Socialist Challenge No. 78, 11 January 1979
The scan: sc-n78-jan-11-1979.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive)
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Page 1 scan of this page
Socialist Challenge
No 78 11 January 1979 15p country is in crisis.
the stories are the same.
warnings are the same.
unions.
say the power of the unions must be curbed.
They threaten to use troops against strikers.
They say sacrifices are essential if the economy is to survive.
WHAT A BLOODY NERVE!
•Selfish? Lorry drivers are paid a basic wage of between E50 and £53 a week. Last year the transport and trading industry made a profit of E437,000,000, an increase of 18 per cent.
•Greedy? The wage rise the drivers of oil tankers have just won is worth between £3 and 24 a week. in 1978 Royal Dutch/Shell had a profit E3,670,000,000 and British Petroleum one of 22,186,000,000.
WHAT A
BLOODY
NERVE!
So for the umpteenth time in the umpteenth year we are told the
From the Daily Mirror to the Daily Express
From Margaret Thatcher to Michael Foot the
They say the country is being held to ransom by the
They say working people are selfish and greedy. They
They say trade unionists threaten the sick and elderly.
Page One
Comment
•Too powerful? The SEEKSOT local and central Government cannot 'afford" to pay manual workers a decent wage is because of the high interests paid on money borrowed. The basic wage rates of workers in the public sector is between £40 and £45 a week. Last year the banking industry made a profit of 21,250,000,000.
•Sacrifices? Last year Lord
Grade, a director of Associated Television, was paid E210,000 CCP Pocock of Shell Transport was paid 113,000. Sir David Steel of BP was paid £96,502. W R Price of Vauxhall was paid £101,842. Rowland Wright of its ICI was paid E96,363.
The rich and the powerful talk about 'the crisis'. The crisis for a lorry driver is the weekly food bill, the crisis for a hospital porter is the electricity bill, the crisis for a refuse collector is the gas bill. The crisis in the country is the CRISIS OF INEQUALITY.
Inside: Tariq Ali on Islam Next week. Women in iran Jim Callaghan spent the weekend in Guadeloupe.
the crisis
IRAN'S VEILED
OPPRESSION
Others weren't so lucky
The crisis is
of inequality
Page 2 scan of this page
A lorry load of...
EDITORIAL
Socialist Challenge, 328/9 Upper Street, London N1. Editorial 01-359 8180/9. 01-359 8371.
Election fever
THE crude anti-union offensive by the Tory press, coupled with Thatcher's union-baiting, indicates that an election cannot be too far away. The Tory calculation is based on the mounting tide of industrial unrest which threatens the ability of Labour to pose as a government which can keep the workers in their place. The lorry
while popular with the City of London and the International Monetary Fund, is not the best possible way to win votes. Even trade unionists not known for their militant views are likely to be alienated by the use of troops to deal with the public sector strike invoked a state of emergency was Edward Heath, a fact which cannot have escaped Callaghan, Healey and their colleagues.
on the following logic: the measures we propose are tough, but they are equitably applied. We all have to tighten our belts, because the system is facing a crisis. The only option is the Tories, who will be infinitely worse and will preside over a return to the Thirties with longer dole queues, legislation, etc. These arguments have been accepted by a large majority of trade unionists and workers for the last four years. One reason why they have been accepted is because the mass of coracs venuinely see no anernauve
new mood is emerging. If the hysterical attacks against the lorry drivers fail, then the stage will well and truly be set for a confrontation between the Tocamen. situation by calling a spring general election.
Labour's present policies exists. One reason for the delayed
dosely connected with the political abdication of Benn and Foot as left social-democrats.
Cabinet than to lead a fight inside the Labour Party. The result has een that Callaghan has been able to disregard completely the view of the Labour Party on all issues where the latter is in disagreement ein zovernment polcies. activists are in a state of serious demoralisation, and real membership figures are continuing to decline.
Labour's election manifesto is being carefully vetted by 'allaghan and his cohorts. But what about those who will go
socialist measures could begin to resolve the crisis in our favour.
activists must ensure that the intervention of the troops is not able to defeat the strike. An emergency TUC Congress should be called with the express purpose of defending the public sector workers and organising national solidarity.
back on every front. We do not believe that such a struggle can only be carried on inside the Labour Party. Nor do we believe that the task of revolutionaries can simply be to enter, for all practical We have, wherever possible, to offer a socialist alternative at the polls.
disregard their conference decision and not to put up candidates is an impressionistic response to the present political situation. Socialist Unity candidates have already been nominated in a number of constituencies. A national conference of Socialist Unity has been organised on 3 February to discuss our election intervention. We urge all activists likely to be involved in our campaigns to attend.
If you agree with these principles and want to be involved in activities by Socialist Challenge supporters in your area, till in the form below and send it to us.
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Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 Page 2
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tanker drivers followed the Ford workers; the rail drivers are aking militant noises; and Callaghan's economic and social
cies could receive the final blow in the event of a public sector
Labour politicians are aware of the fact that strike-breaking,
- not to mention states of emergency. The last politician who
The strategy of the Labour government has hitherto been based
means tests, anti-strike
This situation is now beginning to change. Slowly but surely a
public sector workers and the That is why Callaghan might try to defuse the
but ine race remains Inat no mass ponnical alernauve 10
ponse to government policies has been the cringing class laboration of the trade union leaders over the last years -varded, in Scanion's case, with a peerage! This failure has been
Benn carefully refused to organise any fight against the Labour vernment. He felt that it was more important to remain in the
All ine indications are inat party
locking on doors and driving old-age pensioners to the polling
hs? Have they no say at all? Clearly a delegate conference ould be called to discuss Labour's election manifesto. Socialists the Labour Party should draft an alternative to that which is ing prepared by the leadership in order to demonstrate that In the event of a public sector strike before the elections, union
What Labour's policies demonstrate is the necessity to fight
The decision of the Socialist Workers Party leadership to
THE October 1978 report of the Price Commission into the road haulage industry suggested a picture of chummy tranquillity in the sphere of industrial relations:
"The fact that the typical firm in the industry is a small one, and that even the large firms are organised into small UNILS. COTEE DULeS to family atmosphere in which mutual accommodation of differences is possible.
In such a situation, where employees are only in small groups, and even then mainly working beyond the control of the depot, they will themselves seek to settle problems amicably with their employers rather than involve a trade union."
The report goes on to note that the number of days lost through industrial disputes in the industry as a whole has been relatively small'. So it seems strange that it is conflict in this self-same industry which is now
MESS
Socialist
revolutionary socialists are:
Such an organisation should be based on the understanding that:
1
THE FIRST WORD
Haulage industry
said to be threatening the whole fabric of decent society Britain.
But two statistics summarise why the lorry drivers' strike is now supposedly threatening food supplies, newspapers, and countless manufacturing industries.
On the one hand, 85 per cent of total tonnage transported in this country is moved by road; on the other hand, the basic wage of the drivers varies from £50.09 to £53.35. This means that drivers who work - no overtime take home less than £35 a week.
The employers, in the form of the Road Haulage Association, have offered an increase on the basic rate of 12.5 per COLL benefits would bring the offer up to 15 per cent, but the drivers are claiming an increase on the basic of 20 percent.
Forgetting the headlines in the Tory press about holding GUY
OUR POLICIES 2
Capitalism is in crisis. The leaders of the Labour Party and the trades unions offer solutions that are in the interests, not of the workers, but of the capitalist
Challenge believes that the two vital tasks confronting
To build broad-based class struggle tendencies in opposition to 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 or unite tront tactics, begin to be seen as an alternative by thousands of workers engaged in struggles
The struggle for socialism seeks to unite the fight of the workers against the bosses with that of other oppressed layers of society - women, black people, gays — struggling for their liberation. This socialism can only be achieved by creating new organs of power and defeating with all
the country to ransom', 'state of siege, "mindless militancy', and the rest, the case for the drivers is completely able.
As the Price Commission report testified, "average hourly earnings...have mained significantly below those for manual workers in industry as a whole'.
The RHA has been quoted as saying that it cannot increase its offer because of the government's pay policy. It says that the Price Commission has already criticised the industry for its pricing, and the Commission has recommended they should not be allowed to
Phan here ral are re
general rate of inflation. mployers, if they pay more argue the employers, than they have offered and cannot increase their prices to cover the increase, bankruptcies will follow.
In fact this argument is spurious. What the Price Commission does say is that *costs within the industry are generally greater than those which ought to be incurred by efficient suppliers.
For instance, the report criticises the industry for the general lack of interest among all but the largest firms in the positive promotion or selling of their services and in gencra forward planning of their business'
Elsewhere in its report the Price Commission notes that lorries often lie idle, that the vehicles are often empty on return journies, and that firms to which goods are delivered often increase the COSt themselves by having out-ofthe-way depots or very
Combine)
workers movement.
Hospital Occupation Committee)
* And more! (All speakers in a personal capacity)
Saturday 24 March at Digbeth Civic Hall, Birmingham
N1 2XP. in the eyes of the millions of workers throughout the world. We are opposed to them and will offer full support to all those lighting for sucialist democraes.
3
imperialist regimes in the West and the brutal dictatorships they sustain in 1 atin A mercu. ATTICa anO ASIR
from Ireland and letting the Irish people determine their own future.
The Communist Parties in Europe are in crisis.
4
are more favourable than over the preceding three decades. But such parties can ons he built or relecans sectarianism ano seene aernal democrac luxury but as a vital necessity. This means the right to organise factions and
restricted delivery times The situation is made worse by proliferation companies in the industry; as the report says, •Ine profes sional road haulage industry is fragmented into a very large number of small units So what characterises the
of planning, inefficiency, and low wages. Even profits are not particularly high.
And yet here is an industry which controls 85 per cent of its market and is so large that it employs 275,000 people.
Seen in this light the lorry drivers' strike goes beyond the immediate issue of a justified wage increase. The industry as a whole is a good illustration of what is wrong with the way this society is conducted.
It is not that the country is being held to ransom', but that private enterprise inevitably means waste, inetticiency, anc near chaos If there was a centralised road haulage system, if there was planning on a national scale of the transportation of goods, if there was a common wage structure for the industry whole, then conditions ab d would improve remarkably.
It would mean, for instance, that a lorry which took goods London Glasgow would not come back empty. It would not mean the average vehicle is working for only one-third of the week', as the Price Commission reports is happening today.
All such waste could be done away with if there was one road haulage company that was planned on a rational, efficient, co-ordinated basis. If, in other WOTES. INCUSEE nationalised.
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
Tickets El from SC Trade Union Conference, PO Box 50, London
Our socialism will be infinitely more democratic than what exists in Britain today, with tull rights tor all pontical parnes ano currents ta do not take up arms against the socialist state. The stalinist models of 'socialism in the USSR and Eastern Furope have discredited socialism
The interests of workers and capitalists are irreconcilable on a world scale. Capitalism has not only created a world market, it has created
scale. This units will in the long run be decisive in defeating both the
In Britain it implies demanding the-immediate withdrawal el British-troops
*Euro-communist nor the pro-Moscow wings have an meaningtut strategy for the overthrow of the capitalist state,lew resolutionar socialist parties are more necessary than ever before. Conditions today
Page 3 scan of this page
Iran s new government frail and unconvincing
going.
nevertheless.
By Richard Carver THE new Iranian government of Shapur Bakhtiar is frail and -UnCOVICE. Despite -maybe because of - the US administration's fulsome support, it has the backing of no important section of Iranian society outside the immediate entourage.
Half the Pahlavi clique has disappeared already - to its Beverley Hills mansions and its Alpine ski resorts. The Shah will join them soon leaving Bakhtiar with the slenderest of support.
The military is at best half-hearted. Key members of the tough faction in the army have resigned, led by General Oveissy, the 'Butcher Tehran'. As has so often happened, an utterly loyal imperialist-trained army proven less agile in its political allegiances than its masters.
The removal of the military regime and its replacement by these civilians is a success for the opposition. But the new government's commitment to the entire apparatus of the Pahlavi state makes unacceptable to the masses.
Earlier this week they gave overwhelming support to two successive 'days of mourning'
general strikes, respectively by the National Front and Ayatollah Khomeini.
To hear its leaders talk now, OTe would think that National Front had been the most intransigent monarchist party.
The reverse is true. It has always left the constitutional question open and until quite recently its leaders were in touch with the Shah. Only the pressure of developments on the streets kept them from reaching a deal.
It is an index of the Front's bankruptcy that until last week Bakhtiar was its deputy leader - the same Bakhtiar whom they are now all clamouring to condemn.
The Front sees a government of its own leaders as a possible successorto baknnar. In raris, Khomeini too has a governmental slate in mind.
What none of the major spokespeople for the opposition have raised is the prospect of a constituent assembly - in other words that the regime which follows the Shah should be determined by the masses who overthrew him.
The only other practical options are that some religious
INTERNATIONAL
SOMEHOW everyone expected it to happen more dramatically, but it does seem finally that the Shah is
Quietly, ignominously, leaving a regency council behind him; no bullet between the eyes, no swish of the blade or twang of the gallows rope; but he is going
For the Iranian people, however, the battle has hardly begun. In the coming days and weeks they will face increased intervention from the Western powers.
For capitalist interest group will seize government for itself. At best it would then ask the people to ratify LOT existing state of affairs.
The fight for a constituent assembly and alongside that
Shah's of it
called
the
antiPrime Minister SHAPUR I for a workers and peasants'
ROVCTLHCRE iS 200C effective Way stop manoeuvres.
It is against this eventuality that the imperialist powers are stepping up their intervention in the region. have muted their overenthusiastic support
dictatorship, are backing Bakhtiar and are looking to improve relations with successors.
