over the branches and structures of the new union.
Is it worth risking all this to achiove a single union? Doug ignores the progressive element that has been visible the inter-union rivalry - at least with. in the NHS (where NÁLGO is almost non-existent as a force). NUPE and COHSE it is likely the 1988 nurses strikes would not have taken place. More than once one union or he other has been driven into a more radical stance under pressure to retain and recruit members.
A single union, dominated by a cynical army of new realst officials, is likely to be more effective at stopping than starting action.
Instead of tail-ending the organisa tional debate and echoing platitudes about unty. the lett shouk be sound. ing a loud warning over the political threat that could be posed, and orga nising to prepare for battle from day Only through a poltical fight can the left ensure a genuinely new union emerges rather than the old NUPE wolf in the sheep's skin of a greater NALGO.
Jack Dobermann London March 21, 1992 No. 18 YOUR FRONT page on Trident (15 February) was extremely misleading about what the cold war was -and It said that with the collapse of the Soviet Union the cold war arguments of nuclear deterrence are redundant.
The hundreds of nuclear warheads will not be there to defend anyone. ...The case for billions spent on nuclear sub#these eas noseyier The implication is that the Soviet Union tas a threat to the British people, who needed de fending against it. This is nonThe Soviet Union since 1917 had to defend itself against imperialist invasions and threats.
Each move in the construc tion of its nuclear capacity was a response to previous escalation by imperialist countries. For socialists, the nuclear weapohs of the British state were never justified.
You are also wrong to say that this issue has hanged fundamentally with the col lapse of the Soviet Union. We are not at the end of the cold war. On the contrary, it is now in its sharpest period.
The aim of the cold war has been to restore capitalism in the non-capitalist countries. This is not yet achieved in the CIS. The imperialists are using both their military superiority and economic blockade to force it through.
As the CIS countries make sweeping anuateral cuts in their military capacity, the imPentansts are able to make modest cuts in theirs, and thus save money; but they are maintaining their military supe riority.
Your comments that the Tories' commitment toa fourth Trident is loony' and merely enables capitalist Britain pretend to be a world power are therefore wrong. The British ruling class needs nuclear weapons.
First to push through the cold war against the Soviet Union / CIS to its desired conclusion; second to maintain pressure on the remaining deformed workers' states (which include the largest country in the world); and third as a toll in its intensifying and potentially military. valry with other imperialist and trivialised this world im Your front perialist offensive.
Jamie Gough Camden the British Army will pay whatever is necessary to have its border posts built. But how will such an action be judged by Protestant workers?
How does it break them from loyalism? It just makes them more likely to believe Ken MeGuinness when he talks about a campaign of genocide around the border.
And how does leaving bombs in railway stations or disrupting football matches bring British workers to sup po self-determinationh people strengthens all the reactionary, chauvinist prejudices.
When a revolutionary organisation forgets that its poliics and its support among the working class and the op pressed are infinitely more /aluable than propagandist ac tions in which it substitutes itself for the working class, it is on a road to disaster.
Support which is frightened of criticising mistakes is worthless.
Liam Mac Uaid East London
successes The End of stitutional state. Thus the gainst the liberal democratic