Workers Power no. 120

Workers Power (monthly paper) · July 1989 · 12 pages

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Page 1

other’s throats is a pleasure to see. After their

goats was on.

‘Euro-election debacle the search for ——

Thatcher has made it plain that a is planning another reshuffle of her Cabinet. In Thatcherspeak “reshuffle” is a codeword for compulsory redundancies. Rumours abound that Howe, Lawson or both, will be the victims of Thatcher’s next purge.

This in-fighting is not simply the result of the Tories Euro defeat. It has deeper causes. Problem number one is the economy. It is a headache that threatens to become a migraine. This is why Lawson’s future is being questioned by the bosses’ press.

Recession

Inflation, continuing high levels of unemployment and the threat ofan international economic crisis hitting the still frail British manufacturing sector, all threaten the British economy with a new recession. Added to this Thatcher fears that 1992 will undermine London’s role as a financial centre, a capital of capital.

As if this wasn’t enough the working class is showing signs of being far from down and out, despite the defeats that have been inflicted during the 1980s. The impending dock strike, the strikes on British Rail, the London Underground and buses, the strikes in the civil service and the BBC, are all examples of the will to fight.

Faced with soaring prices and mortgage payments, faced with the prospect of inflation rising to 10% by August, and faced with the unofficial pay norm of 7%—a

wage cut—workers across industry have decided that actions speak louder than negotiations.

For the first time since the miners’ strike there isasense that the Tories can be taken on and beaten. This, like the economy, is giving Thatcher's gang the jitters. Now is the time to press home the advantage. Now is the time for workers in dispute to forge links, across the industries, and face the Tories and bosses down with a united front of

struggle.

Obstacles

There are real obstacles to this happening. Every militant in struggle today needs to face up to them and overcome them. The biggest obstacle is in our own ranks— the trade union leadership. They are now moving into

gear to try and stop the

Page 2

——S ee

THE DOUBLE standards behind all immigration laws, their class as well as racial bias, has been starkly demonstrated by the furore overthe Hong Kong Chinese people.

Of the six million who live in the territory only 3-6 million qualify for British passports. So worthless is the Hong Kong British passport that it does not even entitle the holderto live in Britain!

Many Hong Kong citizens are fearful of their future in 1997 when the colony passes over from British to Chinese rule. Many of those will be Hong Kong workers who have fled previous waves of Stalinist repression in China. Some are rich Hong Kong capitalists who have made massive profits out of the sweated labour which creates the wealth for which Hong Kong is renowned. These entrepreneurs fear that their assets might not be safe under Deng’s “two systems, one country”.

This second type of “refugee” need not fear because Thatcher has an nounced she is quite prepared to welcome them to Britain with open arms—as long as they bring their cash with them. She has indicated that the present immigration laws can be applied “more flexibly” for those Hong Kong Chinese who bring at least £150,000 into Britain.

For the rest, the average Hong Kong

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. Paci ‘a

Workers Power 120 IMMIGRATION JULY 1989

wage is £6,233 per year; enough to buy an air ticket but not a passport! They will have no choice but to swap British imperialist dictatorship for Stalinist dictatorship.

Under British control Hong Kong itself has taken a hard line on immigration. It has shown no mercy to those attempting to enter from mainland China. People caught trying to do this are repatriated in 24 hours or less without any investigation into their circumstances.

The hundreds of Vietnamese boat people who arrive in Hong Kong every day, risking their lives on unseaworthy craft, are also treated disgustingly. They are kept in camps and interrogated to see if they are genuine refugees. More than six hundred of them are now on hunger strike against their appalling treatment.

The British Labour Party has little constructive to say on the issue of immigration from Hong Kong. Their foreign affairs spokesman, Gerald Kaufman, has criticised Thatcher's bias towards the Hong Kong capitalists arguing that it was “Obscene to allow rich people to buy their way into Britain.”

However, he went onto argue that there was a “serious problem” for Britain in absorbing the 3-6 million

people with Hong Kong British pass-

Vietnamese refugees in a ferry moored near Hong Kong

They are all weicome here!

ports. He went as far as condemning those MPs who had argued for the right of entry.

It is clear that the Labour leadership is still as content as ever to pander to the racism and nationalism that exists within the British working class.

British imperialism has made, and will continue to make, massive profits out of the Hong Kong working class. But this entitles the Hong Kong working class to neither a say in how the colony is governed nor anything more than a worthless piece of paper, rather than a genuine passport.

We should make no distinction between those who hold the British passport and those who do not. We should have no truck either with the argument that says it is “the motherland's” duty to look after its loyal subjects. The Union Jack is stained with even more blood than the flag of Deng and Li Peng.

_. To argue that Thatcher is deserting the moral values symbolised by the Union Jack is a sick joke on the people of India, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia etc. It is class solidarity, not misplaced illusions in the honourable pledges made by the British Empire, which demands that British workers fight for the right of entry of all Hong Kong Chinese.

@ Now tum to pages 10-11

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Liz Wood and G R McColl look at Britain's immigration laws and the plight of refugees at the

hands of the Tories.

BRITAIN’S IMMIGRATION laws are racist. An array of laws and regulations has virtually stopped so-called “primary immigration” from Britain’s former colonies. Meanwhile one million white South Africans still have the right to “return” to Britain—though they may not even have visited this country.

In addition the last decade has seen a growing onslaught on the rights of political refugees in Britain. Britain’s treatment of the Kurds, the deportation of Viraj Mendis, the furore over the rights of Hong Kong Chinese demonstrate the hollowness of British capitalism’s claim to represent justice, democracy and freedom.

Britain’s first immigration law, the 1904 Aliens Act, was explicitly racist. It excluded Jewish immigrants fleeing for their lives from the pogroms of Russia and eastern Europe. Britain’s reaction to Jewish immigrants was no better, even during the Holocaust. During the Second World War the small number of Jews who escaped the concentration camps and came to Britain were rounded up on arrival and placed in camps complete

‘with armed guards for the dura-

tion of the war.

Backlash

After the war the British bosses were forced to put aside their opposition to immigration to meet a growing labour shortage. But as the economic boom faltered and a racist backlash gained strength a new round of racist legislation began in 1962. The 1971 Immigration Act led to the virtual prohibition of black immigration except for the families of those already settled here. The 1981 Nationality Act removed the right of settlement for Chinese, Asian and AfroCaribbean British passport holdersoverseas by creating three types of British nationality. This particular law has brought untold hardships to black families.

The Act automatically removes the right of children born to the black people who migrated to Britain during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Some of those denied citizenship may well have been born here and lived here all their lives. At the same time proof of having one British grandparent is enough to ensure the citizenship not only ofa million white South Africans, but also millions of white Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders.

Added to these harsh laws and their notorious enforcement

through dawn raids, deportations '

and virginity tests, is a new onslaught on these seeking refugee

KURDS

THE FLOW of Kurds, desperately seeking asylum in Britain, contin ued in June as another 1,000 arrived at Gatwick, Heathrow and Manchester airports. They join more than 1,000 Kurds who came in May

. hoping to escape from brutal re-

pression and forced relocation policies in south eastern Turkey. On 23 June Home Secretary, Dougias Hurd, slammed the door on this persecuted national minority with the imposition of visa requirements on Turkish passport holders. In the wake of the new visa restrictions the Kurdish refugees held in Dorchester, Exeter and Winchester prisons will probably be released by early July only to face the prospect of likely “removal” (deportation) back to Turkey. The Home Office made good on its threat to imprison

.new Kurdish arrivals even in the .

face of overwhelming medical evidence that dozens of the men exam ined had been victims of torture.

Many of the jailed Kurds responded to this barbarous treatment with hunger strikes. They have won some concessions from prison authorities and unconditional leave to stay in Britain for a handful who were seriously iil. As many as forty others remain on hunger strike at the Latchmere detention centre in Surrey, though the authorities have operated a virtual media blackout.

While Tory stooges such as Timothy Renton hope to stir racist reaction against “job seekers” and “economic immigrants”, the full horror of the Kurds’ plight in both Turkey and Iraq has come into sharper relief.

lraqi troops have driven up to 300,000 Kurds out of Iraq's northern tip, killing several thousand in the process.

Survivors have sheltered in

squalid, overflowing concentration .

camps on the Turkish side of the border, often without access to any assistance from international relief agencies. A report screened on ITV confirms that over 2,000 Kurds in the camps were intentionally fed poisoned bread, killing some and leaving many paralysed. Inthe south east of Turkey where the majority of the country's Kurds now live the

Ozal regime has begun a programme

of deforestation and forced resettlement to make way for tea planta tions owned and operated by a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch multi? national Unilever. Combined with their enthusiasm for Turkey's early entry Into the European Commu nity, the reasons behind the Tories’ hatred of the Kurds become obvious.

Most of the refugees have found accomodation in church halls or community centres In three north London boroughs. The campaign to prevent any further deportations and

to gain asylum and adequate state

provision for Kurds and their families continues. To date, the local authorities, all Labour-controlled, have paid lip-service to the Kurds’ case but coughed up very little cash.

While numerous trade union branches and NALGO’s national conference have offered some support, much more argument and activity in the labour movement are clearly needed not only to win the Kurds’ immediate demands but to smash the whole range of racist immigration laws which has com pounded their misery.

The Kurdish Refugee Support Group is building for a major demonstration on 29 July at 12.00 from Clissold Park, London N16, to Hackney Town Hail. We urge trade union and Labour Party activists to win sponsorships and delegations for the demonstration.

For further information contact:

Kurdish Refugee Support Group (01-249 8680/249 6930).

status.

Prime Ministers regularly cry crocodile tears about the Berlin Wall. Yet black people who come to Britain in an attempt to escape persecution have begun to meet obstacles just as savage and obscene.

The United Nations defines a refugee as someone who has a genuine fear of persecution in their own country because of race, religion or political views. The UN requests its members to waive immigration controls and give such people the right of asylum.

Britain’s record on refugeesis so bad that most elect to flee to other countries. Last year only 5,000 refugees entered Britain; less than half the number who asked for asylum in much smaller countries like Denmark, and less than one tenth of those entering West Germany. Constantly having toreport to the immigration authorities, having to prove their cases are genuine, life is a nightmare for many refugees. Those who arrive in large groups are subjected to detentionin campsor even prisons and the constant threat of deportation.

At present there are 8,000 refugees suffering the uncertainty of waiting to be sent back to persecution in Iran, Sri Lanka or Turkey. The deportation of Viraj Mendis, a Sri Lankan leftist who feared for his life at the hands of Sinhalese chauvinists, signalled a new attitude on the part of the British state.

Deported

“Now the word is to go out and whack them. Its going to be like Mendis—snatched and deported within 48 hours” one immigration officer confided to the press.

At present fifty people a week are being deported, including refugees and so-called illegal immigrants: those arrested in dawn raids on sweat shops, those accused of not being “genuine” de- - pendents or spouses of their partners etc. Whilst campaigns have mushroomed around individual cases, there is a chronic lack of a national campaign and a clear strategy to link the fight of refugees and deportees to the struggle against the immigration laws in general.

The capitalist economy isa world economy. Capital moves freeely from country to country, opening a factory here, closing one there. But labour has no such rights. Even when economic conditions propel masses of migrants from one country to another they face severe restrictions on their citizenship, and meet with systematic racist violence and discrimination.

British workers have no interest in restricting the right of entry to Britain. Notonly should we fight for immediate asylum for the Kurds, the Hong Kong Chinese,

the Vietnamese boat people ete, we should fight for the repeal of all immigration laws.

It is not immigration which causes unemployment and pov but capitalism itself. Black and white British workers share a common enemy with the Kurdish, Chinese and Vietnamese refugees. Immigrant cultures have not “swamped” Britain but enriched working class life and become an integral part of it.

British workers have nothing to fear from immigrants and refugees but everything to lose by siding with the reactionary racism of the British ruling class.

