Un the road to dictatorship

SHORTLY AFTER I went to the United political statement.

era of civil wars'. Since this utterance a group of army officers have public prominence. They • are Brigadier Frank Ki Heath appointed as head of the Infantry Training Warminster; Brigadier Michael Calvert, a founding the Special Air Services (SAS); and Major-Gener Clutterbark, now lecturer in Political Violence and at Exeter University. ITSON first introduced the theory of 'gangs and cou and used it to assassinate some leaders of the Mau-l ment in Kenya. His technique was to dress up Africans in the garb of the nationalist army and infiltrate them. These agents provocateur would then lead the Mau-Mau into prearranged ambushes where the British army would shoot down the Mau-Mau while the 'counter-gangs' escaped. • received medals for this and other services in Malaya, Aden, Cyprus and, more recently, Northern Ireland. During his term in Ulster the torture rooms were set up at Holywood barracks and the paras shot 13 unarmed civilians in the back in Derry on Bloody Sunday. st over a year ago Kitson produced a book 'Low-Density Operations', which has become a best-seller in military and reactionary circles in big business. This politically-charged book urges the government to take up battle stations against the working class by integrating the police, army and intelligence services under a central command. ALVERT was described in last week's 'Observer' as a member of la small group of military counter-insurgency experts'. Until recently he was a reManchester University. The Observer' caarch fellnw in militaru ctudiac at ICHUT stated: 'Both Calvert and Kitson see insurgency developing as the major threat of the late 1970s.' Echoes of Heath! qualified engineer, Calvert wants to redesign major cities to frustrate : 'the urban guerrilla'. He has been described as 'the prophet of the fortress city'. The SAS, of which he was a founding member, is the most secretive and deadly wing of the army. Monetary talks have already point of almost complete breakdow point of almost complete breakdown and there is very little the capitalist powers can do little the capitalist powers can do to stem the slide towards slump.

This was clear yesterday as Finance Ministers and bankers from the United States, the Common Market, Japan, Canada and Sweden gathered in Paris for crisis talks on the monetary situation.

In his opening speech French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing said failure to agree to a joint international settlement would call into question the very principle of exchange rate stability on which the monetary system is based.

This was a high level of understatement: sterling, the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and the Canadian dollar are already floating and West Germany has said failure to agree on a joint Yard strikers conscripted THE PERUVIAN military junta, led by Juan Velasco, has conscripted striking shipyard workers into the army.

A Ministry of Labour spokesman attacked the present strike wave of teachers, shipyard workers, post office workers and doctors as damaging 'key sectors for the national economy and well-being' All these public sector workers are unable to join unions and have had their wages frozen IIS. election in June 1970 Edward Heath Nations general assembly to make a major He declared that the 1970s would be 'the come into son, who chool at member of al Richard Revolution inter-gangs' Mau moveIts operati part of it had a Jagan in While c frequent London, expected or chau: is week honk "F rilla. O vVVE the esta para-mil: demonst He stre: gence w Clutterb tioning • frustrate ready to which t until th feated.' lese rear frequent blasts ir and Clu BBC in preach t eir arro as their sharpest the wor unions. mong ul float means the mark will float independently when the markets reopen.

In fact, there is no longer any stability in relations between currencies and even if Giscard d'Estaing's call was heeded no country or group of countries has any chance of halting the monetary system's collapse.

Yesterday's top-level meeting was doomed from the start. Since the foreign exchange markets were closed eight days ago it has become evident that there is absolutely no basis of agreement between the capitalist powers.

There is not even the possibility of patching together a partial or temporary arrangement to buy time. The objective laws by the military regime.

Diaz Chavez, a leading Communist Party trade unionist, declared in an interview in the newspaper '7 Days':

'The present Minister of Labour, in my opinion, is one of the best members of the Revolutionary government. He has not only shown that he is very capable but that he has great social and human sensitivity when dealing with labour problems.' ffeurs or barmen. the world to assist in coupsfor example, they could. be : CLUTTERBUCK published a ne of his major arguments is blishment of a 'third force', a itary organization to deal with rators, strikers and pickets. sses the importance of intelliork and argues for 'penetration revolutionary leadership itself. of his concluding remarks, uck says: 'Should the funcof the law itself be deliberately id then a government must be › suspend some of the freedoms hat law is designed to protect lis attack on the law is deationary views from a clique of brass are now being heard more ly. After Thursday's bomb 1 central London, both Calvert iterbuck were invited onto the two séparate programmes to heir message. 'gant appearance on the media ir temptation to invoke Heath r mentor must serve as the warning to organizations of king class, especially the trade ght-wing elements discus: broken down JOHN SPENCER of capitalism have completely disrupted all attempts at controlling them by agreement.