Diplomatic manoeuvres are accompanied by less savoury techniques of persuasion: an increase in CIA agents in the country and the despatch of a naval task force. A British naval frigate has already investigated the logistical problem by Abadan on a 'mercy' mission, taking off some 400 British nationals. A US intervention an already still cannot be ruled out, under
the guise of defending the large American community in Iran. The Pentagon is anxious that it gets it right this time after the HOSE traumas of such Angola. Ine
apparently having BIVCI support to the Somali regime in its war with Ethiopia last year The Americans — a taste of things to come?
the Already
Iranian
his possible
and political
as to most countries.
Imperialist socialists pondering
docking at
Iranian upsurge
Moslem Shi'ite left.
Vietnam and and the White House straddle
regrets not boundaries.
open
imperialism Turkey.
worried by the impact of the
Most obviously this has affected oil supplies to politically sensitive imperialist client states such as South Africa and Israel, as well
major Western
strategists and alike should be the impact Iranian events on Turkey. The
was clearly part of the reason why Turkish right wingers have launched their attack on the country's
The left is linked to Iran by religious and national consi-
One
of a
dietatorship.
tion military by
consumption.
the
solidarity
anything
derations: both the Shi'ite faith
Kurdish minority formal territorial
This pattern is duplicated elsewhere. Iran has Baluchi, Afghani and Arab minorities and it shares its Kurdish minority with Iraq as well as
YANKEE
д°
Iran demo
called for
3 Feb
By Steve Potter
DISCRETION proved the better part of valour last week when the Queen finally called off her visit to the Shah of Iran.
of the considerations uppermost in her have been whether the Shah would be there to receive her.
The Queen's decision is part
by the major imperialist powers from their previous total support for the
Shah's
This has proved necessary as the masses have demonstrated their complete opposi-
to government, or civilian, formed under the Shah.
The dominant concern in imperialist circles is the internal stability of the country seriously threatening the ability of the Iranian regime to continue as cop in the Gulf and Middle East generally.
The other irritantis the continuing disruption of the world's oil supplies provoked
the oilfield workers' embargo on oi for externa
The only sure way to counter
Bma noete imperialists is by building the the broadest and most vigorous
action in the its imperialist heartlands.
Only in West Germany has such mass action occurred on
like scale. In the USA, solidarity
Demonstration
SOLIDARITY WITH THE STRUGGLE IN IRAN
Saturday 3 February, 1.00pm, Trafalgar Square
Supported by National Union of Students
Organised t Stop the Queen's Visit Ad-hoc Committe
Home
actions have been confined to vanguard actions by Iranian student groups.
In Britain, despite a growin ginter
In Britain, despite a growing interest by workers in the ports and the arus industry, and vocal but ineffective protests by the left of the Labour Party, mass action on the streets has not so far mobilised any more than a couple of thousand marchers on the streets, largely drawn from the iranian student movement.
At least part of this can be attributed to the lack of unity in action on the British left. A major opportunity to overcome this problem has arisen with the forming the ad-hoc committee originally aimed at stopping the Queen's visit.
Formed by the Communist Party, International Marxist Group, Workers Party, and Workers Action, the committee has the support of the Committee Against Repression in Iran [CARI) and the alliance of Iranian student groups in the Iran Solidarity Campaign.
The committee has decided to go ahead with its 3 Februar demonstration, which h gaine
endorsement the National Union of Students at
conference in December.
On that day we must mak sure that Carter and Callaghan are warned: Imperialist hands off Iran!
Iran!
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 3
Page 4 scan of this page
How to defend the Iranian revolution
small in relation to the scale of events in Iran.
SWP
IN YOUR report of the NUS conference decision to affiliate 10 CAKI you "Socialist Worker Student Organisation proposed affiliate instead to the loose coalition of Iranian student groups called the Solidarity Campaign.
unis is untrue. twas SWO delegate who moved the main motion including affiliation to CARI, and the defeated SWO amendment called for
the ISC addition to CARI.
Having made that (rather substantial) correction it may be of some interest to Socialist Challenge readers to know why we moved that amendment.
We in the SWP and SWSO want a united movement m solidarity with the struggle in Iran. But you don't get that by blinding yourself divisions that exist and glibly proclaiming one organisation to be the solidarity campaign.
Like it or not (and we certainly don't the heritage of past factional struggles has left CARI with the support of only one significant tendency (supporters of the Fourth national) among the Iranian left in Britain and with depressing legacy of ill-will from the great majority of politically active Iranians in Britain.
Of course some of hostility comes from groups which refuse any co-operation with revisionists and Trotskyists* and hence rule co-operation with virtually any of the British left. There is not much we can do about that apart from patiently argue with individuals and hope that the mass movement will provide an even more powerful argument.
But the groups supporting the Iran Solidarity Campaign are not like this. They actively canvassed and welcomed support from the British left.
We in the SWP felt strongly that their initiative was worth responding to seriously and we think we were proved correct when, demonstration ULL the 9 December they
3-4,000 marched on the biggest demonstration in solidarity with the Iranian struggle held in Britain to date.
Yet Socialist Challenge ignored it. You avoided
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 4
INTERNATIONAL
Two views
DEMONSTRATIONS in solidarity with the struggle in Iran have been a feature of nearly every weekend in Britain. Yet the numbers involved are still pathetically At least part of this problem is attributable to the lack of unity on the far left in coordinating solidarity activity for Iran. The largest demonstrations so far
mentioning it Amongst three pages coverage on Iran you failed to report it in your subsequent
CEO ISSUC
And, despite the fact that the organisers specifically invited Iran the IMG to participate in the
demonstration, you apparently did not think it worthwhile to sell Socialist Challenge (with a front page on Iran) on a march including over 2,000 Iranians. In doing this, and in
in supporters voting against NUS
affiliation to ISC, we think you are adding fuel to the sectarian divisions among the Iranian left in Britain.
Of course that does not mean that ISC the campaign. Its SHOSE limitation you have pointed OUL That is its attitude to CARI (its refusal to give them a speaker, etc.) and
the
we have argued and will argue with them that they are wrong in this.
As for the other criticism you mention, the vague political basis of the think you are off the mark.
ISC has criticised CART's limiting itself to a struggle against repression, and with the Inter- enormous mass struggles
and the possibility of the imminent downfall we think they are right in thinking that a solidarity campaign must go further than this.
this Hopefully the
• struggle will also do something to heal the sectarian divisions produced by SO 201.
out SWP will try to assist in this
process by supporting all valid initiatives of solidarity whether they come from ISC, CARI or some other organisation.
That is why we tried to get NUS affiliation to ISC CARI. That supported the ISC stration on 9 December and sent CARI demonstration
have following weekend. It would he
La help if Socialist Challenge acted likewise.
Forward to demonstration in with the struggle in Iran on 3 February. Though quite what the centre of that solidarity will
rapidly moving pace of
called, rapidly moving pace
mass struggle in Iran!
PETE GOODWIN
International Organiser)
EINDE (SWSO)
beforehand.
of YOU solidarity
severe
sectarian campaign', we
increasing
Shah's
rising mass
The SOCIALIST Challenge agrees with the SWP that we want a united movement in solidarity with the struggle in Iran. But Pete Goodwin O'Callaghan wnal sort of sondanty move and ment must be built.
why we clear
demon movement must be a long-term,
permanently the paign. The mass movement in
ULL
the Iran will ride over even the most ferocious repression in pursuit objective overthrow of the Shah. united At the same time, without the solidarity Shah,
seriously threatened and with it the whole of domination in the Middle East and the Gulf. the imperialists will unrelenting in the efforts, with or without the Shah, to derail (SWP or smash the mass movement. The best assistance we can O'CALLAGHAN render to the Iranian people is to
build a broad-based solidarity
have been called by the Iran Solidarity Campaign and the Committee Against Repression in Iran.
We publish below a debate on the way forward in building a united solidarity campaign — a campaign which as part of an international movement can be a massive boost to the struggles of the Iranian masses.
Socialist Challenge
whether that
and Einde don't explain intervention,
that such a Iran.
organised camBritish
the the ports,
capitalism in iran is Iranian people. imperialist So the be equally to this end.
mass meetings begun
this position. with
Solidarity
ISH.
Marxist
went
speaker
practices. 5p per InCI White. Horse
at PCL,
WorKsnoos
women recistration. campaign centred on the theme "Imperialist Hands off Iran' — LOnDON IT
means today demanding the breaking of all links with the Shah's regime or tomorrow demanding an end to
covert against the mass movement in
Any such campaign has to be firmly directed towards
student and labour movement, to get mass action
boycotts embargoes the movement of military equipment, and to win support in general for the struggle of th therefore be camp to all those campaign must forces in the labour movement who are prepared to take action
It is possible to take such action now. Solidarity movement speakers have spoken to
dockers, collaboration with
workers in the arms industry, won national unions and the Labour Party conference to
fact that the Committee Against Repression
Ine leadin force in these activities and has promoted this view of how solidarity movement should be built. This work has been built over a period of years.
Over these years a number of Iranian student groups have been involved in CARI have left because they disagreed
this orientation. The writers acknowledge the problems of sectarianism in the Iranian student
Unfortunately the Iranian
Campaign', what ever its other merits, is not immune from this sectarian-
Inits capacity as the organiser of the 9 December
excluded CARI and the International
Group from its mobilising committee and then
on prevent CARI placards from being carried on the demonstration and a CARI
from addressins. the
We assume that the
PULL dissociates itself from these
This view of how a solidarity
WHAT'S LEFT
word. Display ta per colum . Deadline: 3pm Saturday before puorcaton. rayment in aavance
Belt and witn
racists. Sat 13 Jan, 7.30pmn. Bar. Adm
1 waged, 65p unwaged. Dame Coll
louse, Ben Jonson. Road, E1. Neare: tube steoney Green, and walk Invouci
Lane groanised Hacknev and tower hamiers werence Committee and ANL
CHILE Day Conference on Sat 20 Jar Joan Jara, H Schember, A Christie. Oxtoro st. Londo Speakers
on socIalIst economic planning, education, popular culture,
Details, evenine Cathy social Moss NUS
internationarved, suz rentonviie no
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Must be
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Knowledge of printing and production techniques, especially
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Apply in writing to Fl Litho 328/9 Upper St, London N1
For ring 8288
campaign should be organised is reflected in its structure in which named participation is confined to Iranian student organisations - organisations of a particular political view.
Under these circumstances we think we are entitled to conclude that the ISC, while representing political forces inside the Iranian student movement, cannot be regarded as fighting to build a genuine
We suggest that the SWP and the ISC should come out firmly in favour of broad-based solidarity move ment aimed at the \ British labour movement, that they actively participate in building CARI, and that any of the necessary changes to the basis of CARi be put forward at its forthcoming conference.
An impressive degree of unity has been gained in th fight to build the 3. Februar
We hope that any bad feeling aroused as a result DATO error reporting the NUS Conference will be dissolved in mobilising
maximum possible turn.
STEVEPOTTER [for Editorial Board]
for caldwell. 7.30pm a Holborn Assembly Hall, Johns Mew London WC1 (off Northington st a NW corner of Gray's Inn and Theobald:
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Group meeting. The Fight Agains nacism. bobakers rom Brick Lane Garner's, Tues 16 January
Conway Red Lior Square, London WC1. Adm: 20p
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needed fo material. in Spanish and Portugues contact: LAF, PO Box 50, London S
Page 5 scan of this page
A letter to some Muslims in Birmingham
Politics
in Iran
Dear friends:
Last November you distributed a two-page leaflet after a Socialist Challenge meeting 1 had spoken at in Birmingham.
The leaflet was headed: "On the Question of the Iranian Struggle: Islamic Revolution or waterialist Hypocrisy?" presented a critique of the Marxist position on Iran and
devoted itself to answering the points I had made in my speech.
You argue that:
(a) the iranian revolution is due to the love of the Iranian people for Islam
(b) 'the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky are based on class-hatred and materialist belief and thus alien to the Iranian people*;
(c) it is in the teachings of the ayatollahs and mullahs that the Iranian people's aspirations for
Islamic revolution Islamic state will be fulfilled.
You speak in the name of "Islamic revolution' ane ceclare your open hostility to socialists who are also involved in the Iranian struggle. claim, somewhat arrogantly,
"misled people" who are not interested in what the people desire. The people of Iran desire Islam."
Before dealing with points in detail, it is worth re-stating what, in our opinion, the Iranian struggle is all about. What is its dynamic and its ultimate goal?
Over the last twenty years the social weight of the urban working class has increased dramatically in comparison with neighbouring states. Class divisions and class contradictions have become ACULC.
How can you doubt that Iran is a society divided by class? How do you explain existence of parasites who live
unbelievably luxurious conditions in Tehran while a few hundreds yards away there are people who live in the most abject poverty?
They are all Iranians. are mainly Muslims. Many capitalists regularly prostrate themselves before Mecca in the hope that their god will protect their privileges.
You could say that this latter breed are not true Muslims, they are imposters. But on what basis will you decide? teachings of Islam (especially the Shiite version) are full of ambiguities which can be interpreted to justify both resistance and collaboration with authority
The poverty-stricken masses retain their religious beliefs to escape from the horrors and
INTERNATIONAL
and class
struggle
rich remain religious the better safeguard their interests.
Religion performed a different function hundreds of years ago, but in our century it has become UNIC DaCKDOne reaction. Today we have before us many examples of Islamic states'.
We have the fundamentalists who Saudi Arabia in the name of Islam. Is that barbarism to be reborn in Iran? Or there is the *enlightened despotism'
Libya.
The struggle in Iran began as struggle for rights. This united overwhelming majority of the pcopic In this struggle we all fight together Shah. You shout Death to the and Shah' holding the banners of
Islam. We chant slogan with the red flag in our. hands.
