
Road
HACISA Educatior ALTAR ranted Camer
Against Racism, West Hampstead anc
onuren
West Hampstead, Kilburn Park). (Nearest
DEMONSTRATION on Sat 12 at 11am. nst the Na
Page 13 scan of this page
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE EVENTS
COMMENT
Why Ford
exploded
HAVE been asked quite often during the Ford struggle:
explosion this year by the
workers, when like all our people they have accepted government guidelines, restrictions, promises, policies which have supported them?
The obvious answer has been that we can no longer wait for 'food" tomorrow; the price holding inflation has been far too high, and we the workers have been the only ones to pay. It has also been said that this year the TUC seemed to show determination in supporting the rank-and-file. Lastly, particularly for Ford WOrKCTS. 12S enormous profits the company has
1 have another denying any of the last three reasons) and it certainly applies to Halewood. We have suffered more than ever since November *76 from the very, very strict, unjust and discipline coming from a complete change of management. accepted it for long enough.
I believe that when all shifts, all lads anu lasse. loure a common base to belt the company back we did - we turned, and it has clearly been shown by the people of Halewood, who were out completely within 24 hours and nave rejected all the phoney deals since then almost unanimously.
Ford pay the price for the careerists and opportunisis at present in Halewood, the lackeys who grasp their life by imposing misery thousands of hardworking people on Merseyside.
JOHN BOHANNA (Halewood)
Rock and roll
lives!
KEVIN Wood's review of The Boy Looked at Johnny (9 November) probably revealed more about him that it did about the book. He unfortunately took most of Julie Burchill's and Tony posturing in good faith, seemingly imagining them to be lone crusaders in the rock music press against privilege and discrimination
This, however, is the same Tony Parsons who recentiv ietted to Amer. ica to interview Bruce Springsteen in a SvIC ucscuDaDe ony This is the same couple who introduce one character in the book as Mark Perry of Sniffin' Glue (what a girl), and who use the doubting of someone's masculinity as a snide insult. Hardly anti-sexist, is it?
The most important point about the book, which Kevin Wood totally missed, is that although it purports to be 'the obituary of rock and roll', it contalls no analysis whatsoever
THE DEADLINE for this column miocay Saturday before DuDlcanon.
NORTH WEST WARRINGTON Socialist Challenge Chester Socialist Challeng enge offices foi
GREATER MANCHESTER Socialis
Schoo
Please contact chris (273 947, da
or Steve (226 4287, evening), or write Piccadily. Manchester Centre, SALFORD Socialist Challenge Morner
stices, Tel 061-236 2352 or, Challeng
Socialist sentre. c/o 14 Piccacillv Mancheste with a view to forming a Salford Socialist Challenge group
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(Sara Burn): Wed 13 Dec
Control
Hooms. AUEW bunding. mount rieasant
BAD
PASTE
*Why the
Ford
and TUC
to pay for
to the biz. been For all their
opinion (not large
absorbed by the rock
HOW
unfair
The lads
rock and roll band?
apparent decline. company's
informedly unfortunately is long overdue. TONY COLLINS (Hull)
PAC on
Glasgow
Parsons'
rein 16
Aid Committee'
as rawning,
LuC DrIsonCEs Your reference "London-basedi .IVEKPOOL Socialist Challence Xm: arty, Friday 15 December, Caribbea Centre, Upper Parliament St, starts
MOSS SIDE Socialist supporters sell the paper at Moss Side ventre, saturday, 11-1
NOMIN CASI
NEWCASTLE Socialist local suooorters are active. il vou wan! 2005in them, phone Pete on (0632) Socialist November
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Stairs in the Spencer Hall Shopping
simply a long and neurotic stream of invective against those who have, in the eyes of Burchill/Parsons, sold out
pseudo-cynicism, Burchill/Parsons are incredibly naive to think that new wave would not, to a
extent, grow old and become industry. In their eyes rock and roll is dead. But
they explain the continued existence of those bands who, although they might not express it in these terms, are challenging the conventional idea and ideology of a
The approach of Burchill/Parsons is totally subjective and cannot even altempi to analyse rock and roll Decause it geis no turther than personalities. They fail to give reasons for the rise of new wave or for its
They make no attempt to explain the growth of new wave as a youth culture or why new wave was, and sull remains, much more political than any other movement in the history of rock and roll.
