Bangla Desh: 'under new

HOURS after the liberatior and Bengali troops, IAN Y interview with Dacca INDEPENDENT Bangla Desh will treat Pakistani businessmen the same as all other foreign nationals, Dacca MP Subid Ali told me only hours after Indian troops had liberated the city from the butchers of Bengal.

He said this would happen, if friendly relations between India and Pakistan grow and it is to the benefit of the people' Foreign aid and the labour of Bengal's 75 million population are to be the basis of the nation's economic "recovery' after nine crippling war-ravaged months.

'Everything depends very much on how other states give us aid to build up our shattered economy; Ali told me, commenting on the desirability of a prompt influx of foreign capital.

'If the people work with the same enthusiasm as they gave our fight for independence, there shouldn't be too many difficulties.' Aims India is naturally regarded as most likely to give the immediate aid the Bengalis hope for, but Ali appealed to Britain as well to recognize country and open trade relations.

'Britain and India will both be wanting jute, and in return we can get moving to repair our industries and for future industrial development.' Ali admitted post-war reconstruction would be hard. Ten million refugees to feed, house and cloth besides the millions of others with dislocated incomes.

'Bangla Desh has attracted people for centuries because of its wealth. If this is not true, why did Pakistan want to keep If this wealth is utilized by our people for the benefit of the country, it will be a happy place.' An Awami League member Ali claimed the policy of the new government would be to try to ensure 'the rich don't grow richer • while the poor grow poorer'.

Jacca by Indian 'S obtained this Subid Ali. tricity and we have a plan to nationalize the banks and insurance companies' Sentiment But Ali denied there would be workers' control. 'Workers would not be shareholders, but they would participate as much as benefit from. production. enerally they could and would Commenting on the possibility of compensating previous Mr Subid Ali.

ing full individual rights over it.

'Ninety per cent of our people are peasants and we have a very special plan for them because they have suffered the worst.

'Ultimately we will distribute the land so there are no landless peasants. But immediately anyone owning only up to four acres of land would have his debt to the state cancelled and would in future be exempt from paying revenues to the govern'We will ensure something like a welfare state for the minimum necessities of lifethat is housing, health, unemployment pay and a minimum wage.

'Workers will have substantial control of industry through the trade unions to whom we shall give all help and facilities.' In the new secular state, Ali claimed, non-Bengalis would be treated the same as citizens of Bangla Desh.

'Men and women will have the vote and whatever we do will be done according to the wishes of the people.

'Naturally any political parties that oppose the people would not be allowed.' Explaining what would happen to the guerrillas who have fought to make Bangla Desh a reality, Ali said: "They will voluntarily lay down their arms. They know they have done their job and that they are needed for national reconstruction.

'We won't need a vast army. Just a token army to maintain law and emergency: Order in times of The Indians were helping them find their feet with army and civil officers, but Ali said these would leave as soon as Bengalis could take over.

Non-aligned

He said his country's foreign policy would be non-aligned and discussing relations: with W Bengal he said:

'We don't consider relations with W Bengal in particular. W Bengal is part and parcel of India and she will be benefited as a result of tions with India, our trade relaHe said he saw no • reason why the world shouldn't recognize Bangla Desh, including Pakistan, whom he stressed 'had no right to keep Sheikh Mujibur Bangla Desh remainsza chent stateron world mpertalsm Rhetoric for workers Profit for bosses 30 w SUBID ALI'S remarks will come as no surprise to regular readers of the Workers Press.

They confirm in every detail, and with unremarkable disingenuousness, the Trotskyist thesis that the nationalist parties in BanglaDesh - the Awami League, the National Awami Party and their Stalinist hangerson-are intent on retaining E Bengal's status as a client state of world imperialism.

They only wish to change one form of bankrupt capitalism, under_Yahya Khan, to another, under the patronage of the Indian capitalists.

The message of the Awami League is strangely familiar. It is the message of every ruling class which wishes to secure fruits of an heroic struggle conducted the workers and peasa s: thusiasmrk ers illuserk course and the capitalists, will accumulate'.

As usual there is the "left' demagogy about 'sacrifice, 'national interest, 'equality' and even the 'abolition of the bourgeoisie'.