But ask yourselves why it is that US imperialism supports You the Shah. Is it because he is
'anti-Islamic'? Is it they fear the rise of Islam? If that how
of the oldest allies of the United your States in the Middle East?
No, the reason the Americans fear the fall of the Shah is because they establishing political structures to keep Iran safe for capitalism is not going to process.
The awakening and radicalisation of the working masses has created tremendous expectations. If the government that more follows the Shah cannot satisfy
the people then there will be more upheavals.
The ayatollahs represent a coherent political The bourgeois in the pastes Talled the past. precisely alternative opposition made the religious leaders the They only major focus of dissent.
The struggle in Iran is thus motivated not so much by "love of Islam' (even though the majority of Iranians Muslims) as by a hatred of the Shah and all that he represents. In that sense the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky The relevant. For their followers itself say to the working masses: only
you and your class are capable of liberating Iran from stranglehold of capitalism and imperialism. Only the victory of your class will ensure the real independence of Iran.
That is why the construction of a revolutionary miseries of everyday life. The | party is an important priority.
material Wahabbi
govern
of
democratic
the
down the
because
do you
The teachings ayatollahs and mullahs, which be an easy you claim are the real answer,
offer no practical solutions in fact to the real needs of the
Wat is be mic tie?
What would character? Who would own the
especially the oil weis and
do would decide,
basis, the discredited liances which Iran would need?
have Let us take one question to •Was illustrate your dilemma. Islam
of all eschews merest on oars.
that are Iranian banks going to be forbidden the right to charge interest?
If they are, then they cannot function of answer would be to nationalise them immediately. You would call that 'communism'
There are are very consistent political or theoreti-
cal positions that can be derived from Islam. The logic of capital will force even the most ardent the Islamic sides in the struggle that will develop after the Shah.
The Islamic movement itself will suffer further political rifts workers and divisions, precisely because
La belief in Islam does not lead
of the automatically political conclusions.
and the
be its discredit the
socialism. producaon
and on what international al-
Trotskyists.
years.
•Well,
financial you!
capital. Our
internationalism.
in reality, no
and more barbaric. nationalists to take
and socialism fall of the
but
the same masses.
Islam,
ou are quite correer to poli Christianity out the disgusting role of China
Soviet Union 10S9U800 supporting the Shah over the last decade. You then use this to
very idea of
It is true that these states and their cynical manoeuvres have refusing antagonised and disillusioned millions of people. But we are
Our political this current has tought against these policies now for more than fifty
So throwing Brezhnev and Mao at us is the equivalent of us
the Shah 1s a Muslim', and hurling him at fade.
1. We believe that the interests of workers throughout the world are one slogans, and indivisible. We argue that character. unless the workers seize state power over the next decades, clear. capitalism will become more 2.
You claim that capitalism
are Western ideologies'. This is false. They are both international ideolo. difference. One represents the with crucial Trotsky. interests of the ruling classes very and the other the oppressed
no more than or Judaism 201 Hinduism or Buddhism, offers
We do not deny for a single moment the role of the Islamic opposition, and Khomeini in particular, in fuelling the mass upsurge against the Shah and
to accept any compromise which retains the monarchy. It is what follows
which will decide the immediate future of Iran.
And as we are approaching the 21st century, it would be somewhat foolish to attempt to derive our future from a distant past whose echoes continue to
To summarise
believe that the struggle in iran, despite the predominance of democratic
has clear class The recent strike wave has made this abundantly
We believe that the future of the Iranian masses does rest on the ability of their most advanced sections to construct a party that will be based on the
Trothings of Mare, Lenin and
are trying construct such a party at this
moment: • Iranian section of the Fourth Inter-
national.
3. The ayatollahs and mullahs have been able to play an important role because the repression, the collapse of the bourgeois oppositions, and the bankruptcy of pro-Moscow and pro-Peking groups made them and their mosques the only centres of opposition.
But already this is beginning to change. The fall of the Shal will shift polities further away from the mosques. This is not just desirable. It is virtually inevitable.
In conclusion we can do little more than paraphrase Lenin's remarks to Indonesian communists in 1919. The latter had explained that the peasants were loyal to Sarekat-i-Islam, a progressive Muslim organisation. They were loyal to God
Lenin advised Indonesian communists to work with Sarekat, but said: "Tell them they should he loyal the that when they
There earth the International Executive Com mittee of the Communist futerational is more power-
Yours comradely, Tariq Ali
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 5
Page 6 scan of this page
National strategy lacking in
HOME NEWS
December.
By Martin Meteyard
This was the fourth known racist murder in the area in the last eight months. And this time the black community reacted in a big way.
After a week's leafleting on the streets more than people - most of them black — turned up to a meeting at the local All Nations Club. only was there a lot of anger but loud calls for organised defence.
These were SO insistent because the events surrounding Michael's death had thrown a clear light on the role of the
journalists'
strike
by Geoffrey Sheridan
A NATIONAL strategy is what is lacking in the five-week-old strike of provincial journalists, say militants who have learned with considerable disappointment of the concessions being offered by their union leaders.
The demand for across-the-board £20 increase Bas brought unprecedented anity and determination from the provincial journalists, whose local representatives reported at a meeting last week that morale remains high
But the Newspaper Society, the employers' organisation, has shown no sign of improving
its latest 13.5 per offer, and in their anxiety to get around the negotiating table the National Union Journalists executive has said it would reduce pickets to a token mumber if the bosses agree to talk.
Although over a hundred local newspapers have been stopped, printworkers continue follow the instructions of their union leaders to mormally.
Picketing therefore plays a
role, and militants successes last week. Botched TEED important
A mass picket at Leamington on Thursday, on which 40 or so local trade unionists joined 20 journalists, persuaded pristworkers halt Courier Press newspapers.
The same result was achieved
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 6
Racist murder in Hackney
Community
demands black
self-defence
MICHAEL Andrew Ferreira, a 19-year-old West
Indian, was murdered by white racists in Hackney,
East London, in the early hours of Sunday 10
OCCO COLA COUCH for the lives of black people. Michael arrived bleeding at Stoke Newington police station at 2am after being stabbed. But police LOOK their calling an ambulance, didn't arrive till 2.45am.
200 They were obviously
interested in finding out what black youths were doing on the Not streets at all than in the fact that
Michael was bleeding to death He was finally taken to Leonard's Hospital where he died.
As a result of the mood at the meeting on 21 December, further meeting of black people by a mass picket of the Surrey South VOTION Group. by Newspaper Society's negotiator. embers thas from members grown,'
Howard Hannah, chairperson of the NUJ's North London branch, which brought several papers to a halt before strike was made official. "We're now looking mobile mass picketing. which could spread Leamington through the Hannah adds.
His branch was one of the first to condemn the suggestion cent ог а геоисвоп го oken picKets.
taking the view that this could only confuse both journalists
of and printworkers while allow-
Wing essential supplies to SOCIOC.
Over £300 has been donated to the North London branch's strike fund as a result of a visit to an industrial estate. It is by seeking this kind of support
to from other workers against the
Government's pay policy, not work by concessions to the employ-
ers, that the journalists strike can be won. we are faced problem of having no effective day-to-day leadership strike,' says Howard Hannah. *Various chapels have been pushing for a national action NGA committee elected from the
the rank and file to be in charge of
dispute, with sub-committees.'
only was called December, which decided to set up the Hackney Black People's Defence Organisation.
The basis of the BPDO is that:
LINC which 1. Only
ensure their own defence.
more This means mobilisation of
3. Defence and its organisation is a political involves defence St only the National Front (whose headquarters are Hackney) but also the actions of the police, judiciary, and the whole establishment.
The need for this was shown
News
the
Chie
NGA
the
to a squad
experience Midlands,
PALL
be
WHILE the presses at The Times continue silent. those Challenger will rolling.
The unions battling against the lock-out Newspapers are planning to with the
produce an eight-page paper, of the largely devoted to putting over
their case movement.
This has been one of the few positive moves DEICEW SC regional peace.
Much of the energy of the
for 27
people can
question which Iner arracks
against not community,
now in
Ridley Road
NUS
To find out where help is needed on a picket near you, ring the NUJ on 01-278 7916.
to remain of Times shortly start Street.
Times
the workers' jobs.
ALa
in what remains a phoney
MICHAEL ANDREW FERREIRA
when the three men charged with Michael'smurderappeared in court. They were refused bail When not because of the seriousness of the charges, or because their release would encourage Tur
01 the black but because the police said this was the only way to ensure their safety!
The BPDO is now leafleting
market every
petition to demand the release PICKETS stop a delivery van at the Uxbridge plant of the giant Westminster Press newspaper group.
The Times - an invisible struggle
print unions NATSOPA and February NGA is being taken up with finding their locked-out mem- be built bers temporary jobs on Fleet struggle.
The danger is that with no clear fight-back taking place, this dispersion of the workforce could easily lead to demoralisation and a permanent loss of
mass meeting last Thursday, NATSOPA officials announced that there is to be a rally and Fleet Street march on 25 January, and a conference for trade union delegates on 10
the them
of Michael's body - which is still being held by the police.
This body Is finally released, it is planned to turn the dav of the tuneral into a mass day of mourning for all the victims of racist attacks.
It was in Hackney that the first strike against racism took place on 17 July. It is this sort of action that the BPDO and day. the local anti-racist movement intend to build.
for
ADVEA
But solidarity cannot readily
for invisible
If the management which has suppressed two national papers
allowed to continue publish its regional newspapers without resistance from the unions; if the enormous assets of the Thomson Organisaton are considered inviolable, and if there is no serious attempt b the unions to nail the bosses press freedom, then Thomson could win in the end.
British
Oxygen
management
out for
revenge
By John Ross THERE is no doubt as to the British Oxygen Company's New Year resolution: to make up for its defeat in the last two years' wage deals by attacking union organisation.
Coming back from the holiday on 2 January, workers at BOC's Hackney depot found
lorries iced up and dangerous to work. Although fifteen were eventually got back on the road, three were found still to be hazardous by the union safety representatives
HOWEVER 340H miles away the management repre sentative, Draper, clared them fit and ordered
taken out. When -ERE WOrKCES rejected this the management overturned all dispute procedures and withdrew the gate cards of six workers, including TGWU senior shop steward John Walsh.
The decision of the entire night shift to walk out in support of the suspended men was backed unanimously by a mass meeting of the depot next
This type of attack by management has a long history
BOC. Ritual calls for everyone lo matched by their determination to contest claims for injuries received doing it.
One driver is still paying legal costs to BOC - a judge threw out his case after his leg was
broken and calf muscle ripped
out by a gas bottle which broke loose from an old lorry monstrously bad winter condi tions. They 'proved" liability by test driving a brand new lorry over the same route in June!
John Walsh has now been suspended and reinstated by industrial action three times in five years. Management once again trying to hit back at the militant Hackney depot for the role it played in waging the fights for higher pay in the last two years.
They hope to open the door
riding roughshod over
safety agreements, tearing up
union procedures, and victimi-
sing the leading union militants
in BOC
however, are out solidly for the The Hackney workers ANDREW
implementation of all safety regulations, the reinstatement
of the victimised workers, full
payment TOT LOSI
suspensions and strikes, and
the defence of their union
ONITROTSKYISH AND
3 THE FOURT
- INTERNATIO
Pamphlet: On Trotskyism and
the Fourth International by Phil
Hearse. Invaluablereading. 30p
plus 10p p&p from The Other
London Ri 328 Upper
London
Page 7 scan of this page
LEFT UNITY - WHAT THEY SAY LAST week we published an appeal for left unity jointly agreed by the International Marxist Group and International Socialist Alliance. We asked for people to send in Some have arrived in the post this week together with two letters from socialists These letters raise important issues in the progress towards revolutionary unity. That's why we have decided to open the pages of Socialist Challenge to a debate round this issue. Comrades from the IMG and ISA will be given space to reply.
HOME NEWS
signatures.
Appeal
has
hollow
ring
THE major part of the statement on revolutionary unity provides an important mary of the principles on which we should work together locally and nationalv. However. the final attempt to crystallise the call for unity in three national projects has a hollow about it, especially in the case of Socialist Unity and 'a united revolutionary youth movement.
The final declaration, which after all will give practical shape to whatever unity occurs. puts me off signing the statement. But because I believe in the intention behind the overall statement I want to explain my misgivings in the hope that they might influence the next steps you lake
The first national project on rank and file movements is already part of the basic political statement, as are a number of other areas of national work such as the socialist feminist movement, the ANL, etc. At this stage I think national projects should be left at the level of these general commitments.
Agreement to support Socialist Unity election campaigns and to build a united revolutionary youth movement are inadequately discussed among the wide layer of revolutionaries open to united work that they would seriously limit the possibinues of unity.
Take Socialist Unity: it's true that Socialist Unity campaigns did bring together some of the signatories of this statement at a nanonal level, and in some localities. But since the initial by-election and local election successes there has been no lasting impact, if any, in the localities; at least no public evaluation.
Its stated objectives were to stimulate class struggle alli-
not to make revolutionary propaganda for a few weeks. Is there any evidence that it has begun to do so?
Furthermore, as an attempt to build something broader
explaining why they have decided not to sign.
sum-
ring
than a revolutionary electoral
affected by within the Labour Party which influence the
of class militants.
These allegiances vary considerably locality locality depending Labour Party's relation to local government, the traditions of the local labour movement, etc.
While it is very important to fight for a socialist alternative In terms national international policies, entirely unrealistic to argue that its electoral expression could take a uniform national form at this stage.
You might agree; in which case seems premature, in a basis of unity, to plump for the unproven Socialist Unity agreed basis for activity.
