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What we think 'Special camps' being prepared by Tories? Terrible trap for struggle and

By John Spencer

Workers Press no. 841, 14 August 1972 · scan page 3

Topics: Tory government, Africa

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THE CLASS TRUGGLE, Lenin said, one of the fundamental questions of Marxism. That the Heath government has enormously intensified the class struggle since the beginning of this year is patently obvious to every working-class family.

Central to the Tories' offensive has been the 'shake-out in the deliberate tion ry, creation mass unemployment. The government and its backers in the Confederation of British Industry have •used the fear of unemployment to drive down wages and working conditions.

It follows, therefore, that struggles today are political because they involve the policies of Tory governThe Tories stand at the back of the ruthless British STARI 'rationalization, closures, GEC-AEl empire in prepara tion for the Common Market entry and they stand foursquare with the Road Haulage Association Employers the Engineering Federation in depriving workers of decent salaries and conditions.

Of the political character of these attacks there is common agreement between a number of tendences in the Labour movement-the Comminist Party which produce the 'Morning Star', and the revisionists of the so-called International Socialist ('Socialist Worker') and the International Marxist Group ('Red Mole').

But while recognize formally the role of the Tory government in today's struggles, they seek confine their own counter-activities to a level of protesting. ake The UCS work-in, which perhaps the most glaring example of this form of protest activity.

In his balance-sheet UCS even the limp 'Sunday Times' Labourite, John Fryer, has to write: Those who re. member the "battle for 8,500 jobs" headlines will notice that up to 2,000 men have vanished since UCS went bust. Some have died or retired, but many have either found other jobs, or joined the unemployed.' Mr Fryer doesn't draw any definite conclusion from his research, so we'll do it for him. The work-in was a fraud. It did not save all the jobs, nor did it maintain all four yards as a single unit.

Yet this was the Slogan which the Stalinists, James Reid and James Airlie, hoisted over the work-in when it began. But at the same time the Stalinist leadership insisted from the very first rally held in Glasgow that politics kept out of the struggle.

At every step they diverted attention away from the government.

Yet Lenin warned explicitly about the treachery of such liberal times of activity "Marxism,' grave CrISIS: he wrote, 'recognizes a class struggle as fully developed, only if it does not merely embrace politics but takes in the most significant thing in politics-the power: organization of state And translated into current circumstances, Lenin means the Tory government.

We are the only tendency In the workers' movement which has called continuously for the defeat of this government. In doing SO we have set our face against the Stalinists and their alliesthe revisionist protesters.

Lenin has this to say about them:

'Liberals are prepared to recognize the class struggle in the sphere of politics, too, but on one condition-that the organization of state power should not enter into that sphere. It is not hard to understand which of the bourgeoisie's class interests give rise to the liberal distortion of the concept of class This is the essence of the irreconcilable division between them and us. They refuse to call for the overthrow of the Tory government and thus hold back the political development of the working class.

Because they offered no resistance to the government, because they want to COexist with state power, the Stalinists ended up signing a four-year no-strike pledge with 2,000 men already down the road. This is where 'no politics' struggles lead!

Have the revisionists taken note of the political balance sheet at UCS and learned anything? No. Despite the cruel facts of the work-in farce, they still can't repudiate Stalinism and make a political estimation of the fight. They remain apologists for Reid and Airlie.

Last week's •Socialist Worker' buried the signing of the Clydebank deal in a six-inch single column on Page 7. This paltry article obliquely refers to the 'tragedy' of the no-strike pledge, but makes no direct criticism of the Stalinists or their policies.

By tailing the Stalinists in and out of every craven deal with the employers the IS assists them in keeping the Tory government in office. • See tomorrow's Workers Press for another assessment of the Stalinists' role at UCS. UGANDAN president varying his ultimatum minority within 90 days.

made this clear when he snubbed Tory envoy Geoffrey Rippon who has now left Uganda for Kenya and Tanzania and has no plans to return to Kampala tomorrow-the only day Amin is prepared to see him.

Amin has said that be out of the country not yet said whether accepted in Britain.

