Women central to Comiso
struggle THE PEACE Camp at Comiso in Southern Sicily is still alive and flourishing despite the arrival of Cruise missiles on March 31 and despite harassment from the police and from the Mafia.
A number of mass demonstrations, human chains and conferences have been held. Comrades from Comiso have spoken at rallies and meetings throughout Europe to make people aware of the growing militarisation of Sicily.
The Comiso base itself is the largest missile base in Europe, with 112 Cruise missiles. Its siting has less to do with defence against Warsaw Pact countries than it has as a NATO outpost covering the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. A Cruise missile has a range of 2,500 kilometres, carries a nuclear warhead with a yield of 100 to 200 kilotons and travels at about 850 kilometres an hour. Clearly there it poses a threat to the whole Mediterranean region.
To back up the Comiso base, NATO has increased its presence in Sicily. The island of Pantelleria off the coast of India AN INDIAN Peace Movement has recently been formed (GROUND), based in Bombay. Their first major activity was a week of action beginning on August 6, "Hiroshima Day". The plan is to build a mass movement against the growing lobby for nuclear weapons for India.
Although Indira Gandhi signed the "22 May Four Continent Peace Initiative", India in fact exploded a nuclear device in Pokharan in 1914 and in 1982 voted against a UN resolution to establish a nuclear-free zone in South Asia. Recently the Indian Defence Minister, R. Venkataraman, stated that India would match Pakistan's military powers in every respect. It is assumed by most observers that Islamabad has already embarked on a nuclear weapons programme. It is vital that the masses in the sub-continent stop this nuclear madness before it escalates further, while poverty disease and hunger plague the working classes.
(GROUND can be contacted c/o 4 Habib Court, Causeway, Bombay 400039, India).
The example of the Greenham Women has been echoed in peace struggles elsewhere. Sicily and only 70 kilometres from Tunisia has become a NATO superfortress. A new NATO base is at Lampedusa, with a radar station working 24 hours a day covering 4,000 miles.
Trapari is now an extremely wellequipped military airfield with secret
- the F-104 fighters which patrol the Mediterranean are stationed there. Missile testing and shooting ranges have been established at Agrigento.
The worst example of the rape of the countryside is at Mistretta in the forests of the Nebrodi mountains, where the largest NATO firing range in Europe (22,000 hectares) is scheduled to be built. This is slap in the middle of a National Park.
The port of Sigonella is now a wellequipped base for the Rapid Deployment Force. It has become a fortified American city divided into 3 parts — a base for anti-submarine warfare aircraft, for support for the Sixth Fleet, for interceptor aircraft, for heavyweight helicopters, and for the giant Lockheed C54 Galaxy transport aircraft. Under separate command at Sigonella are armoured vehicles and navy anti-submarine warfare units.
It is no wonder that Italian General Brancaleoni stated that this NATO military equipment had made Sicily "an Socialist Viewpoint, No. 1, Autumn 1984. Page 18
EUROPE unsinkable nuclear battleship" which must serve to "destabilise power in the whole region and encourage our neighbours to build up their own arsenals in defence".
The main reason why Sicily has been chosen by NATO for such overkill is the lack of working class in the area, together with the dominance of the Mafia. The Mafia of course are delighted at the influx of American military personnel, and hate peace activists Their latest victim is Giuseppe Fara, a radical journalist and a founder of the magazine 'I Siciliani. He joins the ranks of those assassinated by the Mafia for speaking out against injustice and oppression in Sicily.
Italian police tactics at Comiso are similar to those used against the British miners' strike. At the mass blockade of the base last September they laid seige to the town, strictly controlling all roads into the city, and sending coaches back. They used plain clothes police in the crowds as informers and pro-
R PE vocateurs. They attacked demonstrators using rot gear and water cannon. Several foreign demonstrators were deported on trumped-up charges, and many Italian activists from the mainland were banned from the province altogether.