isters, meeting in Brussels on Thursday, could agree only on a list of 'suggestions' to put to the high-powered American team. The French and German representatives were absent from the meeting which . had all the markings of a hollow charade.

ted to a last despairing plea to Washington to take responsibility for the vast pool of 'hot' dollars in Europe. The EEC ministers wanted the US to buy them back with borrowed foreign currency and by floating a new issue of Treasury bonds.

ber, grovelling to the last, was anxious that the list of suggestions should not be put forward as demands on the United States. In practice it makes no difference what tone the Europeans use: the American answer is a firm 'No'.

a concerted Common Market currency float have been contemptuously rejected by the other EEC countries. Germany has indicated it will float independently when the foreign exchange markets reopen.

dollar-selling onto the other European countries and force the miners' strike last year. Since this 15,000 and armed and trained to army event of a 'national emergency'—read General Strike.

out the consent of parliament or the public-are a direct reflection of the rapidly worsening economic and political situation. It means that the baffling events in London on Thursday must be subjected to the closest scrutiny. It must be emphasized that both the Official and Provisional IRA have officially denied responsibility. le group of Irish citizens taken into custody from Heathrow are believed to have been connected with the Provisionals in the Andersonstown area. We don't say that these people were 'set up', but in the interests of obiectivity we are obliged to ask this quesAfter all, not so long ago it was admitted that Special Branch agents provocateur were involved in planting guns on a Soar Eire group in Hackney, east London.

The bombing incidents are made doubly baffling when the conduct of the police is examined. The car found outside Scotland Yard is said to have contained 150lb of gelignite and a time fuse. And yet this was dismantled and displayed on the pavement by two bomb disposal men from the Yard.

them to float their currencies as well. In other words the currencies of Europe will relapse into complete chaos with their parities fixed from day to day.

Common Market Finance Min- This spells the end for the Common Market, because trading relations within the EEC will be utterly disrupted by such development. The German decision to float marks the burial of any chance of European Monetary Union.

The enlarged Common Market The list of suggestions amoun- has proved unable to meet its first big test. A regime under which each member country is independently floating will be a case of 'every man for himself'.

The end of the era of 'fixed but adjustable parities' will drive the on-going trade war to a new pitch of ferocity. The American Tory Chancellor Anthony Bar- government is talking openly in terms of a 15-per-cent import surcharge to follow the passage of the Trade Bill through Congress.

At the same time there is great hostility among the European employers to Japan. Japanese industry is accused of dumping British conditions for joining surplus exports in Europe and conducting a 'dirty' float of the yen. This charge was again levelled this week by Helmut Schmidt.

As this mutual recrimination clearly demonstrates there now no way the employers inThis will throw the burden of ternationally can stem the collapse of their monetary system and the slide towards slump. Yet it is an unchallengeable fact that if there was a 'car bomb' outside the Yard the people most qualified to dispose of it would be the army's bomb disposal unit.

This has all the hallmarks of a piece of showmanship by the police to curry favour with public opinion and to win support for the arming of the police. The incident has served the Tory government well. It intimidated the hospital workers' unions to send their members back to work while the military operation surrounding the Whitehall bomb has dealt a sobering blow at the civil servants who staged their first-ever national strike ten days ago.

was the danger of this type of situation which prompted the Socialist Labour League to issue a call earlier this year for a joint declaration by all groups on the left for a common fight to defend the basic democratic rights of the working class.

Whoever was responsible for Thursday's blasts remains a mystery. What is not a mystery is that the Tory government will use the incident to strengthen its campaign against the working class. The strength of the working class can and must resist the intentions of this clique of army officers and extreme right-wing Tories.

For the revolutionary movement the task is to expose publicly these reactionaries and to press urgently ahead with the building of a revolutionary party to lead the working class to the establishment of socialism.

This is a historic responsibility we must not abdicate.