What is notable about the reaction. to the attack on Libya is that it has questioned, for the first time, the entire military basis of the alliance with the United States. The demand for the withdrawal of all US bases has been turned in one stroke from a fringe issue into a minority but extremely serious view in the labour movement. It has also openly blown to pieces Neil Kinnock's sophistical distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear. US Thousands of people who had mobilised against nuclear weapons made the leap to directly demonstrating as well against a military attack on a semi-colonial country.
These facts are of profound importance for the people of Libya, course of British politics, and for every other semi-colonial country threatened by imperialism. Because the prescence of these American bases in Britain is not only a threat to the USSR and Libya, our a alrect munary unreal te every semi-colonial country - as last week's attack showed.
The struggle to remove these bases directly imperialist struggle. It is one in which victory would aid the struggle of the people of the entire world. It also shows - as does the way in which CND and its base mobilised against both the Malvinas war and the attack on Libya - the anti-imperialist dynamic of the anti-missiles movement.
This deepening struggle has with social deepening radicalisation in the working class. In the United States it is naturally not surbases. prising to find that the only section of the population which in its majority opposed the US attack on Libya is the black communit port among whites for Reagan's attack running at over 70 percent.
the In Britain what is occuring is that the deepening OT struggle is, logically, being combined with the remaking of the composition ot the working class inselt - notabi an enormous increase in the proportion of women and black people in the working class.
As Trotsky once wrote: 'Opportunist organisations by nature concentrate their attention on anti- the top layers of the working class.? The struggle against imperialism, and every working class struggle, has pro- working class and the working class leading role in every struggle of the last period -strike and at Wapping as well as for equal rights, other manifestation has been role of women, Greenham women, Greenham women naturally formed links and alliances in their struggles. Demands for, and the reality of, organistion in the Labour Party and trade unions has continued to deepen. with the creation of the black section in the Labour Party. By turning into the Labour movement the black section has created the first nationally structured movement of black people The development is necessarily directly linked to the struggle against imperialism throughout the world because the virulent racism of British society is itself a product of the imperialist past and present of our society. The black section necessarily has , to defend not only black people in this country the black communities in Handswor th, Brixton, Tottenham, and Southall - but those subject to racist rule in South Africa and imperialist terror in Libya and Palestine. the black section shows that deepening political course and its development as a major anti-imperialist force in the British labour movement.
the black community in turn has added its weight to what is the oldest struggle against imperialism which takes place both within and outside the boundaries of the British state - that against the British occupation of the north of itself penetrated more deeply into the British labour radicalisation of Sinn Fein in Ireland linking itself to a dialogue and support from the left wing of the Labour Party. That struggle in Ireland has received particular support from the black community, from miners, and from the women's Labour Party This year from Ireland.
This deepening the working class in history anti-imperialist been combined the drawing, of OT the population.
polls show sup. anti-imperialist during the 1960s -NUT In 1970. culminated in collar trade unionism in Britain.
The same their very with the decision, political funds La political fund already.
Women, of course, have played a NUT for including in the miners and every demand of women. Another the leading 'professional' outlook. above all the in the antipolitical funds Women Against Pit Closures and logically ment - is clear.
Use - S••E A further step forward was taken black sections — as in the police attacks on nationally.
The series of statements issued by The radicalisation of women and it constitutes the That Irish struggle for freedom has movement with the imperialism.
from students the National Union of Students voted to become the first mass organisation in Britain to explicitly call for total British withdrawal process of radicalisation and proletarianisation is extending into wider sections of the population. The popular and 'serious' press has written about the disappearance of the working class and that everyone is becoming 'middle class'. In reality the exact opposite process is The period since World War II has ing class. seen one of the greatest expansions of - above all women into the workforce and the creation of an entire new black community. This is showing tions of the up in a radicalisation of quite new and previously 'conservative sections of the The white collar unions have not only grown enormously in the post-war period but changed their relation to the labour movement. Prior to the 1960s key white collar unions, for example their 'own' NALGO and the NUT, refused to af- interests. filiate to the TUC. They however joined - in the case of the Increasing militanc 1985-86 in a teachers strike which was unparalleled in its for example, militancy in the entire history of white process is now being taken through in a more institutional with considerable chance of success, of white movement collar unions to ballot on establishing - the CPSA and NU.
Another symptom of the same process is the struggle taking place in the unification with the NAS/UWT and the creation of one single TUC affiliated teachers union -a fight also for the teachers unions to rid themselves of the last vestiges of a Of course it will take a long process of development before the main white collar unions move from establishing Labour Party. But the direction of mo. tion - first affiliation to the TUC, then the establishment of political funds and deeper involvment in the labour moveFinally, of course, it was the miners being strike, the historical vanguard of the entire British working class, that first gelled and centralised this entire process — symbolised the profound developments taking place. Scargill and the NUM leadership in the strike showed not only the miners but the entire labour movement how to bring together war. and ally all these developing forces.
The miners consciously allied with women, the black community, gays and lesbians, the Irish people, and anyone who was prepared to support them. They also reached out directly for interrational support. They themselves hav ecome the backbone of supporting a those in struggle nationally and interThe NUM in became the most advanced mass force ever seen in the British labour movement. One that combined resolute class struggle with the social alliances that are necessary for the labour movement.
