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LESSONS The Revolution TOBER:

60p 75p .. Leon Trotsky 75p ORGANIZING head-hunting was not the only bestial atrocity committed by the British Army in its 12-year war against the Malayan workers and peasants.

Investigations into the most infamous of these actions were quietly dropped by Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Norman Skelhorne just two weeks after the present Tory government took office.

The investigations were into the cold-blooded massacre of 25 Chinese plantation workers butchered by the Scots Guards at Batang Kali, near Kuala Lumpur, on December 12, 1948.

The story of the killing really begins with the following enthusiastic despatch from the 'Daily Graphic' of December 13:

Scots Guards gained an outstanding success against Malayan terrorists near North Selangor yesterday, killing 26 bandits out of 26.

The terrorists who had been trailed to a large hut in the jungle, surrendered when they were surrounded. Later they attempted to break out and were shot down.

THREE CAPTURED In another area a Scots Guards patrol led by Lieut Lord Ogilvy, engaged a group of bandits, killed one, seriously wounded another -stated to be a leading Communist-and captured three.

It was followed on January 4, by a report in 'The Times' stating that the Malayan government action had 'decided to take no after investigating the shootings.

The reader was left to make up his own mind as to why the government should have chosen to investigate the Guards' 'outstanding success' Stalinists resurrect AS THE massive American working class moves into action against Phase II of President Nixon's wage freeze, the wretched US Communist Party has consciously set out to divert the struggle away from the independent class action against the government.

The aim of the Stalinists is to take hold of the militant upsurge in the working class and channel. it into subordination to 'progressive' sections of the US labour bureaucracy.

Through providing a section of the union leaders with a 'left' cover, the American CP is seeking to prevent a break with these At the same time the Stalinists are falling right in behind the section of the labour bureaucracy which has organized a so-called 'dump Nixon' campaign with 'progressive' capitalist politicians in the Democratic Party.

Like Stalinists anywhere, the perspective of peaceful coexistence and subordination to the Moscow bureaucracy requires, above all else, a strategy which will, they hope, prevent the working class from moving indepe dent pento action and breakWriting CP newspaper "Daily World' recently, one Daniel Rubin made the perspective clear:

There had to be 'united action' of 'the left and and centre political tendencies among workers ... with the aim of ANTHOLOGY Part three of JOHN SPENCER'S series exposing army Part three of brutality.

'The Times' put out the following cryptic version:

An official statement issued at Kuala Lumpur today says. that the Guards section concerned was commanded by a sergeant under general orders that if any detained person tried to escape he was to be chased and recaptured, but in no circumstances was he to be allowed to escape.

The section patrolled an area which included rubber estates and jungle, and bandits were seen and fired on. The sergeant feared that these bandits would carry the news to others and decided to press on. He eventually arrived at a clearing of kongsi (communal living) houses, huts, and shacks, in one of which ammunition was discovered. The statement continues:

'Information from interrogation was that armed bandits were in the habit of visiting the area and used it for obtaining sup: plies, which were brought in every morning by the lorry which brought food for the tappers and others who occupied the clearing. If attacked the clearing was a death-trap, and the sergeant therefore posted three groups to cover the entrances. These groups were out of sight of persons 'in the clearing and were posted on the afternoon of December ll.' The interrogated men were placed in a kongsi house for the night under guard, and in the morning, seeing only the sergeant and two sentries, they made a break in three parties in accordance with what was obviously a pre-arranged plan.

Philip Wade Before the war the American CP campagned for Roosevelt In the name of the "popular front.

becoming the dominant force in labour, said Rubin.

'This means an alliance of an organized left which . • • begins to see socialism as the answer, together with the "centre" on a common programme,' he concluded. (My emphasis.)

What Rubin means is that rank-and-file workers , influenced or led by the Communist Party must ally with those who are GERMANY WHERE IS BRITAIN GOING?

AGE OF PERMANENT REVOLUTION PROBLEMS OF CHINESE REVOLUTION cloth PERMANENT REVOLUTION :

RESULTS AND PROSPECTS IN DEFENCE OF MARXISM LESSONS OF OCTOBER R. BLACK STALINISM IN BRITAIN MAN:

The sentries and the sergeant called upon the men, to stop, but could not use their arms because their hidden comrades were in the line of fire. These three groups heard shouting, but did not know what was happening until they saw Chinese running through the jungle past their posts. The soldiers called in the Malay language upon the fleeing men to halt, gave chase, and finally opened fire.