Rock and roll is possibly the culture of late capitalism and deserves to be analysed as seriously as any other art-form by Marxists, objectively and
LOSN IN YOUR attack on Glasgow Sinn
November) CoveT SENE principled stand they took on the 18 November Glasgow Irish Defence League march, you say that their decision may have followed pressure from the London-based Prisoners
second
1 am writing to state that the first contact we had with the comrades irom Glasgow sinn rein was atter their decision had been taken. It is a decision we fully support and we know the 'pressure' they were under from Glasgow IDL (IMG) not to take up this principled stand in support of
to must nave some meaning which, however, escapes me.
LOH • suppose IMG is also 'London-
LONDON
HARROW Socialist Challen orters meet regular Box 50, London N1 2XF Challenge WALTHAM FOREST daner saies everv aturday. 1tam-noon outside the bo trice, noest. waltnamstow. Londo
Challenge TOWER HAMLETS Socialist (phone 247 2717 for details).
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Tube; Sundays mee corner of Buxton St.
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LEYTON readers can 326 Lea Bridge Road, E10 RENT supporters sell every Saturda 2.s0om. al KiDum so. nanisons
TOWER HAMLETS/HACKNEY puDre mecung.
Liberation in une vospeaker Daley, TUE Britannia Pub, Mare St
based", as are most political groups in England. Why then single us out for comment in this respect?
It is noteworthy that the amount of space given to the attack on Glasgow Sinn Fein far exceeds the space, if indeed there has been any, you have given to the Republican movement in your paper. The reason for this is self-evident. With support like yours we don't need the Brits.
JACKIE KAYE (Prisoners Aid Committee)
History
Workshop
HISTORY Workshop is a Marxist, socialist conecuve dedicated to the democratisation of mistorical icarning and une overtnrow of the capitalist system. The political positons or une editors, various, are probably not different from those of contributors to Socialist Challenge - indeed, at least two have written for your paper in recent months.
Among the major articles which have appeared in the journal are a two-part study of women in Nazi Germany. examining the compies interplay of economic and ideological TCDICSOn WeNI THEO making of Nazi Labour Front policy; a long article by Charles Van Onselen on the drink trade in 1890s South Africa, disclosing the contradictory
competing capitalist fractions in the exploitation African mineworkers; and (in the forthcoming issues) a two-part study by Arthur Exell, an Oxford engineer now in his 49th year of work as a car worker, on Morris Motors in the 1930s: the first part is on tyranny and paternalism in the labour process, the
aDoue ne difficulties clandestine trade union organisation
On 11-12 November some peorkshop 12 to discuss Britary Canne to KusKIn mistory
La self-critical and reflective weekend on industrial and political struggles over the quarter of a century and some of the material and cultural determinants shaping them. In none of this can 1 recognise John Ross's characterisa-
, November History Workshop as an "epic poem"
11am-1pm details Common tube, BR. newsagents, Braganza St
Britannia Chal-
to organise it.
SOUTH WEST
10am, Brick Lane
can
detalis Newsagents above PORTSMOUTH ur Hig sales. ommercial Road Precinc turday
IVOV egent St (Brunel Centre)
popular and radica achievement.
Has he ever read our journal? And if so, coula ne tell us wnat is in nis mind.
RAPHAEL
College, Oxford)
Better
radioactive
than dead!
I AM looking forward to using my Big Red Diary for 1979, but I had to laugh when I saw the caption on the front of it: Better active radioactive tomorrow While I have always opposed the use ouccan form, i.e. physically during wartime attacks, feel it is easy to forget that radiation is though not always used for evil purposes. very know, because l owe my life to its worinwnlle form radiotherapy treatment for cancer and the use of nuclear medicine for the diagnosis and treatment of illness.
So while I agree that the use or threat of the use of nuclear weapons is one of the greatest scourges of the 20th century, I feel we should be aware of the positive things which accompanca nuclear medicine (at socialist doctors can invent some satel and less haphazard methods diagnosing and treating cancer).
Until that day my motto has to be: of *Better radioactive yesterday than dead today!"
ESTHER GARTNER (Coventry)
Effects of
of Bolshevis -
ation'
selfWAS I wrong in detecting *shock-horror, how ridiculous" feeling Ross's comment in his review Edward Thompson's new book (9 November): 'Kendall actually argues ...that the formation of the CP was an
Common tu0, Baham tube ADor
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and Shepherds YORKSHIRE HUDDERSFIELD Bank
BATH Socialist Challenge sales every eries. Ring Bath 20298 for furthe
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development tradition"?