So for different reasons the
It's
utopian
IN the days of CND demonstrations. members of one of the organisations of the left used to stand on the pavement
with leaflets headed Why We Are Not Marching'. I hope this doesn't read like the same sort of exercise.
commitment to build a united
crucially revolutionary developments ment. On the face of it, a good
Taca electoral alle- But when one thinks of the
struggle difficulties facing all attempts
to get a revolutionary movement off the ground in the past, when one thinks of the on the rarity of
precedent for such a project, it seems extraordinarily glib to include this as a condition of joint activity.
and The IMG have no doubt discussed this thoroughly but there's been discussion.
Surely by including these
national projects in the unity extremely statement you've
process of revolutionary unity wrong way round. Especially as the single when the revolutionary left is so electoral diffuse, and involved in such a
variety of unco-ordinated local and national projects
not signing the 'Appeal for Joint Work' are as follows: 1) Revolutionaries are surely capable trade union struggles, the woHOVENCE. activities, etc. without first re quiring grammatic explanation. 2) It is hard to see who will be persuaded by the Appeal to engage in joint work with the signatories, and would not have done so anyway. 3) The document does little to clarify what kind of work is to be done. Some readers may Put briefly, my reasons for | suspect (quite
PAT CROSS,
IMG.
Leeds.
CHRIS ARTHUR, dent socialist
LIZ
Socialist Teacher.
JILL HALL,
youth move-
Abortion Campaign.
VIV LACEY, CPSA executive. youth dependent socialist.
historical campaigns
'unity from below,
little public projects could come
alliances specific strengthened by got the
only on the and
co-operating
anti-racist them
3,000-word prounjustly, of
Appeal signatories
JOHN BANGS, executive of JAN the Socialist Teachers Allance.
Hull Working HILLEC.
Women's Charter Campaign, Caucus. past Socialist Unity candidate in Hull council by-election.
ROBIN BLACKBURN, New low Left Review Editorial Board,
ROD DAVEY, shop steward, TGWU 9/12 Passenger branch,
JOHN BELL, UCATT mem Alliance ber, past member of Editorial JIM POPE, Board of Building Worker.
indepen- tion group, HARRY WICKS, a founder of UTOM. the British Trotskyist move-
List Unity, CURTIS, independent MICK
TONY GRAHAM, editor of Students.
ex-SWP candidate in Ashfield by-election LIZ SUE WATKINS, recent fulltime organiser of the National Free Ireland
ex-member of
ALASTAIR RENWICK, in-
capacity.
Wouldn't it be better to base local and national joint work on the general statement and then, after a period of such
establish some national conference from which more specific national
In the meantime these local
and joint work in national movements could be
more open discussion about the sort of revolutionary organisation we are trying to build and about the problems with the Leninist model; discussion based not
classical experi ences of building revolutionary
course) that the authors tend to the not uncommon belief that revolutionary in drafting a programme setting out a number of objectives one is already working to achieve OTORCON
4) The Appeal is utopian, in that the series of aims is unre. lated to any analysis of the existing consciousness and or ganisation of the working class. some
5) The reliance on the crude old slogans of trade union bureaucracy and rank and file (a grossly oversimplified dicho- programmes tomy even in the days of the Profintern) encourages a belie that the receptivity of the work
PARKER socialist feminist, NUS women's com
Women's et
CHRIS POTTER, member of Ealing/Hammersmith/Houns-
Area Joint Union Committee, member of the past Hounslow Occupation Com-
KEN JONES, national convenor of the Socialist Teachers like
Revolution editorial board, Glasgow Revolu-
Sham Army LARRY HERMAN, Glasgow for
PAUL GALLAGHER, Social-
Glasgow for ARCHER executiv
member, National Union o
31 secretary, Wandsworth her. DAVE WHITELEY,
CURTIS independent socialist and Committee for a
ALASTAIR RENWICK, independent socialist, Committee for a Free Ireland All the above in a personal
parties in the early part of the 20th century but on the new forms of organisation which are being formed through the women's movement, through the rank and file trade union
through local socialist meeting points like socianst centres, and so on
I thought the final part of the statement, asserting a commitment to a united revolutionary organisation, as if we all knew and agreed what that meant, was insufficiently sensitive to these problems. It could therefore tend to
HILARY WAINWRIGHT
ing class to socialist politics and
struggle blocked principally by the sinister manipulations of a corrupt
This assumption has been responsible for quite enough dis astrous strategies on the left in the past half century. I can't help believing that re-thinking
of the analyses and theories which have failed us in the past is a more important task than issuing declaratory
RICHARD HYMAN
Socialist
Feminist
conference
THE SECOND national socialist feminist conference Dance for 2 March in
Arrangements for the conference are going well and a general framework for the discussion has been agreed, the emphasis of which will towards action, it is hoped.
"This WONG include an evaluation of socialist feminist ideas and organisation up to now. Most importantly, this involves looking at the present situation within British society and neasonal.
The examination of the current situation has been broken down into four main areas for discussion:
*Social policies; including education, welfare, legal changes, health, taxation, etc.
*Economic conditions; including employment, training, low pay, domestic labour.
*Struggles in communi-
including media, art, alternative practices.
*Reproduction and sexu ality; control over our bodies, including lesbianism, fertility, pornography. rape
The success of the conference depends on the active participation of groups and individuals.
The planning group would
hear anyone contributing material for workshops in the form of papers or offers to introduce discussions, even suggestions
what workshops there should be.
Practical help is also needed
food stewarding and accommodation. All papers for the conference should be in b
January typed -on A4 SECACHS
Offers of help, papers, requests for further infor mation to: SocFem Conference Planning Group, 27 Villa Rd, Brixton, London SW9. Registration forms from: 39 Parkholme Rd, London E8
Reclaiming
the night
WOMEN will not put up with violence and fear any longer. This will be the message of a national anti-rape demonstra tion called for 20 January.
On Hallowe'en last October a Reclaim the Night demon stration through Soho •Was attacked by the police. Severa women were injured and some 15 arrested.
The national demonstration has been called jointly by the defence committee for the women attacked on Hallo we'en and by the National Union of Students.
Women students have bee organising against assaults tha occur on campuses. At Susses University, for example, they demanded public telephones more high security genre self-defence classes and protection.
At the last NUS conference the strength of opinion on th issue ensured the success of a motion calling for the union to arrange and support a national Reclaim the Night demonstration.
The march will leave Leicester Square, London W1 at 6.30pm on Saturday 20 January.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 7
Page 8 scan of this page
LABOUR AND THE
absolutely vital in terms of Labourist politics.
state and the government in office.
syndicalism is, on its own, insufficient.
implement workers' control.
January
espite the pay policy being battered b
orkers at Ford, British Oxygen, an by the bakers, provincial journalists and now by lorry and tanker drivers, the Labour Government is determined to make its policy stick with the public sector manual workers.
As soon as the first formal offer of 5 per cent was made to hospital ancillary workers early last month, the leaders of the unions involved called for a national day of action.
On Monday 22 January there will be a march from Hyde Park to the House or commons and a rany mn central Hall, Westminster.
Local authority manual workers, hospital ancillaries, water ambulance workers are around a common claim for a £60 a week minimum wage.
If this claim is won. two million workers and their families will be lifted out of the poverty trap would at least restore their wages to 1974 levels.
There is little doubt that public sector workers are in an angry mood. But for the day of action to succeed in pulling out more than just the most militant sections, the union leaders have to take positive steps.
So far the leaders of the Public Employees Union, the Union, the Confederation of Health Service Employees and the General and Municipal Workers Union have done
Details of venue to follow.
Is the car industry viable?
Is there a workers' alternative?
Called by CDLM.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 8
THE DEMANDS of the public sector unions have been building up for some time and the negotiations now taking place are of great political importance. While defeat or victory at Ford could only marginally affect Labour's electoral prospects, the public sector is
Callaghan and Healey are perfectly aware of the political impact of a strike by refuse collectors, sewage workers, hospital porters, and so on. Public sector workers from the very start confront the
The state's posturing as an 'impartial mediator' is virtually excluded. The enemy is the government of the day. Thus traditional
The struggle waged by the unions in question has to develop political perspectives and
For instance, it is perfectly possible for hospital workers or elected committees to determine who is admitted and who is not. It is quite feasible for the refuse collectors to keep certain areas clean.
The opening shots
will be fired on 22
no more than call the day of action.
No trains have been booked to bring workers to London. There have been no tours of the branches building for the campaign, and there are no plans for what happens after 22 January. The problem facing the union leaders is that the Goe canteen mir landy to me government and une mintancy men memoers.
They have no alternative to the kind of policies put forward by Callaghan and Healey, so they want to avoid a head-on confrontation, especially as this is election year.
Alan Fisher, in particular, has to make some show of leading a fight, partly pressure members and partly because he has his and own reputation to maintain. Fisher built NUPE as the largest and most dominant union in the sector largely through his own left talk.
He can't afford to let this completely slide, but he is far from being willing to lead a really militant fight.
What Fisher really needs is some kind of deal with the Government which will save him face Callaghan and Healey As a step towards achieving such an agreement, Fisher away from the policy adopted at the NUPE conference for a £60 minimum wage. He has started talking about demanding comparability with other industrial workers who Transport average weekly income of £80.
Basnett of the GMWU is calling for comparability with OLIC doing similar work, but such a demand
SOCIALIST CHALLENGETRADEUNION DAY SCHOOL
on Rebuilding the Left in the Unions
Saturday 17 February 1979
Open to all supporters of Socialist Challenge in the unions.
CARS CONFERENCE
Saturday 20 January Birmingham
This is a vital conference for all militant car workers to exchange
views and information and to hammer out the socialist alternative
to the bosses offensive in Ford, Leyland, Chrysler, Vauxhall.
divide their members.
Government can
Election and its outcome.
on 22 January.
would not be suitable for NUPE, many of whose members are in traditionally low-paid work both within and outside the public sector.
At the same time as taking up this apparently more militant demand for approximately £80 a week, Fisher has been talking about such an agreement being phased in over two or three years. Certainly without an all-out national strike, which Fisher building for, there is no way that the Government would pay out increase in one instalment.
Fisher seems to be looking for an agreement like that awarded to firefighters and to the police. would mean that public sector manual workers would see nothing like a £60 minimum wage in the present round of pay bargaining.
There is another complication in this plan, which is that the Government
38011
public
and be acceptable to
has taken a turn
have an
WOrKerS
short.
In other words, the function of striking under workers' control has the objective of uniting all sections of workers behind the strike.
At the same time, the Government knows that to send in the troops to operate the sewers or clear the rubbish will appeal to the City of London but could lead to a crushing electoral defeat because of abstentions or even temporary switching of votes. Thus Callaghan will go all out to try and avoid a strike.
The union leaders are not keen on a strike either. They would prefer concessions which they can sell to their membership or use to
The question is whether afford any real concessions without totally damaging its credibility on the wage restraint front.
Thus the threat posed by the public sector becomes crucial for Labour. It could affect both the choice of date for the General
PATRICK SIKORSKI looks at the build up for the day of action
for such an
standards.
backroom talks with such an service. An
has not been that
such an
the This Such an
could be seen as "vital"
Public sector
TONY BENN tries to pull his socks up. But as the picture reveals, they're too
the Labour would want certain guarantees in return
agreement virtual promises not to strike or take other forms of disruptive industrial action in defence of jobs, conditions, or living
Union leaders are already engaged in
ministers over agreement TOT the outright attack on fundamental trade union rights is being dressed up as a 'Code of Practice' to
'vital" services are
The stated aims which Fisher concurs with are to prevent hospital stoppages which 'pose threats to life' and 'put the unions in a bad light with the public.
agreement would set precedent for the whole public sector; nearly every service that it provides
workers are not Water Year
April 1970 April 1971 April 1972 April 1973 April 1974 April 1975 April 1976 April 1977 April 1978
workers.
MOSS EVANS, General Secretary TG
Average weekly earnings of male full
NHS ancillary staff Local authorities, England and Wales Local authorities, Scotland
All manufacturing industries All industris and services Sources: New Earnings Survey and DHSS
Gap in average earnings between full-ti
andinal indus
Earnings gap, loca Source: New Earnings Survey, updated b The table shows that since 1970 successive the earnings of local authority manual wo between the contents of their pay packets
Only in 1971, following the 'dirty jobs difference between local authority earnin
Difference between n
All manual workers
Total difference €31.3
Total due to
differential hours £10.99
differential grades £16.3
Page 9 scan of this page
: PUBLIC SECTOR
me manual workers in April 1977 ay Survey for ancillary staff
e manual workers in local authorities is ana services
uthorities
ales .00
.06
ne Index of Average Earnings vernment pay policies have depressed ers, and widened the gap in cash terms nd the average pay packets of manual
rike, was there a reduction in the cash and average earnings for men.
e and female earnings
Local -manual authority manual
1.7 £20.4 £25.3
£10.2 £8.0
5.7 £3.2 £11.6
59.11
59.10 75.60 74.20 71.50 Females
—£1.
-EO.
£O.
-£1.
Engineering
ALAN FISHER, General Secretary NUPE
strongly organised - shop stewards structures are phenomenon -proposals could rob them of the little industrial strength that they gained.
To prevent the Government getting its way, the potential of 22 January must be exploited to the full- ideally it would be the beginning of strike action for the full claim.
In each of co-ordinating committees are needed. These could be set up from meetings which plan and organise the action for 22 January, and they should be firmly under the control of the membership through mass meetings.
t strike action develop then militants should fight for committees inter-union basis to be set up.
- .
Such committees could effectively answer ine problems emergency cover for life and death' services - by taking responsibility for these decisions themselves.
If the Government wants to retain any credibility for its pay policy, then it must keep the wages of the public sector workers close to 5 per cent. If it can't
By Brian Hearse
THE FEROCITY of the press response to the lorry drivers' strike is extremely instructive. "Miles of Misery', 'Britain Under Siege, "Enough', headlines pages of the popular press.
