THE UNITED STATES, Great Britain, Italy and France are at Lebanon. The decision to send 2000 extra troops, the casualties among peacekeeping' forces and the decision to British citizens Beirut all point to the fact that alongside the forces of President Gemayel the armies of the powers are at war with the lightly-armed Druze and Shi'ite Islamic militias.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting over the last two weeks. US shore and naval batteries have shelled the militias of the Lebanese left.
British Buccaneer jets, fully armed, have flown Cyprus British positions in the city, timidating the militias. war in US obvious. growing the US forces were engaged in hostilities this recall or endorse the US forces, evacuate mission.
involvement troops. A recent Gallup poll in Newsweek Western that a clear majority of the of withdrawal.
been no such public alarm as to British involvement.
involvement but also because there has been no sufficiently vigorous condemnation from the labour movement of the supportive role the US military adventure. over back-up This weekend demonstration in London to Saturday 17 September, 1.15pm, Embankment with the explicit aim of inBoth Thatcher and Reagan deny that they are involved in a war. For Reagan the reason is If he admitted that would give American Congress the right to But the American people are increasingly alarmed by the of American magazine shows American people are in favour In Britain there has as yet This is partly due to the currently small scale of British will which the British government is giving whether in Beirut. sees say:NO MORE MASSACRES! mark the anniversary of the ghastly Sabra-Shatila massacre of Palestinians by right wing Christian militia. It should be a reminder that imperialism and Zionism hold no answers to the Lebanese crisis.
Only the withdrawal of imperialist and Israeli troops from the country, the release of political prisoners and the granting of the Palestinian demand for their own democratic secular state can begin to open up the way for peace in the Middle East.
But two further points have to be understood by the British labour movement.
The first is that the state of Israel is a racist state, whose very basis lies in the denial of democratic and social rights to Arab people and that far from playing any progressive role, being further Sabra/Shatilas if it is allowed to.
The second is that British imperialism is incapable of playing a peace-keeping role Ireland or West For these reasons we * Reagan and Thatcher out of * No to Israeli aggression! * Self-determination for the Palestinian people! • 'Peacekeepers' prepare for war - see page 5.
Socialist Action 16. September 1983 Arthur Scargill's letter to the WRP paper Néws Line on the Polish free trade union Solidarity has opened him up to a massive press onslaught. cynical. The Fleet Street cynical. The gang couldnt give about the fate of the Polish workers concerned with trying to destroy the left leadership of the NUM and the trade unions in conscious should understand that.
Nonetheless views expressed in the News letter wrong, misconceptions Solidarity This gift to the is utterly as hypocritical La fig Salvador, oblivious to - they are only Eastern Europe Scargill general. Any worker opposed to socialism. adaptation Scargill's views. are profoundly this. year grammatic argue against There with socialism rule.
week represent about which widespread inside the British labour movement. They are a capitalist press. which wants to paint the left freedom in countries like but completely repression in in his letter News Line says that he is 'ut- that, but terly opposed' to the Solidarity organisation because it is more than a trade union and This is bureaucrats, to Stalinist The underground Solidarity steering committee earlier Arthur published pro manifesto which puts forward its objective of a self-managed republic : They Faltering the balance of forces in Europe' -that is against taking Poland into the capitalist camp.
is nothing in Those Solidarity's aims incompatible but there is something in those aims in compatible with bureaucratic In a press statement last it.
Scargill the Polish government of acting in a clumsy, savage and brutal way' against the Polish people Solidarity. But that chorus method of operation cannot bashing be divorced from the domina. tion of Poland, and the rest of press. the Eastern European states, more by a privileged bureaucracy.
It is no answer to people who demand condemnation of brutality of the bureaucracy to say 'why don't content condemi imperialist slaughter in El Salvador Of course socialists should say they should not the disarm themselves by lending one iota of crederice to the lies and slanders of the Polish Such who didn't hesitate to slaughter miners in Silesia when they resisted the Jaruzelski coup.
Scargill does a disservice to the left undermines his own position in the NUM when he appears to sanction the Stalinist lies about the Polish workers.
There is another aspect of this affair the role of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
familiar with this organisation will know that it the demented sectarian remnant of what was once a Trotskyist organisation. Its behaviour on this issue shows Scargill wrote them a letter in June, but they held back its publication until the TUC Arthur Scargillwhich they knew would be going on anything be despicable an organisation which claims to be socialist.
The WRP must have known the real anti-socialist of the witch hunt against Scargill on this ques tion. But they chose, through the timing of the publication of letter, to provide capitalist press with the ammunition to rubbish Scargill.
behaviour is the equivalent of strike breaking scabbing. perpetrators have no place within the ranks of the labour movement
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SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE
Socialist Action and Solidarity