Page 3

China: their communism and ours

IN THE weeks since the Chinese crackdown the media has presented us with a succession of chilling images: the executions, the confessions beaten out of captured protesters, the students betrayed by their own families, the skillful TV campaign of lies and distortions.

The message the western media has hammered home is simple: this is what socialism and communism leads to.

But Deng’s regime has nothing in common with socialism or communism.

Capitalism, which had starved and pillaged China for decades, destroyed in the early 1950s following the 1949 revolution. The Chinese Communist Party, which led the overthrow, replaced capitalism with a replica of the USSR’s social system. It was a bureaucratic not a revolutionary abolition of capitalism. Stalinist China is a brutal dictatorship in which the ruling bureaucratic caste strangles the potential of the state owned economy and of rational planning. It excludes the mass of workers and peasants from political decision making and periodically resorts to the most savage acts of repression when its mismanagement provokes mass revolts.

The upheaval in China is just the latest and bloodiest example of the profound crisis that is gripping Stalinism worldwide. That crisis will deepen and intensify in the coming decade.

The western press likes to depict Deng and co. as outdated “hard liners” who have nothing in common with their new found friend Mr Gorbachev. But for the last ten years the Deng clique has been the advance guard of the “reforming” wing within world Stalinism, cultivating links with the imperialists and opening the Chinese economy to foreign capital.

The road Gorbachev has taken, full of smiles and friendly waves in the direction of “democracy”, is the same road (though minus the glasnost) that Deng has trod for the last decade. Deng’s crisis reveals that road to be a dead end. That is why Gorbachev has refused to condemn Deng’s coup. ti

Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria have all hailed Deng’s suppression of “counter-revolutionaries’. These regimes supported Deng even though historically they have sided with the Kremlin in the “great divide” between China and the USSR. The reason for their fraternal embrace of the Beijing butchers is clear. They want to signal to their own workers, and any pro-reform wing of the bureaucracy, that they too will readily drown a workers democracy movement in blood.

This comes as no surprise given the record of the Czech and East German ruling parties of repressing

Workers Power 120 JULY 1989

mass movements. Those who thought Fidel Castro was somehow different must now realise what genuine Trotskyists have argued all along: he is adyedin the wool Stalinist and Stalinism is always and everywhere incompatible with real workers’ democracy.

Gorbachev and the most marketoriented Stalinist regimes have been muted in their support for Deng, but still “refused to condemn” the crackdown. Gorbachev does this in the name of “non-interference” in the affairs of other states. What is the real reason?

On the one hand the “market socialist” schemes of most of these regimes rely on some measure of aid from imperialist governments and banks. They do not want to jeopardise this through too enthusiastic support for Deng Xiaoping.

On the other hand they dare not create the prece-

- dent of criticising a military crackdown. There is a

very real chance that they will be obliged to mount their own crackdown if they continue down the road pioneered by Deng. They want to keep their options open.

Soviet troops have already shed the blood of demonstrators in Georgia. They are being used in Uzbekistan and Khazakstan at present. Yugoslavia and Romania have used their troops against protesting national minorities. And the Polish regime, the most market-oriented of all at present, only eight years ago mounted its own military crackdown against Solidarnosc. )

The scale of bloodshed that the Chinese Stalinists resorted to is testimony to the massive contradictions that have opened up between the project of “market socialism” and the maintenance of Stalinist political rule.

As these contradictions deepen, the working class of the Stalinist states will face unparalleled oppor-

EDITORIAL

tunities to overthrow the bureaucracy once and for all.

The bureaucracy is storing up a powder keg of mass resistance to the results of “marketisation”. From the struggles against unemployment, shortages, inflation and corruption can and must arise a movement for political revolution.

Workers’ control of production, workers’ price setting committees and tribunals against corruption must be fought for. The real workers’ democracy of workers’ councils protected by the armed workers militia must. be built in the day to day struggles against bureaucratic misrule.

Against reliance on any wing of the bureaucracy the workers must form their own party, dedicated to the seizure of power and the democratic rule of the working class. Only working class power can unlock the planned economy’s enormous potential, so that humanity can once again set its sights on the goal Deng, Castro and Gorbachev have long since abandoned and obstructed:a socialist world!

Published every month by the Workers Power Group: BCM 7750, London WC1 3XX

ISSN 0263 - 1121

Printed by Presslink International (UK) Ltd (TU): Castle Industrial Estate, Elephant Rd, London SE 17

THE LAST weeks have been ones of increasing police harassment of the black community in general and of its militant youth in particular. And behind this wave of police brutality the fascists are raising their ugly faces once again.

Late in May, on the pretext of a drugs raid on the Travellers Rest Pub, the Wolverhampton police occupied the Heath Town estate, harassing its black residents with racist abuse, physical beatings and arrests for no reason.

This has been followed by two saccessive police attacks on black woath in West Yorkshire.

The first took place in Bradford where two hundred white racists attacked an anti-Salman Rushdie demonstration. When black youth fought back the police indiscriminately laid into them using riot maeics and truncheons. Ofthe fifty

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to defend themselves that the police waded in against them.

The police attacks, coupled with Kirklees Labour Council’s capitualtion to 26 white parents who waged a racist campaign to take their children away from a predominantly black school created a fertile climate for the fascists to mmerease their organised activity

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Support black self-defence!

their own anti-racist counter-rally. It was attended by about a thousand, mainly black youth with.a lamentably small turn out from the left and the labour movement. As the rally dispersed and set off to confront the fascists in an organised fashion it came face to face with the racist thugs at the town hall. The police moved in and penned the anti-racists in an enclosed piece of ground where the ‘escists attempted to attack them. in Bradford

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themselves against attack. It was the anti-fascists who bore the full brunt of the police attack and subsequent arrests.

The police attacks will give even more heart to the fascists and racists. So too will the pathetic attempts of Dewsbury’s Labour MP Ann Taylor to blame “outsiders” for the violence and her failure to blame the violence on the racism her party has hel ped spawn and on the police, and to openly to defend . the victims of that violence.

In the face.of this new wave of violence the black community must physically organise itself against racist and police attacks. Only through organised self-defence can we prevent a repetition of the attacks and arrests. And the whole labour movement must organise to fight the rising tide of fascist and racist actvity. The appalling turn out of the, predominantly white, left organisations will have boosted the confidence of the fascists. Alabour movement campaign must be built to support black selfdefence against racist attack and toactively assistin that defence. It must mobilise the labour movement to step the fascists marching end pat am emd to the racist harSSSTEeTT OF Se Sack community.

Page 4

eT re ae F

THE TGWU is now re-balloting registered dockworkers for an all out strike starting on 8 July. That this has been necessary Is entirely due to the prevarication of Todd and the rest of the T&G bureaucracy.

Their spineless acceptance of “the process of law” has allowed the dispute to be derailed time and again. When the abolition of the scheme was announced thousands of dockers walked out in disgust. Todd should have backed them and called an immediate official strike, thwarting the bosses’ plans to stockpile goods and prepare to break the strike.

Shabby decision

Instead he urged dockers to return sothata ballot could be taken and a “lawful strike” called. This

shabby decision was an actofclass -

betrayal. Todd showed thatin spite of his left rhetoric his union coffers were more important to him than his members jobs and livelihoods.

Once this road was taken it was obvious that the bosses and the courts could set the agenda. In order to play for time the ruling class judges cynically endorsed, reversed and then ratified the ballot—just to show how impartial they are! The fact that the decision by the Law Lords to declare the strike legal came after the 28 day period during which the first ballot was “legally” valid was, of course, sheer coincidence!

The other major player in the dispute was the National Ports Shop Stewards’ Committee (NPSSC).This unofficial, but officially tolerated, organisation has a long and proud history of solidarity and class struggle. From Pentonvillein 1972 tothe attempts to get action alongside the miners in 1984 they have seen the need for class wide action and acted accordingly. However, it must be said that serious flaws have been shown up in the fight against the abolition of the dock labour scheme.

In the week after the abolition of the scheme was announced Workers Power argued at a public meet-

Workers Power120 LABOUR MOVEMENT JULY 1989

Liverpool docks during an unofficial walkout

DOCKS:

ing in London that to have any faithin Todd would be adangerous illusion. Stewards from Tilbury at the same meeting refused to agree that an open fight against Todd, Morris and Co was necessary. Instead their line was that as disciplined members of the union they would play it his way for a while and then “do the business themselves” later if necessary.

This has proved to be a serious mistake, as we warned. Successive meetings of the NPSSC in London agreed to play a waiting game in the hope of getting an official strike call. Only after the High Court upheld the National Associatitn of Port Employers’ application for an injunction did they finally agree to call an unofficial strike.

This was endorsed by three of the major ports (Tilbury, Liverpool

Sheffield unionisation struggles

Eversure Textiles

WORKERS AT Eversure Textiles in Sheffield walked out on strike on 18 June when the management refused to recognise their union, the TGWU, and sacked 28 workers.

Attempts in the past to union ise this sweatshop firm have failed. This time though, incensed by the starvation wages - £67 for a 38 hour week - and the management’s unilateral withdrawal of the bonus scheme, the Eversure workers are determined to win.

Management clearly did not believe that the workforce was prepared to fight. They told their customers that the firm had closed for aweek’s holiday! But this holiday week ended, the workers stayed out, and an anxious boss went on the radio to offer talks to the workers.

This is an important strike. It could set a precedent for the countless small, non-unionised firms in Sheffield and throughout the country. If the strikers win other workers will be encouraged to take up unionisation struggles and end the tyranny of the sweatshop managers.

%* Messages of support to: Eversure Strikers Meadowhall Road Sheffield

Keeton’'s

2 JULY marks the third anniversary of the strike at Keeton’s in Sheffield. The strike started when management moved to sack 38 workers following a two to one majority for strike action in a secret ballot over conditions and safety procedures. The strikers, members of the AEU, have fallen in number since 1986 but a hard core of 20 remain solid without strike pay and without benefits of any kind. They only survive on the basis of collections organ ised by themselves and other labour movement bodies.

-For some time now, secret talks have been taking place with Keeton’s management. This has happened partly as a result of pressure from the local chan ber of commerce who don’t like the “good image” of Sheffield business to be undermined by “one rogue employer”.

Rather than relying on other local employers and local dignitaries to exert pressure, the AEU and local trade union movement should act to stick the boot into Keeton’s. An all-Sheffield day of strike action to mark the third anniversary would have been a step in the right direction. In the meantime it’s vital that strikers continue to receive financial assistance.

* Send messages of support and money to: Keeton’s Strike Committee

AEU House

Furnival Gate

Sheffield

ow to win

BY ADRIAN SWAIN

and Bristol) and several smaller enes. However the failure of Southampton and Hull to follow the call was a serious blow. This, together with the fact that up to one quarter of registered dockworkers are rarely represented at NPSSC meetings meant that only about one third of the dockers came out on strike.

Undermined

This points to the fact that despite all its good work over the years the NPSSC can no longer claim to automatically speak for all dockers. Instead it was obvious, particularly at Hull, that their influence had been undermined by local T&G officials. This extended to allowing T&G members other than registered dock workers to vote at the mass meeting andeven refusing to allow a replacement delegate to the National Docks and Waterways Group. Such facts have to be openly and honestly pointed out so that the divisions and setbacks can be overcome in the new round of action looming.

Obviously all dock worker militants should be working flat out to ensure that there isan overwhelm-

John Harris /IFL

ing vote in favour of action in the current ballot. However this task has been made all the more difficult by the previous delays and also by the fact that within a week of the official strike date of 8 July the scheme will have finally been abolished. This will mean not only that the bosses can “legally” bring in scab labour, but also that previously registered dockers will be able to be sacked at will and lose up to £35,000 in severance pay in the process.

Many workers may be tempted to cut and run or vote against action in the hope that this will safeguard their jobs. Such a course of action wouldbe disastrous. Already the bosses have indicated their

desire to decimate the work force. .