Despites have citizen sarrest trom Britain since 1968 under the Wilson government's Immigration Act. If the Tories are forced to accept these retugees, however, they will certainly face stringent restrictions once they arrive.

The government is believed to be preparing special camps on War Office bases to house the refugees from Uganda. And when they leave the camps they will be allowed to live only in certain parts of the country.

Councils in Leicester, Bradford and Coventry have told the government they will not accept any more coloured immigrants. Rippon maintains: 'You can't deal with large numbers of human beings as if they were cattle.' But that is precisely what the Tories propose to do.

Until now all British citizens have had the right to live where they choose. This fundamental right is to be abolished if the Tories have their way. They are pandering to every racialist in the country in order to whip up FOREIGN NEWS Race attack on Turks working in Holland TURKISH workers in the Afrikaander district of Rotterdam have been the targets of three nights of rioting by groups of Dutch youths.

The Turkish workers in this city-centre slum are among the 150,000 foreign labourers imported from southern Europe under the ComHeaviest bombings-but liberation forces press on AMERICAN planes made the heaviest air raids of the war over North Vietnam at the weekend. About 1,200 tons of bombs were dropped on supply depots and a new oil pipeline running down from the Chinese border to the frontier with the south.

The newly-built pipeline has enabled the liberation forces to outIdi Amin has no intention of expelling the country's Asian an estimated 50,000 by November 8. The the Asians hounded Caught between two sets of racialist policies anti-immigrant feeling. would reduce the Asian refugees who have already once been robbed of their citizenship rights to the status of second-class citizens if they finally arrive in Britain. are taking advantage of a crisis which is their responsibility to impose a total ban on all immigration from other Commonwealth countries. Ugandan Asians of their citizenship rights-and thus exposed them to the mercies of the racialist dictator Amin-they now propose to use their plight to strip every other coloured Commonwealth citizen of their right to come to Britain. mon Market 'guest workers' scheme.

Most of them are employed as cheap, menial labour in the country's factories. Right-wing groups have been agitating against them for some time, complaining that they are crowding out the Dutch.

Since the riots began on Wednesday, many of Turkish workers flank Nixon's blockade and mining of the country's coast and rivers.

The US planes-eightengined B52 bombersattacked points along a line stretching 30 miles south-east and 60 miles north-west of the coastal city of Dong Ha, the the US command announced.

American air force, marine and navy planes mounted a further 200 strikes against targets British citizens must Tory government has out by Amin will be Amin successive British governments Their unprecedented proposals Asians into a terrible trap. There are already reports of Amin's police terrorizing Asians and demanding money from them at gunpoint. such actions, but he and his More to the point, the Tories whipping up a pogrom atmosphere and he has neatened 'highly unpleasant, threatened against any Asian who is not out Having already stripped the of the country by the 90-day deadline. remain after that date are the 23,000 Asians who chose Ugandan citizenship after independence (and then only if they can prove their status with documents) and certain cateThe racialist legislation of gories of professional employees. have fled the area. The agitation against the foreign workers comes at a time of crisis for the ruling coalition government.

Right-wing premier Barent Biesheuval has een forced to call a premature eneral election folowing parliament's rejection swingeing budget cuts.

The police did not in the southern part of North Vietnam.

The American command is extremely worried by the outbreak of fighting on a number of fronts in South Vietnam which were previously considered "secure'.

After seven weeks of fighting the South Vietnamese puppet army has signally failed to take the besieged town of Quang Tri, despite unprecedented US bomhas now driven the Ugandan Amin has publicly denounced ministers are touring Uganda The only categories allowed to originally intervene against the rioters because they considered there was 'enough tension already' according to a Rotterdam inspector.

They moved in force, however, when they learnt that Turkish workers from other parts of Holland were on their way to • help their countrymen. bardments against defenders.

In the Mekong Delta south of Saigon, liberation forces in considerable strength are harassing South Vietnamese units and threatening to cut the capital's supply routes.

And there have been reports of big liberation units moving towards the coast in the central area of South Vietnam.

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