SAMUEL (Ruskin There
wrongly) idealising,
'gang of four" branches in
today than (Justice,
power in its worst in the arms race and circulation
socialist around 80,000.
In trade that
Party derivatives.
How
their invention. •I.C
least until
of be letters may self-evidently behind John of will FOR INFORMATION on activities in the
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unmitigated disaster, as it blocked the
of a healthy British
seems me nothing
proposition. In 1909, before the peak or synaicansm wnich Koss 1 tink
interprets Kendall as ine Social Democratic Party, the largest socialist grouping outside the Labour Party, was again under attack as a sectarian, dogmatic and numerically insignificant force by Philip Snowden, one of the ILP's own
At that time there were 60 SDP
London, 108 in the "provinces', 41 in Scotland, nine in Wales, one each in Gibraltar and Ireland, and two in South Africa
15 May 1909). Justice advertised a total of 124 SDP lectures and public meetings that week, plus 26 Socialist Sunday Schools. The
OI the largest-selling paper, the Cfarion, was
Given the growth in population and
union membershir and militancy, we have a right to ask what the revolutionary elt can show te match this today, after more than half a cet o Work ov me communs
of Great Britain and its
the 'left' might have regrouped and developed without 'Bolshevisation' after the shattering and al une same ume radicalsing effects of the First World Waris a matter for speculation, but a case can
made that the formation of the CGB retarded and perverted the movement in Britain. There is no reason to believe that this is a case of 'retardation in one country'. We may well come to see that it applies to
IAN BULLOCK (Brighton)
THE LENTH of letters printed will usually be kept down to 400 words in order to encourage as wide a range of contributions as possible.
be cut at the Editor's discretion. Unsigned letters will not normally be published, although we
withhold real Hames from publication on request.
SOUTH EAST RIGHTON SC forums fortnightly o Contact Mich for details.
University of East Anglia
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ror intorma on abour tne paper or it Scotland please contac Socialist Challenge BOOKS
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Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978, Page 13
Page 14 scan of this page
Even socialists say 'Oh, poor boy
Disabled at work
NE NIGHT I'd missed the last bus home so l thumbed a lift. A car stopped just up the road and I asked the driver if there was any chance of a ride. He nodded, I got in. and he drove off — straieht into the grounds of a nearby psychiatric hospital. I thought: What the hell's going on?
The driver got out of the car, lifted the bonnet, and said the clutch had gone. This was bullshit. I'm engineer; I know when a clutch has packed in.
It turned out he was a mental nurse, and before I knew it I was marching up a path into the hospital itself. The nurse was lying to me about having to see a friend of his. A matron opened the door and I was led through to an office.
'Good evening, doctor,' my nurse escort said to one of the ocupants, 'is this one of yours?' It was disgusting. It's one of the things you have to put up with as a spastic. Even socialists say: *Oh, poor boy. It's really important that people understand.
LAUGHED
I went to the local infant school for a year. I remember the other kids laughing at me — they used to call me "Wrigley's Spearmint Gum' because l couldn't keep still. They understand about my disability, and neither did One of the important things you have to learn is the nature of your disability, and how to cope with it.
also remember the teacher shouting at me. It was a year betore they or 1 realised I was partially deaf as well as spasuc. Alter thal t went to a special school for the physically handicapped where 1 got on a lot better.
It was great to realise that I wasn't the only disabled person in the world!
Luckily, our doctor told my parents not to molly-coddle me but to let me lead as normal a life as possible. So from an early age l played in the street like the other kids, and got into more than my fair share of fights with the mickey-takers!
My dad even taught me to ride a children shoul be pre tected frombied bike. Many disabled rest of the world, but if this happens they are likely to be less self-confident or even anti-social.
From school I went on to a sort of further Coucaron COULSC physically handicapped people, away from home. SESeV taught us a lot about office work, which was pretty useless to me, but also how to cook, sew, and so on, to generally be more self-sufficient. This was usetul.
However, at that time I was really wanting to go to work and went to a work centre near home. I was then aDoul coat-hangers for 17.1 was which I was paid making
£1.50 a week. The same work in a factory would have paid about £17. Today I believe the work centres pay about t4 a week.