Considering the fact that Chiang Kai-shek and other leaders of the Kuomintang were prepared even-to go to Moscow and shout 'Long live the world revolution' so that the working class could be more effectively repressed, the statement of this Awamı League spokesman is very much in the tradition of bourgeois nationalism.

Rhetoric for the workers — profits for the capitalists, landlords and bankers.

What are the main problems facing Bangla Desh workers and peasants?

They are: • Rural and urban unemploy• Primitive agriculture conducted on economic holdings by extremely poor, debt-ridden and oppressed peasantry.

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retards industrialization and intensifies the dependence of Bangla Desh upon imperialist finance and industry.

Dependence imperialist loans in turn leads to further exploitation of the peasantry, through increased direct and indirect taxation, greater rural and urban unemployment and an exacerbation of industrial underdevelopment. (It has recently been estimated that, by 1978, capital flowing out Asian countries in the form of payments on interest and principal on foreign loans will exceed sening LESSONS G Theil WOBER results and .. Leon Trotsky 60p 75p Leon Trotsky 75p All for £2 Including postage Complete form below and post to :

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The only way out of the vicious cycle is the transfer of political power to the workers and peasants; the nationalization of land, industry, banks and a campaign to end unemployment and reliance on foreign 'aid' through the gradual collectivization of the peasantry and immediate idustrialization on a planned basis.

Utopian

The reforms envisaged by Ali are capitalist reforms aimed at a minimal redistribution of rural income.

They do not affect vitally the property relations which prevailed under the previous regime and in the time of the British Raj.

So long as these property relations exist, BanglaDesh will remain an underdeveloped country with mounting unemployment and foreign debt—Ali's Utopian hopes notwithstanding.

Fourth OUT NOW • The struggle for power Not so much Lippe IF YOU think TUC chief Vic Feather doesn't look too happy in the picture above, you'd probably be right.

You see the bespectacled, bechinned and bow-tied bod standing next to him is Irwin Lippe, labour attaché at the US embassy in London. And friend Irwin has just dropped a bit of a brick.

The unhappy occasion was last month's London conference on industrial relations legislation sponsored by Leo Kramer International Ltd 'Lippy" Lippe, as he must inevitably be called, devoted several hundred words to eulogizing the American system of trade union law, on which the Tory Industrial Act Feather claims to oppose is based.

But he led into these remarks with a lot of guff about how the average US worker not antagonistic to the capitalistic system as such', prefers quick action for quick results to 'pie-in-the- Sky changes in access to lieves he has the powers and favours of government'—in fact all the things the TUC is trying to tell workers in Britain.

And the heart of Feather, who privately believes that all leftwing groups are just "barnacles on the boat' (the ship of state?), must have missed a beat when the American intoned:

•.. the American worker did not have to fall in with radical political groups in order to influence government...

It's a pity about Lippy.. The workers' judge WHAT KIND of men will be investigating trade unionists who get on the wrong side of the Tories' Industrial Relations Act?

One of them is Harold de Ville, a member of the Commission on Industrial Relations.

De Ville is executive director of British Insulated Callender's Cables (BICC), with special responsibility for personnel and Last year he played the leading role in preventing the BICC staff association merging with Clive Jenkins' Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs.

The staff association's central committee backed the merger and the issue was put to the vote of the 8. ,000 members.

De Ville struck back at this attempt to build a union in his industrial empire by withdrawing all facilities from the associaHe stopped them using noticeboards, which made it difficult to hold meetings and campaign for the merger. He encouraged members not to vote via a circu lar to all the staff.

As a result, the proposal was narrowly defeated - since majority of the total membership needed to vote in favour before the move could go ahead.

The association therefore remains in the best non-militant traditions of these kind of organizations.

Its two full-time officials are paid by the company and, of course, it has been accepted onto the provisional trade union register under the Act.

In order to get onto the full register, the Kegistrar has to be satished that it is an independent organization—'not under the control of an employer'.

International Fourth International Jelame 7 No. 2 Price 25 pence Winter 1071 72 EDITORIAL The International Committee 1B08 and the struggle for power BOLIVIA:

Revolution and counter te valution basdeun LUKACS! a political itinerary Marxist theory and class consciousness Stalinism. Liberalism and British Flistory