At Tilbury 200 out of 600 from one section are threatened. At Ipswich they are looking for savings of up to 50% on wages anda reduction of between 20-25% of the workforce. In terms of severance, a regular income until retirement is far better than £35,000 with no guarantee of ever working again. Clearly the only way to go forward is for the dockers to strike and win. Despite setbacks this is still possible. And it is necessary if union organisation in the ports, once the scheme is abolished, is to

be maintained. But the right tactics need to be used from day one. Picketing will be essential tosustain and spread the strike. This will inevitably mean battles with the picket busting squads of the state—the police in riot gear. The experience of the miners’ strike and Wapping show that strikers cannot just dodge the long arm of the law. They must be prepared to defend and sustain effective pickets against the inevitable violence of Thatcher's bootboys in blue. The support of other workers will be needed to do this. Appeals for support for mass pickets must be made throughout the labour movement in order to stop the bosses using scab labour. Speakers must be sent throughout the labour movement to argue for solidarity. Dockers will be faced

_ with further legal attacks if pick-

eting is effective. Their speakers need to explain that the use of the law against the dockers is a classwide issue and requires a classwide response.

In the first place it is likely that the bosses will try to use the nonregistered ports to keep trade moving. Pledges of blacking must be honoured, but more than this, dockers must act to stop all cargo coming in or going out. This means, once the strike is underway, fighting to bring out the nonscheme ports.

Industrial action

Solidarity should not just be financial—important as this will be—but must include industrial action alongside the dockers. We must not allow the TGWU leadership off the hook. Dockers must demand that Todd and the Executive place all the resources of the union at their disposal andinstruct all TGWU members to refuse to handle scab cargo and honour all picket lines.

To organise these essential tasks each port must open up its shop stewards’ committees to all the militant activists to turn them into strike committees, elected by and accountable to regular mass meetings of all strikers. ‘hese committees must have majority representation in any future talks to stop Todd negotiating a sell out.

@ Vote Yes to action in the ballot!

@ Organise mass pickets to spread the strike!

@ Defy the law if necessary and fight for solidarity action!

e fet a total shutdown of every port!

Tories target firefighters

FIREFIGHTERS ARE now being threatened with an attack on their pay and conditions every bit as serious as that being faced by the dockers. —

The immediate target is the pay formula, won after the 1977-78 strike, linking pay to higher industrial earnings. A letter to local authorities from Home Office minister, Lord Ferrers, makes clear the Tories’ intentions. He stated that if the pay formula is not abandoned the “Govemment will not hesitate to legislate”.

In the fire service, pay and conditions are negotiated nationally at the National Joint Council (NJC). The Tories have never liked this body.

In the past, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), often with threatened or actual industrial action, had succeeded in gaining the support of some local authority representatives

on the NJC to defend pay and condi?

tions against the Tories.

Also in his letter, Ferrers threatens that if local authorities and the FBU refuse to co-operate the “Government would have to take the matter forward with those prepared

BY A WEST MIDLANDS FIREFIGHTER

to discuss the issues with us”. The real meaning behind this threat is that the Tories have decided now is the time to implement the proposals laid out in the 1980 Green Paper to cut fire service costs by half.

To do this they aim not just to attack the pay formula, but to replace existing national conditions with a series of locally imposed ones. This is the purpose of the recently set up “working party” to “review” the fire service.

Target number one for this “working party” will be the overtime ban which has been in place since 1974. With this gone, the way would be clear to drastically reduce the number of fulltime fire fighters. Existing shift patterns could then be abolished and these full time flrefighters would be expected to be “on call” on their days off.

Instead of the largely full time national fire service with laid down standards of fire cover as now exists in Britain, we will have a new set-up based on the Dutch and German models—a small core of

full time fire fighters backed up by part timers and volunteers.

The plan must be resisted at all costs. Unfortunately, the FBU Conference, after an impassioned speech by General Secretary Ken Cameron on behalf of the National Executive, narrowly agreed by 21,000 to 18,500 votes to “co-operate” with the government on its “working party”.

The words of the West Midlands Conference delegate must be heeded by all: “The Executive Council is already running scared before we have started—watch the Executive Council, | don’t trust them.”

At the first mention of changing conditions in return for a pay deal, the FBU should withdraw from the “working party”. At the moment this body is due to make its first report in the autumn—when the Tories hope to have resolved their “problems” with the dockers and transport workers.

We can't allow the Tories to pick us off one by one any longer. We must bring our dispute to a head

now. To fight now alongside the

dockers and transport workers will give us the best chance of victory!

Page 5

Workers Power 120 TRANSPORT DISPUTES JuLy 1989

Now for an all

SOLID! WEDNESDAY 21 June saw Britain’s first national rail strike by the NUE in seven years. In London, Underground and bus workers also struck, halting all public transport in the capital for the first time since the 1926 general strike.

British Rail workers are fed up to the teeth with their pathetic wage packets—£115 a week basic for station staff, £160 for drivers. Many staff have been forced to work 60 hour weeks regularly in order to cover the costs of mortgages pushed ever higher by soaring interest rates. The BR Board’s drive to end national bargaining and its imposition of the 7% pay rise—in fact a wage cut given inflation—was the final straw.

On London Underground trainstaff have already staged a series of one day strikes over pay. On 21 June they united with other Underground workers to strike against two proposed productivity packages: “Action Stations” which mainly affects station staff and the parallel productivity measures aimed at trainstaff dubbed by the workers the “slaves charter”. In fact “Action Stations” with its “blue-eyed boy” promotion system andits “unsatisfactory attendance procedures” would affect train drivers as well.

As with the BR workers, London Underground workers are fighting, not only against vicious new working conditions, but also for decent

yY Teahnekatt have made their claim—£6.-43 for drivers and £5-50 for guards—but the NUR has yet to put a figure on the claim for station staff. At present ticket collectors get ameasly £2.77 per hour! Workers Power has argued in its strike bulletin fora minimum £200 a week with a 15% increase for all grades already above this figure. Wednesday’s action drew aswift response from the bosses—BR suddenly found that it could offer more than the final 7%. This came as no surprise te the 100,000 workforce who have been made well aware of the board’s glee at record profits of between £300 and £350 million. Hewever the 0-9% extra offered still falis way below the cost of living. And London

Whats gor We kell do i think We pay you fev f aS

out strike!

BY AN NUR MEMBER

Underground has said that it will drop “Action Stations”. Though as it turns out they mean change the name, not the package.

These offers are not good enough. But they do prove that the only thing that will change the bosses’ minds is strike action. The real problem is that the NUR only has plans for more one day actions. They hope that these will pressure the bossesinto arbitration atACAS and get them something they can offer to the workers—below the full claim—that can end the rank and file militancy.

= ©

This won't do. It amounts to a sell-out. The vitriolic language of the bosses in the face of the shutdown shows that much more pressure needs to be mounted if we are to win an outright victory. Their attacks on strikers as “unjustified”, “ungodly” and less sociable than Rottweiler dogs, need to be answered by a solid response. They are suffering the jitters. We must go for their jugular.

We hurt them not because the “public” was inconvenienced. The management of public transport has been inconveniencing the public for years with their cutbacks of the service. No, we hurt them because weehit their profits. BR lost £10 million, a further £3

million was lost on London Trans- ~

port, £30 million in the shops and undisclosed millions in related services and industries like the Royal Mail! By making them lose more we can get them to meet our claims in full—quickly. We need an all-out indefinite strike now on BR and the tubes.

The bosses are far better equipped to deal with one day strikes than workers. Provisions are made by companies, like Lloyds for example, weeks in advance to get key workers into work. The fact the enemy know how long the attack will last means they can ride it out, as the bosses’ paper the Guardian put it:

“Actually, it [Wednesday 21 | did not seem that bad. In fact, as long

om f

suffering days go, it was really

| jolly good .. . If Mr Knapp and his

coincidental allies think that more of the same [one day strikes] will bring the nation to its knees, they are clearly deluded.”

Not only will the bosses ride out

one day actions, not only will this |

lead to wheeling and dealing and sell-outs at ACAS, they will also exhaust and wear down the militancy of the rank and file workers.

This is why Workers Power argues that all out indefinite action is the way to win victory. And the more workers involved the speedier the victory! This is why the magnificent start of the united railworkers should be built on, indefinitely until total victory. No sector—BR, the Underground or the buses—should go back to work until all the disputes are won! Any settlement negotiated by the unions must be ratified by workers at mass meetings.

If workers are told it’s the best we can get by their unions, the strike should press ahead, unofficially if need be. Yes, the strike will damage our bank balances. But they will be damaged a lot more if we cannot secure a living wage that protects us from the ravages of inflation. And, in astrike we must get strike pay to minimise the damage to our side.

After all strike pay is what we donate our subs for. It is what union assets should be used for— fighting funds, not sources of privilege for our leaders.

The message at every meeting now must be, all out action can win.Aco-ordinated national transport strike—alongside the dock strike if that starts in July—can win in days, not weeks.

@ All out indefinite strike now!

London Buses

STRIKE ACTION by London’s busworkers on 21 June ensured a hat-trick for transport workers. The capital city ground to an almost complete halt.

Busworkers had rejected the management's “improved” offer of 8%; 0.5% up on the offer made two weeks prior to the strike. They are still fighting for the full 14% claim.

That the action was so effective and so solid showed the anger on London’s buses. But had it been left to the TGWU leadership the strike might never have taken place. They have kept fruitless negotiations going and called off planned actions so as to prevent unity between the bus, Underground and rail workers developing.

As it was the action wasn't called until the night before the strike when garage reps met. They decided on action and, although there was some scabbing, they did man age to get a relatively solid strike. But further delays or last minute decisions will squander the anger of busworkers and give management

the chance to

regain the initia-

tive.

To stop this, to win the full claim and to puta end to the Tories’ cuts and privatisation schemes for the buses an all out strike, united with the other transport workers, especially on the Underground, is needed—now!

SPOTLIGHT ON THE

ECONOMY

Behind the productivity drive

Before the current crop of pay disputes erupted in the spring there had been a noticeable change in the causes of strikes during the previous year. For most of the 1980s the key battles were over pay or redundancies. Disputes over working practices amounted to, at most, 10% of all disputes until the

last year or so.

But between February 1988 and February this year all this changed. During those twelve months there were 270 strikes involving about 180,000 workers, with 1-2 million days lost caused by clashes over staffing levels, work allocation and supervision. These accounted for about 40% of all strikes.

What does this tell us about the British economy? It indcates that as the post1982 recovery deepened the key battle front that the bosses were pushing on was productivity. In fact for a whole period, until the recent surge in inflation, British bosses were prepared to cough up wage rises without too much fuss as long they were paid for by increased productivity. Put another way as long as output per worker hour was outstripping labour costs then this was tolerable for the bosses.

But if we look behind the productivity figures and see what British business has gained as a result of these victories over staffing, then the picture is not particularly good for them.

There are two ways of increasing productivity. A manager can force fewer workers to produce the same amount as before or make the same number of workers work harder and get more out of them. This way focuses on labour.

Alternately, a business can re-equip with up to date machinery which can pump out more goods with the same effort or number of workers as before. This way emphasises capital improvements.

Through a combination of these methods productivity in Britain has undoubtedly improved over the Thatcher years. In the economy as a whole productivity has improved by about 3% a year during the 1980s. The record for the bosses is even better when you look at manufacturing. Between 1980 and 1988 productivity increased at 5-6% a year. This is faster than any major capitalist economy except Japan.

That's the good news for the bosses and it expresses in cold Statistics the victories they have achieved in the last ten years over the working class. But every other statistic or comparison should bring them down to earth.

First, there is the historical comparison. As against the boom years before 1973 the Thatcher “miracle” does not look very impressive. Whilst it is an improvement on the dismal 1970s the productivity

growth. remains very much below the 1960s. This is true for all the major imperialist countries. But since Britain's performance then was poor, com pared to its rivals, to be below that rate now does not indicate an especially dynamic economy. The truth is that if you take the last 30 years as one unit then business productivity under Thatcher is below average.