The aim of the press was clear: the
strikers were responsible for the crisis. The TV news added a new twist. It virtually implied that the strikers were responsible for the conditions. It encouraged hysteria and panic buying.
And indeed there reminiscent of Weimar Germany in some of London's suburbs as people Josted and pusned to make sure una they had bought the last packet of frozen Brussels sprouts. Manchester was worst affected and some rather
took supermarkets.
The demands of the drivers are eminently reasonable.
Transport Union leader, Moss Evans, stated that they had a watertight case. The haulage firms involved have stated that it is Government policy which is preventing them from settling.
So here we have yet another example of firms using the excuse of the Labour
Government's policies to prevent free
wage bargaining from taking place.
That is why we say that all talk of a state of emergency is merely an indication that Labour has reached an impasse.
But that is not all. It is obvious that the ruling class is seriously worried at
DOSSEDHE,
shutdown. It is determined to avoid a clash. Both polinical competing with each other to show how tough they can be.
A constipated-looking Merlyn Rees, putting on his best Irish troubles' look,
talks on TV about a state of emergency.
Margaret Thatcher talks about banning strikes in the public sector; not paying social security to strikers where there
relauvely and the Government's Other
have as local
the unions, strike
blinkered parliamentary
does spread and Democratically cross-sector, STIKe
raised around
Lorry drivers-a
dress rehearsal
All this talk
were the
adorned the front
bad weather
were scenes
The trade
place outside
Even the a good one.
and economics.
All DUDIC
public SCLEUE
parties are
turn.
control the workers it pays itself, then it will have no credibility whatsoever.
public sector workers not involved in the immediate claims. such
government white-collar workers, teachers and civil servants, should try and get their union branches to support the day of action.
If the whole public sector could be organised to fight to win now there would be a great chance for success.
But the union leaders will have to be pushed by the rank and file. They are
-Dy narrow perspective the Labour Government and so have no choice but to sacrifice their members living standards to the fifth year of responsibility in the national interest'.
run cross-union and Pay Action Committees could answer some of the questions about who suffers in a public sector strike and provide a forum for raising an alternative to the Labourism or me wraac umon icaders
The arguments that wage rises will mean cuts in services and higher rates must be countered - the fight must be for an end to all cash limits and for a sliding scale of public expenditure has been no secret ballot; and taxing social security payments.
will be multiplied a hundredfold if there is a public sector strike. What should trade THOUSA EU in the face of such an offensive?
Their traditional response has been to argue that they are simply fighting
living standards of their members. But this is no longer a simple thing. It involves a political clash with the Government. Therefore a political alternative needs to be mapped out.
To take one example. When troops are used to maintain 'essential services' it is workers and their representatives who must insist on deciding what is essential or inessential. This has already been done by the Texaco drivers. The have already determined to supply oi to hospitals, but not to industry.
are in the best position to organise these actions. First locally and then nationally.
The public sector workers should be prepared to fight for the right to decide these questions so that there can be no excuse left to bring in the troops. In that sense, the example of Moss Evans is not
Evans position seeks to institutionalise the traditional social-democratic division between politics
just carrying through the decisions of the labour movement. It's Callaghan's job to run the economy.' But if the running of a capitalist economy is awkward because of the wage claims. Ihen one becomes al ostrich, according to Moss Evans.
should carefully observe the current political and ideological offensive being waged against the lorry drivers. For they will be its next victim. And if that is the case then surely something more needs to be done than wait passively till it's their
They should seriously breaking the isolation of the lorry drivers by joining in the struggle. That would strengthen both groups of workers and defeat Callaghan's salami tactics: isolate and get them one by one.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 9
Page 10 scan of this page
How the workers
INTER/
mehr Lonn
ausyleich!
In Hörder, for instance,
wife in the
picture.
By Richard Carver
THE people of Crossroads, on the outskirts of Cape Town, are the latest to suffer the vagaries of the South African
their camp because economic imperatives of apartheid and are now threatened with eviction at the whim of the SAILC mOUSECE.
The authorities issued eviction notices to all residents last May. Since then there been many police attacks in which arrested and at least one man
Government representatives have said that "every method available to the will be used to make them move Crossroad: dents face a long struggle to keep their homes.
COMMUNAL
The first of the 20,000 squatters arrived in 1975. They were men who were attracted to the city to work but did not want to be separated from their families.
Instead they erected their own homes on waste ground, to live the social life
The ward committees of Crossroads exercise a considerable amount of communal
But the decision to live as
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 10
ONAL
Horder Travenges
Unter stitet
der Hoesch -Kou
35 - Stunden ice
ber vollem Lohn-
THE West German steelworkers' strike has just ended. One important development was a move to involve women.
La women's group started a street petition in support of the strike after an interview with a striker's
local paper attacking it. Together with the strike leadership they then organised a meeting for the strikers' wives, and have organised the joint collection of funds for the families. The women also attended the mass meetings, as shown in our
Crossroads: long-
running racism
families in Cape heart of white South Africa, is too great a challenge to the regime's racial
that blacks are citizens of "homelands' in the rural areas and simply migrate to find work.
The homelands policy ab• solves white bodies from responsibility for blacks, well as undermining the politihave cal identity of black people.
A Crossroads social worker been described the eviction thus: It is the logical application of the
resithey
Europe.
By Martin Meteyard
The demand for a shorter working week, with no loss of pay and no become so important because of the steady rise of long-term, structural unemployment.
Employers like Times Newspapers are using the economic crisis to try workforce by labour-saving technology.
Such moves are the other side of the German miracle'. In steel, for instance, no fewer than 36,000 jobs went in 1975-77. Now the workers have had enough.
The vote for strike action in the Ruhr was 87 per they cheered Rudolf Judith, a Icader or me ru-melan union when he recalled the co-operation of pre-war steel bosses with the Nazis.
'One really has the impression here, he said, that the employees are many plants as unnecessary ballast. when the economy becalmed, they can simply be ruling political and economic system. It is an example of
happens Africans deprived of political, legal fiction economical ano legal rigats -deprived of rights as human
SUPPORT government * Send telegrams of support social to ine Crossroads Committee, Cowley 126 Chapel Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa. the Crossroads Action Campaign Terrace, London NW1. Bulldozers move in to clear out Crossroads squatters.
35 hour week
THE 35-HOUR WEEK is rapidly becoming standard feature of union claims throughout Western It was recently at the heart of the first strike by German steelworkers in the Ruhr for 50 years.
the ship.'
speed-up, has
to trim the going round the clock. introducing Such
'economic Germany,
their countries of origin.
already won hours Almost 25 per -workforce industry, banks, public services regarded in
included •In Residents House,
Contact people of
Cambridge if they persist in fighting.
Rule Zimbabwe.
to threaten
Rule Government, and if
heart.
Tell your
home in peace,
babwe Security
can create jobs
go.
thrown overboard to lighten
The workers' demand for a
35-hour week, as well as a 5 per
cent pay rise, aims not only to out.
preserve jobs but to create new Yet
ones. Because steelmaking is a
continuous process, a reduc- working
tion in the working week would alternative
force the employers to take on a
"fifth team' to keep production not
"job-creation"
imposed by the working class increasingly
- is badly needed in West
where unemploy
ment is 4.3 per cent and would be much higher but for the example. shipping of tens of thousands of immigrant workers back to
In Belgium mass action has
reductions in without loss of pay. cent of the in the petroleum ACTION gas, electricity, multiple stores, and now covered by such agreements.
In Britain, too, the demand for a 35-hour week has been
most of this
THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE WANT YOUR SONS & DAUGHTERS TO COME HOME By pondent
THIS is the text of the Rhodes- IT HAS lan propaganda leaflet: We the
Zimbabwe have shown ZPRA our strength. We have shown you what we can do
times.
We want them to come nome and join in our new Majority
But we are dedicated to protect our new State, and so, if they continue
our new freedom. we will be forced to hit back HOVe away
arca
Tell Joshua Nkomo to bring Most your sons and daughters home to join in the New Majority
refuses, find a new leader who ghost villages. really has your interests at
ALERT
Life is good in Zimbabwe.
children to come home and eniov it. Cut out this FREE PASS below, and send it to them. If they wish to come
and they show this FREE PASS to the Zim-
forces, they Pikwe, will be promised a safe return.
autumn's claims. But the union
leaders' failure to campaign for
this demand has tended
mean that it is the first thing to
It was supposed to be
central part of the Ford claim.
But there was nothing about it
in the final settlement. And the
Post Office Engineers' struggle
for a 35-hour week was sold
this demand is an
elementary way of uniting the
class an TO 1 capitalist
scourge of unemployment
only Britain, but
throughout Western Europe.
The European capitalists are
operating on
multinational level. The take-
over of the Chrysler plants in
Britain by Peugeot is just one
The way to stop them using
the workforce of one country
against that of another is joint
action together.
The need for such action has
even been recognised by the
European TUC, which organ-
ised an international day of
action against unemployment last April. In Italy, Greece,
Zimbabwe:
free pass to
nowhere
Botswana corres-
been officially ians* established that since 27 De. cember 1966 Rhodesian forces have violated Botswana's north eastern border more than 31
They have attacked homes and abducted and killed people in a clear attempt to terrorise the people of Botswana into refusing help to likely freedom fighters and to force them to
from the border
inhabitants have moved away from the 500 kilometre border, leaving behind them bullet-ripped walls and
On 19 November the Botswana Defence Force was put on special alert. In blatant disregard of territorial integrity, Rhodesian military aircraft wa: flying over the towns of Selebi
Francistown and Duke, where it happens that three of the main Zimbabwean turning refugee camps are established
Belgium and Spain this was
marked by strikes and mass
meetings lasting two or three
hours
In Britain, however, all the
TUC did was to go and talk to
the government about the need
economic growth. That
must have been
consolation to the more than 6
million unemploved ir PLIC
Common Market countries!
CO-ORDINATE
We are now seeing efforts to
create new West European
institutions which
Cal. ordinate the capitalists' attempts to solve the crisis at the expense of the workforce.
One step in this is next year's European elections
This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the workers movement. The European elections can be used as a focus to put forward the idea of a different, socialist Europe one run by working people themselves in their own interests.
This would be immensely aided by common action for the shorter working week against unemployment including active support for all those like the West German steelworkers who go into struggle around this demand.
To drop bombs? After the recent raids on Zambia and Mozambique and the Rhodes-
obvious disregard for human life, it would come as no surprise.
But no, this time they were dropping leaflets urging refugees to return to enjoy what was described as peace and freedom under majority rule.
DESPERATE
This shows just how desperate the interim government has become. The refugees have already shown natune) are aware of the realities of the situation in Rhodesia by leaving the country en masse and in many cases volunteering for the guerilla forces
They know only too well that the Free Pass Back Into Zimbabwe means a free pass to almost certain death, curfews, vicious dogs, tank patrols and constant raids.
The Rhodesian government has now resorted to accusing Botswana of physically pre venting the refugees from re
and has even asked Britain to intervene.
Page 11 scan of this page
adolescent revolution'
round-table
Boudarel
The book by Jean Lacouture which has just appeared (The Cambodian People Must Survive!"] refers to "madness' of the Cambodian leadership. Isn't that a bit abrupt?
Jean Lacouture: What I have tried to explain is why the Cambodian leaders parted company with socialist reason.
The victors of 27 April 1975 suffered from an extreme weakness of cadres and of revolutionary implantation. A revolution is most prone to excesses when it feels weak and threatened, with little support among the people.
The Cambodian revolution was an improvised revolution, even though victory achieved seven or eight years after the organisation of the TESS ACC The resistance still remained very local, basically limited to the forests.
So there was a real upsurge - of the old mole, if you like -which was extremely brutal and unrestrained.
One can explain many of the actions the Cambodian leadership by the feeling improvisation, of isolation, the youth of the cadres and the fighters, the victors' feeling of floundering in a hostile sea.
Another basic explanation is that the Cambodian leadership had always been in the shadow of the Vietnamese suffered from it, and determined at any price to come out in opposition to the orientation of the Vietnamese leadership.
Very sharp conflicts were already apparent in 1954 and 1973 over the strategic choice between negotiating or carrving on fighting. From 1973 there was even the Cambodian physical liquidation of cadres who had spent any length of time in Vietnam and were thought to support the Vietnamese strategy.
Daniel Hemery: The key which allows us to understand what has been happening Cambodia is in my opinion the struggle for power. For power of the Red Khmers was very weak and local.
It seems to me that they had a VCLy serious competitor: Sihanoukism. The monarchy nad immense presuge. I tne struggle against Lon succeeded, it was because the peasants were mobilised in the name of a royal myth.
In 1975 there was a struggle for power. The Red Khmers weren't at all sure of themselves They probably mobilised the young poor peasants, but that was a fragile base all the more fragile that Vietnamese supported hanouk at the time.
It seems to me that there lies the explanation for the mass
Georges Boudarel: It is clear
WHeR coup against Sihanouk took place in 1970, the Vietnamese were the first to
INTERNATIONAL
Cambodia: the
WHAT underlies the fighting in Cambodia? A
discussion with Lacouture and historians Daniel Hemery and Georges
- all active in the Indochina solidarity
the was was the
Cambodian youth dig clay to make bricks Nol support him.
It is a fact that three-quarters of Cambodia was liberated at the end of 1970.
Khmers had nothing at all. It was the Vietnamese Battambang. They trolled Cambodia.
It was then that the return the took place of the thousand Cambodian cadres Sibeen evacuated to Vietnam in 1954.
