unions offer solutions that are in the interests not of the workers but of the capitalist class.
Surialist Challenge believes that the iwo vital tasks confronting revolutionary socialists are:
• To build broad-based class struggle tendencies in opposition lahour movement. These should non-exclusive In grouping together militants holding & wide range of polluical yews.
In begin in light for the unified democratic revolutionary socialist organisation which can, application uniled front tactics, begin to be seen as an alternative by thousands workers engaged in struggles.
Such an organisation should be based on the understanding that:
The struggle for seeks te unite the fight of workers against the with that of other oppressed layers of societ! — women, black people. gays struggling liberation. This socialism can only he achieved by creating new organs of power and defeating with all necessary means the power of the capilatist state. 2 than who Our socialism will more democratic I than what exists in Britain today. with full rights political parties and currents that do not lake up arms against the socialist state. The Stalinist models of 'socialism' in the USSR and character.
in October for appeal against the verdicts. and the photographs, through of socialism Benda. A video • judge's office.
hearing, their Britain Platts-Mills OC.
The Vice-President for all the THIS THURSDAY, 20 December, Petr Uhl and the other four civil rights. campaigners in Czechoslovakia Jailed "subyersion' appear before the supreme court to 1111º time just published Britain, reveal that the judge at Petr Uhl's trial has been doubling As g senior official in the Czech political police. The pictures, which appear in the latest issue of Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, show that the judge's office has been used as a base for spying operations on the flat of one of those sentenced in October: Vaclay camera trained on Benda's flat has been wired up to the In response to the appeal court CHERISI Charter Defence Committee is sending one of the most prominent socialist lawyers trial: John Platts-Mills was expelled from the Labour Party in May 1948 for going to Prague to hail the victory of the Communist Party take-over. He is President of the Haldane Society and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Moscow-backed lawyers' which Czechoslovakia's legal profession belongs.
At the time of writing it is still not clear whether Platts-Mills will be able to attend the appeal court hearing.
would major international scandal amongst socialist and communist awvers On this page we publish, for the first time in the West, the text of a in Prague explaining who Petr Uhl is. It is written by Petruska Sustrova, a close friend of Petr Uhl and a member of to Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted [VONS] which is the target of the regime's present IF YOU WANT to find out who Petr you ask someone who knows him, the first thing you will be His political beliefs are certainly the thing that people know about I don't know how he got his political convictions, bur I do know over years ago, he was already a Trotskyist Given the fact that it is not only the Czechoslovak media which tries to equate terrorism and Trotskyism, useful to outline Petr's He is supporter of the revolutionary line in Marxism, which takes as its starting point the idea that after the socia revolution it is necessary to prevent the bureaucratisation of the state by establishing a regime of self-manageThis means that people should run years things themselves: that they should not hold official positions permanently but that there should be a rotarion cer vove a vendon defence of legality like Charter Petr Uhi has been activities of Charter 77 from the start and has also helped to form Committee for the Defence of Those Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS). It is because of this that he is now in prison with nine other members.
This is not the first time that Petr has been imprisoned. He spent four (1969-73) in prison 'subversion'. At that time, I was a member of the Revolutionary Youth Mo emen: and I can well remember SABATOVA, wife of Petr Uhl, outside the court in Prague 77. Jaroslay Sabata, who had also been released in December 1973. their reasons for getting married was the so that they could keep in contact il either was regulations only correspond with members of their family!
some of Petr's characteristics. I have for had many opportunities in discussions and meetings to learn from timo his immense patience. dez jeroaded : LUE TETE at te apartmeni. Isualy Per was followed by polic In 1974 he married the daughter of One of arrested again. Prison pertil Itiales It would be wrong not to mention male Inn ! correct and necessary. whenever he went out.
Imagine going out for a walk and being followed by two heavies and a car crawling behind you close to the kerb. Imagine picking up a letter and having one of these gentlemen leaning over your shoulder to see who it's Imagine visiting friends and them asking whether the heavies are with you or just following you Anyone who can put up with this sort of pressure without losing thei sincine into extremely • ¿ = TED TE I writiced his own defend the hers. I think you can belief that it is risk rather than renounce one's right to do what is