Too/ Where We Stand Recent issues of Militant have carried letters critical of that organisation's outrageous refusal to either support Bosnia's right to self-defence or to call for the lifting of the imperialist arms embargo on the besieged country. Militant has so far retused to publish this letter, from Socialist Outlook's ALAN THORNETT: Thornett has travelled in the region with International Workers' Aid and written extensively on the war. I was appalled at the dreadful article on Bosnia in the December 9 1994 Militant by John Bulaitis.
This article refuses to support the Bosnians against blatant Serbian aggression and the Greater Serbia project; defines Bosnia's multi-ethnic population as "Muslim"; refuses to recognise that the struggle for national rights is a class issue;
Socialist Facing mass unemployment, rampant employers equipped with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won education, health and welfare services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership.
Socialist Outlook exists to fight for a new type of working class leadership, based on the politics of class struggle and revolutionary socialism, to tackle this crisis.
The capitalist class, driven and politically united by its own crisis, its requirement to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has been given determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal class-war Tory high command.
The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions with legislation, and to fragment and weaken the resistance of the working class and oppressed, allowing falsely regards the conflict as an ethnic civil war; refuses to call for the lifting of the arms embargo and regards talk of a multi-ethnic Bosnia as "pure utopia".
It also, scandalously, argues that Bosnia has never, in any case, been a "distinct nation".
Before the war Bosnia's three main ethnic (or really confessional) groups, were 31.3% Serbs, 17.3% Croats and 43.7% Muslims. The divide was religious rather than ethnic, since Tion rights. New realism is the latest form taken by the politics of reformism, seeking no more than improved conditions within the framework of capitalist rule. Socialist Outlook rejects reformism, not because we are against fighting for reforms, but because we know that the needs of the working class - for full employment, decent living standards, a clean environment, peace and democracy - can never be achieved under capiNor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achieved under the bureaucratically deformed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes ethnically the bulk of the population were Bosniac.
Religion laid lightly on the population. Bosnia-Herzegovena has been throughout its history and in all its different forms a multi-national, and multi-religious entity.
Charges of Muslim fundamentalism are misplaced. Bosnian Muslims have probably been less attracted to fundamentalism than any Muslim community in the world. Generally they do not observe Islamic law, tries world-wide. right wing. Name Address Phone Age.
particularly in the cities. Ethnic conflict and the rise of Serbian nationalism was deliberately promoted by the racist Milosevic project. It was not an "inevitable" result of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Bosnia is an historic nation which has existed for 2,000 years in various forms. Even during the Yugoslav Federation, the bulk of the population saw themselves as Bosniac first. The notion that Bosnia is not a nation because it is multi-ethers, of the black communities and ethnic minorities, of lesbians and gay men, of for socialism. students, of youth - and of those fighting imperialism in Ireland and throughout the world. Socialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises co-thinkers in 40 counfor their rights. Sectarianism Unlike some other groupings on the British left, we do not believe a mass revolutionary party can be built simply by proclaiming ourselves to be one. Too often this degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from the actual struggle taking shape within the labour movement, playing into the hands of the Nor do we believe that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland and Wales should be left to tive! await the outcome of a socialist revolution. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now around their own • Please tell me more about Socialist Outlook.
nic is fundamentally flawed. Socialists should be opposed to the notion of ethnically pure states - not propose ethnic purity as a test of nationhood. Socialists should be in favour of the right of nations to self-determination including their right to secede. We support op pressed nations against their oppressor and this is not altered by the politics of their leaders, pro-capitalist or otherwise. The national question and the right to self-determination is a vital working-class issue which is fundamental for the struggle for socialism in ex-Yugoslavia. Socialism can only be successfully advanced on the basis of the defence of these basic demo cratic rights. The unity of the working class has to be built on this - not abstract phrases. The call for workers' defence squads as a precondition for supporting the defence of Bosnia is a confused cop-out. The Bosnian working-class is defending the country at the present time. Many of them are organised by units raised by the trade unions. The miners' brigades defending Tuzla, for example, comprises Muslims, Serbs and Croats-all fighting to defend Bosnia. • For a copy of the cited article from Militant, send two first-class stamps to us at PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU. demands, which are a part of the struggle But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fiaht for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as fighting racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate their differences. If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join with us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in towns across the country. Contact us now, get organised, and get ac-