But the situation evolved against Sihanouk. The slogan inside Cambodia become: against the third force, i.e. Sihanouk a ne Vietnamese-trained Communists, the former
journalist Jean
Khmers, those alongside the Vietminh in the struggle against French colonBut the Red ialism.
The Vietnamese say that they who were could have intervened had they
con- wisneato, and unals truc were in Cambodia in 1971 and they left; they own comrades to be killed, they who had allowed the leadership to be
North taken by those who now turn
against them.
Jean Lacouture: One could not expect much
was discipline from the Cambodian
militants, who had only just left the forest - kids of 14 or 15, who knew no other life than the
Issarek
their contributions.
who fought machine-gun
hands
illiterates, fault.
The leadership, allowed their
largely
nationalism.
revolutionary
List.
they had Vietnam
bombing and the
I movement - was recently organised by the French revolutionary daily Rouge. We reprint excerpts from
food
abroad
before.
come back roots revolution. were taxes.
Sloped slowly. even in 1965 only.
communist was Cambodian Think
Jean people were
They Party.
Vietnam,
choice;
Jean framework cooperation was made
arrangements.
long
very largely.
stuck in their
It was an adolescent revo
undergone lution a revolution of kids
and it wasn't their fate.
however, was formed in what was very view
internationalist framework. But it went back to
isn't
Never has a revolution,
We saw it recently when floods ravaged Cambodia as
and Laos.
Pol Pot refused all foreign aid.
revolutonal
It's unprecedented, to refuse another.
with
der.
sure.
and medicine for the people because it comes from
Proletarian any other kind of internationalism has been rejected as never
Daniel Hemery: I would like to Peru
to the historical of the Cambodian Cambodian communists didn't have thirty years of clandestine activit
it was a very and recent movement.
special of Cambodia in Indochina meant that all the colonisers extracted
The repression there was less harsh.
Thus the intelligentsia deve-
consciousness very They isolated, WELC — a few hundred
The Cambodian peasantry Was not impregnated like the Vietnamese peasantry by the
movement. There nihilist aspect the revolutionaries. what would have happened with the Russian nihilists in power!
Lacouture: But these Marxists, they claimed to adhere to Marxism.
created a Communist
To justify their policy towards
the Cambodian leaders explain that they had no
Vietnam's wish dominate Indochina left them HO CHICLE DUELO STUPHIC UI become dependants as in Laos.
Lacouture: So, in the of COCHICSC or a federation, the amoodlans nacto choose between the system imposed on the Laotians and their own rabid ultra-nationalism?
But Laos is a 'non-existent' country! There is a completely respectable Laotian people, but there has never been a Laotian state. It was invented under the occupation, at Vichy in 1941. It
Run from this and that, one of the worst colonial
But Cambodia is a completely coherent nation, with a
history, unified language, a culture, a religion and priests which also unity it
The Cambodians can't say to us that unless they had done what they did they would have
Not the Laotians today — which is, in my opinion, a typically colonial
have all sorts reservations from this point of
on the Vietnamese strategy, even if it is to defend themselves vis-d-vis China. But
serious for the Cambodians to say that they could have been colonised
There were possibilities for cooperation between the Vietnamese and Cambodians, as
to one nation with another, one
group with
IN BRIEF
Sabata for trial JAROSLAV Sabata, a spokesperson for the Charter 77 human rights manifesto in Czechoslovakia, goes on trial this week accused of insulting a government official.
The alleged incident took place last October when police broke up a Charter meeting
the Polish Workers Defence Committee (KOR) on the Polish-Czechoslovak bor-
The original charge was one of assaulting a police officer. It is believed to have been reduced because of international pres
Sabata, who is 52 and has suffered two heart attacks, faces a prison sentence of up to a year.
Peruvian strike A GENERAL strike started in
on Tuesday despite attempts at intimidation from the government. The country's military rulers have declared a state of emergency, suspended all constitutional guarantees
banned a of political weeklies
The strike is 1n protest against the government's economic policies and planned to go on for three days. Free Ben Bella HOUARI Boumedienne, the Algerian dictator, is dead. He played a useful role for imperialism by eliminating those sections of the FLN leadership who were inspired by the model of revolutionary Cuba.
Their leader was Ahmed Ben Bella, a charismatic figure who planned to move Algeria leftwards. His weakness lay in his failure develop any strategy for mass mobilisations to settle political accounts with the right wing of the FLN.
This proved to be a fatal error. He was overthrown by a military coup and imprisoned in 1965. Boumedienne took his place. Ben Bella has been kept under house arrest for thirteen years.
A campaign for his release has been launched in France and should be supported by all socialists. Any openings in the political situation could see his
major political leader.
German steelworkers THE German steelworkers strike ended too late to be covered in our article on the opposite page. The settlement was something of a setback for the struggle for a 35-hour week.
The strikers won only a four per cent pay rise and, instead of a reduction in the working week, the union leaders cooked up a deal over annual holidays.
Defend Astrid Proll THE extradition proceedings against Astrid Proll have resumed at Lambeth magistrates court in south London. Supporters of the West Ger man, a former member of the Red Army Fraction who faces charges of attempted murder and robbery, had their cars searched by police.
A picket outside the court demanded that Proll be allowed
stay in Britain and condemned her detention in the men's prison at Brixton.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 11
Page 12 scan of this page
Burntollet march
Bid to ban contraception for singles
IRELAND
ROBERT OVEREND (with shotgun) and would-be murderer.
DUBLIN demo for contraception rights last month
by Tomas Marlowe
OPPOSITION is mounting in the South of Ireland to the Irish government's proposed restricting the Sale availability of contraception.
The Bill is the most savage attack democratic women's rights that has been launched by the present Fianna
government. Measures proposed include:
GLASGOW
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 12
the Loyalist statesperson *Sales of contraceptives will be made only to those with prescriptions or written authorisation signed by registered Bill medical practitioners. and *The doctor issuing prescriptions must be satisfied that the person concerned is using the and contraception for 'bona tamily planning purposes'. The assumption is that this means that the person concerned will nave to be married.
BLOODY SUNDAY COMMEMORATION
Demonstrations 28 January
LONDON — organised by Provisional Sinn Fein
Movement
year message' on 2 January.
By Geoff Bell
The march itself left Belfast
on Friday
arrived at
January. It marked the tenth
anniversary of a similar march
which was viciously ambushed
Burntollet Loyalists and members of the
*B' Specials — the predecessors
the Ulster
Regiment
In his speech, Mason said:
"Ten years ago, as we all remember, beginnings of violence and civil disturbance.
Those who marched demonstrated thereafter did so in the name of civil rights. Many of them were genuine in their concern for these issues and were concerned «DOU grievances, perceived, for
FREE LEGAL CONTRACEPTION
NOW
*The advertising and display of contraceptives banned.
*Penalties for offences under the Bill would range from six months in jail and a E500 fine to a year's imprisonment and a nine or 13.000. fide The Bill, introduced by Health Charlie Haughey, is an attempt by the government to clarity the existing confusion - organised by the United Troops Out
LABOUR's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, made criticism of last week's Burntollet commemoration marchers a major theme of his 'new
sought redress.
January and time their banners Burntollet on
treatment for a few. bridge by
Defence human rights
Mason's
the odW achievements. land my and weathered 1969 and boasted
Seamus Mallon. real or which they will be ColTaLCDEVes.
tion.
BIGOTRY which Was Minister of January.
are essentially EDICSSUEC from
legislation
Mason attacks
to une real
Mason's
*But what are the aims of those who march today? This
are TOI asking for equal treatment for all citizens of Northern Ireland.
They are demanding special
*And who are they support- for 800 years ing? Men who have shown by oldest colony. their actions a contempt for the
ordinary people in Northern Ireland.'
Danger the marchers was accompanied by his usual claims about his own
history. ministers have the storms', he remarks which brought heavy criticism from the Chief Whip of the Social Democratic and Labour Party,
The latter complained: At every level of political activity
and settlement.?
ment's Burntollet march.
march, march
The
Overend
around the sale and use of impressively
oeuvre, using
But the measures proposed by Haughey will further restrict the availability of contracep-
helicopters.
Leading the opposition to the new measures is the Contraception Action Programme, who in December defied the existing forced to legislation when they opened a shop in Dublin providing the open sale of contraceptives.
The shop is still operating, armoured cars. and CAP will be organising a demonstration in Dublin on 29 ABUSE
The government's proposals
the result of the Catholic Church. Haughey is allegedly one of the most Republican' of statesperson Fianna Fail ministers, but his
reflects greater allegiance to Catholic bigotry than to Irish Republicanism.
the Northern Ireland office has
shown an arrogant indifference
problems facing
Northern Ireland.'
speech was also
attacked by Sheffield Labour
MP Joan Maynard. Referring
to Mason's remarks about the violence starting ten years ago,
she told Socialist Challenge:
If he believes that he can't know much about the turbulent
history of Ireland and Britain's
part in it. We have been there
- Ireland is our
THUGGERY
*The violence and thuggery
we have perpetrated against
Ireland is a black record in our
Will behoves
Mason to talk of human rights
when you look at our history in
Ireland, and at what we are
doing at the present time. first
*Mason and the government,
like the Tories, have no policy
for Ireland except repression.
The violence will continue until
we set a date for withdrawal
work for political
Maynard's comments about Mason's policy of repression were reflected in the govern-
handling the commemorative
Two nights before the march lican started the RUC visited one of the principal organisers of the People's Democracy The RUC Michael Farrell informed Farrell that the police would stop the demonstrators
Police riot again
From Ronan Brady
UNDER pressure from Robert Overend (Loyalist Convention member and local counchor, the Burntollet commemoration
was banned from Bellaghy, a small almost totally Catholic Antrim village.
Was local opposition', but the course of the march was to show that the only opposition came from
and his family.
The marchers refused
the ban. In an organised mandecoy and COME local geographical knowledge, we fooled nearly a thousand police who were using two army
By taking to the lanes and then to the fields, we left the RUC thugs well behind.
As we reached the last field outside Bellaghy, we saw that the army and police had been
occupy small town with massive forces in order to try to keep us out. The main street was filled with
army
It was at this point that Overend re-entered the picture. We had unknowingly occupied his field, and this impressive
running from his farmhouse with a gun.
Hurling abuse at us he fired a shot, and only the fact that the police then rushed to protect
from entering the towns of
Bellaghy, Claudy, and part o
Maghera.
Farrell told Socialist Chal-
lenge that his RUC visitors had
made it clear that the ban was
being because of
pressure from Mason and local
BOVAISES
The whole situation bears a
remarkable resemblance to the
original Burntollet march.
When the Loyalists am-
bushed the march ter years
ago, they did with the
connivance of the RUC, who
had been chatting and joking
with the ambushers just before
the bottles, rocks and sticks
were hurled at the civil rights
demonstrators.
As a statement from the
Commemoration Committee
of last week's march said: "Ten
years ago, RUC collaboration
with Loyalist harassment of the world the rottenness of the march exposed to
Northern state. Ten years on,
the authorities have evidently
learned nothing.
WITHDRAWAL Those mme oratio int
weeks Commemorado!
cluded: a number of Relatives Action Committees, the Trade
Union Campaign Against
Repression, the Irish Repub-
Socialist Party, and People's Democracy.
Provisional Sinn Fein with-
drew its support for the march
because the Commemoration
Committee had notified the
RUC of the intended route
this thug saved him from a premature end to his political career.
The police then pulled their guns and rioted — no doubt to remind uS how little has changed in ten years. Michael Farrell, one of the march organisers, was among those beaten up.
In the whole affray the police succeeded in arresting only two people. Neither of them was the attempted murderer called Overend.
But the final touch was yet to
Special Patrol Group of the RUC was sent into the field and surrounded the marchers.
We sat down and refused to move; demands to be allowed into the local hall where people had prepared food for us were refused. The only answer from the police was to raise their guns against us.
We then decided to occupy a piece of road nearbv. As we formed up there, the march organisers pointed out that we were within the limits of the town of Bellaghy.
In spite of massive police and
harassment we had reached Bellaghy and fooled Mason!
And when we bedded down in Maghera ten miles later, we noted that our march had grown in numbers trom lo people to 250, despite the arrests, the assaults, and the sheer exhaustion
Page 13 scan of this page
Marxist theory and
THE basic attitude of the Russian revolutionary movement to Marxist theory was well illustrated in a story told by the Bolshevik Krupskaya in her book Memories of Lenin:
Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin] and ecalled a simile that I somewhere: Once when walking, he spotted in the distance the figure of a man squatting on his haunches and moving his hands about in an absurd way; a madman, he thought - but on drawing nearer, he saw that it was a man sharpening his knife on the paving-stone.
*It theoretical controversies. from aside, they do not seem worth quarrelling about, but once the gist is graspea, it is reansca wat une matte is of the utmost importance.' (p84) rich rapidly become apparent to which rapidly become apparent anyone coming into contact with Marxism.
At first glance, Marxist theory does freouenty sound like abstract squabbling. 'United Front', *Popular Front', 'reductionism', 'revisionism', labour and labour power', and innumerable other pieces of apparently incomprehensible jargon dot the pages of Marxist works.
Yet any knowledge of the history of the working class shows that these 'abstract" questions
in IdeL had importance.
PHRASE
Take the dispute between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks Russia — between what became the revolutionary and lutionary wings of the working class movement. This first appeared in the form of a difference around a single phrase in the party rules concerning whether a member was one engaged in "personal participation in one of the party organisations' or one who *renders it regular personal assistance
organisations".
Similarly, the struggle Trotsky and Stalin fundamental form on the apparently ultra-abstract question of whether it was possible to build socialism in one country or not.
So why have the most tremendously important struggles in working class movement inseparably bound up with questions of 'abstract theory"? To answer that it is necessary to go back and look at the nature of revolutionary theory itself.