Meanwhile the 'Daily Worker' for the same day had gone to press with a very different It carried an interview with the widow of one of the massacred victims saying the 26 men had been shot in cold blood.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons and Labour colonial secretary Creech Jones announced that the Malayan Attorney General 'was satisfied that had the security forces not opened fire the suspected Chinese would have made good an attempt at escape which was obviously prearranged'.

The Malayan government's reaction was similar to the Army's cover-up job over the horror photographs which emerged some three years later.

After the cursory investigation'-army witnesses have since admitted that they fabricated the 'shot while escaping' story to avoid repercussions-the Malayan government issued a back-dated order making it lawful for soldiers or policemen to shoot at prisoners attempting to escape or at people resisting arrest.

The order was promulgated in led or influenced by labour bureaucracy.

As usual, the stalinists had to throw in 'Marxist' phrases this time on the united front, to justify their policy.

Of course, the tactic of the united front was developed by Lenin and Trotsky to facilitate break by workers led by reformist parties in a situation where a Communist Party was also a mass party.

The Stalinists make a parody of Marxism and the fight for a revolutionary party when they turn the united-front tactic into its opposite.

Instead of helping to expose and break from all agents capitalism within the trade union and workers' movement, the united-front tactic becomes a principle, the use of which is made to justify an alliance with 'progressive' bureaucrats.

an even more sinister article in the American CP's "theoretical journalis made to Affairs', an attempt resurrect the wretched ultra-right policy of a popular front with sections of the bourgeoisie.

No doubt the author found it necessary why a so-called Communist Party advocated an alli. ance with 'non-monopoly' capitalists on a capitalist programme of 'curbing' the monopolies.

The writer performs veritable contortions in tanies with one that former alliances the sections of the bourgeoisie was not only the bulwark of resistance against fascism in the 1930s, but was also a development on a higher plane of the tactic of the united front!

Both, of course, are preposterous lies and falsifications of the real position.

BOOKS cloth {1.87} paperback £1.25 374p HISTORY OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. 3 vols £1.50 45p REVOLUTION BETRAYED cloth £1.05 paperback 623p £1.87% paperback £1.121 paperback 75p paperback 75p paperback 60p cloth £2.00 paperback {1.12} MOSCOW TRIAL paperback 75p the 'Government Gazette' on January 22, 1949, six weeks after the Batang Kali massacre.

At the time of the massacre the Malayan Emergency Regulations did not authorize shooting of unarmed people for any reason.

It was made retroactive to provide a pretence of legality for the butchery at Batang Kali.

There the matter rested for But it preyed on the conscience of some of the men who had taken part in the Batang Kali killing and after George Brown's "stop weeping and get on with the war' outburst over the American My Lai massacre, one of them approached "The People' newspaper with his own story of what had really happened.

The testimony of William Cootes was backed by four other men who had taken part in the fatal patrol to the jungle village of Batang Kali.

They confirmed that the men of the village were separated from their womenfolk, and kept PROFITS Workers demonstrating against the wage freeze overnight under armed guard.

Next morning the women and children were driven away from the village in lorries, and the Guardsmen were told the men were to be killed. 'None of us protested, Mr Cootes said.

... The Chinese were brought from their hut. Their ages were about 16 to 80 years. We took our seven down to the edge of the stream just outside the village. We were looking at each other waiting to see who was going to shoot first.

'I remember an old man of about 80 staring at me constantly. Alan Tuppen [another solider] showed them some matches to indicate that we were going to burn down the village and motioned them to run away.

'A couple started to walk. ... We still hadn't fired and we were still looking at each other. Then we heard shooting from one of the other groups so, instinctively almost, we opened fire....

All but one of the prisoners was killed in the massacre. He survived only by feigning death.

The revelations in "The People' caused a considerable stir at the time. But they were rapidly hushed over. • Five months after the report appeared, Scotland Yard had closed its file on the Batang Kali massacre, despite a wealth of evidence showing that the Scots Guards had committed a war crime.

Atrocities like Batang Kali and My Lai are inseparable from imperialist war.

They represent the only means by which the armies of the exploiters can hope to terrify their opponents into submission.

The same brutal method was used at Amritsar in India and at Croke Park in Ireland.

Today as the Tory government steps up its torture and repression in N Ireland the history of the British Army provides a salutary warning of the brutalities that can be expected in the weeks and months to come. Cold-blooded systematic terror is the techniqué of the British Army and these are its terrible fruits.

FREESE WAR NOT