Young Socialists plan most important conference yet

hampering South Vietnamese efforts to bring in reinforcements.

Many of the troops supposedly defending Qung Tri, the next major town on the North Vietnamese line of march, had already evacuated the town yesterday and taken the road for Hue.

Their retreat was described by one Saigon source as. 'fairly orderly in some places and completely disorderly in others'.

American aircraft were unable to cover the retreat because the entire area is obscured by low cloud.

In addition to the attack across the northern border, Saigon reported increased military activity in the tri-border region where the frontiers of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam meet.

They fear the North Vietnamese may try and cut off the puppet state's northern provinces by a drive to the sea across the vulnerable central provinces.

The attack is a direct challenge President Nixon's much-vaunted 'Vietnamization' policybuilding up the puppet army under an umbrella of US air support.

Coming just over a month after Nixon's visit to China it is also aimed at ensuring * the Maoist bureaucracy does not sell out the Vietnamese revolution by an underhand deal with Nixon. home have forced Nixon to withdraw most of his forces from Vietnam. They became thoroughly demoralized and mutinous when faced with the revolutionary struggle of the Indo-Chinese workers and peasants.

The Vietnamization programme, substituting equally disaffected South Vietnamese for US troops, is a sign of weakness, not a position of strength.

On Saturday, as the North Vietnamese swung into the attack, the puppet Saigon defence minister, General Nuyen Van Vy, asked prime minister Tran Thien Khiem for permission to take a holiday while the government investigated corruption charges again him.

Rotten

General Vy is the head of the Military Savings Fund, made up from soldiers Payments stopped wages. Under him, it has grown into a highly lucrative business worth several million pounds--to the great profit of Vy and his associates.

South Vietnamese capitalism is rotten-ripe for overthrow. Without the massive American military technology and air support, the Saigon government is powerless to withstand the military implications of the powerful blows from the North. MORE than 1,500 delegates, trade unionists and supporters are expected at the annual conference of the Young Socialists at Scarborough next weekend, April 8 and 9.

All the Right-to-Work marchers have received a special invitation to take part in the conference, the most important in the history of the Young Socialists.

There will be a packed and lively agenda with 157 resolutions.

Predominating the discussion will be the fight against the Tory government and the building of the revolutionary party in Britain this year.

The Mitcham YS motion says: 'We, the Young Socialists, say that we must construct a party which, through its principles, can lead the working class in a fight against the Tories and which will carry the working class to power.' Other resolutions cover the Common Market, Ulster, Vietnam, rising prices, the attacks on the NHS and the social services, racialism, the Industrial Relations Act, Bangla Desh, Angela Davis and George Jackson, Black Power and the police.

World crisis

The main resolution sets the background to the conference the world crisis of capitalism. The resolution's opening paragraph reads: 'President Nixon's decision on August 15, 1971 removing the Us government's pledge to exchange gold for dollars, and ending existing exchange rates, was a declaration trade war *It was fo lowed on December 15, 1971, by a devaluation of the dollar. Both these events marked the end of an era for world capitalism' The main resolution stresses the fight for Marxism: "To build the Young Socialists into a mass revolutionary youth movement is to lay the foundations of the greatest transformation of society in human history. This task 1s impossible without the corresponding development of consciousness to the highest level yet achieved-in the Marxist method of dialectical materialism and its application to a scientific study of society.

"The Young Socialists must be the arena for introducing the basic principles of Marxism. to young workers. This theory is further developed only in the revolutionary party which is the

LAW AND POLITICS PACE & Merkin Press, Mondar Arril 3, 1972