Labour Must Lead Anti-War Fight

By G. HEALY The preparations for the summit talks can only find a parallel in the behaviour of lunatics who have lost all contact with reality. Just pause for a moment and think about the awful situation in which mankind finds itself. Barely a decade and ahalf after the end of the second world war the German capitalists have openly embarked upon a fresh campaign of war preparations.

While the stench of death still hangs over the horror camps of Belsen, Dachau, Ravensbruck and Auschwitz, the Krupp millionaires, the merchants of death of Western Europe, send their technicians into Spain to commence the manufacture of missiles in that outpost of fascist brutality. Just as the reinstatement of Krupp was made legal by the American imperialists, so this latest move is also quite legal. The destruction of Hitler’s war machine was brought about in order to organize a better and more efficient one.

Ask yourself, who was right about the second world war?

The Trotskyists were the only international socialist tendency Soviet bureaucrats and Mr. Khrushchev will be caught just as to state that that war could not put an end to fascism or Stalin was on June 21, 1941, when the Soviet people became imperialism and that it was a capitalist war which would involved in a war with Hitler which their leaders were calling resolve nothing so far as the working class were concerned. right up to the night it began, impossible. The right-wing Labour leaders, including Mr. Shinwell, and their Stalinist allies supported the war and its orgy of mass Gaitskell lines up for nuclear war destruction on the grounds that this would end fascism for The right-wing Labour leaders such as Gaitskell cannot ever. Who was right, the Marxists or these traitors?

oppose the Tories and their war preparations. It-was the 1945 Labour government which drew up the plans for the H-bomb The summit talks are a farce home of Aldermaston and the poison factory at Porton. It The summit talks have been boosted by the same rotten was they who voted the first guided missile expenditure. crew as a way of strengthening peace today. But what is the In the defence debate last Tuesday, Mr. Gaitskell proudly reality? On the eve of .these talks high-flying military airdemanded that Britain should have its own nuclear policy. craft stream provocatively across the skies between the East Everyone should feel happier now that Transport’ House is and West zones of Germany. Military expenditure has got prepared to lead the British people into the valley of death. out of hand. Nobody knows exactly what it has cost and — Indeed this is the only type of leadership that Gaitskell and what it is going to cost. In 1948 the Labour government his kind have provided for the working’ class since 1941. estimated that it would cost £1 million to build a guided There is not a single shred of serious opposition to these missile. The latest estimate for the same missile is £40: milwar preparations in the Parliamentary Labour Party. The lion, and it is confidently expected that when this missile is so-called Victory for Socialism lefts do not oppose the war operational it will already have become obsolete.

preparations on principle, they simply caJl for alliances beoriginal estimate of £8 million for these missiles has now tween the people who’ are preparing the war. In other words jumped to £110 million.

they are a left cover for the right wing and not a serious American bombers constantly patrol the skies, ready to anti-war opposition. leave at a moment’s notice to destroy Soviet cities and indusAll socialists and trade unionists who want to prevent the trial installations. American rockets are ready for launching nuclear holocaust now being prepared must understand that from British bases. Mr. Khrushchev is not behind the times, only the mobilization of the working class around a socialist he says that Russia has the most terrible weapon of all.

policy which will constantly oppose the Tories and their agents Mark you, all this is taking place on the eve of the summit. in the Labour movement can solve the problem of peace. The decision to hold the talks sparked off a new round of The Socialist Labour League is the only organization in sabre-rattling and wild military expenditure. Just as the de- Britain that fights for such a policy. We oppose war on clared war aims of the victors of the second world war were principle and we believe that only the victory of the working a farce, so the summit talks are a farce. They cannot bring class in the struggle for socialism can prevent it. peace because they are based upon the diplomatic meanderings The policy to be debated at our local Assemblies of Labour, of the capitalist lunatics who dominate society in the Wester commencing this week-end, is the only effective answer to world. . the madmen of Washington and the rest of the capitalist world.

In fact the summit talks may well bring war nearer. Should We urge all our readers to support these Assemblies, to join the Americans think that they have gained some short-term the Socialist Labour League and take part in the real antiadvantages they may be tempted to take the plunge, and the war struggle.

Sunday LONDON : Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, S.W.1. 10.30 am.—S5 p.m. March, 6 Walker Art Gallery, William Brown Street.

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THE NEWSLETT 186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, MarcH 5, 1960 LAST Sunday’s demonstration calling for a boycott on at Trafalgar Square and not the West Indians of Notting Hill. Here is a warning that cannot be ignored.

Last summer The Newsletter urged the Labour movement in West London to consider the setting up of defence guards composed of trade unionists and coloured ‘workers in order to defend ordinary work-