Czech attack heralds new purge

allegedly been 'urging the overthrow of the political system.

The statement claimed that the organization had aimed at creating a 'political crisis' in Czechoslovakia, and had attempted to build up cells throughout the country.

This latest stage in the Stalinist purge 1s, without doubt, the most sinister.

The trial and execution of Slansky and ten other leading Czech Communist Party members in 1953 was based on charges involving a Trotskyist' plot to overthrow the Czech government and restore capitalism.

Spy Yugoslav President Tito was alleged to have masterminded this 'plot' and was slandered as a 'fascist spy and assassin' in the pay of imperialism.

To charge real or imaginary groups of Trotskyists with creating a 'political crisis' in Czechoslovakia is too absurd for words.

What we have seen building up for many years in Czechoslovakia is the crisis of Stalinism, which develops through . the bitter clash between the revolutionary needs of the working class and the privileged interests of the strikers confirms that the Spanish working class has fully recovered from its defeat in the Civil War of 1936-1939, and has no fears about taking on the Franco regime and its capitalist backers. counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy.

Trotskyism as a theory and a movement arose through a fight to understand and oppose the rise of the stalinist buraucracy, it did not create it.

The Kremlin-backed bureaucracy of Prague, however, have no interest in the finer oints of Marxist theory and istory.

Entrench

Novotny's old friends in the Party apparatus and secret police are taking advantage of Husak's drive against the proDubcek wing of the Party to entrench themselves even more firmly.

Those that raise the slander of "Trotskyite plots' in Czechoslovakia do so with the tacit agreement, if not encouragement, of the Soviet Party leaders.

The uncovering of such a fictitious plot could • well be the necessary, prelude to a show trial of Czech oppositionists, in which police stooges could easily figure as some of the "Trotskyist' plotters, as they did in the three Moscow Trials of 1936, 1937, and 1938.

It could also be quite possible that groups of oppositionists have come into contact with the writings of Trotsky and begun to form themselves into an organization.

Certainly in the period before the Kremlin invasion of August 1968, the questions of Stalinism and Trotskyism were pages of several Czech journals, while a critique appeared of Stalinist policy during the French general strike of May-June 1968 which owed much of its analysis to the ideas of It was precisely to halt and crush this fermentation of ideas among intellectuals and the working class that the Soviet bureaucracy took its decision to intervene.

The excuse that Czechoslovakia stood on the verge of counter-revolution and capitalist restoration was simply a transparent attempt to provide a militant-sounding cover for its action against the Czech state and working class.

GREET at. a public meeting See the film of the first issue being prepared and Sunday January 25, 2-30 G. HEALY Vational Secretary of Socialist printed and the film 'Young Socialists, 1969' (National Secretary of the Young Socialists)

This was, of course, the identical formula used during and after the Kremlin intervention against the Hungarian workers' revolution October-November 1956.

That the Czech bureaucracy should seek to present Trotskyism as the spearhead of resistance to Stalinism is, of course, no accident.

The growth of Trotskyism has been carefully studied, slandered and warned against in the Soviet press, and here the Prague Stalinists are simply taking a cue from their masters.

We say here and now that if the Husak regime attempts to arrest, persecute or slander any group fighting for the ideas of Trotskyism in Czechoslovakia, we shall mobilize all our strength inside the British labour movement against it.

The Czech working class is faced with immense political problems, the greatest of them being the struggle to understand its own history and the origins of the movement that has betrayed it-Stalinism.

Clarification

Political and theoretical clarification cannot proceed under the lash of bureaucratic repressions, slanders, show trials and censorship.

Just like the rest of us, the Czech workers have a right to re-discover their own political past. They have to do this in order to secure their own socialist future, for which they have fought SO stubbornly against both imperialism and Stalinism.

The slanders of a 'Trotskyist plot' are designed to discredit the very theories that provide : this key to action. That is why we must insist:

Hands off all Czech antiWEATHER London area, SE, central Southern, _NW and central Northern England, E and W Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow area: Rather cloudy, showers, perhaps longer outbreaks of rain. A few sunny intervals. Wind southerly, moderate or fresh, locally strong. Very mild. Maximum 10C (50F). Channel Islands, SW England: Rather cloudy. Outbreaks of rain, perhaps thunder. A few sunny intervals. Wind southerly, strong, locally gale. Mild. Maximum 12C (54F).

Northern Ireland: Rather cloudy, outbreaks of rain. A few bright intervals. Wind easterly, moderate or fresh. Very mild. Maximum 9C (48F). Outlook for Thursday and Friday: Rather cloudy with rain at times in most places. Probably becoming a little colder in the East.

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The job of the union leaders, assisted by the Communist Party, has been to convince workers that the employers are all-powerful and that developments like, for example, one-man operation are 'inevitable'.

An example of the effect of this was encountered by the ford, Yorkshire, depot of the West Riding Automobile Co.

One driver claimed that one-man operation would not withdrawaty the Manchester work, quoting as Corporation Transport Department and the Halifax Joint Omnibus Company.

Another driver, who sat on his local branch committee, told us that busmen had been guaranteed a 51-hour weekpaying £22 gross--and a written 'no redundancy' agreeHave the busmen in fact got this situation under control?

Overtime

The run-down in the industry hits busmen who have for years relied entirely on overtime earnings to make up a decent living wage perhaps