This is not because handicapped people can't produce the quantity as ordinary workers. It's just outright exploitation! BELCI dHyUnC trouble is that coming from physically can push a button.
handicapped school you don't have much option. Instead of feeling you have the right to work, you are supposed to be lucky to have a job at
In fact, I was perfectly happy at the aisablea worksnop because. sense, they didn't know any better. This is not to say that anyone from a disabled workshop can get a job outside. That's the problem
Socialist Challenge 30 November 1978 Page 14
SURPLUS VALUE
didn't
most
knowing how to react and being sociable in some respects.
My dad was working at British Leyland and he got me an interview there. I was really excited when he wrote and told me. I've kept his letter to this day. I got the job, and I've been there ever since — that's 11 years. I received the normal rate rent irom the start, because the union insisted aSaD eG WOrKeS De LIVCH LuC same rate as everyone else.
Tor ue oine. me cea aru dune, anu the chronically ill.
FRIENDLY WITC
The plant makes lorries and I'm on the production side, making parts for engines and chassis. My main work is connecting piston rods to the engine block.
Some jobs I find difficult but others same I can do. It's main v automatic work
You put in a component, OULU dne CaRO C DuOi ant The that's it. With some jobs you've got to
how mne macnne. particular machine, the only person WRO KHOWS IES BIC.
In terms of my handicap, the other workers are very friendly When they didn't know me they were inclined to be patronising, but now they let me get on with it - and give me a bollocking if I do anything They treat me like anyone wongelse.
They' re inclined to take the piss,
equipment. They don't tully take m) views on the political level, though!
That goes
reactionary way on a political level. You don't
anywhere else,
themse ves regard
about it.
DICOSC
AnC WILn onc
can be soul-destroying.
CHALLENGE
-to me.
Metal Mechanics at first, but that was
but about humanity rather than my they were cancelled. disability. They take the piss about anything 1 do wrong, rather than at Engineering
I'm into electronics. I read a lot of disablement issue, hi-fi and audio magazines, so people come to me and ask about different
The attitude on my politics is: "Oh, held a yellow card, that spastic. Who's going to take any notice of him. In other words, most of the workers respond to me in a
hear much about the union. disabled people's rights in the unions
because both FIGHTING ordinary workers and the disabled
work for the handicapped as a privilege. If you are lucky enough to have a job, the last thing you should ever do is complain
You are not encouraged to be trade union minded. It you want difterent or better conditions, you start to worry that there is something wrong with you; that you are ungrateful. It effect.
branch did not
I was in the National Society of I'm the teller
a waste of time. The branch had a reactionary chairperson who didn't bother to hold branch meetings for the most part, and then didn't tell me where they were being held or when
people words,
who
again. yet
people
Nine monshs ago I joined the
Union and since 've society. been in it I've been fighting on a
which ve now won for myself but not for others.
1 discovered that another brother, also a spastic, held a red card - - the ordinary membership card - while I
which classified me as 'chronically sick or disabled'. I was paying 25p a week dues instead of 30p, and it meant that if I fell sick, I woulan t be entuea to sick pay trom
Like many disabled people, l've had hardly a day's sickness in my life And in the case of the chronically sick, it means that those who are most nkely to neca sick pay are une ones who don't get it. Some of us wanted to challenge the rule book over this. and moved that our branch should send a letter to the AUEW journal to this
I got myself a red card, but my
carry our motion.
Perhaps other AUEW members who read this will take up the issue.
for the branch counting votes at meetings. We have raised the issue of the National Front. Kacists were panng nasty icuel: about immigration into the union journal, and we proposed In Enc branch that this be stopped. We got a Group.
good reception on this in the branch.
I'm involved with Socialist Unity in Southal, for the simple reason that i joins so many organisations together. 1 Inink that une socialst worker. Party should join Socialist Unity. I'm not in a group myself.
I prefer to call myself physically
handicapped, because 1 feel the wor
'disabled' implies you are not able, i handicapped, but there's nothing what mean.
aren't encouraged to self-confident, because, if they were, they might take the same attitude as other oppressed groups, and start demanding their rights.
While blacks are treated as a threat by our society, and women and gays as a joke, handicapped people are those you must feel sorry for. In other
SWC EINCI the mosi patronising treatment going, more or less on a level with domestic pets
Apart from anything else, 1 think people should educate their children more about what it is to be physicall nanacaooea. con envv anvont
is handicapped child. wouldn't like to go through that
As with women, the law serves to reinforce the myths. For example, we nave 10 nave our parent's and doctor's permission to apply for a driving licence. Whenever we apply for a job, we must have a medical check-up. Then there are the spastic and sick jokes made to make us look incapable. And just as gays and blacks are missing from TV shows, so are the disabled.