Secondly, there is the international comparison. If we study the figures for the whole economy and not just manufacturing (which only makes up 25% of British GDP and it is a falling share) then British capitalism does not come off well. Britain has done better than the USA and West Germany but no better than France and worse than Italy and Japan. This bodes ill for Britain’s international competitiveness at a time when the trade and balance of payments gap is already surging ahead.

And despite the better annual growth rates in productivity this decade British capitalism has not closed the productivity gap on any of its major rivals. When it comes to output per person hour in manufacturing Britain is bottom of the league. The US produces over twice as much per person hour than Britain. France, West Germany and Japan are not far behind the US.

Finally, it is well documentedthat most of the productivity gains achieved so far this decade have been due overwhelmingly to “improvements in the use of labour", rather than as a result of massive new capital investments.

All this forms the background to Britain's bosses’ current offensive on conditions and productivity. [t explains why they have provoked a whole number of disputes on this issue in the last couple of years. It suggests that now that wage costs are beginning to outstrip productivity growth they will be determined to hold the line on wages but redouble their determina tion to get the changes in working practices and Staffing levels they needed.

As public sector services such as transport were forced to make profits then one by one they have become battlegrounds over productivity. The buses and now London Underground.are typical here. Industries that have been or are due to be privatised face the same issues. In engineering the employers are playing the same old tune: no major pay awards without further concessions on working arrangements.

No trade unionist should be under any illusion that British bosses will rest content with | the gains of the 1980s. The] international pressure on them is too intense. It will take similar determination on behalf of the rank and file in the trade unions to repulse the renewed productivity offensive. Z

Page 6

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With the policy review complete Kinnock has given the bosses an electable and loyal opposition again. But they want more, reports Mark Abram.

LABOUR’S POPULARITY is soaring. After its victory in the Euroelections, Vauxhall and Glasgow, the party has continued to notch up big leads in the opinion polls. Millions of workers are waking up to the fact that the Poll Tax, the NHS review, the water and electricity sell-offs are a frontal attack on their living standards, and that Lawson’s “anti-inflationary strategy” makes them pay for the government’s economic mess.

Shift

Added to this there is a clear shift amongst the bosses and the media, not towards support for Labour, but in favour of acknowledging Kinnock’s move towards

‘Thatcherism on most of it fundamental tenets.

This began cautiously when Labour published its pelicy review. The Economist argued that faced with the Tories’ present difficulties:

“Britain needs an electable opposition; the best chance of getting one lies with Labour.” (13 May 89). More recently the Financial Times editorialised in the wake of Labour’s Euro-election victory:

“It is looking less wild, more in the centre ground and more electable than it used to...that

should be the main lesson for Mrs Thatcher and the Tories from the European elections: there is beginning to be an alternative government.” (20 June 89)

Arethe key supporters of Thatch-

Green

BRITAIN HAS been the last of the major European countries to witness the electoral rise of the Greens. In 1981 the first Green MPs in Europe were elected in Belgium, followed by 23 German Green MPs two years later. In those years most environmental ists in this country existed in a loose national coalition of cam paigning groups—Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and so on.

Membership of these various groups has doubled inthe 1980s, not least due to the impact of major environmental disasters from Bhopal through to Cher nobyl, not to mention the effect of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. But, paradoxically, the “conversion” of Thatcher to the Green cause in September 1988 did most to boost the electoral credibility of the Greens in Britain.

Thatcher's speech to the Royal Society that month was a cyntcal ploy by the Tories to hamess the growing disaffection of middle-class voters with their record on the environment. But in many ways it backfired—provoking a concerted counter-offensive from Labour and Democrats alike. They focused on the actual record of the government in areas such as beach and water pollution, which have put Britain near the bottom of the European table. This, together with further grumblings from traditional Tory voters unhappy with the govern ment’s handling of the economy, led to a sizeable protest vote for the Greens in the recent elections.

Workers Power120 POLLS JULY 1989

Neil Turner/Insight

“An electabie |

erism beginning to abandon her in her hour of need? Not quite. That the Tories are in substantial mid-term political difficulties is beyond doubt. Inflation is at a seven year high and rising, in turn provoking a series of industrial disputes. The-Tories’ NHS proposals are meeting with general hostility even amongst historic middleclass allias. Most recently, the open split within the Government over

its attitude to the European Community produced confusion, ridicule and an electoral debacle. But none of this means that the decisive sections of the ruling class have lost their nerve and want Labour in office: On the contrary, Thatcher is a tried and tested antitrade union warrior. Her government plans even more restrictions on legal trade unionism. Labour's review on the other hand is silent

The various Green Parties in Europe all registered gains in the Euro-elections. Together they succeeded in doubling their representation in the

Strasbourg parliament.

But the greatest advance was made by the Green Party that got no MEPs—Britain’s. From under 2% in the 1987 general election the Green Party captured 15% of the vote in the Euro-poll. This compares with only half a percent of the vote in the last Euro-elections five years ago. Steve Prior analyses the flowering of the Greens.

However the size of the Green vote in Britain should not be seen as any kind of victory for the left— despite the crowing of some of the soft left and the smears of the right. The unpleasant truth about the British Greens is that they are fur ther to the right than most of their European counterparts.

In Germany, for example, the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD) was for many years the natural party of government and the right wing of European reformism. The German Greens emerged partly as a radical petit bourgeois force hitting out at the complacency and conservatism of the party of the German working class over the capitalists’ destruction of the environment. In the absence of a vibrant left wing in the SPD many confused socialists and trade unionists looked to the Greens.

in Britain, matters have stood differently. Labour and groups to its left have kept the loyalty of most of

the radical, pro-working class strata of the middle class, leaving the Greens to mop up those more sol idly pro-bourgeois and anti-working class elements.

At their best the Green Parties of Europe have alerted the labour movement to the destructive effects of capitalist production in a situation where trade union officials and the Socialist or Communist Parties have colluded with the bosses to hide pollution and other hazards.

But the Greens, home and abroad, have failed to identify the cause of this short-sighted destruction of the environment. It lies not in industrial growth in and of itself, but in the pursuit of profit above all else. The bosses have no overriding interest in the future of the planet or the planned utilisation and conservation of its resources. Even in the short term they can use their wealth to avoid suffering the consequences

on picketing, promises restrictions on the legal actions open to employers against the unions and even suggests some rights for workers at work. Sir John Hoskyns—leader of the Institute of Directors—remarked on these policies that they:

“could be the first step to the bad old days and a licence for free collective mugging”.

This expresses the bosses’ con-

Party: alternative Tories

of their own destructive appetite.

But the working class has no such luxury. It is workers who suffer on the front line of indus- | trial hazards and dangerous work processes. It is working class families who have to live in full view and smell of noxious emissions and toxic wastes. _

It is the working class who, both at work and in the community, have the interest and power to force the capitalist class to bear the cost of radically improving health and safety measures. These issues, as much as the fight over pay and jobs, are susceptable to the struggle for workers’ control over production.

In short, it is the waging of the class struggie over these issues that will secure meaningful reforms just as it is the overthrow of capitalism that will be necessary to secure irreversable gains.

In direct opposition to this | view Green Party spokesperson Jonathon Pomitt hasinsistedthat _ . “this country is paralysed bythe | redundant polemic of class warfare”. We have heard this all before. In terms of its voting base, its programme and its composition the Green Partyisa bourgeois party. Like the Liberal Party before it, it has a vocal left | wing and attracts young, angry militants, as well as a large and | growing middie class base. But | that should not blind us to the fact that its votes do not mark | the demise of the bourgeois centre, but its temporary reconstitution around a different axis.@

opposition”?

tinuing distrust of Labour’on the fundamental question—its relationship to the organised trade union movement.

Thatcher has inflicted substantial damage on British trade unionism. The bosses hope it is irreversible. They recognise that Kinnock has made substantial “progress” in seeing the world Thatcher’s way: his conversion to the social market, abandoning unilateralism and wresting complete control of the party machine from the left and the constituency activists.

On all this Britain’s bosses find room tocongratulate Kinnock. But they still urge at least one more major change on him: anendtothe decisive power of the unions in formulating Labcur’s policy through the block vote.

Atthe moment the leaders ofthe trade unions-—steeped in new realism—are Kinnock’s poodles. Even so the bosses have found them unnervingly capable of responding to the pressure of their members, whether on pay (NUR, NALGO etc), the docks (T&G) or scab unionism (AEUV). |

Dismantle

The circumstances in which the bosses might have to live with a Labour government—two figure inflation, world recession, the need for an austerity programme—leave no room for effective trade union pressure on Kinnock. That is why the bosses want Kinnock to use the next two years to dismantle any effective mechanism of trade union pressure on Labour.

While profits and productivity remain buoyant, outweighing the effects of inflation and the trade deficit, while the Tories grudgingly respond to the demands for the renewal of roads, rail and other infrastructure, then Labour will continue to wait in the wings.

Should Thatcherism no longer be able to deal with rising class struggle and discontent, then the bosses will turn again to their allies within the labour movement— the Labour Party and its leadership—safe in the knowledge that Kinnock is prepared to guard and extend their major gainsof the last ten years. > | PG: 1

Page 7

Revolution and repression

was directly related to the AWO. On Tuesday 30 May its leaders were arrested and the workers of Beijing were specifically ordered not to take any further part in the demonstrations. S

This was the beginning of the bureaucracy'’s offensive and followed the victory, behind closed doors, of Deng and Li Peng, supported by Qiao Shi, the head of the security forces, over their opponents. By this time Beijing was already ringed by troops who had been kept in isolation from the population after fraternisation had undermined their discipline in the first days of martial law.

Much has been written about splits and open conflicts within the different army groups. Such divisions must have existed since the Army High Command is very closely integrated into the party leadership and the latter was visibly divided. However, there is no evidence yet available to prove any conscious and directed internecine military operations.

Confusion, inexperience or regionalisation of the army could all account for reports of armed clashes. What is clear is that, at the end of the day, it was the faction prepared to use force against the bureaucracy’s enemies that was victorious.

Again, without a revolutionary

party this was unavoidable. To divide an army requires convincing elements of it that they can win in battle against the existing re-

‘gime. That conviction could only

come from seeing the mobilisation of a social force capable of forcing back the bureaucracy.

In China that is going to mean either an insurgent working class or a concerted counter-revolutionary movement for the restoration of capitalism. Neither existed in Beijing in the first week of June and, therefore, hesitation and doubt amongst the soldiers were not transformed into the certainty and courage needed to side with the civilians against other troops.

In the aftermath of the Beijing massacre, the working class of all Chinaresponded with remarkable uniformity. In city after city, general strikes, demonstrations and barricades defiantly expressed the solidarity of the workers with those who had been butchered and those being hunted down. Without political leadership this movement could not raise itself to a counterattack against Deng and Li. It is, nonetheless, a magnificent pledge for the future overthrow of everything they represent. Despite all the propaganda and re-edited video film, millions upon millions of workers in China know the truth.

The divisions within the bu-

Youths during a riot near Tiananmen Square, 4 June

THE EVENTS in China have had major repercussions in Hong Kong which threatens serious problems for the British ruling class (similar problems face the Portuguese and Macao authorities). While spouting about “communist dictatorships” and the need for “freedom and democracy" the British imperialists have happily denied the masses of Hong Kong even the semblance of democracy for 150 years.

The 1984 Sino-British Joint Deciaration agreed by Thatcher with Deng Xiaoping was an agreement made between the Stalinist bureaucracy and the British Tories over the heads of the: Hong Kong workers. It aimed at a, “smooth” handover ofa capital-

For a Hong Kong workers

ist Hong Kong to Chinese rule, the CCP offering long term guarantees for continued capitalist exploitation, while continuing the denial of even basic bourgeois democratic rights to the people of Hong Kong before or after 1997.

The mass demonstrations and general strike protest involving over a million Hong Kong people out of a population of six million (actions themselves illegal under the Hong Kong Public Order Ordinance !) have shaken the Deng/Thatcher agreement and thrown the Hong Kong capitalists into. disarray. The so-called

reaucracy stem from insoluble economic problems, not from the advanced age of the leadership. Those problems have not been altered by the massacre and repression, they have been made, if anything, worse.

