Almirante invites

IN A two-hour speech, Italian fascist leader Giorgio Almirante has warned parliament that any attempt to dissolve his party would only serve to make it stronger.

Almirante is accused of having attempted to reconstitute Mussolini's fascist party.

Parliament now has ten packets of documents of evidence against Almirante and MSI-national right party.

In the debate on whether he should stand trial, Almirante said that such a move would not only be undemocratic, but impossible in practice.

'You can take away a label, but you certainly can't take away a political will, he declared. His party would win many more voters if anyone tried to do away with it.

If convicted, Almirante faces up to 12 years in jail and the

Nixon planned

attack on basic democratic rights THE ATTACK on basic democratic rights, which is at the centre of the Watergate bugging affair in the United States, has been brought right in to the open by President Nixon's latest statement on the scandal.

He revealed that under plans drawn up in 1970 the administration had. intended systematic surveillance of left-wing and radical student groups. Nixor said: 'In the spring and summer of 1970, another security problem reached critical proportions. In March a wave of bombing and explosions struck college campuses and cities.

"There were 400 bomb threats in one 24-hour period in New York City. Rioting and violence on college campuses reached a new peak after the Cambodiar operation and the tragedies al Kent State and Jackson State.

The 1969-1970 school year brought nearly 1,800 campu demonstrations and nearly 25 ases of arson on campus. Man olleges closed. Gun battles be and police taking place. of the disruptive acuiviues were receiving foreign support.

'Complicating the task of maintaining security was the fact that in 1966 certain types of undercover FBI operations that nad been conducted tor many years had been suspended. This also had substantially impaired our ability to collect foreign intelligence information.

'At the same time the relationships between the FBI and other intelligence agencies had been deteriorating. By May 1970 FBI director Hoover shut off his agency's liaison with the CIA altogether.' The President went on to describe how after meetings between the various heads of security services, plans were set Iranian CP welcomes Soviet trade with Shah IE NEW programme of this money on industrializing THE NEW programme of the Tudeh (pro-Moscow Stalinist) Party of Iran lays heavy stress on growing ties between the Shah's dictatorship and the Kremlin.

The establishment and consolidation of these relations, which have included considerable soviet aid for the develo is aid for the develonpresented as a 'retreat' by the Shah.

The programme sees Soviet aid as part of a genuine industrialization of the country'. '. In recent years', , it says, 'faced with the people's demand, the government has given ground and in particular with the aid of the socialist countries, taken certain steps towards the creation of some heavy industries.

It adds: 'Had the regime been refraining from wasting thousands of millions from our oil revenues by pursuing a militaristic policy and purchasing weapons, and had it been spending GIORGIO ALMIRANTIE.

logical result would be the dissolution of the MSI. But given the pace of Italian legal processes, it may be months or even years before the case actually goes to court.

In fact, there is no doubt that Almirante's party is based on the ideas and actions of Mussolini's party. They have led many brutal assaults on the working class in recent months.

Almirante's trial would be a sham facade of action against the fascists. in motion, including 'authorization for surreptitious entry breaking and entering, in effect —on specified targets in specified situations related to national These plans, Nixon_ claimed, were never put into effect. But it was these plans that White House counsel John Dean removed from his office and placed in a safe deposit giving the keys to Judge Sirica.

This version of events is certainly not intended to tell the full story. But it demonstrates conclusively that a massive and illegal campaign of surveillance against student and left-wing groups was under discussion 'at the highest level in 19/0.

Nixon's statement produced a new high in public incredulity and scepticism. The 'New York Times' one of the newspapers hottest in the trail of Watergate disclosures, said it presented a picture of a government "frighteningly out of control'.

'In the light of Mr Nixon's admission that he approved such measures in one context in 1970, it is hard to accept unreservedly his disclaimer that, in the case of the burglarizing of the office of Dr Ellsberg's psychiatrist and similar incidents, "I would have disapproved had they been brought to my attention."' this money on industrializing the country, then the outcome would have been much better'(!)

