A smokescreen for class compromise MOSCOW DRAWS CLOSER TO WASHINGTON

statement on world policy only thinly disguises its strategy of collaboration with imperialism. EVurYer exposes he ronow, No-one should be taken in by the militant-sounding phrases of this document, obligatory in a statement allegedly celebrating 1970 as the Lenin centenary.

The Kremlin bureaucracy has always concealed its moves towards compromise or a deal with imperialism behind a smokescreen of anti-imperialist propaganda.

But even here, the verbal attacks are milder than those ot the last major statement on policy published on the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Like nent on Stain, body something of a compromise Or struggle within the bureaucracy. - The outy capitars countin: attacked by name are the United States and West Gerwho are accused of , "abandoned their andero but world influence'.

Yet only in the last few days the soviet government has concluded an agreement with US officials in Helsinki full-scale arms limitation talks in Vienna by April, 1970.

And for good measure, the bureaucracies of Poland and negotiations with the Wes Grand government of Willy Fraud The 'anti-imperialism' of the statement is therefore at once Leninist cover for continued exposed fraud, as a negotiations with the centre of all imperialist power-the United States government.

Stalinism is in deep and growing crisis.

Every struggle of the international working class reveals it more than ever before as a reactionary force, concerned only with the maintenance of the status quo and the preservation of the bureaucracy's privileges.

But the immense problem for the bureaucracy is precisely this: How can it come to terms with imperialism and yet at the same time maintain the fiction that it is the legitimate defender of Lenin's revolutionary heritage ?

The move towards the right, towards international class collaboration with imperialism, cannot therefore be a smooth or open process.

It is masked by 'left' phrases and manifestos, by protestations of loyalty to Lenin, and interrupted by factional struggles within the bureaucracy and even by tactical turns back to the left.

To the right But the general curve is to the right, to betrayal and the eventual undermining of the very foundations of the bureaucracy itself — the property relations established by Russian Revolution of 1917.

For both the imperialists and the Stalinists, actions have always spoken louder than words.

• decade of 'anti-fascist' propaganda by the •Stalinists proved to be no obstacle to the conclusion of the Stalin-Hitler Pact in 1939, and the routine verbal assaults on US and West German imperialism have proved as little trouble today.

The Soviet government and its press have so far studiously avoided any attacks on the US government in connection with the atrocities in Vietnam.

The Stalinist silence on this central issue speaks louder to Nixon than all the anti-imperialist bravado the Kremlin scribes can muster.

As we have repeatedly emphasized in the Workers Press, Stalinism together with social democracy remains the main counter - revolutionary force within the working-class movement.

Stalinism foists on the working class the reactionary programme of the parliamentary road to socialism in order to guarantee for imperialism the continuation of its rule in the advanced capitalist countries, in return for which the Soviet bureaucracy hopes to secure the sanctity of its own national frontiers.

As part of this deal, the bureaucracy requests, and in fact has been given, (as we saw in Hungary and CzechoSlovakia, a free hand to deal Uh its own working class.

In pursuing this policy of peaceful co-existence, the Stalinists serve the counterrevolutionary strategy of world imperialism.

In • Britain their alliance with the 'left' (and sometimes not-so-'left') elements within the trade union and Labour party bureaucracy is deliberately constructed so as to wall the working class off from BLACK HRISTMAS • TIME is here again-bringing the usual outpouring of Fleet Street bilge. And who better to open the floodgates than the 'News of the World', year-round specialists in the crudest hypocrisy.

llowing the success of the great 'legs v. breasts' de bate in the columns of he new 'Sun', its Sunday sister calls in an estab.

lishen. practitioner. -n of what Thomas Carlyle called the art 'whereby a man speaks openly what he does not mean' to bring Christmas cheer to the 'News of the World's' four million readers. This paper really believes in getting its copy straight rom the horse's mouth Only a few weeks ago, it shocked the Fleet Street establishment when it let Christine| Keeler loose on the Tory skeletons in the high society cupboard. Now it's the turn of Britain's home-grown high priest, the Archbishop of Cant(erbury)

himself.

Not that the Archbishop rattling any Tory skeletons. The story he has to tell is a good deal older and even more flyblown than Miss Keeler's.

But it's a familiar old tale and doesn't do the circulation figures any harm. No doubt the Archbishop's message came as a welcome break from routine for the boys down at the "NoW's' Bouverie Street offices. There is nothing like a refreshing dip into the fountainhead of idealist claptrap for those who face the arduous task i putting it cross every Sunda Sandwiched between the man who 'killed to save his blue film business' and the girl who was "led to degradation' in golden Jaguar, the arch-shaman certainly picked a magnificent setting for his message 'you're the real heroes of our time. He Christians' who 'have al- praises those individual ways risen above the squalor of their times'.

No doubt they have his sympathy. It's not so to compete for readers with the pick of last week's squalor!

But it can't be denied that the setting of the archbishop's words gives them surely hance lacked in his they would own parish magazine-quite apart from the wider readership.

However the message is much the same as ever. "Most of the great leaders of WEATHER London area, E and W Midlands, central northern England: Cloudy, occasional rain or drizzle becoming dry with clear intervals by evening.

APPEAL FUND BY DEC. 31 WE certainly have had a good response to our December £1,000 fund. At the time of writing, December 23, we have received £702 4s Ild, which leaves us with £297 5s Ild to pull in by first post Thurs day, January 1.

