'Feedback', PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU. Letters over 300 words are edited for brevity and concision. "Peace off? The unionists want a deal whereby the nationalists admit defeat No justice & no peace in Ireland THE REASON that the British gov. ernment finally abandoned the peace process seems clear. Neither Britain nor especially the unionists are will. ing to sign up to a deal that does not involve the acknowledged defeat of militant nationalism in the north of Ireland.
For British imperialism there are obvious political and economic advantages of a settlement of the rish problem". As the editorial in your last pared to offer big concessions so a deal between all parties should have been on the cards. But Major kept insisting that the IRA had to give up its arms. Why? Because they had to be seen to bo beaten. Because at the end of the day unless the most class conscious militant communities in the British state are not demoralised and broken they are still a threat to the ruling class and a challenge to unionist reactionar. March Saturday 16, CAVE demo, assemble 12, Battersea Park. Saturday 16, memorial meeting for Sam Levy, 3.30, Fenner Brockway Hall, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London Saturday 18 Socialists in or out of the Labour Party? Debate between Socialist Campaign Group, Militant and SLP, 7.30, Adelphi pub, Leeds. Saturday 23 Dockers demonstration, assemble 12, Myrtle Parade, Liverpool Saturday 23 ARA demo, London. Assemble 12.30 Embankment. Saturday 23 Welfare State Network conference. Mechanics Institute, Manchester. Saturday 23 North West Peoples March against Job Seekers Allowance. Assemble 10 Cavendish Street, Manchester. Will march to WN conference. Monday 25 Defend working class militants, defend Horatio Penario, Picket of Argentine Embassy, 53 Hans Place, London SWI. Called by Campaign Against Repression int. Argentina BACK Solidarity with these communities and the republican struggle is therefore important for the British working class. The bombings obviously don't help us 00ve 0 Cal S01a54 008S Yo much in our own interest.
Ivor Gill, West London Militant Swedes READERS of Militant (issue 1263. February 16) were no doubt very pleased to read that in Sweden, *3,000 to 4,000 people took part in a demonstration organised by the Workers League Offensive (AFO) against the tightening up of the asylum laws" and "Per-Ake Westerlund spoke as AFO chairperson along with speakers for the Left Party and Liberals"
Readers may however wonder how It came to pass that the Liberal party chairperson was invited to speak at a AFO demonstration. After all, this party was, between 1991 and 1994, part of of a bourgeois government which did some really nasty things to What's Happening steering committee, lpm April Hull, phone 01482 215 059 Unemployed Workers Centres Embankment, London May Councils, Kettering.
The answer lies in the fact that the event was not organised by the AFO but by a coalition of more than twenty groups. The AFO did a food job before it happened but then so did everyone else. I was not a demonstration either but an outdoor meeting. The attendance was not more than 500. In Sweden we have a saying — "Lies have short legs". Peter Lindgren, Socialist Party, Sweden ANTHONY BRAIN (SO 98) is wrong to advocate even "critical support" for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The CPRF is not Stalinist or even really socialist. It is openly capitalist. Gennady yueanov has often repudiated claims that he would restore the Soviet Union if he became President. The CPRF merely wishes to slow the Yeltsin reforms, not to stop or reverse them. What's more, the experience of so-called "reformed Communist" parties in Eastern Europe shows that they have whole-heartedly embraced the West's free-market agenda. Many leading figures within such parties have expressed admiration for Brain's claim that Russia isn't capi. talist because "there is going so be a 20 per cent increase in investment on education ...miners are getting the back pay owed to them ...(and) 4.5 billion roubles is being invested in the mining mousiry is nukulous In Lyndon Johnson's USA, there was an increase in educational investment, all the miners got paid and there were subsidised industries. capitalist in the mid to late 1960s? Of course not! As for the CIS along with China "reasserting themselves against imperialism" _bow? Hollow anti-western ranting from Yeltsin and Li Peng aside, both coun tries can be seen to be embracing the West. The encroachment into Russia and China of Western capital, firms and Western-style organised crime, surely shows this. Alan Thomas, Southampton Saturday 30 Socialist Campaign Group Supporters' Network, Leeds Town Hall. 11.30 debate with SLP. Saturday 30, March for Justice, Raghbir Singh demo, assemble 11.30, Black Patch Recreation Ground, Foundry Lane, Smethwick, West Midlands Saturday 13 Stop Workfare demonstration, Thurday 18 lobby of parliament against JSA, called by Saturday 20 CAIAB demo. Assemble 11 am, Friday 10 - Sunday 12 National Conference of Trades Saturday I| Conference against the Asylum and Immigration Bill, I lam-4pm, Natfhe Conference Centre, Britannia Street, London, near King's Cross. Organised by Campaign for a Fighting Democratic UNISON. Saturday 25 National Dockers Conference, | lam, Transport House, Islington, Liverpool. UP AGAINST mass unemployment, rampant employers with savage anti-union laws, and a war on ain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership. ship, based on class struggle and revolutionary socialism. by its need to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has had determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal Tory high com. any pretence of being a socialist alternative. Every retreat encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, conditions and union rights. environment, peace and democracy, can never be achieved under capitalism.
Nor, as we argued long before the coflapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achleved under the bureaucratically devived only by repressing the working class. dies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless version of 'marxMarx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Illusions of peaceful legislative change. topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish Its sioners, of the black communities, of lesblans and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting imperialism in Ireland and mass revolutionary party can be built simply by proclaiming ourstention from struggles in the labour movement, playing into right wing hands. of the struggle for socialism. in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their rights. sues such as racism and fascism - In which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate differences. with us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in cities acron the country. / / want to know more about Socialist Outlook. i would like to sell Socialist Outlook • Please send me your introductory pamphlet'Socialism After Stalinism'. I enclose a cheque for 1€1.00 payable to Socialist Outlook ¡O Send me details of the Socialist Outlook Fourth International Supporters' Association. Name Address Post Cod 'Tel Retur to: Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU. hard-won public services, the working class in BritSocialist Outlook exists to build a new type of working class leaderThe capitalist class, driven by its own crisis, and politically united The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions, and to fragment and weaken the resistance, allowing them to pick off isolated sections In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the de. featist politics of 'new realism", effectively total surrender, while ditching New realism is the latest form of reformism, seeking only improved We reject reformism, not because we are against reforms, but because we know that full employment, decent living standards, a clean formed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes surWe are a marxist current, based not on the brutish totalitarian paroIsm' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Our socialist alternative is not based on parllamentary elections or We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the working class to We struggle against fragmentation by bullding solldarity, to unite the various struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of penSociolint Outlook is above all an Internationalist current, in solidar. Ity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises in over Unlike some other groups on the British left, we do not believe a selves to be one. This degenerates into sectarian posturing and ab.
Nor do we belleve that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland, Ireland and Wales should be left to await revolution. The oppressed must or. ganise themselves and fight now for their demands, which are a part But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key is.
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Socialist 50p • Issue 99 March 16, 1996