IMAGE The left's record on this question is very pool but understandably so, since apart from Jack Ashley's group une paysically nandicapped naven" done much to organise themselves
What upsets me most is when
acuve OVC oppression, such as gays or women, laugh at me. I have experienced this quite often. I feel they should know better. After all, they have analysed sex stereotyping, so it should be pretty obvious to them that most disabled people don't exactly fit the image of sexual desirability projected by this
It is also annoying to be ignored. ] have speech difficulties, and people often don't really bother to listen, socialists included. hope don't sound self-pitying part of the problem is that people aren't aware of these things.
It's great for me to have the chance to communicate like this, and I want to paint things as they are. I woulc like to say that I do also meet plenty ol people who understand my situation
I think the physically handicapped need to get together to articulate ou operession, m oracr to come to termi: self-cour dendicapse co to deselss and to develop sen-con neence. ways of fighting for our rights, such as changing that AUEW rule. Also it would help us in our fight against patronising attitudes, our equivalent to sexism or racism.
The trouble IS that disabled socialists are few and far between, so l would very much like to hear from other disabled readers of Socialist Challenge, especially if they live in London, in order to get such a group off the ground. Tiseussions beiveen T Y anda ted This article is based friends. Write to Tony c/o Socialist Challenge if you are interested in forming a Physically Handicapped
Page 15 scan of this page
The life and times of psychiatic patients
Don't let the Mental Health Act
Belsen in Britain
GEOFFREY SHERIDAN,
when the reports on the most
The quotation above comes not from a report on Belsen but from the committee of inquiry set up to investigate conditions at the Normanstield hospital for the mentally handicapped,
Teddington, Middlesex.
THE STRIKE that began the inquiry. May 1976 throw you in a mental hospital.
hospital.
Michael Young has never been violent towards anyone, though he has stolen property from a lot of people. system can't cope with people like Michael
nev ined approvee school borstal and prison. However these places never made him any richer. So last time — when Michael stole a TV set - the court got a couple of doctors to say he was psychotic'.
By 'psychotic' they meant (to use the words of one doctor) that he had an irresponsible attitude towards property. This allowed them to shut him up in Moss Side Hospital under Section 65 of the Mental Health ACE
INDEFINITE
Under Section 65 Michael Young was sent away for an indefinite sentence, could mean for life. The only person who can release him is the Home Secretary - even the so-called Mental Review Tribunal can only make
UNDER REVIEW
'ON ONE occasion Dr Lawlor tried to subject three adult, but mentally immature and child-like patients, to a rigid and unpleasant diet consisting of a tepid, porridge-like substance and nothing else for a month.
'When he came to the conclusion that they might be receiving secret gifts of sweets from others, he ordered them to be locked up together in a room to prevent further breaches of the regime he had ordered
who worked on the Confederation of Health Service Employees journal
Normansfield Hospital inquiry extensive investigation carried out into the running of a psychiatric hospital.
One of the recommendations of its 700-page published last week, is that Dr Terence Lawlor - a consultant psychiatrist again be employed in the NHS.
The committee of inquiry, DEMAN
drive Michael
Young crazy
IF YOU live in the USSR and are a dissident then the way the authorities deal with you is call you 'mad' and
If you live in Britain, are working class and steal to survive then the way 'our' authorities may deal with you is also to call you 'mad' and throw you in mental
This is exactly what happened to Michael Young, write GREG DRAPKIN and STEVE COHEN.
recommendations to the Home Secretary.
Michael's now been inside This for nearly six years. The people who put him inside judges and the doctors — ain't gonna want him outside. The only way we are going to get him out is by a campaien lo force his release.
Lance dealing with housing строутелі of has offered Michael a hostel place scheme if he is released.
Michael Young is one of an unknown number of persons unknown who are in a similar situation. By taking Michael's case we would be helping him, but also everyone else imprisoned under this Act.
The campaign address is the
Grass ROOLS Books, which Oxford Road, Manchester. If you would like information or would like to help in any way or know of Health similar cases, then contact us
which spent evidence and cost £350,000, catalogues camp-like conditions at the hospital, which it compares with a workhouse.
