ISRAEL'S SOUTH AFRICA PROBLEM

ISRAEL/PALESTINE. AN OCCASIONAL SERIES BY The establishment of the state of Israel involved the clearing out of Be. douin clans from traditional grazing lands in the north and restriction on their movements.

The Minister of Agriculture had suggested in 1960 that they should give up their flocks and their semi-nomadic existence and become hired labourers in the 'mixed towns' -that is, places like Lydda and Ramleh, with a mixed Arab and Jewish population. The Minister at that time was Moshe Dayan.

The employment of Bedouin labourers on 50 per cent pay - the Israeli government holds back half—was one step in this proletarianization of these people. This process does not mean their gradual integration with the Israeli working class (note that Dayan referred to their employment in specific areas, but their forcibly being turned into a special, particularly oppressed low-paid section of the working class. Over recent years, this process has been carried further, not only because the development of Israel has interfered with the former mode of living of the Bedouin in the ordinary economic way, but deliberate appropriation of clan grazing lands in the Negev and military contiscation and enclosure of land and the deportation of people.

Alongside the 'ordinary' CHARLES PARKINS working class-mainly Jewish, organized in trade unions, and enjoying a standard of living and welfare benefits for the most part well above that generally prevailing in the Middle East-another section has been created.

The Bedouin labourers are part of this cheap Arab labour section, subject to both national and class oppression, employed mostly in low-paid, menial and 'dirty' jobs, and with much lower living conditions.

This process has developed particularly since the 1967 war, with the Israeli occupation of Gaza, Sinai, the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan region.

Arab workers, many

them from the poverty of refugee camps, are encouraged to cross the so-called 'Green Line'-the pre-1967 Israeli frontier—into Israel, to take jobs with Israeli farmers, or on construction sites, providing them with employment and the chance to earn some wages for their families, and the employers with a source of cheap casual labour.

OVERNIGHT STAY These Arabs are under Israeli rule, but they are not Israeli citizens. In fact, they are supposed to carry passes, and are not allowed to stay overnight in Israel.

On August 3, last last eat, che Israeli newspaper reported: "The government is going to instruct the police and the military • authorities to take firm action in preventing Arab workers from the territories from remaining inside Israel's "Green Line" after working hours, government sources have reported. The sources said that according to evaluation of security agencies, workers from the territories sleep overnight near their places of work, in cellars of buildings under construction, in the kitchens of restaurants, in the yards of farms, in orchards, and other agricultural areas. There is no official estimate of the numbers of workers re. maining every night in Israel, but it is rumoured to be in the thousands' Recently, there have been reports of Israeli police raids on places where Arab workers from Gaza were sleeping and arrests being made.

Inevitably, comparisons have been made with South Africa, with the exploitation of native labour, the passlaws and the restricted areas.

Some of the Palestinian guerrilla movements see the employment of their people by the Israelis as a form of collaboration. They blow up the Israeli-run Labour Exchanges in the occupied territories and bomb the buses used for taking Palestinian labourers to work.

While we must admire the courage and determination of the resistance fighters in defying Israeli rule, their tactics in this case are questionable. Under the pressure of economic circumstances, the Palestinian working class is driven to seek the chance of a wage, however meagre and unfair, from the Israelis.

Resistance to Israeli domination must base itself on the masses, with a programme which offers them the perspective of changing their conditions and strategy and tactics which bring the masses themselves into action.

Terrorist tactics, derived from nationalism, mean relegating the masses to a passive role and attempting to do without them, by relying on General Strike, aimed against the Zionists and the British Mandate, was defeated, largely because there was an alternative, Jewish economy not reliant on Arab labour, which was able to keep the country running.

In fact, Jewish-owned enterprises were able to take adpand at the expense of their vantage of the strike exArab competitors.

We can see here what some British supporters of Zionism had meant when, in period just after the Balfour Declaration creating they spoke of the value of a Jewish Ulster' to look after imperialist interests in Palestine The issue of Arab labour, and in particular its growing employment since the 1967 Six-Day War, poses both ideological and real problems for the Zionists. Israeli paper *Tedioyear Aharo- In October last the not' published a letter from the wife settler in Moshav (co-operative farming village) addressed Moshe Dayan. Expressing concern at

Crowds of workers gather as a food convoy passes through Poplar, t Press, BOOK REVIEW, PART 'The General Strike, May 1926 By Christopher Farman. Rupert Hart-Davis. £3.50.

A number of points of general interest emerge trom a reading of Farman's book. Some of these relate to the natural history of the development of such mass struggles and some to specific characteristics of the 1926 General Strike.

The systematic lies and distortions of the capitalist mass media become particularly well illuminated at a time like that. Farman gives a good list of the 'persistent falsifications' of the true position of the strike the Gazette overch nas 'British which was edited by Winston Churchill.

For example, it was claimed that the emergency department of the London hospital was closed down because of a power failure, when the real reason was that most of the doctors had gone off to break Churchill expressed considerable indignation when it was revealed (though not by him) that the strikers had made arrangements for the emergency services at the hospital to be resumed.

Farman also makes it clear that the reputation for objectivity which is always imputed to the BBC is a hypocritical myth.

