Imprisonment of Abram Fischer

[p063] _ Imprisonment of ABRAM FISCHER "THE International Committee of the Fourth International condemns as an attack on the workers of South Africa and the whole world, the vicious sentence of life imprisonment pronounced on May 9, 1966, against Abram Fischer, 59-year- old Johannesburg lawyer and member of the Com- munist Party. This sentence is part of the ceaseless re- pression of the Verwoerd government, which oppresses the South African workers on behalf of big capital both native and international. The Suppression of Communism Act, under which Fischer was convicted, is a_ tyrannical measure, part of a whole programme of political dictatorship to enslave the workers and peasants. Verwoerd’s government, like Ian Smith’s in Rhodesia, and the Portuguese imperialists in Angola and Mozambique, is the hired thug of the international monopolists and finance capitalists in Europe, America and South Africa. The struggle against Verwoerd’s imperialist dictatorship is likewise a struggle against all those who stand behind him. Fischer will be freed, and the people of South Africa with him, only on the basis of an interna- tional struggle of the force which can challenge monopoly capitalism, the international proletariat. Fischer’s ‘crimes’ were entirely political. The capitalist government decreed that certain political affiliations, such as membership of the Com- munist Party, themselves made a person liable to life imprisonment. Fischer could not renounce his politics. Since he was not permitted to carry his political actions out legally, he was compelled to conceal his identity and equip himself with forged documents. Such actions are the elementary duty of any socialist struggling against the repressive regime. To convict Fischer on these grounds is not the ‘preservation of law and order’ on behalf of the people, as Verwoerd’s government claims, but the brutal and direct suppression of elementary per- sonal liberties. Fischer and the South African Communist Party conceived of the struggle in their country as one directed towards a national democratic revolution. The Fourth International has always considered that the national democratic tasks of the bour- geois revolution, in the epoch of imperialism, can be carried on only with the methods of the pro- letarian revolution, by the leadership of the work- ing class and its own Marxist Party. Only when this course is taken will the struggle be successful. Further, the struggle requires a strategy of united campaigns by workers in the metropolitan countries, in this case particularly Britain, against the bankers of the imperialist regime. We know, however, that such leadership and such campaigns must be built in and through the struggle against police repressions like those of Fischer. The methods of working-class revolution must be used for this defence also. The International Committee calls upon the workers of South Africa to stand firm in their resistance to the imperialist government, to strengthen their organisation in every area, to rouse the maximum support against the sentence on Fischer, to continue the preparation of armed resistance to the regime, alongside the workers and peasants of Rhodesia and the rest of Southern Africa. It is the independent organisation and politics of the proletariat which will drive out the imperialists. Particularly in Britain the campaign must be waged. Behind the smokescreen of a Labour government, thousands of millions of pounds are invested in South Africa by British capitalists pro- tected by Verwoerd and providing the basic support for the Smith regime. The struggle against these imperialists in Britain is impeded above all by their lackeys in the Labour government. When we call upon the Wilson government to intervene against the vicious sentence on Fischer, we do it as part of a campaign to expose the social democrats as servants of imperialism, and to build the independent leadership to lead the working class to the smashing of the imperialists at their centre. It is through this struggle that we fight most effectively on behalf of Fischer and all those de- tained in the South African police state. All sections of the Fourth International, and revolutionary workers everywhere, must expose by every means the sentence on Fischer and what lies behind it. Public campaigns and demonstrations to South African legations, all as part of building the anti-imperialist revolution in every country; this is our answer to the Verwoerd regime. The armed struggle of the African workers, supported by the international proletariat, will bring the freedom of Fischer and the destruction of Verwoerd and his like. Every publicity, every pressure, every action, by the workers’ movement and its allies all over the world, for the release of Abram Fischer. International Committee, London, May 5, 1966

[p064] 156 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 Declaration of the International Committee of the Fourth International