The standards of hygiene often appalling...Faeces and urine were frequently left unattended for end...The upper floor building began, evacuated because rain water
poured in...
CYCl
COSMETICS report, Health - minister
Ennals has responded with the predictable cosmetics. He has should never ordered area health authorities
to investigate conditions in all hospitals for the
have 49,000 patients.
We can expect virtually no change. nospitals Normansfield, there have been over the past few years at least half a dozen inquiries into individual "mental institutions which have revealed conditions just as horrific.
REMEDIAL
Neither these inquiries, the minor remedial action that has resulted from them, have achieved anything to alter the fact that those who are born with a serious mental handicap Words by Red Flu • organisation
and
woodworkIng
up
JUIC
please
•a year taking
concentration
days on of the often had to bo
David
mentally which in total
While few psychiatric
al t
society in bestowed by the
associated with to be criticised inquiry.
Music by Bob Dylan (Jack of Hearts')
Michael Young was 21, a hardened criminal was he He stole a television set, and also some other property So when the screws had heard the news they said it's plain to see We've got to lock this man away to save society And in Moss Side on a 65 they shut the door and threw away the key. Four years later the appeal tribunal finally heard the case They reconsidered all the things they never dared to tell him to his face He stabbed his sisters and his mum, three shrinks have sworn it's so His mum and sis say it's a lie but how are they to know? We'll keep the lid tight on the bin he's got another couple years to go
Another year had come and gone then Michael's mum got busy on the phone She rang the local Law Centre and told them that she wanted Michael home The lawyer started working, his brain was moving fast Looking for some answers, ways out of this morass He found some facts and witnesses that's how the next tribunal came to pass
O'Shea the red psychiatrist from Birmingham drove up to testify And Lance and Michael's family from Manchester dressed in their suits and ties Then through the door peered Michael's shrink, Noble was his name He knew that all the people there had seen right through his game So the tribunal got rained off, giving Noble time to leave the town At the replay his replacement started speaking spreading out the facts He said that someone else had said that Michael might have killed cats with an axe And when the poor steal from the rich, then Michael says it's fine He knows the rich steal from the poor, they do it all the time Oh a psychopathic attitude to property, it's a classic sign. Eight months later, this man is still inside the bin The Home Office ain't bothered cause they know that no one's ever heard of him But Michael Young is not alone, I don't mean people care No, thousand more like him and just like us are still in there
So all of you good people, and all of those who want to be free Keep your thoughts close to yourself and don't go nicking a colour TV And when they ask you how you know that you are really sane Don't try to say your mental health is somewhere in your brain The way to spot the crazy ones is simpla, they've got them tied in chains
Lonely Metropolitan by Herbert Bayer severely mentally incapacitated in later life will no find themselves shut away from ill-treatment the "loonie bins'
Victorians Lawlor is not the only person Normansfield any by the latest
The Ballad of Michael Young
In Broadmoor, Rampton and Moss Side that's where they throw the ones they want to hide.
itself ved ions.
stands
While the committee found
evidence cruelty by the nursing staff at the hospital, it attacks the regional and area health authorities for failing to take
notice of the staff's complaints about Lawlor, and it criticises two officials of the
CHARLA
Confederation of Health Service Employees for exploi-
and breaking the union's rules.
The latter comments ar aunteremarkable. As the rebori
clear. the cone onsa would never have been exposed
COHSE members the hospital, who successfully called for Lawlor's suspension. SCAPEGOAT
The inquiry has sought to scapegoat the union regional and branch secretaries invol-
They are blamed for stirring up the walk-out and allowing a petition to be circulated among union members al ine nospital The report quotes a COHSE rule which effectively forbids members from initiating petit
The leadership of the trion
absurd undemocratic rule, and it has responded to the report by agreeing hold its own internal inquiry.
There is a certain logic to this move. Apart from the concern of the COHSE bureaucracy to avoid strikes, it has a touching reverence for governmenta inquiries and for the protes sionalism on which the health service is structured.
Its wariness about outside interference' does nothing to break down the isolation of psychiatric hospitals and DauCHEs. whose oppression
with the physically handicapped described on the facing page - is reinforced by being screened off.