He says a large number of totally inaccurate reports of returns to work were broadcast. Although, in most instances, the union concerned sent immediate corrections ... these were never broadcast' A false view of the effectiveness of the strike was thus perpetrated and this proved particularly disturbing to strikers deprived of other sources'. Farman does not mention that the supposed 'independence' of the BBC was another lie. In fact, the Director-General Reith worked very closely with the government during the strike, constantly meeting Davidson and actually helping to prepare the broadcast of Baldwin on May 8.

No general statements by strikers were broadcast, nor even calls for compromise, like the one issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Far from playing any kind of 'middle role', the BBC thus provided an essential plank in the government's strategy for defeating the miners.

The leaders of the TUC were not beyond lies and distortions paper the "British Worker, he They claimed in their the issue published on evening on which they started their discussions with Samuel, that no attempts had been made to reopen negotiations.

The leaders of the NUR, in their fervid rush to arrive at an agreement with the Tories, claimed that there was 'a mass drift back to work on the railways', a statement which, as arman puts it, 'had no Even after they had capitulated altogether, the General Council leaders claimed to have received 'assurances' that 'negotiations would be resumed', though they knew that this was utterly untrue.

Another interesting aspect of the struggle is the role of the middle class. It is important to realize that despite the long queues of strike-breaking volunteers in central London, there were many parts of the and Manchester, shere ther like Leeds, Liverpoo were virtually no volunteers at all before the strike began.

Those travelling around the country when the struggle was on found that many local Conservatives had crossed the class lines. In Glasgow, Orangestruggle Part generally in the men were 'active pickets and In Weymouth, Dorset, and Shrewsbury, Shropshire, former Tories were also found to be active. Even some sections of the Liberal leadership around Lloyd George were forced to take a more sympathetic line to the strike than some Labour leaders.

This was thus a classic situation, where, despite the picture which is usually painted of middle-class blacklegging, the strength of the working-class movement showed the ability to attract other sections of society.

here is one other important myth about the General Strike which Farman's account goes a long way to dispel. The publishers try to continue the view of how • 'peaceful' and 'English' it all was by quoting on the back cover the statement of George V that 'not a shot has been fired and no one killed'.

His Majesty concluded that this 'shows what a wonderful people we are' Such statements as these are used to perpetrate a view of the benevolence of the ruling class and the unrevolutionary nature of the workers. However, the lack of violence of the early days of the strike is an indication not of the weakness of the working class

EVAN COOL

but of its strength.

Although the government's emergency services worked well enough, the parasitic titled ladies and the backward protofascist students had no skills that made it possible for them to run any sort of reasonable public transport system, and they would certainly never have been able to restart the mines, or the engineering factories or print shops.

The very effectiveness of the strike left no reason for any violence. However, as the days Winston. Churchill, Editor of 'British Gazette' which spread employers' lies about the strike. went past, there was an increasing number of violent incidents. In Brighton pickets at the tram depot were attacked by police 'hitting them with sticks two feet long with hooks on the end'.

In the north-east, there were provocations against the leaders of the most effective local strike organizations, and they were then arrested. At Bristol and Airdrie, the issue of permits by the councils of action for the transport of goods was cene of many stay ed the the police ghan Joint Strike Committee was arrested.

There was also the use of agents provocateur. In Westminster a bag of bullets was handed to a worker selling a local strike sheet an hour before the strike headquarters was raided by the police. Fortunately, the police failed to find what they came for!

So all the usual paraphernalia of police repression was clearly visible and Farman traces to a Cabinet meeting of May 6 the 'much adopted in the later tactics' part of the strike.

Although every book reports the football match between police and strikers in Plymouth, few have reported as graphically as Farman an incident in Poplar on May 12, which showed the way things were going as the struggle intensified.

'Local Labour leaders were addressing a meeting of 500 dockers outside Poplar Town Hall at 9 p.m. when a police tender suddenly swerved into the road and raced into the crowd, injuring a number of people. When the tender stopped at the end of the road 30 police jumped out, doubled back and baton-charged the crowd. While the injured were still trying to drag themselves away a second baton charge was made.

'A total of 25 casualties were treated at hospitals in the borough, including a local clergyman who approached police with an upheld crucifix. Shortly after this incident, police with drawn truncheons stormed into the district headquarters of the NUR in Poplar High Street, batoning anyone unfortunate enough to be within striking distance. The Mayor RUSA 15000352 clashes between striking dockers and pollce. of Poplar, who was in the building playing billiards at the time, was admitted to hospital with serious head injuries. Drunken specials were also accused of numerous assaults in Poplar on Wednesday evening and of wrecking three public houses in the area.' It was these incidents which represented the real face of Tory , 'law and order' in the final desperate days when the effectiveness of the strike was spreading and the capitulation of the union bureaucracy had not yet been finally secured.

So the men and women involved in the General Strike were not all peace-loving, unrevolutionary, and 'English'. They were workers and capitalists faced with the sharpest social problems that raised questions about the whole government and organization of the social system.

There can be no doubt that had the struggle continued, it would have intensified sharply and control would have moved increasingly from trade union bureaucrats and government and more and more into the hands of the workers engaged in the struggle itself.

The question of who should run society would then have been posed. Had there been a revolutionary leadership steeled in the preparation for such a situation, it would have been possible to take steps towards the overthrow of capitalism.

It is certainly both necessary and possible now, when the ruling class and working class are again in a position to concede very little, that a revolutionary leadership should be prepared capable of bringing us towards the victory of the working class and the creation of a new social order CONCLUDED

June 15, 1973