Philippines. government figures for siphoning millions of dollars into investments, property and personal bank accounts abroad. The scan- dal over the assassination two years ago of bourgeois opponent, Benigno Aquino, continues to rumble on, with top army officers clearly implicated, and only Marcos hand-picked Inquiry and a conspiracy Though the Impeachment will not be where Marcos has successfully maintained a % majority — the move is a clear sign of the Impatience of a growing sector of the spects Philippines capitalist establishment with the anties of this degenerate and expen- Smaller scale businesses and many of the foreign enterpises in the Philippines hostile to the monopoly control exerted over the key sugar and Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986, Page 20
coconut industries by just two powerful
while smaller growers and agricultural labourers face ruin. The
Ponce a bedrock of economy has been devastated by a slump in pricen from 65 US cents a pound 10 years ago to just 3
Only the vast empire Roberto Benedicto — with the blessing of Marcos — has weathered this storm, while other farms and mills stand idie.
Sugar is not the only industry to hit the skids. Factories are grinding to a halt as manufacturers run out of even the foreign
Wto export their goods: the economy is actually shrinking for the second year running only unemployment and poverty are on the rite.
But as in so many comparable situations, the official Philippines "opposition"
dominated by disgruntled capitalists and politicians whose main grievance is that they have not been included in Marcos privileged elite.
Such oppositionists have little nothing in common with the interests and demands of Philippines workers struggl
against super-exploitation ot the peasants and agricultural labourers. Led by Salvador Laurel, the United Democratic Nationalist Organisation looks not so much to the downtrodden as to the IMF and the White House for sup port in pushing Marcor aside and stepping
"normalise" capitalist rule in the
For the US there is much more than bank loans at stake in the future of this
former colony. The Philippines harbours
the largest US airforce and naval bases
outside the United States. The deep water
port of Subic Bay - strategically placed
for the US Navy's nuclear patrols of South
and East Asia and the Pacific — is regard-
ed as literally unreplaceable, The Clark
Air Field is similarly priceless as a vast fix-
ed aircraft carrier.
With the treaties for both these facilities
up for renegotiation in 1991, and the pro-
that Marcos might rig himsell
another election any time between sow
and 1987, Reagan and State Department
strategists have to weigh up his chances of
combatting the growing streagth of the
guerrillas of the CP.led New Peoples Ar-
my, whose forces are now estimated at
anything up to 20,000, asd who are steadi-
Philippines netnam Singapore Malaysia
Indonesia Nakasone ly gaining ground in comparison to the Philippines graft-ridden armed forces.
The war against the guerrillas is further destabilising the economy, consuming cash and shaking confidence in the regime: US analysts are pessimistic for Marcos's chances of survival.
As with other pro-US dictatorships Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, the Shah in Iran — the key question is how to guage the point at which the old regime cannot be salvaged, but new "democratic" capitalist order can be installed in its stead: so far the USA has never got this difficult equation right.
Indeed with the strength of the Communist Party's front organisaion the National Democratic Front also growing in the cities, and Philippines workers increasingly bold in their challenges to the regime, it could already be too late for the US to change horses with any ease. The strengthening of the CP, aligned neither to Moscow nor Peking, is a reflection, in a land where workers' organisations have always been repressed, of the potential independent struggles of the working clans.
But as the crisis deepens, the development in the Philippines of a consistently revolutionary party with a programme to link the struggles of town and countryside, democratic and economic issues to the central fight for workers' power and a break from imperialist and capitalist exploitation is ever more urgent.
Philippines Support Group
National Office
BM Box 758,
London WC1N 3XX.
Fighting for socialism in Coventry By a Special Correspondent COVENTRY is a Labour-run city with a population of 330,000. Of its 4 MPs. 3 are Labour and it has had a Labour Council consistently since the Second World War except in the late "60s with the unpopularity of the Wilson government.
The TGWU and AUEW dominate the town with two massive HOs built with the members subscriptions, and delegates to all the CLPs. In the 1950s and 1960g Coventry was the "boom city" with the rebutiding of the centre alter the war and the expansion of engineering and the car industry.
In those days the media complained of the greedy carworkers with their high wages and wildcat strikes:
Coventry is now the ghost town of the Specials pop song. The car industry has been more than decimated with only Peugot Talbot and Jaguar left, and these considerably slimmed down.
Alfred Herbert. once the largest machine tool firm in Europe has now disappeared. There is now no future for youth in the engineering industry in Coventry - an unthinkable situation even O years ago.
The unemploymen rate 1s 20%. reaching 37% in the Foleshill area and 33% in Hillfields → two inner city wards. Recently there have been 500 more sack inge in the car industry and a reported 711 to go from GEC, now Coventry's largest privately owned employer.
And the labour movement's response? During a collection during the miners' strike, an ex-carworker put E10 in the box and said:
"We should have had an Arthur Scargill at Standard Triumph. Instead we sold our jobs for redundancy pay. Now the kids have got nothing
Exactly! The TGWU and AUEW made the deals throughout Coventry that produced unemployment. At the same time the Labour Council (many of the coun cillors being converiors from the local factories) have implemented cuts in services year alter year since Dennis Healy's first squeeze in the mid 70s.
It has been a form of Fabianiam in reverse. As the late Councillor Harr Caplan (himself AUEW convenor at BI Self Changing Gears) reported to the District Party in 1976:
"It's going to get worse. We'll either become Tories or Trotskyists, there's no middle road any more."
Very prophetic words! The District Party Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986, Page 21
is still dominated by an unholy mixture of right wing Councillors and IGWU and AUEW officials with some tame right wing Asian "godfathers" in tow. They are steeped In sell-outs and cynicism.
Embattled against them are the Left, which now dominate 3 of the 4 CLPs. There is indeed very little middle ground in the Coventry labour movement.
On several occasions in the last few years the Labour Party NEC has intervened into disputes in Coventry. Only recently National Agent David Hughes threatened to protect the interests of councillors who were threatened with deselection by socialists opposed to local council policy.
At least one of the CLPs (Coventry South-West) has a policy in favour of the resignation of Neil Kinnock in whom It has no confidence as leader.
According to local labour movement ILP) botore World War I had o pare up Independent Labour Party members in Coventry with meeting rooms. a billiard hall and tea rooms in the city centre.
The present