Twenty five years of war

1970s, civil war, not war between nations, will be the chief danger we face?

So spoke Edward Heath on behalf of the British ruling class when he addressed that international gathering of the representatives of bosses and bureaucrats of the world, the United Nations General Assembly, on its 25th Anniversary.

Not only was Heath being realistic about the dangers now threatening the world's rulers, but he was also implicitly recognizing the UN's real function.

It is not an organization of the peoples of the world, but of their rulers.

With all their rivalries and conflicts, with all their differences of social order and diverse forms of government, one thing unites these rulers: their fear and • consequent hatred of the workers and colonial peoples, of all who are poor and oppressed.

This is why the leader of British Toryism, heading a government which is supplying arms to the S African apartheid regime could denounce withr horror those who, he says, are prepared to use 'violence' for political ends!

That is why he could be warmly applauded by the delegates.

The international ruling class believes violence ceases to be violent when it is used by uniformed men in the government service.

They believe that they can uphold their imperialist economic system and doom millions of children to die of disease and ter Prime Minister HEATH They can run their factories so that every production speed-up causes a rise in fatal and serious accidents-but that is not violence.

They can allow old people to die from cold because they can't afford winter fuel-and this is not violence.

They can house people in unhealthy slums or break up families through homelessness, and nobody calls it violence. The Yalta Conference, February 1945, attended by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill They can tell a man if he disagrees with them he will lose his job, so that his family suffers -will anyone accuse them of They can deny young people education and jobs, and rob them of their hope and their future—but will anyone call that If the people resist, if they rise up against the system that is responsible, if they threaten property and the state-then that is violence and must be put down and denounced by all 'rightthinking people'. peace.

On an international level, United Nations also keeps peace.

The 20th century is an epoch of wars and revolutions.

Marxists say the causes of war in this epoch are two-fold: one is the conflict of rival imperialist powers trying to dominate the world's markets and resources; the other is the use of force by the ruling classes and bureaucracies to maintain their power and privileges.

Imperialist rivalry has led to two World Wars while the use force against workers colonial peoples has been shown in the Allied intervention in Russia (1918-1920); the Algerian British aggression at Suez (1956) and the attempt to hold down the people of Aden; the Soviet Stalinist suppression of the Hungarian workers in 1956; and the bloody US war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants.

These are just a few examples.

It will be noted that in none of these conflicts has the UN intervened in any way against the powers concerned. The middle-class idealists who think the UN has a peaceful role should try and explain that.

Lenin called the League of Nations-the UN's predecessor• 'thieves' kitchen', where the bandits get together to sort out their spoils.

Trotsky remarked — when the statesmen get together to talk of peace, the common people know they can expect war.

Yet idealist idiots continue to believe that somehow, when all the bandits and murderers get together, they will quit their thieving and murder.

Marxists know that to get rid of war, we have to rid ourselves of imperialism and oppression.

Wars arise not because nations 'misunderstand' each other, but because they understand each other all too well. When they want to understand each other better they rely not on speeches and conterences, but on espionage, spy planes and intelligence.

When the statesmen meet at the UN, they meet to legitimize their backstage dirty deals and provide a spectacle to delude the masses. Idealists who assert, 'this is the way to peace, help the delusion along.

Imperialist

The UN can only take resolute action when the dominant imperialist powers agree on it— when the action is to preserve and extend the imperialist system of war and plunder, and especially to further the interests of the dominant imperialist power, the United States.

The UN grew out of the wartime alliance between Britain, the US, and the USSR.

In 1942 the Allies issued the 'Declaration of the United Nations'. In the same year, Stalin dissolved the Communist International.

Before the when Stalin joined the League of Nations (thieves' kitchen), the Stalinist parties had been subordinated to the Kremlin's diplomatic drive for 'collective security'.

Then, during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact (1939-1941), German communist leaders were handed over to the Gestapo.

Now for his alliance with Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin abandoned the Comintern and any pretext of proletarian internationalism. The wartime alliance against the Axis powers, with its catchword of 'democracy' grew into an alliance against working-class revolution. they we: order in be stam the lion Lord of US fr basic air tions anc British il take on taining a system o While tried_to *Big Fou a networ as a fri world de At eve "free' al would hi —All in the name of 25 years of the United Nations Are setting up 'a world . which the mice could ped out, but in which would not be restrained'. lion' at the end of the World War was the States-now undisputed the imperialist jungle. preign policy had two ns: to usurp, the posi1 power once held by its mperialist rivals, and to responsibility for mainund defending the whole if imperialism.

Big Four'

the Soviet bureaucracy preserve wartime and alliances amework for American omination. ery UN conference, each nd independent' state ave to remember-or be quietly reminded-of the US.

From an extension of the 'Big Four' alliance, the UN became, in effect, a wing of the State Department.

Its first 'world problem' was Palestine-placed on its agenda by Britain on April 2, 1947.