Whatever the bureaucracy attempts, whether it be further marketisation, a return toisolated autarchy, a fake “purge” of the corrupt elements under a new reformist leadership or an opening to the Soviet Union in order to gain access to economic modernisation, political splits within the bureaucracy and continued hostility from the working class will combine once again tocreate political crisis. 1989 has shown how quickly such crises can develop into armed confrontation.

As the workers of China ponder on the defeat of the “Democracy Movement”, it is the duty of revolutionaries throughout the world to do everything in their power to explain and propagandise for the revolutionary lessons from this tragedy.

Stalinism, as a world phenomenon, is in its dotage. But it will not pass away of its own accord. It must be despatched, and for that the weapon of the revolutionary communist party is indispensible.

Bob Gannon/Insight

“pro-democracy movement” in Hong Kong, a largely petit bourgeois led formation which only calls for half the legislature to be elected by 1997, is similarly in danger of being overtaken by events.

Revolutionary communists must seize the opportunity to build a movement which not only mobilises concrete solidarity with mainland Chinese students and workers, but also aims at destroying the Deng/ Thatcher agreement and mobilising the Hong Kong workers for power. @ Down with the Deng/Thatcher

agreement! fe 9

What kind of solidarity’?

AS THE Beijing Stalinists move from indiscriminate mass slaughter to systematic repression and judicial murder so it is necessary for the solidarity movement to develop from spontaneous demonstrations to organised and directed work.

Forrevolutionary communists, the duty to do everything possible to aid and support the victims of repression cannot be separated from the political task of building an international revolutionary party. This means arguing for forms of action and organisation that focus on the organisations of the working class and stress the need for working class political independence. Nowhere is this more important, at present, than on the question of sanctions.

Around the world, millions of people, horrifled by the scenes of the massacre, will have thought immediately that something should be done to cut off vital supplies to the Beijing regime. This was given expression by the calls on Thatcher, Bush and company to impose “economic sanctions”. We oppose this.

The ultimate cause of the conflict in China was the opening up of its economy to the world market dominated by the main imperialist powers. The long term strategy of imperialism is to dismantle the statified and pianned economy which, despite Stalinist political control, has protected employment and living standards in China. If the imperial ists succeed the Chinese economy will be wrecked and the dead will be counted in millions as unemployment and starvation take their toll.

Whatever actions Thatcher and her ilk take will be calculated to serve imperialist interests. For the solidarity movement to demand that they do anything would be to mislead the millions who want to help the workers and peasants of China. Indeed, Bush’s statement that relations with China-will be, “guided by America’s long term interests”, accurately represents the criterion for all imperialists. We can expect it to mean continued trade coupled with specific conditions related, in all probability, to what they will call “human rights” issues.

To not call on the imperialists to bring down the Stalinists, however, does not exhaust the question. The regime must be brought down and millions around the world could be mobilised to ensure that this is done without aiding imperialism’s plans. Economic pressure can help to open up the obvious rifts that exist in the Beijing bureaucracy. Every step in that direction is to be welcomed as creating breathing space and room for manoeuvre for the opposition movement inside China.

Especially whilst the open repression continues, the imposition of workers’ sanctions can achieve everything that is positive about the demand to cut trade links; &

’ commune!

No to acapitalist Hong Kong under a Stalinist dictatorship! Immediate elections to a con stituent assembly of Hong Kong! One person, one vote!

Forward to the Hong Kong workers’ commune!

Solidarity in struggle with the mainiand workers and students against the blood-soaked Deng regime!

For political revolution in China! Forthe revolutionary re-unification of all China including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao under workers’ democracy!

demonstrates most vividly the repugnance of the worid working class forthe massacres and repression; it signals to the workers of China that their true allies are the workers of the world. It even reveals very clearly the hypocrisy of the imperialists who will want to carry on their trade in the interests of profits.

For these reasons we are in favour of direct action by trades unionists to impose an embargo on all trade, all commercial and financial links and all links with the “official” Chinese trade unions. How long such an embargo should be maintained will depend on the developments in China. We would not propose it as a permanent blockade. It is a protest action, a demonstration of immediate solidarity, not a strategy in its own right.

Apart from the demands for workers’ sanctions, the main focus of the solidarity movement should be attempts to establish links with the underground movement in China and to disseminate information in the labour movement about develop ments relating to China. The building of a movement of this sort, oriented primarily to working class organisations will, no doubt, be opposed by many who are influenced by the anti-communist, pro-capital ist “democracy movement” in Hong Kong.

OUT NOW! CHINA: the road to Tiananmen Square

A new pamphet from Workers Power Includes MRCI resolution on China £1 including P&P from BCM 7750, London WC1N 3XxX

The existence of sucha current is not to be wondered at given the age-old denial of democratic rights by the British state and the visible barbarity of the “Communists” in China. Genuine communists, i.e. Trotskyists, especially British Trotskyists, need to be extremely sensitive in relation to those who have spontaneously become in volved in the solidarity movement via this current.

Every attempt should be made to propose actions and campaigns that can involve Chinese community organisations in solidarity with the workers and peasants of the Chr nese mainland. For example, demanding of the British state the immediate and unconditional granting of democratic rights in Hong Kong and the right of abode in the UK, and the right of all Chinese students to continue their studies here with financial assistance from the British state.

Although the tempo of solidarity work is bound to be affected by events in China it is to be expected that the first wave of mass, spontaneous, mobilisation is now passing and that solidarity work will be come dependent on organised groups of activists. Within this milieu communists will argue for the adoption of democratic forms of organisation, with clearly stated objectives, elected, accountable and recallable leaders and regular meetings and forms of communication to keep all supporters and activists informed of decisions and proposals.

As soon as possible local groups need to be co-ordinated into a na tional structure committed to an agreed set of objectives and meth ods of campaigning. Workers Power will be to the fore in proposing and initiating such work wherever possible in the labour movement and, in the longer term, will argue for a campaign to affiliate working class organisations to a national solidaritymovement.B. 6

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NEWS FROM THE SECTIONS

ARGENTINA Solidarity with the Argentine left

RUNAWAY INFLATION in Argentina has led to looting on a mass scale. For some workers this has been the only way they can obtain essential items such as food.

This has led to a government clamp down and the mass arrest of workers. The governmenthave especially targetted the left and key trade unionists.

Over 1,000 prisoners

| are still being held including leaders of the movement Towards So-

cialism (MAS) and the Workers Party (Partido Obrero). The latter organisation has had its offices closed down and is forced to operate semi-legally. Members of the MRCI have been involved in solidarity activities.

In France Pouvoir Ouvrier joined an eighty strong picket of the Argentinian Embassy in Paris called by Latin American organisations.

In Britain, Workers Power was involved in the setting up of the “Campaign for Argentinian Political Prisoners”. The Committee organised a picket of forty people outside the Argentine Embassy to protest about the arrests.

ARBEITERSTANDPUNKT Hungarian intervention

ON 18 JUNE the AST attended the reburial of Imre Nagy who was executed in 1957 for his part in the Hungarian uprising of 1956 (see page 12). The AST distributed thousands of copies of the MRCI's first leaflet in Hungarian. sw

The AST have also had a high profile intervention into the student union elections, selling more than 400 copies of their Flugschriften (bulletin) and disinbuting three leaflets over the course of a several week campaign.

AST comrades attended the 400 strong demonstration which protested about the treatment of Chinese workers and students by the Stalinist butchers.

They managed to sell over a hundred copies of the Flugschriftenwhich contained an article on the Chinese events. This means that no less than one quarter of the demonstration bought MRCI material!

MRCI 3 Conference discusses

China

DELEGATES FROM the GAM, Ast, WG, PO(France) and Workers Power gathered in London over the weekend of 17-19 June. The main item for discussion was of course China. The meeting adopted

| anextensive resolution on China which deals with the nature of the

Chinese state, the roots of the present crisis, role of imperialism as

| well as examining how the Chinese working class can come to

power. This resolution will be published in the third issue of Trotskyist

| International in July. it is also available in Workers Power's new

pamphlet, China: the road to Tiananmen Square (see pgil for details).

PRESENTLY THE MRCI Secretariat is undertaking extensive discussions with our new section Poder Obrero (Peru) and our fratemal group in Bolivia—Guia Obrera. This is essential preparation for the Congress of the MRCI to be held later this year. We are pleased-to register a donation of £1,000 from a comrade in Workers Power who has recently won some compensation money after being wrongfully arrested. But to finance the

travel of delegates from Europe and Latin America requires even more than this. If you value our work please send donations to:

MRCI, BCM 7750, London WCiN 3XX

The MRCI Arbeiterstandpunit (Austria), Gruppe Arbeitermacht (Germany), irish Workers Group, Poder Obrero (Peru), Pouvoir Ouvrier (France),

| Workers Power Group (Britain)

Guia Obrera (Bolivia) is in the process of discussions with the MRC! with the aim of becoming an affiliated section.

Workers Power120 EASTERN EUROPE uy 1989

fee MAR Hungary: reclaim

the revolution!

ON 16 June Hungary re-buried, with all due ceremony, its former communist prime minister, Imre Nagy. On 16 June 1958 he had been hanged and buried face down inanunmarked grave, reviled asa “traitor and counter-revolutionary” for his part in the 1956 uprising.

Alongside his coffin were those of four other members of his government, including Pal Maleter, hero of the uprising and its military resistance to the subsequent Soviet invasion. A fifth coffin was empty, symbolising the thousands of unknown workers who perished in the suppression of the uprising and the repression that followed it.

Nagy, Maleter and the rest are gradually being re-habilitated, at least by the Hungarian bureaucracy. The uprising itself has changed from a “fascist counterrevolution” toa “popular uprising” in official pronouncements.

The rest of Eastern Europe is not so penitent, although many states were represented at the ceremony. Romania went so far as to suggest that the funerals became “unambiguously fascist and anti-socialist”.

Demonstrations

The reason for this less than whole-hearted welcomeis not hard to see. The 1955 events were sparked off by the re-burial of Lazlo Rajk—a Stalinist turned on, imprisoned, tortured and killed by his own party—as Nagy and his supporters were to be. In the wake of Rajk’s funeral mass demonstrations and strikes broke out in solidarity with Polish workers (themselves pressing their own government for political and economic reform)snowballingintoopen, armed rebellion. The parallels too with China, where the Democracy Movement was sparked off by the funeral of the disgraced Hu Yaobang, are all too obvious.

But the Hungarian Stalinists have rival claimants for the mantle of Nagy, Maleter and the spirit of 1956. Just asin 1956 there were a

BY SIMON MACINTOSH

handful of fascists who attempted to utilise the uprising for their own ends, soin 1989 the disintegrating Hungarian party has spawned out and out campaigners for a resoration of capitalism.

It was such restorationist elements who, at the funeral, attempted to paint the hardened Stalinist bureaucrat Nagy as a Hungarian patriot and anti-communist. Patriot he certainly was, but an anti-communist (in the sense of being against the ruling Stalinist party and bureaucracy) he was not.

His role was to usher in the reforms demanded by Moscow in the wake of Stalin’s death. His misfortune was to be the reluctant hero of an insurgent people who placed more hope in him than he could ever fulfill without breaking from his whole previous life and training. He wanted reform, they wanted revolution. So he couldn’t succeed without them, and they couldn’t succeed with him. They were both dragged down together.

Nevertheless it is the working class of Hungary that must claim the genuine heritage of 1956. It was they who dealt with the fascist Arrow Cross agitators and provocateurs in 1956, in no uncer-

1956, the workers armed

tain terms. It was they who organised workers’ councils throughout Hungary within days of the first outbreak of shooting in Budapest. It was they who organised massive general strikes again and again even after the armed resistance had collapsed. The workers seized weapons from the army and formed the militia that fought the Soviet invasion. They blunted the edge of the first Soviet troop deployment by fraternisation. The working class turned units of the Hungarian army-sent to destroy them, most notably the tanks led by Pal Maleter, into units of the new militia. Nagy was forced to power by working class pressure. And it was the working class who made it impossible for capitalist resoration to gain a foothold in 1956.

