SCHEME A RETREAT FROM THE FIGHT

BARBIE: CIA PROTECTION?

Iwo-month hunger strike ends TWO Soviet oppositionists have ended a two-month hunger strike in a Leningrad psychiatric prison on the understanding they will be given a thorough mental examination, according to Moscow sources.

The two men, Victor Fainberg and Vladimir Borisov, have been imprisoned in a KGB mental hospital because of their opposition to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and their defence of victims of Stalinism. improved Strike demanding Last year they held an 80-day conditions, consultations with lawyers and the opportunity to take iheir cases to court. They declared the latest strike when these demands were not met.

Victor fainberg (41), was one of seven oppositionists who went to Red Square on August 25, 1968, with posters denouncthe Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. Fainberg's teeth were knocked out by KGB men who attacked the demonstrators and he was arrested together with Pavel Litvinov, Larrissa Daniel and three other demonstrators.

Vladimir Borisov a 29-year-old Leningrad electrician, is a member of the Action Group for the Defence of Civil Rights in the USSR. MRS BEATE KLARSFE Europe last night after ad to hunt down the Nazi Together with Mrs Ita Halaunbrenner, a victim of the Gestapo, she had chained herself to a bench in the La Paz. city centre because Barbie is being sheltered by the right-wing Bolivian dictatorship.

Mrs Klarsfeld, who works for the International League against Anti-Semitism, has conclusive proof that a Bolivian businessman called Klaus Altmann is really Barbic, who headed the Gestapo at Lyons during the last war.

Barbie tortured to death Jean Moulin, a leader of the French resistance, and has twice been sentenced to death in absentia. The French government has demanded his extradition from Bolivia.

But the Nazi war criminal has powerful friends in high places.

After the war, in the American zone of Germany, he worked for the American secret service. When the French applied for his extradition to stand trial for his crimes, the US authorities refused the request on the grounds that he was vital to US national Later they supplied him with Bolivian papers and arranged his escape io Latin America. He became i close associate of the corrupt president Barrientos, fixing many shady deals on his behalf. LD left La Paz, Bolivia, for mitting defeat in her efforts war criminal Klaus Barbie.

When the President was ousted by 'General Juan Torres, the Bolivian government began investigations into Barbie's affairs.

The investigations were still under way when the Torres regime was toppled by the ultraright-wing Colonel Hugo Banzer, backed by the CIA and the Brazilian government.

One of Barbie's deals . under Barrientos is said to have been an altempt to break the arms embargo imposed on Israel after the six-day war in 1967.

According • to Teddy Cordova Claure, Torres' private secretary, Barbie arranged to buy arms for the Bolivian government in Switzerland and divert them to Israel.

Three. people who have since tried to investigate the deal were murdered early last year.

Barbie's ties with the present Bolivian regime could not be closer he is joint owner of a large ranch with the wives of President Banzer and ex-President Alfredo Ovando.

Like many of the other exNazis now in Latin America, including the notorious Auschwitz. concentration camp doctor Losef Mengele, Barbie enjoys top-level protection because of his ties with the Central Intelligence Agency.

These connections apparently extend to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as well as Washington.

FRENCH According to a report in the dockers may ignore a national press ahead with a scheme to employers' company.

the strike›all was made by the Nationa shop. Stewards' Liaison Committee, at a meeting attended by Hull stewards. It is to take effect if 53 men are sent back to the unattached register in London.

Mr Walter Cunningham, chairman of the Hull shop stewards' committee, is quoted by the 'Hull Daily Mail" as saying: 'We are more concerned with getting our own company off the ground, than we are with stoppages.

The scheme is understood to involve 2,000 men agreeing to pay £2 a week each for 12 months. The company would then be able to employ 100 men and make up the wages of others on the reserve pool. This is just a diversionary reformist scheme which will do nothing to solve the problem of full employment and wages on the docks.

The working class has a long history, which did not begin a few weeks ago in Hull. During this history the working class, in struggle against the employers, constructed its own, class organizations - the trade unions, the Labour Party, and the shop stewards' movement.

It established its rights through struggles like the dockers' tanner strike of 1888. These struggles could not be avoided, because working-class life under capitalism centres around a constant battle against the class which extracts surplus value from workers for profit.

There is no future for workers in some sort of 'be your own capitalist' scheme. Workers Press knows the men on the Hull docks. They have a record of principled struggle second to none. In 1954, a strike in Hull began the movement to bring the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers Union (the 'Blue' union) to the northern ports.

It took the united force of the employers, the press, the courts, the TUC, the T&GWU, the Labour Party and the Communist Party to break the long recognition strike of 1955.

The Hull men were in the forefront of the struggle against the Devlin modernization scheme and the fight for decent piecework rates through a series of one- day stoppages in 1964.

Hull dockers marched with the Young Socialists in the campaign for socialist policies and to make the 'left' MPs fight Wilson during the 1964-1970 Labour government. They supported the campaign against anti-union laws under both Labour and Tory governments.

In the course of these developments, prominent militants on the Hull docks reached an understanding of the reactionary role of Stalinism, well in advance of many other groups of workers. They also became familiar with the sinister activities of Moral-Re-Armament, particularly when one of their leaders arranged a showing of an MRA film in the dockers' club.

Once, in 1966, the Hull dockers were outmanoeuvred into not joining their Merseyside brothers in a strike against anti-union laws. When the Liverpool dockers came to Hull to address them, many of the leading militants said that would never happen again.

Yet now, if the 'Hull Daily Mail' is to be believed, their leaders expect them to scab on a national strike against unemployment. We find it hard to believe that this will happen in Hull. It is time for these dockers to turn their backs on crack-brained schemes and stand where they belong—in the front rank of the fight to bring down the Tory government and return a Labour government to restore full employment.

'Hull Daily Mail', Hull strike call in order to launch their own port Czech plastics