General election tasks government are being challenged on an unprecedented scale as the workers movement demonstrates its tremendous fighting capacity.
At the same time, the "left' Labour MPs — with a nervous contract once the storm subsides dominated by all issues that have produced the present turbulent crisis in society. People who have been radicalised by experiences of these movements and class battles will be looking for an alternative, and it is our task to make sure that the needs of the class struggle are not buried under the debris of reformism.
how we can make the strongest intervention to ensure that the banner of the socialist alternative is raised during the election. Make sure that your area is represented at this conference.
Solidarity in Iran JUST AS spectacular as the internal consequences of the Shah's fall has been its impact on world politics. Sadat of Egypt, for example, is a little unwise to play host to the exiled tyrant for he is widely reckoned to be next in line for the anger of the masses.
from Iran (quite a feat from their point of view) but no doubt the Iranian upsurge will remind the Egyptian people of their own anti-government rising in January 1977 Iran's traditional rival, Iraq, decided to throw its lot in with the Shah in return for his help in crushing the Kurdish rebellion a few years ago. It proved a wrong choice. The rulers in Baghdad may yet live to regret their decision to expel the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini. He is not one to forget a sleight.
have shed tears over his departure. oil-based economy is just as vulnerable to working class upsurge. The internal threat at the moment may be minimal but the Saudi ner are wonnca abour terarge numoer or arab workers in iran, as well as the Palestinians in Saudi Arabia. Both would be effective carriers of the revolutionary virus.
Iran's oppressed nations -threaten to carry the lessons of Iran into unstable) Turkey and Pakistan.
Eastern casualty: under pressure from the masses the Bakhtiar government has cut off oil supplies.
apartheid regime may be far away but the political impact will be felt there. as one black former student leader told Trotskyist Journalist Ernest Harsch: "We do not know much about Iran, just what is printed in the papers. But it reminds me very much of our own struggle here, when we demonstrated in 1976. If the Shah falls that will help us. It will show that unjust systems can be brought down.' fortunate in the almost total paralysis of the policymakers in Washington. Britain seemed to have shot its bolt early with Owen's misinformed iomeini, and now stands to gain control of the tranian oil imperialism, in contrast, has played a clever consortium.
With the Shah's fall, the most dangerous phase of the Tranian revolution is opening confidence only in the power organisation.
government has not halted arms sales to the Tehran regime and it has accelerated more covert forms of intervention by British imperialism. Solidarity now becomes all the more necessary. ENORMOUS grass roots opposition is sweeping the 5 per cent norm into oblivion. The anti-working class politics of the Labour cast on thei parliamentary seats- make noises about lye collective bargaining but fail to take any organised steps to build support for the millions of people fighting wage restraint. Their refusal to build a nationally organised opposition fighting for a socialist alternative leaves the door open for Callaghan and the trade union bureaucracy to cobble together a new "social Marxists have a special responsibility in this period of growing class struggle to fight for working class unity around policies that can build a socialist alternative right across the labour movement. The forces that are coming into action have the strength not only to break wage freeze but to start a fight that can replace the right-wing leaders inside the trade unions and the Labour Party.
We must also recognise that the coming general election will be the The Socialist Unity conference on 3 February will be discussing The Egyptian press has carefully selected only the 'good news' Other regimes in the area have equal reason to feel unhappy.
Even the Pahlavi dynasty's old foes, the Royal House of Saud, They recognise that their Kurds, Afghanis, Baluchis -neighbouring (and Israel will be anther Middle South Africa too will no longer be getting Iranian oil. The Imperialism stands to lose in Iran. The masses have been and dogmatic defence of the Shah. French But none of this means that imperialism has run out of tricks.
one in which the masses can place of their own independent But we have a duty to help in that process. The change in the British labour movement, it is now of more than passing interest that three, albeit rather junior Government personnel have quit over this piece of legislation ALIENATE The decision to increase CHICCE. will be the Loyalists* ( representation at Westminster was taken purely out of parliamentary considerations and Labour's desire to buy Unionist votes That is one more reflection orine tovernnenes amulec te For all Ene collective blunders, sins, and sell-outs of the Wilson and now Callaghan regimes, it is arguable that their ECaLEL CHnC aLa ISL SoMals!! has been their Irish policy.
In particular, the "achievements of Roy Mason breathtaking. He has managed to alienate every conceivable form of opinion in nonLoyalist ireland.
The Irish Government, the Catholic hierarchy, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, even the rump of the 'Peace People' have all publicly condemned Mason's repressive policies: his obsession murdering security, his SAS, USC and of the his unwillingness to come up with a single constructive idea.
Mason has even turned down Bombs over London last week DEMONSTRATION CALLED BY SINN FEIN prisoners living in filth and wearing only a blanket, he seems to gloat about it.
It is probably fair to say that Roy Mason has achieved, in the face of great competition, the reputation of being the most 1 hated politician in nationalist in the eyes of the millions of workers throughout the world. We are opposed to sectarian and democratic manner, is the most populated of the presen solidarity movements.
And so it deserves to be.
Those who wish to take seriously Callaghan's remarks about not being 'too parochial' should contact the United Troops Out Movement at 2a St Pauls Road, London N1.
Our socialism will be infinitels_more democratic than what esist- in 'socialism" in the USSR and Fastern Europe hase discredited socialism