From this it becomes clear that the Stalinists' aim is simply to get the Shah to undertake consistent policy of forming capitalist industry with the assistance of the Soviet bureaucracy. The programme goes. on:

'In the process of industrialization the valuable assistance provided by the socialist countries headed by the USSR has been aimed at strengthening the industries in the direction demanded by our country.

'These aids, including the establishment of the [Isfahan] steel mill, machine-tool factory and a tractor factory, have dealt a heavy blow to the imperialists' prolonged and subversive policy and have fulfilled the longstandnational •stee! mill.

'Although the regime has not made proper use of the true potentialities of the socialist countries or their willingness to THE TORY "SICKNESS' ROOTED IN CASH CRISIS 'TODAY Britain is no longer the sick man of Europe.' Premier Heath's boast to Conservative Women's Conterence on Wednesday rings hollow today.

le Lambton-Jellicoe scandal, the Lonhro affair and the Poulson revelations prove that top Tories, including Cabinet Ministers, have been involved in call-girl rackets, tax evasion, enormous profiteering and dubious trading practices.

It that is only one side of the sickness British capitalism. It is only to bé expected that the Tory hypocrisy of 'hard work and sacrifice for the good of the country' should be for working-class consumption only.

le ruling class acquires the wealth that pays for its existence from the labour of the working class. The fortunes of the Lambton family came from the coalfields of Northumberland and Durham.

ord Jellicoe, as head of the Civil Service, led the resistance anions worke civil service minions wage claim. And he was co-ordinator of 'national security' during the miners' and dockers' strikes last year.

HILE these upper-class gentlemen are dishing out £50 a time to prostitutes, the working class • faces state control of wages. WHILE they massivel directors profes and fees without doing …a moment's work, the workers struggle Nixon provide comprehensive assistance, nevertheless the role played by the socialist countries in the industrialization of Iran has left its mark; this has also to some extent prevented the process from taking the grotesque form which the imperialists and capitalism were inclined to give it.' The programme goes stress that without the assistance of the Soviet Stalinists the Shah's dictatorship would have been unable to build up its heavy •.. Not only could the creation of fundamental foundations for the country's industrialization come true and materialize only through the Socialist countries' assistance—as shown by the steel mill and the machine tools factory-but they also provide a reliable market, divorced from the goods produced by the imperialist countries ..

Expansion and consolidation of relations with the socialist countries, ..: are of great imwith soaring prices and government-imposed rent rises. WHILE property speculators wax fat, thousands of families can find nowhere to live. WHILE the Tories and the Labourites moan about 'national security, trade unionists face a constant threat to jobs and basic rights. le 'sickness' of British capitalism-of which the sordid antics of Cabinet ministers is only one expression—is rooted in the economic crisis which produces soaring inflation, tottering currencies, trade war and balance of payments crises. ere is no cure for this 'sickness'-though the ruling class seeks to find a 'cure' at the expense of the working class. Every day that this government is permitted to survive will bring further attacks on the workers. le call of the Socialist Labour League to mobilize the strength of the working class to bring the Tory government down has been completely vindicated.

All those Labourites and trade union leaders who have • cooperated with this 'sick' government stand exposed. Yet the TUC chiefs continue to troop into Downing Street and collaborate with Heath and his discredited gang, while the - Stalinists cover up for them.

Id the Labour Party leaders Greek navy mutiny 'foiled' THE GREEK military regime claims to have foiled a mutiny on three ships of the Greek navy early on Wednesday.

The under-Secretary of Press and Information, Byron Stamatopoulos, said two retired rearadmirals and a few active navy officers were arrested after the mutiny attempt.

Stamatopoulos said that an attempt had been made recently by Greeks living abroad to penetrate the Greek armed forces and create an underground organization among them.