When Marx and Engels developed their positions, adopted the term Socialism' to describe their theories. This was not merely a grand phrase but exactly expressed the relation of their theories to material reality. As
SURPLUS VALUE
The first two articles in this series looked at the contrasting paths taken by the Russian and British working class movements. The Russian movement, historically characterised by its extreme interest in what Lenin referred to as the 'last word' in international revolutionary theory, overthrew capitalism in one-sixth of the world. The British movement, characterised by its national insularity, disregard
Engels explained in *Herr Heinzen Nadezhda
principle as its core and Tolstoy used Heinzen is
movement; IL
p303)
FACTS with
socialism. •Yel
Marxism will rapidly find out. mere
'economism,
expressing ESCH
different' movement contradiction theories.
facts of reality.
JF] is nothing. in material world human mind and translated counter-revop 19)
In Communist Manifesto:
between that would be universal assumed its They terms, actual relations
La historical movement under our very Engels. Collected the p498) been QUIBBLE
by Marxism. approach loved in first height of impracticality. they *Scientific
that on the state.
The position
criticising the German theorist Karl Heinzen:
imagines communism is a certain doctrine which proceeds from a definite theoretical
draws further conclusions from that. Her
very much mistaken.
Communism is not a doctrine but a
proceeds not from principles but from facts.' (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol 6,
rapidly
A socialist system basing itself on the facts of reality. That was what Marx and Engels meant by scientific
they based their positions on facts, Marx and Engels obviously brought about a tremendous revolution in socialist theory — reality. as anyone who has tried to read Capital or any other major work of
For the British tradition, technically known as "empiricism', this relation of facts and theory is an insuperable problem. That tradition counterposes facts and theories
such everyday phrases as 'that's all very well in theory, but in reality it's
In reality, however, there is no
betweet tacts and Theory precisely someting waich renecis, or i raist Class: fails to reflect, the real forces and
As Marx put it, 'the ideal [theory
else than the reflected by the into itself forms of thought'. (Capital, Vol 1,
In short the theories of Marxists are nothing other than the reflections of the material reality of the class
the words of the
*The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or
reformer.
CHOOSI In general springing from an existing class struggle, from
going on eyes. (Marx and Works, Vol 6,
Compared with the forces analysed for
sense'
CLIC -COlOn Britain is the
This can be seen in one of the most famous theoretical debates' in the history of the workers movement -
of Marxism, put forward in Marx's The Civil War in
France and given its classic statement in Lenin's The State and Revolution is that the state apparatus German Social Democratic capitalism must be -Smashed. Kautsky, however, argued that the state machine must be 'taken over' or "transformed'.
"Smash' or "transform'? It might seem an obscure quibble over words
at the reflected in these terms, then it
becomes obvious something far more is involved the realion of a force of taundreds o thousands of people with tanks, guns, atomic bombs, law courts, the army, the police, etc. The debate about "transforming or "smashing' the state is not about words but about how that tremendous armed force and apparatus will act in
When the socialist positions of the working class achieve a majority, will the army quietly dissolve? Will the capitalists surrender their wealth? Will Prince Charles meekly pack his bags and leave Buckingham Palace? VIOLENT
Or, on the contrary, will every single weapon which the bourgeois class has at its disposal be turned against the oppressed in one final violent ALICHIDE maintain the power and wealth of the capitalist
That is far from being an abstract debate about words. it is literally a life and death question for millions of pethe working class does prepare
beforehand, if propaganda and organisation among the rank and file soldiers against the officers, if it arms and organises the ranks of the working class, then historical experience shows that the capitalist state can be smashed and
eared be read men same,
such as Chile under Pinochet Germany under Hitler show only too clearly what will happen.
REALISTIC
In Chile, country with population only one-fifth that Britain, over 20,000 people murdered by the army within six months of the military takeover of September 1973. That is equivalent to 100,000 people - one in every three shop stewards in the country
example - being executed in Britain.
In Germany, the fascist takeover milioner led and hundreds ot
Jews hundreds thousands of trade unionists and socialist activists, and the unleashing of a world war in which 50 million people were killed.
of Marxist theory, and obsession with 'bread and butter'
overthrowing capitalism in Britain today.
of these labour movements and their historical fates.
The people who led the working class to those terrible slaughters precisely prepared these catastrophe
The y rejecting armed resistance to th leader ruling class under the banner that the
capitalist SLALC formed".
This is what is involved in the "quibble" over apparatus of the capitalist class must De "taken over'.
that be organised to defeat the attempted
armed counter-revolution bourgeois class, defenceless to be capitalism's heel in the name of 'taking over' the state?
That is a far powerful reality than the day-to-day "practical' questions which dominate the majority tradition of the British labour movement.
That - is why Russians were working class to power while the 'practical' CRITICA defeats. The Russians, 2 pm
makes
Name..
Address
were
the British labour
movement
thoroughly defeated in the General Strike of 1926 and is still very far from
This article looks at the connection between the two different traditions
but towards it.
The forces could be "trans-
ment whether the state
whether it can be dues collection, Will the working class
of the form of or will it be led completely crushed under with
bigger and more
forces the "theoretical' able to lead the because achieved only -In their
THE ALTERNATIVE IN WESTERN EUROPE
One-day school on Eurocommunism and revolutionary strategy in the West Introduced by ERNEST MANDEL and followed by discussion 10am Economic Policies of Eurocommunism and the Socialist Alternative
The State and Revolutionary Strategy Saturday 13 January, 10am-5pm
Holborn Assembly Rooms, London (2 minutes from Holborn tube)
Tickets £1.50 at the door or in advance from Socialist Challenge, PO Box 50, London N1 2XP.
Please supply ........ tickets at £1.50 JUJUL HIGH HOLRORA
questions, was obsession with what Lenin called the "last word" in revolutionary theory, were not turning away from reality
reflected in thei theories — the state, political parties, the trade unions, economic develop
were the overwhelming powerful forces of reality. The so called 'real issues' of the British
administrative efficiency as an end in itself, day-to-day economic struggles as the highest
class conflic were insignificant compared the forces dealt with in the Russians' 'abstract theory'.
The theory of the Russians was the sole realistic and practical approach, Most firmame basic on ental most fundamentall
at work concentration on 'day-to-day que tions was and is totally unrealisti Bondamental and powerful face ignored which shape reality.
Labe Str Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 13
Page 14 scan of this page
LETTERS
How con
descending!
YOUR 'Open Forum' on other revolutionary traditions (16 November) was the worst form of condescension. In asking that question one would have expected either concrete examples or a debate. But no! Your only
'proof that non-Trotskyists can be revolutionists is that Trotsky said so
Similarly, the article by Cannon on splits and regroupment was from the narrow Trotskyist standpoint. On the failure of reunification with some other group all he could say was: *After seven years... changed their position on the Soviet Union.'
Trotsky defines sectarianism (in the Transitional Programme) as socialists who have only convinced themselves of their socialist programme. Most "Trotskyists' suffer from just this today.
TONY SHARP [Liverpool]
Rank and file
in NALGO
KATY Gold's comments (4 January) on my article on the social workers' strike and her accusation of 'political inaccuracies' cannot be allowed to pass without a reply on some aspects
1. Since we knew right from 29 November that talks on a national deal were to continue, the NALGO leadership's juggling with about whether the original deal was "not accepted' or "rejected' is of no real importance. If we can force them to 'not accept' a further national deal we will be doing very well.
2. I did not vote against the call for a strike on 29 November. I abstained in fact on the call — which was for a "national one-day strike'. It seemed to me that such a call, made by 120 people (not 250), failure, and would only show our weakness rather than our strength.
This turned out to be true, as only two branches in the whole country took strike action. Also the date for the 'strike' was introduced in the most appallingly undemocratic fashion — leaving no time at all for discussion about it.
3. The standing conference strike committees is very definitely "accountable to the rank and file'. Delegates report back weekly to strike committees/mass meetings, and in most cases are re-elected weekly or subject to instant recall.
Katy's allegation that it is not a 'rank and file' body is based on the strange idea held by some NALGO Action Group members that delegate bodies have no place in rank and file organisation. Such a view is surely closer to anarchism than revolution-
HE DEADLN tor this column 1 micday the Saturday Detore DuDlicaTion
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Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 14
taste
Mary Marxism they had not
longer in NAG. the NALGO Action Group.
NALGO activists think? — Eds.
Unity with
non-
words
JOHN Ross's article
SONICS was doomed to
This articles what Trotskyism is. Simply revolutionary at a
unite: of
Opposition,
La stone emphasis).
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4. NAG is in fact a rank and file political current in NALGO (one of several) and not 'the union's rank and file group'. It has proved by and large to be hostile to the unity of the left in NALGO. That is one of the reasons why I, and many other people, are no
Whilst it is true that the strike needs to be supported by other unions and departments, those of us who are on strike have been working to do this for months. It is, of course, a lot easier just to talk about it than to do it, and there are no magic ingredients to be called upon in this task - least of all the incantation of the name of
PETE CRESSWELL [Liverpool]
*What do other social workers and
not
Trotskyists
Trotskyists be revolutionaries? nly "Can November) manages to tell us a lot of
but very little conclusions And he still hasn't explained in any of
because particular time does not automatica lv mean we unite with it. John gives the example from Trotsky's writings of the Bordigists.
But if he flicks back a few pages Trotsky explains why they shouldn't
"To take upon ourselves so much as a shadow of responsibility for the tactical view's of the Bordigists would mean for the International
very first instance our German section, to hang
around its neck' (my
There are no timeless formulas. It is one thing to co-exist with Bordigists in elitist, a mass party (e.g. the Communist parties in the early 1920s) but quite another to be common members of a
- which is what every far left group in Britain is
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At the other end of the scale are the situations where new parties alignments form out of the major events of the class struggle. Thus the Comintern established drawing together all those supported the October revolution and saw the need to construct a International. WaS after parties had been formed that the political fight was waged to transform them into Bolshevik parties, capable of leading the working class and oppre was this er
method that expressed by James Cannon in a letter, of which extracts were printed below John's article: "It appears to me
the movement, in all its branches and affiliations and independent sectors, is in a process of fermentation and re-examination of the problems of party-building. That puts a serious discussion on the agenda. And that, in turn, can lead to a broader eventual re-unification of the international Trotskyist forces, and others who do
yet recognise themselves Trotskyists' (p.77, my emphasis.
There are therefore two questions on our agenda today: (1) Is there any basis for separate organisations for those claiming to be Trotskyist today? (2) At the present time is there any non-Trotskyist group with whom we can unite? In answer to John's question we must say: 'Yes, world scale the only consistently revolutionary current is that grouped around the banner of the Fourth International, of Trotskyism'. MARK TURNBULL (Liverpool)
Theory and
practice
WE MUST defend ourselves from the insulting and backward letter from S Kerry (7 December). Kerry accuses us of "intellectual elitism' and 'talking above the workers'. Kerry is the
however, by saying anything than the mundane should be 'set aside for the confines of some theoretical organ, suggesting that ideas be kept away from the working class.
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On the contrary, unify theory and practice is in
and classical tradition of Marxism.
support can be gleaned from the Marxist tradition position, which, rather, is an effusion who from the economist/syndicalist and
politically underdeveloped tradition
new of the British labour movement these In the early 20th century, the page
of the German SPD organ Neue Zei reverberated with just such polemic: as we see in Socialist Challenge today, but on a much vaster scale.
Kerry seems to be unaware that the
was aim of our movement is the creation
of a radically new form of civilisation that transcends the divisions between theory and practice, work. Gramsci was well aware of this when he argued for the formation of "organic working class intellectuals to defend socialist democracy and to maintain the politicisation of the class during periods when we cannot be nourished by the bread and butte issues of economic struggles alone.
Contrary to Kerry's
Lenin didn't need to be reminded of this point: Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary This idea insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable opportumism goes nand in nana witn an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.
STEVE SMITH, JOE
on a (Hull)
Future of
ANL
I WAS rather taken aback to read Colin Talbot's report' of the Anti Nazi League working council meeting, as well as the report on the ANL trade union conference (7 December) The meeting was not called to discuss whether there should be a recall conference or not. It was discussing the state of the ANL and various areas of work. There was a useful
that discussion on the state of the NF and mOst other fascist organisations, and from
the local reports it was clear that many local ANLs were beginning to take up anti-racist issues in the localities.
At the end there was a resolution
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moved from Birmingham and Mersseyside to have a recall ANL confer-
The motivation was that the steering committee was undemocrati and accountable to no-one; that two major initiatives had been rather badly cocked up (Remembrance Day and Brick Lane); and that we need a clear line on immigration controls. Unfortunately none of those criticisms related to trade union work, nor were they drawn out of the previous discus. sions that had taken place.
I voted for a recall conference be cause I believe that if people think that the steering committee is un democratic let us have it out in the open - and a more democratic steering committee would help not because of what happened at Brick
There are problems with the ANL The major one, it seems to me, is that it is in danger of running out of steam, given that the General Election wasn't called. Now this problem is not going to be solved by a national conference No-one (even Socialist Challenge) ha: been able to map out a clear strateg)
in practice, with or without a line on immigration controls that deals with trade union work black self-defence, no platform, wo
I believe that the crucial problem with the ANL is not whether to have a nanonal conterence or not, bur wnal is the way that the ANL can take forward the struggle against racism and fascism in Britain today, carrying with it as many of the people that it has attracted over the past 8-10
I would suggest that Socialist Challenge, recognising the problems that local CARFs and ANLs have, opens up its pages for such a discussion on
ANNA REESE (Coventry)
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Page 15 scan of this page
The only good alien
Science Fiction
degree of civilisation of that society.
LeGUIN, a leading science fiction author.
