MALCOLM

• it is criminal to teach man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law?

M born Malcolm Livas ALCOLM X was in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. He was one of 10 children. At an early age he came to know the lot of the poor Negro in capitalist - segregated America.

His father was bludgeoned to death by racists and run over by a street car in Lancing, Michigan. "is mother went mad as a result of this tragic blow and became a permanent inmate of a mental home.

Malcolm's comment on this was prophetic: 'I was only six years old at the time, but I had already learned that being a Negro in this country was a liability, In 1945 he was caught doing a burglary and got 8 to 10 years in the state prison in Boston.

After six years he was paroled and went to live with his brothers. Mystical There he came into contact with and was won over to the mysticall reactionary creed of Elijah Muhammad.

To thousands of displaced and frustrated Negroes from the rural South trying to eke out an existence in the urban ghettoes of the north, the petty-bourgeois creed of the Black Moslems, cunningly combining abject political passivity of the Negroes as a whole with the promise of individual violence, . the apocalyptic doom of the white race and a separate state for the Negroes has a certain plausibility. Malcolm was not an exception.

In 1962 he featured in the with the ideology of Elijah infamous trial concerning the Muhammad. In a statement shooting of seven unarmed printed in full by 'The Militant, Black Moslems by the Los the SWP newspaper, without Angeles police, One was killed, comment on March 23, 1964, one maimed and six injured. he said: The police were exonerated This prompted Malcolm to Muslim. My religion is Islam.

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Malcolm became a trusted confidant of Elijah Muhammad. He was even chosen to negotiate an alliance with the racist Lincoln Rockwell's Nazi movement. Rockwell was an honoured guest at Black Moslem rallies.

The assassination of President Kennedy suddenly terminated the close relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad when Malcolm dismissed the President's murder as a 'case of chickens coming home to roost'.

Malcolm's break with Muhammad marked a new point in his life. It coincided with a tremendous upsurge in the Negro struggles for civil liberties and integration, an idea which he originally abhorred.

Independent

action In 1963-64 Negroes we ginning to proclaim openly ti ea of independent politic tion.

Malcolm intuitively recognised the importance of this demand: "The Negro will never be politically mature as long as he refers to himself as a Republican or Democrat,' he said.

However, Malcolm maintained an equivocal attitude to the setting up of political parties.

His opinion on the Black Moslems has been more than confirmed by recent events:

"The only thing that held the movement together was the image of morality reflected by Mr. Muhammad. The Black Moslem movement will crumble because the organisation is held together by coercion by a Gestapo-type police force within its own ranks."

It is interesting to note that the Socialist Workers Partyan uncritical supporter of Malcolm—never at any time dared to criticise this reactionary movement, its ideals or its organisational set-up.

After a trip to Mecca last year, Malcolm abandoned his racist ideas in favour of a more moderate, but just as utopian, I still believe that Mr. Muhammad's analysis of the problem is the most realistic, and that his solution is the best one. This means that I too believe the best solution is complete separation, with our people going back home, to our own African homeland.' Although this statement was made before Malcolm × set up the Organisation of Afro-American Unity, he never repudiated it.

Despite all this, Malcolm was a paradoxical figure.

Enigmatic in his attitude to institutions and unpredictable in his choice of weapons, he made many friends and created many enemies.

His uncompromising attitude towards Negro self-defence ('When our people are being bitten by dogs, they are within their rights to kill those dogs'), his forthright condemnation of police brutality all over the States and his readiness to co-operate with all civil rights groups in struggling for equality and integration earned him the undying hostility of his late friends in Muhammad's Mosques.

He became the frequent target of Black Moslem goon squads.

Bloody battles In June 1964 a bodyguard armed with nifles escorted him to the court house in New York because of a threat by Black Moslems to shoot him.

Before that, , followers of Muhammad tried to threaten him in a tunnel near Logan airport but fled when his bodyguards pulled their guns.

This was typical of a series of bloody and recurring street battles between the two groups.

Finally, his enemies-and it is not difficult to guess who did it killed him.

This must serve as an ominous warning to Negro militants and revolutionary socialists throughout North America-and in THE storm aroused by Lord Cromer's advice to Callaghan to cut government expenditure -to me has came the American Negro to fight kack in sekf-defence whenever answwherever ms i being dustly a sur weatackeds BRESERV UL ..... and its black allies against the Negro workers and urban poor.

It represents the reflex action of a desperate ruling class to repress the most oppressed and exploited section of the American people, in order to preserve its wealth and power.

The fact that a Negro was the assassin makes no difference. Whoever did it it is impossible to remain silent about the role of the Black Moslems.

The Black Moslems represent paradoxically the vanguard of reaction in the Northern States; the black equivalent of the white Ku Klux Klan.

Enemies Their policy of separatism is the obversé of the segregation policies of the Southern reactionaries.

There is nothing progressive about them. They are completely reactionary, indeed counter-revolutionary.

3 THE

Febr 27, uary party (PSB), like al He egian socialis the other parties of the Second International, has consistently served the interests of capital since 1914.

From Vandervelde's support of the capitalist war in 1914, to Spaak's position as secretary-general of NATO, the record is the same: Betrayal of the working class.

In carrying out this task, it has never hesitated to carry out brutal attacks upon the working olass.

At the end of the Second World War, its leaders, ministers in a capitalist government, helped the rebuilding of capitalism in Western Europe.

In 1944, the social-democrats, together with the Belgian Communist Party, signed the agreement with the Belgian capitalists that the partisan movement should hand its arms back to the capitalist state.

In the following year, its leadership participated in the amendment of the laws defining the right to strike which imposed on the working class the government's right to requisition strikers in those industries which were 'of vital need' to the economy.

It was the socialist minister, Van Acker, who insisted that the striking postmen SHOUlO sacked in 1948. It was the socialist minister Vermeylen who so zealously carried strengthening of the riot police, after the the monarchy in 1950. was ended.

The workers returned in Liege and Hainaut, the last outposts of militancy, and the government, The strength of the social-democrats comes from the ability of the "Belgian ruling class to grant concessions to some secRenard knew this and de. nounced this. But he came to an agreement with Major that he could have control of the SocialOnce the march on Brussels was squashed by the counterproposal, Renard began to remind the workers that letting the blast