Proud history

The Hungarian working class has a long and proud history. From the ill-fated 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, through the resistance to the pre-war fascist regime of Horthy, to the 1956 revolution, they have shown themselves capable of independent organisation and of arming themselves for revolutionary struggle.

As the Hungarian regime crumbles in the face of mounting economic and political pressure, the Hungarian working class must once again look to this tradition. But this time it must draw the lesson from 1956, and from China in 1989. No wing of the bureauc-

-racy can be trusted to consistently

side with or lead the insurgent workers to victory.

The working class must forge their own party—equally hostile to Stalinist repression, corruption and economic mismanagement as to imperialist exploitation. They must form their own government— based on workers’ councils and an armed workers’ militia. And they mustresurrect their 1956 slogan— echoed by Nagy and Maleter on the scaffold—for an independent and socialist Hungary!"

Polish elections solve nothing

THE RECENT elections in Poland have produced many surprises, particularly for the Stalinist bureauwcrats. Not only did Solidarity wipe the floor with pro-regime candidates wherever they stood, but the Stalinists who stood unopposed on the “national! list” failed to get elected either. That is the electoral equivalent of throwing yourself at the ground and missing!

The overwhelming victory for Solidarity and for its leaderLech Walesa personally, has faced it with acute problems. More than once they have had to reject invitations from the Jaruzelski regime to form a new coalition government “in the na tional interest”. And the arithmetic of the new parliament suggests that Solidarity could command a majority on many issues as the normally reliable allies of the ruling “communist” party (PUWP) waver. Indeed there is evidence that the PUWP vote itself could split between hardliners and reformists with the latter floating the possibility of forming a new party altogether.

Several government ministers, including the Prime Minister, were “deselected” via the national list flasco, whilst it continues to agonise over how to fill the remaining seats, Solidarity faces the problems of being a majority opposition. Whilst they cannot formally oppose

BY HARRY WALL

legislation they can block it.

This sits at odds with their project of economic reconstruction based on a strategy of privatisation (see letter on page 15) and the elimination of price subsidies. So despite their formal refusal to join the government it is Solidarity’s economic advisors who seem to be making the running in planning the new austerity drive.

There is no doubt that Solidarity will use its massive electoral sup port to promote itself as a necessary partner in any “national recovery” plan. Nor is there any doubt that the full brunt of this sacrifice will fall on the backs of the Polish working class.

There were signs during the elections of growing divisions within Solidarity ttself. As the Solidarity leadership around Walesa increasingly acts as a Catholic political party and Jess as trade union leaders, these splits will deepen. The task of militants in Poland today is to ensure that these splits do not remain simply at the level of different shades of opinion in the leader ship. :

Solidarity’s working class base has shrunk considerably from its 1981 high point. Nevertheless it is these forces that must be won to

opposing the austerity plan, and the Walesa leadership. They must prevent themselves from being used merely as a prop for Walesa’s politi cal ambitions. That he is content for this to happen is illustrated by his remark that Solidarity “will never be 10 million again”. For his ambitions, it does not need to be.

The worker militants of Solidarity must regain the initiative if they are to regain the power to defend their living standards and challenge the regime. The call for a Solidarity congress, at which the base units could hold the leadership to account for their drive towards auster ity, needs to be taken up and ar gued for. That was the potential for working class political power could be unlocked in Poland.@

JOZEF PINIOR

In Workers Power 118 we reported that Jozef Pinior, a leader of the PPS(RD), had been refused a passport by the Jaruzelski regime. We are happy to report that, following protests by the international workers’ movement, he has now been granted one, and willbe addressing a fringe meeting at this year’s Labour Party Conference.

Page 9

Workers Power 120

After the death of Khomeini the fragile unity of the ruling clergy is set to blow apart. Mark Hoskisson explains the issues behind the unfolding

Crisis

FEW KIND words were to be found in the obituaries of the western press for Ayatollah Khomeini. His journey to the next world has been eagerly anticipated by the western governments for several years

now. _ For them Khomeini was the Iranian revolution. He symbolised its Islamic fervour and its intransigence against the “great Satan” (the USA) and the “lesser Satans” (Britain, France, West Germany, etc). His death, they hope, will smooth the path towards the reintegration of Iran into their world order of exploitation and servitude. Khomeini’s reign of just over 10 years was a bloody lesson proving the hostility of a supposedly “antiimperialist” bourgeois leadership to the real interests of the op-

pressed masses. In reality he was =

lran after Khomeini!

the personification of the counterrevolution in Iran.

Yet Khomeini’s reactionary dictatorship, and even, in the end, his Islamic fervour, were not the reasons for the west’s hostility to him and his regime. Carter, Reagan, Bush and Thatcher were all friends with an equally vile Islamic dictator, Zia, in Pakistan. They were indifferent to Khomeini’s slaughter of the left. They welcomed his programme of breaking up the workers’ control movement in the factories (the shoras). And they couldn’t care less about the tragic plight of the Kurds his regime persecuted.

What really antagonised them was Khomeini’s refusal to return to business-as-usual with imperialism. They hoped they could continue to exploit Iran economically and use it militarily to guarantee stability in the oil-rich Gulf. Khomeini not only refused to succumb to their wishes, he repeatedly thwarted them.

Rushdie

His interventions in the Palestinian conflict, his prolonged war with Iraq, the activities of his supporters in the Lebanon, his toleration of the holding of US hostages from the Embassy in Tehran for 444 days all obstructed Iran’s return to “the international community”. The death sentence on Salman Rushdie was the latest example of this policy of inflaming relations with the imperialists.

Despite this, in no sense could workers politically support the Khomeini regime as “anti-imperialist”. Having come to power as a result of an anti-imperialist revolution, Khomeini unleashed a bloody counter-revolution. In order to maintain mass support for his Islamic Republic, he had to utilise anti-imperialist demagogy. He had to prolong the bloody, and after 1982, futile and reactionary war with Iraq, to maintain the unity of his mass base. And with this mass support he was able to oversee the reconstruction of Iran as a thoroughly repressive, capitalist country within which his key bourgeois supporters were able to amass fortunes.

Out of the power struggle that has begun in Tehran today the imperialists are hoping for the emergence of a moderate faction that they can, at last, do business with. The war wreaked havoc in Iran. The reconstruction of the country could provide fat profits to the western capitalists. Deals are already being struck. France and West Germany are now sending their ambassadors back to Tehran. Others will follow. But the signs are that the path toreconstruction will be bumpy.

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Khomeini has left behind him a crisis-ridden country. The economy is the government’s biggest nightmare. Industry is operating at 25% of its pre-revolutionary capacity. Inflation is officially 22%, but in reality nearer 70%. The masses are paying dearly for this high cost of living. Torenta one bedroom flat in Tehran costs 100,000 rials a month—the average wage of a teacher is 50,000 rials a month! Food coupons and rationing have led tomassive shortages andstimulated a huge blaek market. Out of a workforce officially numbered at 13 million (women are excluded), some 4 million are unemployed. The oil revenues which fuelled the war cannot offset these economic ills. They now barely cover the costs of Iran’s $13 billion per year food and armaments import bill.

Khomeini preserved a degree of unity inside the ruling class in the face of these difficulties by acting as a Bonaparte. That is, he stood above the different factions and played them offagainst each other, limiting or extending their power and influence in order to maintain a balance between them. Against any opposition—such ascame from his once designated sucessor Ayatollah Montazeri—he used his mass base among the urban poor. Montazeri was deposed and his supporters executed. Through this balancing act, this Bonapartism, a relative stability was maintained. Now, with the Bonaparte gone the stability could die with him.

Factions

In broad terms the principal factions within the regime are the “pragmatists” around Rafsanjani and the “radicals” around Khomeini’s son Ahmad and the Prime Minister, Moussavi. Hitherto the pragmatists, and Rafsanjani in particular, were looked to by the west as potential allies. It was Rafsanjani who engineered Iran’s acceptance of the ceasefire that has effecticely ended the war with Iraq. It was he who negotiated with the USA in the Iran-Contra dealings. It was he who initially appeared to moderate the calls for Rushdie’s death. Most important, Rafsanjani, a millionaire capitalist himself, favoured a privateenterprise dominated [ran in which investment from the west would be welcomed. |

Seite ena

Ranged against him stood the “radicals”, the very epitome of the fundamentalist fanaticism that is associated with Iran. These are the forces who, mindful of the need toretain mass support, demagogi-

cally champion the interests of the

poor, favour nationalisation of the economy and urge the maintenance of the most brutal aspects of the Koran’s legal and moral strictures.

The problem for the imperialists, however, is that Rafsanjani is a real and skillful pragmatist. While this can episodically endear him to them it can also destroy

INTERNATIONAL JULY 1989

their plans completely. In order to consolidate his own power he is more than ready to out-shout the radicals. Hence his recent call on muslims to kill five westerners for every Palestinian killed in the intifadah. Hence his recent turn— which he claims Khomeini endorsed on_his deathbed—to cultivate relations with the USSR.

Formerly it had been the radicals who favoured negotiating economic ties with the eastern bloc. Now Rafsanjani has delivered the goods, with the USSR promising aid for power stations, steel mills, dams and reconstruction projects. He was given the red carpet treatment on his recent trip tothe USSR. In typical fashion, he has told Britain and the USA: “The west must act as the USSR and then relations will improve”.

Heis, pragmatically, playing the USSR off against the imperialists in a bid to secure economic aid for Iran.

His project is to replace Khomeini’s Bonapartism with his own. He is speaker in the Majlis (parliament) and has already secured command of the armed forces. He has close links with, and can probably control Khamenei, the current president, chosen by the Assembly of Experts to be Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader.

He is himself likely to become president after elections in August. The constitutional review underway will transform this post from a largely ceremonial one into a really powerful one. The post of prime minister, currently held by Moussavi, a radical, is to be abolished. And there are plans to give Khamenei the power to dissolve the Majlis, the main base of the radical clergy.

How far Rafsanjani will get in this project will depend on whether the radicals organise themselves for a fight. A planned demonstration against Khamenei’s appoint-

ment by the radical-led Komitehs was called off in the name of unity. Already Khamenei’s supportersin the army have replaced radical influenced Revolutionary Guards at a number of key installations. Rafsanjani’s brother controls the state radio and TV network and the radicals have not yet started using the platform provided by prayer meetings to argue their case.

Conflict

Despite this apparent passivity there is every possibility that the scale of the ‘economic crisis will plunge the regime into internal conflict. All Rafsanjani’s pragmatism will count for nothing if the masses continue to be deprived of bread. Anew turn tothe west would lead to further struggles against him.

Given this uncertainty there is the real prospect that Iran will, once again, be plunged intorevolutionary turmoil. When this occurs the masses will, as they did in 1978/9, take the road of life or death struggle. There will be no shortage of people from within the regime claiming Khomeini’s mantle and attempting to use mobilisations for their own ends. There will be no shortage of reactionary exiles, from pro-Shah monarchists through to bourgeois liberals like Bani Sadr, waiting to try and make Iran habitable for imperialism once again. The masses need to learn the lesson of the last ten years, that all such leaderships will betray their fundamental interests.

A new leadership will be needed for a new revolution—a proletarian, revolutionary party that is prepared to seize the opportunities presented by the impending crisis. Only this can ensure that this time a socialist Iran, a workers’ not an Islamic republic, is the outcome of the struggle

S miners battle union busters

LATE LAST month a teenager was shot in the head and seriously wounded in West Virginia, USA. The sniper that fired the shot aimed to kill. The youth was a striking miner, a soft target for the company thugs who have been paid handsomely to frighten miners back to work.

An 1988 the Pittston Coal Company set out to break the miners’ union, the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA), and clear the way for a reduced workforce, paid below union rates and working in inhuman conditions. The company refused to abide by a union con tract and for 14 months workers at Pittston’s pit in south west Virginia tried to negotiate.