The women's movement has made most of us conscious of ne ee arsoence neon nas either totally ignored women, or presented them as squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters — or, at best, loyal little wives or mistresses accomplished heroes.
Male elitism has run rampant in science fiction. But is it only male elitism?
the *subjection women' in science fiction merely a symptom of a whole wnich is autnonanan, powerworshipping, intensely parochial?
The question involved here is the question of. The Other the being who is different from yourself. This being can be ciTereILTOn YoU HS SCx D! its annual income; or its way of speaking and dressing doing things; or in the colour of its skin; or the number of its CUS anCaUs
were
dynamite'
By Carl Gardner
THAT THE media are racist is unquestionable. Indeed would surprising it the media institutions alone could escape the generalised racism CHaCIC In white British society.
However, oppose that racism effectively, the important thing to understand is not that they are racist, but how they are racist
For the media - and TV in particular - don't just reflect racism like a mirror, or let it shine through like a window. The media subtly recreate and represent it in a novel media form.
Therein lies their power.
This process does not consist simply of a preponderance of overtly racist utterances; in BeW ae CuCidc dd rate they are relatively rare.
Racism resides instead in a whole series of codes conventions presentation which Have become totally
UNDER REVIEW
is a dead alien'
ONE of the great early socialists said that the status of women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the
If this is true, then the very low status of women in science fiction literature would make us ponder about whether we are civilised at all, writes URSULA K
sexual Alien, and the social Alien, and the cultural Alien, and finally the racial Alien.
Well, how about the social Alien in science fiction? How about in Marxist terms, proletariat?
Where are they in science fiction? -Where are the poor, the people who work hard and go to bed hungry? Are they ever persons in science fiction?
Tney anonymous masses from giant slime-globules from the Chicago sewers, or dying off by the billions рониноп or radianon, Faceless armies being battle by generals SLdLCSHICH In sword and sorcery they behave like the walk-on parts in a school performance of The and Chocolate Prince.
Now and then there's a busty lass honoured by the attentions of aOnE them
In other words, there is the the Captain of the Supreme
Were black,
were white,
'naturalised" in the media personnel and viewers alike.
Such conventions are seen simply as the "best' probably ways reporting on race.
These conventions of racist caH de LO0 HunICIOus LU list here - a forthcoming BBC TV Open Door programme by the Campaign Against Racism in the Media, to be broadcast in March, will be them in detail (provided it isn't SuOOrCSSCO)
Besides you can all probably spot some of the more obvious ones the preponderance of white reporECIS and experts the supposed 'problem" blacks is just the most basic.
But when a series programmes comes which breaks almost all the normal rules and conventions or acanng wih race on then it is worth commending.
And from the first notes of the Tom Robinson
Terran Command, space-ship crew there's a quaint old cook, Swedish accent, the Wisdom of the Folk.
The people in science fiction -BOI people. masses, existing purpose: to be led by their superiors.
From a social point of view most science fiction literature has been incredibly regressive the and unimaginative.
All those Galactic Empires, taken straight from the British Empire of 1880.
All those planets — with 80 trillion miles between them conceived of as warring nation-
Vast,
fleeing exploited, or to be nudged by
Denevolent towards
from LICHL the
Burden all over again.
The Rotary Club on Alpha and Centauri, that's the size of it. What about the cultural and racial Other?
It is the Alien everybody recognises as alien, supposed to special science fiction; it's in the old who pulp science fiction; it's very
simply: the only good alien is a dead alien - whether he is an eyes of
and of analysing
overwhelming
discussing
of intro lo the -of credits,
along series Our People,
tonight (Thursday) at 10.30 pm, is quite simply the most
TV, devastatingly radical TV vision
of race and racism which has brightened our screens to date. musical The first two programmes
For ln a German dentist. with a Scots or And this
representing flourishes:
Common Niven's Moon' (in
They are for one that America, faref course, Europeans and
It is interesting
function is to say Oooh! to be resourceful hero.
CU UHCLU
OCE UI another person, if yosun
self-developWhite Man's
human reality. of You have
COnCCII
thing,
relationship. final fading Thames TV's six-part
SEdENEY crime and education.
One of the
pop' with Canada, (
Alderbaranian Mantis-Man, or
tradition still witness Larry SLOY *Inconsistent All the Myriad Ways, 1971) which has a happy ending - consisting of the fact
including Los Angeles, was not hurt by a solar This
La few million Asians were change fried, but that doesn't matter, it just makes the world a little safer for democracy, in fact
that the female character in the same sometimes story is quite brainless: her only warning,
Oh? and complacently. the clever and
If you deny any affinity with
For kind of you declare it to be ethical wholly different from yourself — as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation you may hate it, or defy it; but capitalism in either case you have denied its spiritual equality, and its
fiction made it into a which the only possible relationship is a power
CANO thus you have fatally impoverished your:l then at the bottom the poor, the begin by debunking the racist myths surrounding the rate of
jobs, housing, footage best uses of CeRETe interviews with whites is a 'vox
immigrants from New Zealand and animals. Australia: "It was easy to get
own reality. You have, in fact, alienated yourself.
tendency has been remarkably strong in American science fiction. The only social
presented Dy most science fiction literature has been towards authoritarianism, the domination of ignorant masses by a powerful elite
presented as but often quite
Socialism is never considered
alternative, and democracy is quite forgotten. Military virtues are taken as nity
Wealth assumed to be a righteous goal and a personal virtue.
Competitive free-enterprise
economic destiny of the entire Galaxy.
In general, American science of
has assumed permanent hierarchy of superlors and intenors, with rich, ambitious, aggressive males at the top, then a great gap, and
the in', "no trouble at all', I just walked through'
This is set against chilling
from the detention at Hounslow, where black immigrants are talked to through the fence-wire like zoo
The dark Satanic mills of
uneducated, the faceless masses, and all the women.
I think it's time science fiction writers and their readers! stopped daydreaming about a return to the
Oueer Victoria and started thinking about the future
would like to see the Baboon Ideal replaced by a little human idealism and some serious consideration of such radical, futuristic concepts as Liberty, Equality and Frater-
And remember that about 53 percent of the Brotherhood of Man SEnE Sisterhood of Woman Books by Ursula K LeGuin: The Dispossessed (95p); The Left Hand of Darkness [60p]; City
Illusions [50p]; Nebula Award Stories II [95p]; Plant of Exile [60p].
All available from The Other Bookshop, 328 Upper Street London N1. Add 10% if ordering by mail.
Blake's Lancashire are 200000 much same BATOT Asian workers on permanent night-shift working for a little as £47 for a 48-hour week
The third programme places
StudIol of immigrants firmly -ENE European context. The super-exploitation of million migrant workers, living in barracks or shanty-towns with no demo cratic rights, has formed the backbone of the EEC economies since SEAT mid-fifties.
Programmes five and six home in on the growth racism and the National Front Using the April ANL Carniva
Hackney as its starting point, the final half-hour is a
heartening celebration anti-racist activity in the East End and elsewhere
Flashbacks to Cable Street and interviews with antiMosley veterans underline the tradition.
Anti-racist journalists on
ancal pa pers talk abow, thei
JOcal
policy: "How, as a journalist in a multiracial area, can you sit on the fence?' No anxious quaims about press freedom' or 'objectivity' there
Young schoolkids — *We're black, •WETC white. dynamite' - describe their CITOrIS against racism school
All in all it's positive, it's euphoric, it's possibly a trifle over-confident but as a series of images, a collection of voices and a cogent, anti-racist argument, you won't see hear anything else like it on TV for a long time "Our People', in six_ parts. begins on ITV tonight 10.30pm.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 15
Page 16 scan of this page
CAMBODIAN REGIME
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had been expected for some time.
Pot government was mourned by no one.
By Tariq Ali
While the Vietnamese were clearly involved in removing unis regime, mere is no doudl that the Cambodian United Front for National Salvation does have local support. Its programme will enable it to win turner acccolance as Illiteras
ICYCESC the draconian measures of its predecessors.
In its communiqué, the Front PHNOM PENH, in the rush hour
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'Socialist Challenge'. Complete and return to: Socialist Challenge, 328/9 Upper Street, London NI.
Socialist Challenge
COLLAPSES
THE FALL of the Pol Pot government in Cambodia
Despite the crocodile tears of some Western analysts (obsessed with a cold war hatred of the Soviet Union) a few left-liberals and Peking, the departure of the Pol
pledged to permit people to to their villages and TOWIS Dal compulsory riages; and institute a 48-hour working week.
This last measure reduce the working time of Cambodians by getting on for 50 per cent! The Front has also promised to reinstitute ments for work carried out.
Thus there can be little doubt that for the overwhelming
OUR FUND DRIVE
statement, from the 1962 Royal Commission on the Press, would respectfully draw to the attention of our readers.
Like so much of the press, our cover price would need to be something present level if we were to be able to fund Socialist Challenge out of this source of revenue We do not, however, have a this massive subsidy from capital-
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Cheques, POs and Money Orders should be made payable to
majority of Cambodians the departure of Pol Pot, leng Sary and mrienas will come as an immense relief.
It is ironic that a regime which refused Western aid to deal natural disasters appealing for United Nations troops to Cambodia. clearest indication yet that the Chinese extend their solidarity beyond would brave words.
Why did the intervene at this time? The HOSI pay- reason the destabilising impact of Cambodia on Indochina as a whole.
It was the Vietnamese who ists in the form of advertising we revenue to make up for the shortfall; though readers may disagree with their lordships of the Royal Commission about the editorial indifference like twice its Fleet Street to the bribes of big business.
In short, dear reader, our *supplementary income' is primarily your good self, with whom -our relationship remote nor impersonal.
But you did not do us very
the first of the new financial quarter.
The total we received was £95.40 - barely half the weekly sum the fund drive needs if we are to make the total of 2,500 in the 13 weeks of this quarter.
Much of our hope for the future vested
teacher militant Bernard Regan. Their loss is our gain.
Sponsorship so far means nearly E10 for the fund drive for every pound in weight thai he loses. Keep the sponsorship
from
to Vietnam
accept ворсинь with
is now
negotiations intervene in would do the trick This latter is the
appear to
Vietnamese massacred.
particular
important continuing
Sunday. logic.
force revolution.
countryside.
Through
blown up in their faces.
Socialist the fat, Bernard!
some of our
of played published in Xmas
the players. source
we hope. to Diplomacy,
neither
Anon S. Taylor JR Coward Anon C Harpum SC sale of books A nOn Jo Hammond
in the Charlie van Gelderen tissues of Middlesex supporters
Jane Shallice R Hurcombe Anon Left Overs game Melvyn Holdsworth TOTAL
took the bulk of the refugees
Cambodia. Tens of thousands of Cambodians fled
escape the barbarism of the Cambodian
For five years the Vietnamese had held back, hoping that
and patience
In the meantime all the Cambodian guerrillas trained by the Vietnamese to fight the United States, together with most of their leaders, were
Ultimately the Vietnamese helped to organise the resistance in Cambodia and delivered the final blow last
The Vietnamese-Cambodian elections, war, the Sino-Vietnamese conflict, the Sino-Soviet dispute must, however, all be seen restraints, etc. within a broader framework.
At the root of the conflict is the Stalinist theory of building socialism in one country.
The Cambodians took this theory to its most barbaric are lacking.
They proclaimed "self-sufficiency to be the driving
the Cambodian They herded the population into camps in the
naked coercion they transformed them into ultimate virtual slaves. They engendered a semi-mystical nationalism to provide their victims with an ideology. This has all now
Challenge maintained that the central dilemma of the post-revolutionary regimes in Indochina was the establishment of organs
money coming in; and cut out
Lastly, a word of thanks to
sources of income in Colchester
the game we '77, Left Overs, and collected E5 from
This idea could be extended
Risk, Monopoly, Class Struggle, Beat Your Neighbours out of Doors. or any other of the games people
playur thanks this week to:
£0.50
£5 £25 IMG, £2 £S February, E1 Charing £95.40
POL POT - before his fall of power which institutionalised their legitimacy.
This involves the establishment of democratic
plurality parties, access to a press freedom of religion, no cultura
Utopian? No. It is interesting that all these themes have been discussed on wall posters on Peking's 'Democracy Wall'. It is these political rights which
Given that these rights do not exist in Vietnam, it would be utopian to expect the Vietnamese or their supporters to institute them in Cambodia who But that is what Marxists must continue to argue, for the
fate of those
WORKERS OF THE
WORLD UNITE!
HEAR HUGO BLANCO
MIKE FARRELL, IRANIAN TROTSKYIST, TARIO ALI
7.30pm FRIDAY 2 FEBRUARY
CAMDEN TOWN HALL, EUSTON ROAD, LONDON NW1
5.30pm FILMS, MUSIC, DISPLAYS/ADMISSION &1 Admission £1. Two tickets for €1.30, three for £1.60. The reduced rates apply only to tickets bought before 31 January. Tickets from
PO Box 50, London N1 2XP. Cheques to "The Week' GLASGOW Socialist Unity rally with Hugo Blanco, Thursday 1
7.30pm, Highlanders Institute, Cross. Also Latin American seminar University plus lunch and reception - phone 041-221 7481 for
revolutions is intimately connected with the whole question of socialist democracy.
It might be unpopular to say these things in certain quarters (as it was initially in relation to Stalin's Russia and then Mao's China), but silence would be
Meanwhile we can only state our amazement at the cheek of General Haig, the boss of NATO and possible presidential candidate in the United States, when he expresses sympathy with the plight of Cambodia.
For we have not forgotten
invaded Cambodia, bombed it and imposed vicious and tyrannical regime in the early Seventies.
FOR THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
Berkeley Street. in Glasgow
← Socialist Challenge No. 77, 4 January 1979Socialist Challenge No. 79, 18 January 1979 →