The process which is taking place in Britain, and on a lower level in other west European imperialist countries, is clear. A profound social recomposition of the working class — a break with a male white dominated labour movement, and the massive entry of women and black people into the workforce — is being combined with a growing anti-imperialist political development. As this process is still only at its beginning.
most important developing force for socialism in Britain for six decades - indeed the most important in the history of the labour movement since the rise of British The political dynamics of this process are clear both in Britain western Europe. Naturally the last place to which the mass of the working class turn is a direct onslaught on their own imperialist ruling class. If that were occuring today we would be talking about an immediate struggle for socialism in Europe. Only the most advanced sections understand the need for a total struggle with their own ruling class. Instead the mass of the working class and oppressed first turn to partial expressions of struggle against imperialism But each progressively bring the working class successively closer to a full scale clash with its own imperialist rulThe most general development since the 1960s is the wholescale clash of secwest European working class with US imperialism. This growing opposition in the working class to US imperialism explains a considerable amount of hesitancy of the European capitalist states in supporting the US -they fear not only for their own international interests but for political stability in their own countries. For clashes with US imperialism bring the west European working class into conflict with speeds.
ruling classes and their First the general radicalisation of the struggle against US imperialism spills over into opposition to direct west European imperialist interests. Thus, the movement against Cruise and Pershing missiles spilled over in Britain into increased support for British unilateral nuclear disarmament. In west Germany, for the first time since the 1950s, the anti-missiles produced Greens, which is opposed to west Ger man membership of NATO - against perialist ruling classes are not capable in present conditions or historically of any thorough going break with the United States Since 1914 most of western Europe has had no economic social, or political equilibrium outside its relations with the US. 'Opposition to US imperialist actions is weak and vacillating by the ruling classes whereas the opposition of the working class is thorough going and decisive.
The west European ruling classe cannot today break with NATO, canno remove US bases, cannot utterly oppose the attacks on semi-colonial countries - in short cannot do any of the things that would represent a real break with US imperialism and its policies The west European ruling classes, particularly the British, cannot grant the types of demands on this field that are generated in their movements. The opposition of the west European working classes to US imperialism leads them to outflank, and directly clash, with their own ruling classes — a process we have been seeing in Europe ever since the beginning of opposition to the Vietnam There are, of course, major forces in western Europe which are attempting to utilise the clashes with the United States for their own reactionary imperialis purposes. One of them, Neil Kinnock. leads the Labour Party. Their aim is to drag the working classes of western Europe behind west European imperialist interests instead of the direct ones of the US. Mitterrand's policies in France, Gonzalez in Spain, or Soares in Portugal show exactly that develop ment, and also the way they fail to really oppose the United States policie Kinnock opposes the bombing o Libya not because he is against imperialist attacks on-semi-colonial coun tries — he supported the Malvinas war fully for example — but because, from the point of view of the west European imperialists, he prefers other forms of attacks on Libya than direct military assault or economic sanctions.
But Kinnock, or Gonzalez, cannot prevement pro sections of the sin prevent a sections of the work. ing class into conflict with imperialism. West Germany with the anti-missiles movement, Spain with the anti-NATO movement, and Britain with CND were the countries where there were the big. gest protests against the US attack or Libya - that is against direct military assaults on a semi-colonial country.
This process is the most importan development in British and west Euro pean politics - the most decisive in its implications for the future. Out of the miners strike, for the first time since the 1920s, real class struggle forces emerged in Britain - forces that, in Arthur Scargill's words, 'stand and fight'. That left was itself rooted in the huge postwar transformations of the working the developments that accompanied it. The really decisive task was to link that left, and new forces that develop, to the international struggle against perialism. That is directly what is taking place under the pressure of the class struggle — as the reaction to the attacks on Libya shows.
There are still many confusions an mystifications in that left. Tony Beni or example, in the very same speech i vhich he savagely attacked Reagan bombing of Libya, could state that he stood both for the existence of Israel as a Jewish state and for a state for the Palestinians — as if the two were not completely contradictory. Confusions about detente, the role of the Soviet bureaucracy, and similar themes still exist. Different forces develop at different But the deep opposition to the attack on Libya has given yet another boost to the convergence of forces which emerged out of the miners strike and out of the transformations within the labour movement, with the interna. tional struggle against imperialism. That is the most important and fateful development in British politics. The most important to push forward in every way.
Socialist Action THE UNITED States prepared its overthrown. The Syrian National Carriers America and Coral Sea with combat and auxiliary vessels LIBYAN TERRITORIAL WATERS Misurata® LIBYA La United States which feared the con& Benghazi Gulf of Sirte CRETE Mediterranean Sea TobrukGermany per percent. With these
Missile sites
Libyan airbases Refineries Oil fields began to turn to varying degrees back
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Thatcher's expulsions of Libyans, and Kinnock's call for economic sanctions. = of an perialist left
up the developing movement against the US. They threw all Labour's weight behind the EEC's diplomatic actions against Libya, JOHN ROSS looks at the reasons for the huge outburst of protest and the frantic drive of Labour's leadership to head it off.