The two rear-admirals, Constantine Engolfopoulos and loannis Mineos, had convinced a portance to our national portance to our national inter- ment, depriving the freedom ests.

Such relations will have posilive effects on the political and social situation in Iran. Consequently they have the support of the people and the progressive forces and above all of our This document is a most servile apology for the treachery of the Soviet bureaucracy, which has entered into extremely close relations with the Shah's regime.

Even the Stalinists are forced to lift a corner of the curtain to tell of the savage dictatorship the Shah wields against the Iranian masses.

'Despite the constitution, the state power is in practice administered by the Shah through absolute monarchy and the concentration of the Three Powers in his hands.

'The regime's anti-democratic policy takes the form of a police sta'e and domination of the security organization, Savak, turning the Army into a tool for the suppression of the people's movehave announced that they will restrained and statesmanlike'. Their spokesman on television, the "security' obsessed James Wellbeloved, has not made a single call for the Tory government to resign. › is the time to demand, through: nationwide meetings and rallies, that the Tory government must go. The TUC must be forced to break off all talks with the "sick' Cabinet and the Labour leaders must be forced to end their gentlemanly parliamentary restraint.

Why should the working class suffer and pay for the Tories conomic and political crisis; a crisis that must be utilized to kill it off politically? The hospital staffs, gasworkeril carworkers, builders, servants, engineers, teachers and millions of other workers who have borne the brunt of the Tory attacks could now e mobilized immediately in a campaign to force the Tories out. le Tory government CAN be brought down • now and replaced by a Labour government which must be committed to socialist policies, including nationalization of the basic industries without compensation and under workers' : Marx wrote in the 'Communist Manifesto': 'The bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law.' number of active officers to stage a mutiny in three ships of the Greek navy, he said.

All the officers were arrested before being able to put their plans into operation.

Stamatopoulos linked the mutiny attempt with a statement by former premier Constantine Karamanlis denouncing the regime. Karamanlis' statement was followed by other declarations in a similar vein from retired army and navy officers.

It seems likely that the mutiny was inspired by supporters of the exiled King Constantine, who attempted an abortive counter-coup against the colonels regime in and has sime lived im exile 1967 ment, depriving the freedom of assembly to national and democratic parties, implementing national oppression of the coun try's peoples, encroachment by military courts on social and political rights and freedom and violation of the law.' This is the regime which is buying $3,000m worth of arms year from Washington and whose leader openly boasts in the American Press that he has the largest Middle East army for express purpose of keeping radical regimes out of the area and acting as imperialism's gendarme in the Gulf.

It would be a crime to this man a pea-shooter.

The Iranian Stalinists-whose own members are among the 109 men and women executed by the Shah's firing squads in the last two years-are in favour of the Soviet Union and the East European countries giving him a complete set of heavy industry readily adapted to the requirements of counter-revolutionary

GET YOUR BOOKS. PERIODICALS AND paperbacks would very much like us to conclude that the British Communist Party has abandoned Stalinism.

On the contrary, its role in sabotaging any united action against the Tory government, its support for the TUC leaders who collaborate with the government is a continuation of Stalinist policy ever since Johnstone was a member of the Party.

As capitalism enters a crisis which entails gigantic revolutionary struggles, so the Stalinist and the 'left' trade union leaders move closer to open collaboration with the capitalist state.

Johnstone is not blind. He was in the national leadership of the Young Communist League when the 'peaceful road to socialism' was first developed. Its real meaning, then as now, was collaboration with big business and the capitalist state to prevent revolution.

Here for example are the words of Harry Pollitt, John Gollan's predecessor as Party secretary, in his 1947 policy booklet, 'Looking Ahead':

'The militant working, class will not be content with the role of either an indulgent or a carping critic of a Labour government (elected in 1945). It is determined to increase its power and control in practical life, in production, and administration, in winning what it veted for. On the job, this means stronger Joint Production Committees, it means linking up their work through the district or national organizations of the union. If important work is being held up because the materials aren't coming through, or because management isn't doing its job, then let the workers sit on the doorstep of Cripps or Bevan till they get satisfaction.' ('Looking Ahead' p. 122-123.)

