Stalinists slander SLL policy as General Strike demand gains wider support

ON THE 18th anniversary of Stalin's death, Bert Ramelson, the Communist Party's so-called industrial organizer, decided to launch a fresh round of slander against Trotskyism.

He told students at the London School of Economics that 'the Socialist Labour League has never been able to get a response for its demands in the working class'.

Slander and distortion against revolutionaries is, of course, the stock-in-trade of Marxist economics The revolutionary party and the working class italinism and Trotskyisn starting A series of lectures at 8 p.m.

Given by Peter Jeffries W LONDON Wednesday March 17 Wednesday March 24 ют За, University of London Malet St, WCl Given by Michael Banda this ageing Stalinist functionary, whose entire political life has been devoted to licking Stalin's boots.

He and his colleagues in the Communist arty leadershi upported every act of brutal ity and murder committed under Stalin. They have never changed their positions on these crimes.

Ramelson knows very well that his statement about the SLL is a lie. He is all too well aware that just a month ago, at Alexandra Palace, 4,500 young workers and trade unionists answered the SLL's call for a mass rally against the Tories and demanded the TUC call a General Strike to force the Tories to resign.

He knows that this policy commands widespread support inside the trade unions, having been endorsed in dozens of union branches all over the country. (See below.)

He knows that large numbers of workers demanding a General Strike heckled Victor Feather and the union leaders in Trafalgar Square on February 21. He knows that the same thing happened in Glasgow last Sunday.

It is precisely the widespread support for this demand that terrifies Ramelson and leads him to attack the SLL.

The League is the only organization which has consistently fought for a General Strike to defeat the Tories. The SLL has always maintained that no amount of protest will persuade the Tories to drop their attempts to smash the unions and that the Tories must be forced out of office.

CONFIRMED

This policy has been abundantly confirmed by the defeat of the postal workers' sevenweek struggle, which plainly demonstrated the bankruptcy of reformist trade unionism in the face of a government ruthdestroying basic organizations.

Post Office chairman Maurice Styles, a leading CP member, is one of four Stalinists on the executive which recommended the return to work without a single lp increase in wages, in return for binding arbitration by a special three-man committee.

In accepting this principle, which forms part of the Tory Industrial Relations Bill, Styles made 'an error of judgement', Ramelson says.

Ramelson plans to take no action against Styles in the Party, however.

He is just one more of the leading CP members who accept the principles of the Tory laws even before they are on the statute book.

That is how the Communist Party "fights' the Industrial Relations Bill—by openly participating in the defeat of the postal workers.

The ending of this strike demonstrated the impossibility of defeating the Tory government through sectional, trade union action.

It raised very forcibly the need to mobilize the entire labour movement to force the the Tories to resign.

This is now the only perspective for defending living standards, jobs, wages and basic rights.

CONFINE

been the policy and ramer bas party. The CP bases itself on existence contine the malent of he not mo question the Tory government.

Like the Labour leaders, it accepts that the Tory government is here to stay and conALL TRADES MEETINGS Lessons of the postmen's strike.

AN UNIDENTIFIED American plane yesterday attacked • Vietnamese troops of t in S Laos, killing 10 wounding 12, US military siders the role of the working class to be to protest against it.

Thus Ramelson condemns the campaign to force the Tories to resign and advances instead the opportunist illusion that the Tories can persuaded to 'kill the Bill'.

Ramelson's attacks on the SLL reflect his own deep fear of the mass movement in the working class, which is disrupting all the established opportunist trade union relationships and placing the CP on trial as never before.

The case of Terry Devey, the Stalinist convenor who accepted a £3,000 pay-off to end a reinstatement strike, is the writing on the wall for Ramelson and his Party.

Devey was the Sheffield secretary of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trades Unions, an organization which Ramelson claims 'accepts guidance' from the He was convenor at Batchelor's Foods and a leading local CP member.

At the end of a seven-week strike Devey accepted the employers' pay-off, a fundamental feature of the Industrial Relations Bill, and shortly after resigned from the CP.

No political explanation of this series of events has been forthcoming from Ramelson or any other leading Stalinist.

Brodsworth branch of the Clerical Workers, and Administrative National. ( Union of Mine- Union says workers has decided to sup lesson of the postal strike is port a resolution on these that wage struggles can only lines already submitted by the won as political fights coalfield's Wheldale colliery against the Tory government. ist Party and sell out. He knew he would have to leave the CP'.

But at least 12 of Devey's fellow CP members in Sheffield knew exactly what he was doing and agreed with him.

Devey himself said that Barry Bracken, the local CP city secretary, advised him to accept the money. But nothing has been done, either about Bracken or about the other Stalinists involved.

CROWNED

Devey is not the first such case within the CP.

Ramelson also presided over the political development of William Paynter, whose long career inside the National Union of Mineworkers was crowned with a well-paid post on the Commission on Industrial Relations.

Ramelson's predecessor, Peter Kerrigan, played a simirole in the ETU ballot-rigging scandal.

Ramelson stated at the LSE that the Liaison Committee could claim all the credit for the movement against the Industrial Relations Bill. It would be more correct to say that leading members of this body are prepared to accept the Bill, even before it is on the statute book!

At the Liaison Committee's November 14 conference, Trotskyists who raised the demand for the TUC to call a General Strike were described as 'living in a dreamnew problems Chase Manhattan is trying to encourage them.

However, these European capitalists need high interest rates (as in Britain) at home SW London branch of the Only three weeks later, the Committee itself was forced to change its line of one-day protest strikes and call for "industrial action of general strike proportions.

Since November 14, the Liaison Committee has held no more conferences, though its policy has changed considerably.

These changes alter the form of the Committee's policy, without in the least changing its basic aim of confining the movement to proCONTENT The more the fight against the Bill has stepped up the more silent the Liaison Committee has become.

For March 18, it contents itself with supporting the engineering union's strike call.

It offers no perspective to carry forward the fight against the Tories. It even makes the absurd statement that 'At all these magnificent demonstrations... the call rings out to the General Council of the TUC "Mobilize the unions for national industrial action to defeat the Bill"'.

Nobody, of course, is shouting this mealy-mouthed and evasive Stalinist formula. Many workers, on the other hand, are demanding that the TUC call a General Strike and defeat the government.

its best to hide this uncomfortable fact. When 11,000 tion has arrived, and it suits them to see the squeeze put on their rivals.

Liverpool workers voted on January 12 for the TUC to call a General Strike, this resolution went unreported in the 'Morning Star'.

On February 21, when the entire capitalist press noted the widespread demand for a General Strike, the 'Morning Star' ignored it.

The Stalinists hope that if they keep this demand out of the columns of their ailing newspaper, it will go away.

CHEAT

At every opportunity, they attack the Socialist Labour League for putting this demand forward.

They want to cheat history with lies and distortions. They will not succeed.

Not only is the Socialist Labour League's policy winning wide support-it is the only answer to the Tory onslaught on the working class.

The time for protest has long since passed.

The class struggle now opening up will ruthlessly expose the opportunist bankruptcy of Stalinism and reformism, and create conditions for the rapid building of a mass revolutionary Trotskyist party in Britain.

All the lies of Stalin's bootlickers will not be able to halt this great leap forward. move elsewhere than concede 'parity, which would lower its profit rates enormously.