One of the most encouraging developments has been the work of the women of Comiso CUDIP (Italian equivalent of CND), who have been working for support in the local Sicilian communities. Their method has been to go patiently from door to door, linking the question of Cruise missiles to local problems. They then form small groups of women in the same neighbourhood who meet regularly to discuss issues and plan action. They were particularly encouraged by the 68% of women who voted in the Italian referendum for divorce and for abortion against the heavy pressure of the Catholic Church. One woman activist, Giovanna Cagnes, explained:
"The idea of small groups based in the community is to overcome the fatalism many women feel because they think they can do nothing about their situation.
Once they are in a group, they gain confidence and a creative force comes forth. It started when we were talking to an elderly woman in the street who asked what she could do to help our struggle. She said she would arrange a meeting in her house.
Two days later we were faced with 20 women in her house from the neighbourhood. Our film projector broke down so we had a discussion — about everything — it was incredible In every street we find there is someone like this woman. We are revealing the will and the ability of ordinary people to act. This is our great work. It is very exciting." * Come to Comiso: Contact CUDIP Viale della Resistenza 13 97013 Comiso The women's camp at Comiso has just been restablished after being closed by police last Spring.
Bad news for Botha A MISERABLE 20-30% claimed participation in the first elections for Indians and Coloureds under the new Constitution (with many areas much lower than that); a return to mass defiance and riots in the streets comparable to the Soweto events of 1976; a new upsurge of the black armed struggle, with bombs placed in sensitive state targets; and the first-ever legal strike in the vital mining industry, involving a newlyorganised and brutally exploited section of black workers. The catalogue of recent events is by no means encouraging for the white South African bourgeoisie, which appeared only a few months ago to have hit on a winning streak following diplomatic deals enforced on neighbouring Angola and Mozambique and Botha's much-publicised foreign travels. "Workers Party" without workers Socialist Viewpoint, No. 1, Autumn 1984. Page 19
One of the triggers to the new wave of militancy of black workers and youth in the townships has been the massive increases in rents as a part of the soaring cost of living. Another is that after a wave of strikes in 1980-82, the black working class ran into a succession of defeats and setbacks industrial conflicts from early 1982 through 1983; the level of strikes declined, but the unions nevertheless continued to grow.
Now, a new regroupment of black unions has given workers added confidence. A new black political organisation. the United Democratic Front, however limited its policies, structure and leadership, has raised the tempo of political opposition to the regime, staging mass rallies during the campaign against the new Constitution.
Now workers are being driven by economic pressures and by repression once more into struggle for survival against the vicious apartheid state. The efforts of liberals and of class collaborators within the black organisations and communities are unlikely to prevent further explosions of militancy on the streets and in the workplaces.
By Harry Sloan AMID scenes as grotesque as many of the ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympics, President Mengistu Haile Mariam, bloodstained dictatorial ruler of Ethopia since 1977, has launched a new "Ethiopian Party" which, in the inglorious traditions of Stalinist ruling parties in Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba, will have no decision-making role whatever.
Just as in post-war Eastern Europe Stalin's agents created large bureaucratised "Communist Parties" by forcibly merging and purging the tiny Communist Parties proper with the larger, careerist social democratic parties; just as Fidel Castro in 1961-64 merged the remnants of his July 26 Movement with the Stalinist "Popular Socialist Party" to form the rubber-stamp Cuban Communist Party (which held no Congress for its first ten years); so Mengistu's new showpiece party is the outcome not of workers' struggles and self-organisa. tion (to which he is ruthlessly opposed) but of bureaucratic manoeuvre and top-level manipulation.
A big increase in literacy and landreform are the most tangible benefits the Ethiopian masses have derived from the Revolution of 1974 which toppled the Emperior Haile Selassie. But with the reactionary ($500,000 per day) war continuing to repress the Eritrean people and other national minorities; with famine rampant, and the lowest per capita income in Africa, there is still a long way to go.
Mengistu and his new "