Anybody can see who were the pioneers of the present corporatist trends in the TUC! Here, 26 years in advance, are the advocates of 'workers' participation' to solve the crisis.

Johnstone knows this history as well as anyone, but the present crisis does not lead him to examine it or break from it. Predictably, he supports it. No doubt he would re-echo Pollitt's call to the militants:

'The shop stewards in particular have now a more responsible task than ever before. They are the guardians and leaders of the workers on the job. They can set an example by crying to explain the character of the job the whole nation must tackle.

Pollitt's pamphlet reveals collabor •Wipe out defeatism, cynicism and doubt, so that for example, the Joint Production Committee can really be organized and got going in a manner we have never seen before, just because all the workers understand the gravity of the nation's position, its need for increased production, and are determined to make a bid for it.' ('Ibid' p. 123.)

This was the policy of the Stalinist leadership to which Johnstone returned after his stay in the Trotskyist movement at the end of the war.

Another point. The whole correspondence between the Young Communist League and the Young Socialists, concerning proposals for a public debate was published in 'Keep Left' in the early months of 1969.

Johnstone's reference to what on his own admission was a 'stop Press' advance item January 1969 'Keep Left' will not save him from the facts of that whole correspondence. We were ationist policies. not prepared to have the debate started as the Stalinist wanted it, against 'Trotskyism'. '. The questions at stake, as we have explained, in this reply, are those of two generations of the communist movement, and the world working class.

Trotskyism is the culmination of the work of Lenin, the Bolsheviks, the October Revolution, and the early Communist International. It exists only through the struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. That bureaucracy came to the heights of its power and. turned the communist parties into what they are today, only through the 'liquidation' of It is this struggle, past and present, which must be avoided by those who want to discuss Trotskyism separately from Stalinism. For the working class, such an arrogance bears no relation whatsoever to its main historical task: to resolve the crisis of working-class leadership.

Nothing could more clearly reveal the absolute middle-class cynicism of the supporters. of the bureaucracy than Johnstone's assertion that we seek a 'Vishinsky-type confession' from him. This facile comparison wipes out the entire counterrevolutionary development of Stalinism and its consequences; it repeats the old comfortable middle-class idea that Stalinism and Bolshevism are the same thing.

Vishinsky's trials were based on the unbridled brute force of a gang of secret police, jailers, interrogators and torturers recruited to defend the privileges the Stalinist bureaucracy against the working class and Bolshevism.

Johnstone is being asked to come clean on his political record. under conditions where he can speak out. He prefers to speak for the same Stalinist bureaucracy that perpetrated the NEWSPAPERS FROM THE •Vishinsky-type' forced confessions.

There is no more important task in this period than to review all these positions in struggle; it is the most vital preparatory task of all before the battle for working-class power.

Nobody is asking Johnstone for Vishinsky - type confession', but we are demanding straight answers to straight political questions.

That is why we asked the YCL or the CP-not Monty Johnstone as an individual-for a debate on Trotskyism and Stalinism'.

Mr Johnstone tries to evade this challenge by suggesting that there be two separate debates. 'As far as I am concerned', he says, 'the offer stands'.

We are not really concerned about what Johnstone thinks individually. We want to know what his organization thinks and whether he is prepared to fight within the Party for such a Finally we think it necessary to point out that Johnstone leaves unanswered comrade Slaughter's challenge that he come clean on the witch-hunt begun by the British Stalinists against the Trotskyists in the Labour Party in 1954 and his own attempt ('Morning Star'. April 18. 1972) to dis ort deliberately our. principled defence of Stalinist fellow-travellers in the Labour Party in 1950. CONCLUDED.