In April, after no progress had been made, 1,700 miners went on strike. Their struggle is one of many being fought by miners to stop union busting throughout the industry. At other pits in the region mining corporations like the New Beckley Coal Company have also tom up contracts. They too have been met with strike action. The rank and file of the UMWA are saying they will not take any more attacks the coal owners.

In response to the Pittston strike the bosses withdrew medical aid to retired miners and widows. This act of meanness had the effect of uniting the whole West Virginian coalfield against the bosses. A “people’s movement” organised support and relief for strikers, their families and the retired miners and widows. Crucially wildcat strikes throughout the Appalachians took place and created the conditions for reversing the defeats that the

BY ARTHUR MERTON

union has suffered since the great coal strike of 1978.

The union’s campaign of picketing quickly showed that the vicious coal bosses were not alone in wanting the break the UMWA. The state government sent in police and troopers to smash the picket lines. Over 2,000 miners and supporters have been arrested since the strike began. Three union organisers were imprisoned. The UMWA was hit by the courts and faced fines of up to $1,000 million for organising pickets. And now, in the tradition of the coal wars of the 1920s and 1950s, the company have sent in gun toting goons to kill strikers.

Onslaught

The West Virginian miners are amongst the toughest and most militant workers in the USA. In the face of the company/state onslaught they have organised pickets, demos and traffic convoys to block roads. As the violence is stepped up they will have to add militant mass pickets, defended by organised workers’ militia, to these tactics. They did it in Mingo county in the 1920s and fought a war with state troopers. They will need to do it again today. The Pittston miners have already secured combat jacket uniforms—a militia is the next step.

The key to victory, though, lies ia spreading the strike. For years the coal bosses have been able to pick off heroic but isolated sections of miners in their campaign

against the union—Duke Power in the 1970s, A T Massey in 1984 85, Pittston and New Beckley today. The surest way to put an end to this piecemeal onslaught is for an all out UMWA strike. After all, other disputes around similar issues are, or have been, raging in numerous states across the cour-

try.

Yet the union leadership, under president Richard Trumka, are holding back. They are abiding by court rulings, calling on miners to pursue non-violent civil disobedience tactics, urging consumer boycotts and federal mediation, and limiting the action to selective strikes. This is a recipe for the slow death of the union.

By building on the widespread sympathy and solidarity that exists, the militants at Pittston need to press forward for a quick victory. Links between existing strikes must be built. Pickets must be dispatched and every coalfield closed. This way the bosses’ union-busting plans can be stopped and the possibility of unionising the vast number of open-shop mines across the USA will be created.

More than this, with a solid strike at Eastern airlines still going on, a national UMWA strike alongside it can turn the tide for the whole US labor movement. The defeats and decline that characterised the Reagan years can be decisively reversed. Bush’s antHworking class plans for North America can be thwarted before he has a chance

to begin implementing them. @ Victory to the Virginian miners! @ Ail out in the UMWA!

Page 10

V—_—_—_——_—

14 Workers Power 120

CHINA

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JULY 1989

Debate

Massive revolutionary upheavals, like the Chinese events, always expose an organisations’ politics to the severest test. They demonstrate, like nothing else can, the weaknesses and flaws in the theoretical and programmatic basis of an organisation. Nowhere has this been clearer on the British left than in the case of the Socialist Workers Party with its “state capitalist” analysis of China and its disdain for “programme” as Stuart King explains.

THE REAL weaknesses of this organisation are all glaringly exposed in its coverage of the Chinese events: its inability to analyse the dynamics of the crisis of the Chinese bureaucracy, its helplessness when faced with developing a concrete strategy for a revolutionary struggle and finally its ability to “forget” the question of the revolutionary party.

At the end of May Socialist Worker was correctly pointing to one of the key weaknesses of the Chinese movement, its failure to throw onto the scales of battle the enormous economic power of the working class. An editorial in Socialist Worker pointed out that despite the numbers of workers involved in the protests, “With a few exceptions they organised in their neighbourhoods and estates not in their factories and offices. ..

Forcing the regime to make real concessions needed a different kind of power, the power workers have to bring the economy anditsrulers to its knees. This could only be done by strike action and workers organising collectively in the factories and offices ... As aresult the government could reassert its control of the streets which could never have worked against factories occupied by workers.” (Socialist Worker 3 June )

While the question of strike action to paralyse the economy was key tothe struggle, tosuggest that somehow it would have prevented the government from “reasserting its control” in the factories, is to disarm the masses. As long as the army remained a reliable instrument of the bureaucracy the burning task was to organise armed defence by the workers’ and students’ organisations. Strike action, even massive general strike action, can be crushed if the workers do not form their own militias. But scour the Socialist Worker coverage of China and you will not find this question raised. As usual it remains firmly in the “Where We Stand Column”, not as an opera-

_ tive demand to be fought for.

Army

Connected to this was the question of how to deal with the army. Again Socialist Worker offered no

way forward for the movement. It was left to John Molyneux in the “Teach Yourself Marxism” column to raise the question, and only in the most general sense, of working class revolutions néeding to “break the rank and file of the army from the control of the generals and ruling class through mass confrontation”.

But what did this mean concretely in the Chinese events? How were the Chinese workers and students to do it? Again Socialist Worker remained silent.

The need to turn fraternisation into systematic work amongst the troops in the barracks, raising the soldiers’ demands and grievances against their officers, setting up rank and file soldiers’ organisations, putting across the case of the workers against the corrupt bureaucrats, these were the key tasks of the movement. In the struggle to break up the army as an effective disciplined force and win over the rank and file, arming the people and forming an effective workers’ militia, is crucial.

Units have to be defeated, demoralised;-only the armed work-

SWP: no answers for the

Chinese working class |

ers can dethis. As the rank and file soldiers come over to the masses, so they have to be drawn into the workers’ councils. Without such councils organising the struggle and drawing in all sectors of the masses, the movement could only go backwards.

Why was the SWP incapable of raising these crucial demands drawn from the arsenal of Marxism? Because. these are programmatic demands, they are part of the programme of political revolution, and the SWP hates programme. It preferstoswim with the spontaneity of the masses rather than fighting to give the movement direction. It has built its organisation on the basis of rejecting the Transitional Programme and its method. As a result it is incapable of putting forward a strategy that can win, especially in a revolutionary crisis.

Vague

While the SWP recognises that there was a failure in the movement to develop demands to mobilise the workers it offers only the vaguest suggestions as to how it should have been done.

“Calls for democracy and an end to corruption were absolutely right ... but these calls had to be linked to the fight to defend living standards from inflation and economic chaos.”

But how? Where were the demands that addressed these questions? The question of workers’ control in the factories, the struggle to break the bureaucrats’ hold on the plan and place it under the direction of the workers, the demands addressed tothe grievances of the poorer peasants etc. All this is far too “programmatic” and therefore absent.

Marx, Lenin and Trotsky in-

sisted on programme not because they thought the incantation of a few magic words can absolve revolutionaries from addressing the concerns of the masses. On the contrary they recognised the need to focus the needs of the masses on strategic goals, to give a clear answer tothe question “what next”. This was the function of the action programme for the revolutionary Marxist tradition. It is a method explicitly rejected by Socialist Worker.

No socialist could have failed to be moved by the enormous upsurge of the Chinese masses. The mass student demonstrations in the face of bureaucratic threats, the transport strikes and blocking of railways, the popular fraternising with the troops and the willingness of the workers and students to risk their lives again and again in front of the tanks and armoured cars of the bureaucracy were all a source of inspiration.

Yet for revolutionaries there was also a feeling of frustration. Frustration that so powerful a movement lacked the direction and strategy which could haveensured its victory over the Chinese Stalinists. Only a revolutionary party of the proletariat could have provided such direction—a party forged, of neccessity, in this mighty struggle—rooted in the student and workers’ movement.

Such a party would have been built precisely on the programme and strategy it argued within the masses in the course of these events. It would have had to combat the illusions of the masses and student leaders in this or that section of the bureacracy, in the “People’s” Liberation Army, in notions of peaceful change through “people’s power”.

Socialist Worker is proud of its party.profile.in Britain, it constantly exhorts workers and stu-

Bob Gannon/insight

dents to join it and build it. But what about China in the midst ofa revolutionary crisis where the question of party, class and leadership was posed so dramatically? We find only silence.

Scour Socialist Worker's coverage of the Chinese events again and you will find no argument for the neccessity of the Chinese movement to build a revolutionary combat party. Characteristic of the state capitalist tendency is not only its rejection of programme but, inextricably tied up with this, its failure to recognise the political importance of the party in revolutionary crises. As an afterthought, when the immediate struggle had already been defeated, Socialist Worker had this to say:

“Socialists must hope some of the activists survive the repression, draw the lessons of the defeat and keep some form of organisation alive even if underground.”

Confession

Whataconfession ofbankruptcy! The major lesson of the defeat was the need to build a party independent of the bureaucracy, one that could develop a programme and with it organise the masses to take power and smash the bureaucratic caste which at presentrules China. The SWP “hopes” “some form of organisation” survives. What form? The student movement? The independent workers’ organisations? Neither are sufficient. These dyed in the wool liquidationists dare not raise the question of the party— the hallmark of a centrist.

“But [this or that SWP hack will reply] we cannot raise everything in Socialist Worker”. True, but the eight page article on China by Charlie Hore in the June Socialist Worker Review (SWR) only provided the same confusion, in depth.

how the SWP’s state capitalist analysis ledves them incapable of finding the roots of the Chinese crisis.

For the SWP, divisions within the bureaucracy merely reflect arguments over how much or how little state capitalism and state direction should be allowed in the economy. While they correctly point out the economic dislocations and chaos caused in China by the introduction of the market, they fail to see the implications this has for the bureaucracy and how it effects their actions. Because they do not analyse the bureaucracy as aruling caste, whose very existence depends, in the final analysis, on the survival of post-capitalist property relations, they cannot understand the contradictions which rack this caste. Rather they see the struggles as “various factions of the Chinese ruling class vying for power” (“May of the Masses” -SWRJune 839, p11).

This sociological analysis of the regime leads to a dramatic overestimation of the fragmention of the bureaucracy and an underestimation of its determination to preserve the basis of its rule in times of crisis. Charlie Hore’s article presents a picture of a Chinese economy out of control of the bureaucracy, of a central bureaucracy unable to control the local party bureaucrats, managers and even the army:

“The anarchy of competition which now characterises the Chinese economy means the state has lost control over the army and of lower level officials and managers who run the economy day to day” (SWR p14).

Bankrupt

The troops. rolled into Tiananmen Square only a few days after the article was written. Rarely can a group’s analysis have proved so bankrupt so quickly!

The bureaucracy is indeed wracked with crisis, but it the crisis of a degenerate workers state based on post-capitalist property relations. It is the crisis of bureaucratic command planning, which, because it has driven the workers from any political power and control of the plan, is failing to develop the economy.

The introduction of the market, using the profit motive and competition to improve productivity, is a dangerous road for a bureaucracy whose rule is based on a different form of property. It is not likely to allow anything that seriously undermines its position without striking back, even if this means exacerbating the stagnation and decline of the Chinese economy.

The SWP is incapable of understanding this dynamic, blinded as it is by the need to analyse China as a capitalist country with a capitalist ruling class. The events of the past month have shown once again just how bankrupt that analysis, and the political method

. The artiele.brings.out graphically. » that-goes withit,really is.M > -

Page 11

Workers Power 120

solidarity and the shipyard

Dear Comrades,

Every worker in Poland and throughout the world must be delighted at the defeat of the bureaucracy in the recent Polish elections.

However, while being pleased with the government's humiliation, the victory of Solidarnosc in the elections raises new problems for socialist in Poland. Given that the capitalist press is full of nothing but praise for Walesa and squeals with delight every time he moves further right it was a relief to see in Workers Power an analysis of developments in Poland and interviews with militants who are fighting Jaruzelski and Walesa.