COHE's own reports point to the chronic and understaffing of psychiatric hospitals yet the union gives precious little support to the numcrous local actions by
Dr TERENCE LAWLOR, the
psychiatrist
Normansfield 'intolerant
abusive, and tyrannical'
its members to confront thi
We can be certain that much
psychiatric illness will
eliminated in a socialist society
But it will never disappear for
good. Breaking down the walls
of mental institutions - in a
social if not a literal sense
will help the workers move-
ment to come
with the problems.
Socialist Challenge 30 Noyember 1978 Page 15
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Challenge
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S DORISUR this
decide how 1978.
away, Bucharest Teng
that would unseat him.
chairman
by taking a are regarded
weeks
the
Stalc €20 Public Security,
.50 tailed to guard Mao 130 was Cultural
der' 110 and harassed. £1.20 FAILURE £2 E12 then to £199.70 qualitatively
demoralisation masses.
apparatus for support.
Malici
SCCUOI
Revolution.
apply the Cultural
own dvnamic
off a mass upheaval.
Demands
to protect the dictatorship.
dictators and finally eliminate them!'
While Chairman Hua was
dancing the 'hora' in earlier this year, Hsiao-ping and his supporters were busy at home laying the basis for a campaign
For Hua and party vice-
Wang Tung-hsing both within sections of the apparatus and by the masses as policemen.
It is not a foolish assessment as both men rose to power because of their control over the repressive organs of the
Hua was Minister for Wang commanded the detachment de-
It was Wang who arrested the "Gang of Four' and put Hua in power. It was also Wang who suppressed the demonstrators at en An Mien Square alter the death of Chou En-lai.
Teng Hsiao-ping is a veteran bureaucrat of the old school.
sacked during the Revolution as *The Number Two Capitalist Roa-
and was publicly reviled
The failure of the Maoists
institute a society different from what existed before led
amongst the Mao was forced to revert to the party and state
The rehabilitation of Ten and numerous other top anc middle-level bureaucrats meant ineir re-entry into the party and state apparatus. It was only a
of time before they made a bid to purge the entire
acadetsi identified with the Cultural
However, in order to do this they have, ironically enough, to
methods of the Revolution. The wall-poster campaign against Mao and Hua is clearly inspired by sections of the apparatus WHAT
But already it has taken on its tional
where the bureaucracy maintains a total monopoly of all means of information, even the smallest concessions can spark
Feng wielas chormous powe in Peking today. However he 328/9 Upper St, London NI. Printed by Goodhead Press Ltd., 25 Murdock Rd, Bicester.
for socialist democracy
China in turmoil
•MODERN dictators have developed a new religion to suppress the people and keep them in the dark. A spiritual Great Wall had been built round the country
'Arise, comrades! — Give a final judgment to all
-Statement on wall poster in Peking, November
him Teng Hsiao-ping in 1966 cy" cy"
Premier Hua Kuo-feng
SIPALS
DEMOCRAC
the Fourth Internasays democracy: 30p plus 10p p&p from The Other Bookshop, 328 Upper Street, London N1 2XQ.
needs some popular support in order to deliver the final blow against those who were party to his humiliation. The recent events will undoubtedly aid
The demonstrations in Peking gather momentum. Nigel Wade, the Peking corresponaent of un Daily Telegraph, reported:
* "Hyde Park" is the pseudonym used by one of the poster writers. But they do no attack Communism itself and they say quite definitely that they want "socialist democra-
, not "bourgeois democraas in the West.
Meanwhile the latest issues of Chinese Youth were, recenuy suppressed on the orders of the party leadership. After a fierce debate in the party's upper reaches they have just been released.
They reveal a vigorous debate on the theme of "socialist democracy' A Chinese-speaking comrade who has read them told Socialist Challenge that there echoes of the discussion in the Fourth International on this question.
The model that Teng Hsiao-ping has in mind might well be Yugoslavia. Economic "liberalism', close links with the West, anti-Sovietism and peaceful co-existence.
ERUPT
But China is not Yugoslavia. It has a population of 800 million people. Unless and until
masses find channels
control over Chinese society,
contradictions the bureaucracy will continue to erupt at regular intervals.
In recent years a number of left-wing observers have stated that Trotsky's demands for a political revolution in the USSR did not apply to China bec. ase of the diverse origins of its revolution. Events havi somewhat contradicted that particular thesis.
The basic contradictions which characterise Soviet society can all be found in China. The latter's specific peculiarities might give the boluca revo luon a citteren form, but its aims will be the same.
Long live socialist democracy! DOWn with the bureaucracy!
NEXT WEEK: The debate in China
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