Any other month we would be hopeful of reaching the target, but there is Xmas in between, and everyone knows how easy it is to spend out over this period.

The time for action is now, at once, as you read these lines.

can you make that Xmas Eve whip-round now!

Do the job systematically. Explain that £1,000 a month is a rock-bottom minimum for the Workers Press.

We are sure our readers Will understand.

We enter 1970 with great confidence in the future of our paper. Without our readers' support this would have been impossible. Help us over the Xmas hump.

Rush the donations at once 186a Clapham High Street London, S.W.4.

Briefly TRANSPORT STRIKE WARNING: London Transport chairman Sir Maurice Holmes yesterday told bus and underground workers that their threatened New Year's Day strike could only achieve the opposite of what was intended.

In an attempt to blame transport workers for fare inThe said a strike will cause a Further Tedaction in passengers using the services, leading to further cuts in services and a worsening of the financial position of London Transport executive, which will tend to bring the next increase in fares nearer'.

F-11l'S GROUNDED: The US air force yesterday grounded all its F-lll's, the controversial swing-wing jet bomber, following the crash of an F-111 in Nevada - the 16th F-111 crash since January 1967.

The US government had hoped that the F-Ill's, which are equipped to fly bombing missions at very low level, would be one of the 'wonder weapons' bringing a US victory in the Vietnam war. F-1l] yesterday's crash an nosedived into the ground while on a low-level testing flight.

MRS MEIR ATTACKS US: Israeli Prime Minister Mrs Golda Meir has said Washington's support of her country has been eroded to the point of dangerous appeasement of the Arab states.

In a 'New York Times' interview she said, I don't think it is Washington's intention, but each new proposal encourages the Arabs to increase their military activity across the borders.

"Things are going good for them. They just have to shoot more.' Israeli leaders are becoming increasingly worried that Washington may try to force them to give up territory conquered in June 1967 in return for a settlement with the Arab states.

AIR FRANCE STRIKE: A lightning strike by Air France luggage handlers yesterday forced the cancellation of at least 15 flights from Orly airport.

The strike was called as holiday air traffic built up to a peak.

The handlers are demanding better working conditions, more staff and higher wages.

NW. England, N Ireland: Cloudy occasional rain or drizzle. Becoming brighter with showers during the morning. Fresh SW winds.

By our foreign correspondent present world situation must lead inexorably to an unprecedented sharpening class conflicts to the point where US labour will be forced to break with the Democratic Party and launch its own party.

This is the prospect for 1970. revolutionary politics and leadership.

This combination of 'lefts' and Stalinists has served the employers well throughout 1969.

Again under the smokescreen of militant talk, the British Stalinists have helped to smooth the way for vicious productivity deals in industry after industry.

Their support for union leaders selling these deals comes from the international strategy of class compromise, taught to Gollan and company by Stalin himself.

For this reason we insist that understanding the role of Stalinism is the beginning of all political wisdom today in the trade unions.

We promise our readers —and all our enemies-that 1970 will see no let-up on our part in the light agains ur historical enemies.

Gollan and his Stalinist friends will not be given the chance to betray.

logether with the working class, we intend to politically annihilate them.

General and Municipal Workers, will continue to use the dangerous argument that the claim has already been paid for by increased productivity coupled with a cutting-out of 10,000 jobs in the past two This inevitably paves the way for further redundancies and productivity deals and must be rejected in favour of the f2 claim with no strings.

¡TOWS members at the university have refused to sign.

Ten Port Talbot steelworkers - including AEF shop steward and branch chairman A. J. Bevan-have supported the campaign.

62 members Birmingham's Joint Guild of Students (covering Aston University, the College of Commerce and the College of Art) have called for the greatest possible mobilization of the labour and trade union movement to stop the visit.

AT a meeting of the Liverpool Trades Council, 17 delegates signed. They included Trades Council president Eddie Loyden and several members of the Communist Party.

The only refusals came from right-wingers and two supporters of the revisionist 'Militant' group.

CARDIFF Young Socialists, in a campaign around the city's docks, collected 23 signatures on the Workers Press petition. AT A civic 'do' in the town A civic 'do' in the town demand for a reduction in the demand for a reductio! bank rate to local authorities the world have been revolutionaries, the archbishop announces. Jesus of Nazareth was a revolutionary, too."

Part of this 'revolutionary's' teachings, if we are to believe the high priest, is the need to 'turn other cheek, give comfort to the hungry and be loyal to the state while worshipping God'. 'Christianity', he adds, 'began an age when most men and women automatically acknowledged the supernatural'-just as they automatically acknowledged that the earth was flat! 'But today we live in a scientific age when the process of doubt about God's existence, begun by philosophers in the 18th century, has reached a climax caused by the pace of change..

However, if 2,000 years ago Christianity was fundamentally true, it remains fundamentally always will, true today and What was good enough for Moses obviously good enough for this 20th century revolutionary; who comes complete with his own palace.

From his Olympian perch, the primate compliments readers.

The . 'heroes and leaders of our time, he says, are 'the ordinary men and women who endure dull and illpaid jobs and live in inadequate and ugly houses who still remain constantly cheerful'.

So long as there are people like that about, happy in their God-given misery, then hances ate insisted ins insisted best to stay that way, have nothing to fear.

That's why it's so important to be loyal to the state and keep the archbishops, Fleet Street and their capitalist system in business.