Anyone whostill has any doubts about where Walesa is heading need only look to the back page of the Financial Times (10 June 89).

Pornography

Dear Comrades,

With regard to the article in Workers Power 119 “Censorship and Pomography”. Whilst I wholeheartedly agreed with the basic premise of the article that pomography could not be seen as the cause of sexual violence against women, | did feel that In not accommodating to this point of view the article bent the stick too far the other way.

By this | mean the statement which claims pomography is only a reflection of what already exists in society.

“Where sexist imagery is widespread it is merely a reflection of this material reality, not its principal cause.”

Of course, pomography Is not the principal cause of violence, but that does not mean it is only a passive reflection of what exists already. Surely there is an “active” element to pornography, as in all media, that serves to perpetuate and legitimise the system that exists—thus playing an active role in maintaining the existing system. in comradeship, Julie Shufflebottom.

In an article titled “John Lloyd meets the lady with everything but the Lenin shipyard” we are told about the multi-millionairess who plans to buy the Gdansk shipyards.

Mrs Basia Piasecka Johnson seemingly decided to buy the shipyard at acorpus christi procession in Silesia. A week later she signed a letter of intent with the Gdansk management and Walesa to buy the shipyard, by January 1990.

The article is full of rubbish which gives the impression she is doing it for Poland. But, unlike

saber aan ag

Walesa and striking

Sec ee Lenin shipyard worker,

%. BCM Box 7750 S. London WC1 3XX

John Lloyd, I just don’t believe that multi-millionaires are philanthropic. If the shipyard doesn’t start to give a nice return in a few years then it’s job cuts and lower wages just like it is in the west.

In Workers Power 119 you argued that a vote for Solidarnosc in the elections was a vote for their integration intothecorruptregime. Mrs. Basia Piasecka (who owns two Caravaggio’s worth £25 million each) will obviously agree with your analysis.

She said of the elections “Solidarity and the government must

eaten tet 8

Roe ember 1988

Sept

hata

JULY 1989

Correction

Dear Comrades,

In my article in the last paper we create the impression that all black candidates in the Vauxhall by-election had Supported local government cuts. This is not the case with regard to Martha Osamor, who has opposed cuts in her local constituency. | would like to set the record straight.

Brian Green

find a way of working together— they must—and then both sides can create great opportunities for Poland”. She ought to have said great opportunities for a new Polish bourgeoisie.

Yours, R Millar Sheffield

Dear Comrades?

It was with some interest that | read your article on the Birmingham City Labour Council inWP 116. Nearly three months on the NALGO workers you referred to are still struggling against wage cutting re-grading proposals. The council leader, Dick Knowles, quaintly referred to in the local bosses’ press as a “socialist stalwart”, is in reality rather less than that.

At a recent May Day rally in the city, Knowles treated workers to abuse when confronted by NALGO strikers and will only discuss the matterwith a fulltime regional official,

For services rendered

to the understandable disgust of local shop stewards and lay officials. But this is nothing new. Members of NALGO, NATFHE and numerous other public sector unions in the city can point to a history of unavoidable confrontations with a Labour Council falling over itself to keep sweet with Tory central government cuts at the

direct expense of the Birmingham

working class.

Recently Knowles has led a posse of other right wing Labour councillors out of the room at a District Labour Party meeting being addressed by a striking NALGO shop steward only to lead them back in again after she

had finished. This “socialist stalwart” has also overseen the installation of millions of pounds of computer equipment to administer the Tory Poll Tax.

On the leader of this council the ruling class has just bestowed one of its knighthoods, presumably for “services rendered”. One can’t help wondering if the labour movement in Birmingham might consider bestowing its own “award” on Councillor Sir Richard Knowles—an LBE perhaps? (that’s Lackey of the British Empire).

Yours in comradeship, D Chapman

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STAND:

WORKERS POWER is a revolutionary communist organisation. We base our programme and policies on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, on the documents of the first four congresses of the Third (Communist) international and on the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

Capitalism is an anarchic and crisisridden economic system based on production for profit. We are for the expropriation of the capitalist class and the abolition of capitalism. We are for its replacement by socialist production planned to satisfy human need.

Only the socialist revolution and the smashing of the capitalist state can achieve this goal. Only the working class, led by a revolutionary vanguard party and organised into workers’ councils and workers’ militia can lead such a revolution to victory and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. There Is no peaceful, parliamentary road to socialism.

The Labour Party is not a socialist party. It is a bourgeois workers’ party— bourgeois in its politics and its practice, but based on the working class via the trade unions and supported by the mass of workers at the polls. We are for the building of a revolutionary tendency in the Labour Party and the LPYS, in order to win workers within those organisations away from reformism and to the revolutionary party.

The misnamed Communist Parties are really Stalinist parties—reformist, like the Labour Party, but tied to the bureaucracy that rules in the USSR. Their strategy of alliances with the bourgeoisie (popular fronts) inflicts terrible defeats on the working class world-wide.

In the USSR and the other degenerate workers’ states, Stalinist bureaucracies rule over the working class. Capitalism has ceased to exist but the workers do not hold political power. To open the road to socialism, a political revolution to smash bureaucratic tyranny is needed. Nevertheless we unconditionally defend these states against the attacks of imperialism and against internal capitalist restoration in order to defend the post-capitalist property relations.

In the trade unions we fight for a rank and file movement to oust the reformist bureaucrats, to democratise the unions and win them to a revolutionary action programme based on a system of transitional demands which serve as a bridge between today’s struggles and the socialist revolution. Central to this is the fight for workers’ control of production.

We are for the building of fighting organisations of the working class— factory committees, industrial unions and councils of action.

We fight against the oppression that Capitalist society inflicts on people because of their race, age, sex, or sexual orientation. We are for the liberation of women and for the building of a working class women’s movemert, not an “all class” autonomous movement. We are for the liberation of all of the oppressed. We fight racism and fascism. We oppose all immigration controls. We are for no platform for fascists and for driving them out of the unions.

We support the struggles of oppressed nationalities or countries against imperialism. We unconditionally support the Irish Republicans fighting to drive British troops out of Ireland. We politically oppose the nationalists (bourgeois and petit bourgeois) who lead the struggles of the oppressed nations. To their strategy we counterpose the strategy of permanent revolution, that is the leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle by the working class with a programme of socialist revolution and internationalism.

In conflicts between imperialist countries and semi-colonial countries, we are for the defeat of “our own” army and the victory of the country oppressed and exploited by imperialism, We are for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. We fight imperialist war not with pacifist pleas but with militant class struggle methods including the forcible disarmament of “our own” bosses.

Workers Power is the British Section of the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International. The last revolutionary International (Fourth) collapsed in the years 1948-51.

The MRCI is pledged to fight the centrism of the degenerate fragments of the Fourth International and to refound a Leninist Trotskyist International and build a new world party of socialist revolution. We combine the struggle for a reelaborated transitional programme with active involvement in the struggles | of the working class—fighting for J revolutionary leadership.

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against capitalism: if you are an

Page 12

British section of the Movement for a Revoluticnlry Communist International

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POLL 1AX:

DON’T PAY!

THE POLL Tax is the flagship of the Tory third term. With the Tories reeling from their Euro-election defeat, with the economy in trouble, with a wave of strike action underway, now is the time to sink Thatcher's

flagship.

The Poll Tax systematically robs the poor to pay the rich. The average bill for every individual over 18 is working out at upwards of. £600 a year.

The Tax is an assault on what few services Labour still providesin local government. If the Tories implement the Tax successfully they will launch a massive propaganda campaign to show voters how their payments could be reduced: by councils slashing services to the very bone in working class areas.

That is why the Poll Tax must be stopped.

At present the Scottish anti-Poll Tax campaign has reached acrucial stage. Over 700,000 are reportedly refusing to pay the Tax.

In England and Wales it looks likely that, as in Scotland, the Tories will succeed in registering most people through a combination of threats, fines and snooping. But the registration forms falling onto the doormats in the last few weeks have been alerting working class families to the ssid ies and un-

Wie ses- ae etre tries ee ime oa

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just cost of the Tax.

The Scottish campaign has rallied hundreds of thousands to non-payment despite the bitter opposition of the Labour and trade union leaders. At its height their “campaign” has amounted to a few newspaper ads, with stars like Glenda Jackson telling us: “I’m outraged by the Poll Tax”.

The problem is that millions of working class people will be more than “outraged”

by the Tax. Their living standards will be hammered by it. Even the unemployed will be forced to pay one fifth of the charge. For them a campaign of petitions, of big demonstrations that lead to nothing, is useless.

We can beat the Tax only if we organise to break the law.

In every area and estate there should be a local antiPoll Tax union. These local groups should be fighting to

build citys yice Sct SovrG

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cils of delegates from the areas, the workplaces andthe trade unions. Together they should organise a-mass campaign of non-payment and non-collection.

Councils and council trade unionists should be won to refusing to handle Poll Tax work. So should all those workers the government will have to use to collect the Tax, from postal workers to pay clerks.

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BUILD THE ANTI-

IMPERIALIST CONTINGENT

on the Time To Go

MARCH AND RALLY IN LONDON

Saturday 12 August 11am Whittington Park Holloway Road, near Archway tube

Sponsors include: South London Year of Action, Revolutionary Internationalist League, Workers Intemational League, Workers Power

THIS AUGUST sees the twentieth anniversary of British troops arriving on the streets of Belfast and Derry. It is therefore essential that there is the biggest possible turnout on the demonstra tion called for 12 August in London to mark the anniversary of this event.

The troops arrived in August 1969 underthe pretext of defending the nationalist population from loyalist pogroms. Instead they introduced internment, torture, daily harassment and shootto-kill against anyone who resisted British rule.

Britain's policy has never been aimed at bringing about

Steve Wride

the localities should be organised to keep the nonpayment campaign solid. The moment a single one of those resisting the Tax is hit by the law, whether it be fines for non-payment, or injunctions under the antiunion laws for non-collection, workers should organise the biggest possible mass strike action and the occupation of the Council offices, not just in Scotland but throughout

‘thelandm >”

a peaceful solution. Both Labour and Tory. govemments have tried to smash the antHmperialist resistance to British rule.

In, Britain, through the use of the PTA frame-up trials, they have carried out a campaign of repression against the Irish community.

During the last twenty years British workers have not been won to the building of a mass challenge to British rule in Ireland. The central responsibility for this rests with the Labour Party and TUC leaders who have upheld a bipartisan agreement with the Tories through out this period. Labour governments were responsible for the introduction of troops in 1969 and the SAS death squads in 1976. From the hunger strikes of 1981 to the Gibraltar shootings in 1988, the Labour leadership has continued its treacherous, chauvinist role.

The slogans of the march organisers: “British With drawal From lreland—Time To Go” accomodates to this chauvinism in the hope that they will give the demo fake mass appeal and by presenting withdrawal from the point of view of Britain’s best long term interests.

There can be no political basis for a withdrawal movement founded on these backward sentiments. Such a movement would be unable to withstand the intense pressure put on it by British imperialism and its agents in the labour movement.

No short-cut

There can be no short cuts to making Ireland a popular issue. Illusions that exist in the working class about the neutrality of the British state, and the bigotry that exists towards Irish people must be challenged head_on.

Work within the trade unions has been relegated by lrish solidarity organisations to a tenth rate issue. That must be changed. There must be a clear recognition of the need to rally the working class as the only force in Britain that can effectively unite with Ireland’s republicans and socialists to force the troops out.

That is why any campaign to get the troops out must be based onthe labour movement. It must be unambiguous and state clearly that Britain has no progressive role to play in Ireland and therefore the occupying troops must go—NOW! It must make clear that the only people who have the right to decide the future of the Six Counties are the Irish people as a whole. They were deprived of this right in1921 when Britain partitioned the whole island against the express wishes of the majority of the population.

it is for these reasons that we are calling for support for the anti-imperialist contingent on the 12 August demonstration around the demands:

@ Troops out now! @ Self-determination for the Irish people as a whole!