We welcome letters on any subject but please keep them brief. Letters over 350 words will be cut. Send your letters to: Socialist Outlook PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU Your article on Sri Lanka (Sri Lankan marxists rally to Fourth International. SO 13) was excellent and highly inormatve However, it was sad to note that Phi Hearse had apparenty transposed the words terrorist" and terror in describing the actions of the Singhalese organisation, the JVP, and the Sri Lankan state's response to their campaign.
No doubt terror is part of the JVP's citical armoury, just as it was for the Bolsheviks during the civi war alter the 1917 revolution And no doubt the programme of the JVP should be subjected to the same kind of vigorous criticism we would direct against cre ram Life, the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso or the late and uniamented Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.
Infortunately no other political char acterisation of the SVP than Terrorist was avalable in Phil Hearse's account.
"Terrorist" is usually reserved by most of the press for acthvites in places ike Belfast or Beirut. It is quite obviously a word to be used other with great care or proferably not at all - unless perhaps in describing state terrorism.
Many political organisations across the globe use wrong methods (and sometimes very dim lamps to lght thoi shining path in their struggle imperialism. If we are to condemn them, our perspective must be entirely different from our common enemiiy.
Bob Wood Southall de-recognition? Left TGWUGeneral Secretary Bill Morris: where was his fight agains!