Britain had a mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations after the First World War. At the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, which drew up the League of Nations Covenant, the Zionists recognized their debt to British imperialism when they asked that:

'Great Britain shall act as Mandatory of the League of Nations for Palestine. The selection of Great Britain as Mandatory is urged on the ground that this is the wish of the Jews of the world and the League of Nations, in selecting a Mandatory, shall follow as far as possible the popular wish of the people concerned.' It might be asked by what process of consultation could the Zionists claim to speak for the 'Jews of the world?' In fact, only a small minority of Jews belonged to the Zionist movement and large numbers were indifferent if not downright hostile to it.

In any case, how could they refer to the Jews as 'the people concerned' with Palestine-at a time when over 90 per cent of the people there were Arabs!

the League of Nations comletelv ignored the wishes and aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs.

Refusal

Contrast the status given the Zionist delegation-'representing' a people who were never consulted and a country they did not inhabit-with the refusal of the same 1919 Conference to recognise the Irish and Egyptian delegations.

The Allies claimed to have fought the First World War for the 'rights of small nations'. But the Irish and Egyptians were 'small nations' fighting for their rights against British imperialism. • Zionism, of course, was in alliance with British imperialism. The Versailles Conference was one where the winning side disposed of its conquests. Thus was born the first 'thieves' kitchen' -and its mandates. All in the name of 'peace' After prolonged negotiations on carving up the former Turkish empire, British rule in Palestine was ratified and Zionism won international recognition for its claim to Jewish nationhood and for Zionist colonization of Palestine. and plunder claimed the noblest and most humanitarian motives: a place must be found for the persecuted Jewish refugees. It must be Palestine.

Why not, say, America instead?

Well, in 1941, the US government had tightened its quota system against immigrants.

Congress had subsequently rejected a proposal to admit 20,000 German Jewish children above the quota limits.

So much for the part played by humanitarianism in the policy deliberations of the US ruling Class.

Blackmail

In 1967, Senator Eugene McCarthy, advocating firmer support for Israel, told the Jesuit magazine 'America':

'Everyone knows why we set up the country [Israel]. We did not want to face up to the prob. lem of Jewish immigration here.

So Palestine it was. In the displaced persons camps in Europe administered by UNRRA (UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) the Zionist organizations set to work. All kinds of blackmail, harassment and intimidation were used to enforce a sort of conscription making sure the refugees "chose' Palestine as their destination.

And there was a selective policy. Fit young people who would make good fighters were picked out.

Early in '1946, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, UNRRA chief in Germany, revealed some of the Zionist activities and was promptly relieved of his post by Herbert Lehman, UNRRA's proZionist American head.

Three weeks after Britain submitted the Palestine issue to the UN, five Arab states asked the Secretary-General that the issue to be discussed be 'the termination of the Mandate over Palestine and the declaration of its independence'.

The UN set up a special Committee on which Palestine' into two recommended partition states: one Jewish and one Arab.

A minority favoured a federal state.

The issue was then shunted into various committees and subcommittees. - In all the UN's deliberations two things were clear: the Jewish refugee problem must be linked with the Palestine problem, as though they were one, and the Zionists, with American backing, were determined to impose partition and a Jewish state. 'peace' Palestinians as they llve today—In New Zealand and the US-all of whom had imposed severe restrictions on Jewish refugees entering their countries.

The US retained the most powerful argument of all: most of the voters were deeply in debt to the US.

America and the USSR both supported partition, but the vote was postponed on two occasions for lack of the necessary two-thirds majority.

The three votes said to have finally decided the issue were those of Haiti, Liberia and the Philippines--all three virtual US colonies..

PERMANEN

The American columnist Drew Pearson wrote:

... a lot of people used their influence to whip voters into line. Harvey Firestone, who owns rubber plantations in Liberia, got busy with the Liberian government; Adolphe Berle, adviser to the president of Haiti, swung that vote ... the French ambassador pleaded with his crisis-laden government for partition.' (France was relying heavily on US aid at this time.)

So the US got their way—and the Zionists got partition— through the United Nations.

With partition came a bloody war; the establishment of a Zionist state based on racial oppresSUBSCRIBE £13 for 12 months (312 issues) £6 10s for six months (156 issues) 23 5s for three months (78 issues) want to take Workers Press twice a week £1 for three months (24 issues) CIrculation Depf., Workers Press, 186a Clapham I would like to take out a subscription to Worke Days required MONDAY THURSDAY (Please tick) TUESDAY FRIDAY sion; a million Palestinians turned into homeless refugees— and more than 20 years of bitterness, confict and misery in Palestine.

This is not the place to analyse fully the causes and the course of the Palestine conflict.

What we can show, however, is how the United Nations-like its predecessor - fostered this bloody conflict in the name of 'humanity" and "peace'.

In the next article we will look at two further cases of UN 'peacekeeping'—the Korean war and the Congo affair, to assess the further development and role of the United Nations.