I have just received your October issue and was government. The blockade was designed to destabilise the government, and open the door to a far-right Tory government in the near future. As a bonus, big business and farmers expect to get increased profits from petrol tax concesSIOnS. You write that the Sun, Mail, and Telegraph "denounced the militant tactics adopted by the farmers and lorry bosses". This is just not true. It was only towards the end of the week that the gutter press advised a cessation of the blockade "to retain the moral high ground in the dispute" (Mail, September 14). They recognised that the mood in the country could become hostile if the blockade continuedi When the CIA financed and inspired hauliers to strike in Chile in 1973, would your sister party in Chile (if there was one) have encouraged its members to join the picket line, and would its paper say, in enormous type on its front page: "BITTERNESS EXPLODES IN ALLENDE'S FACE"? Allende, like Blair, was a reformist who refused to nationalise big business or improve conditions, and thereby lost the support of a section of the middle and working class. For the left to have made him the main enemy would have been dangerous sectarianism, but your headline, makes Blair the main enemy rather than big business.
Your front page should surely have attacked the main enemy with a hard-hitting demand such as: "LABOUR MUST COUNTERATTACK: NATIONALISE THE OIL COMPANIES AND THE BIG HAULIERS WITHOUT COMPENSATION. Reduce oil prices and cut profits." Wouldn't that appeal more to Labour supporters?
The cleverly organised blockade and campaign by the employers, Tories, and their allies in the media, have shifted the mood to the right. We must not allow the return of another Tory government, which would be even further to the right than the Thatcher government.
The SWP has the duty to analyse events far more critically, and not invent "facts" to justify its erroneous theory. And it has to emphasise that the main enemy is capitalism, not the Labour and TU leadership. That does not mean that we should have anything but hatred and contempt for those "lieutenants of capitalism". Unfortunately there are millions who don't understand the role of Blair, Monks & Co. It is for marxists to find a route to those millions.
David Finch Croydon, 24 September