CHINA MATHURA ( LUCKNOW KANPUR 9 RAE BARELI BENARES K BURMA presidency originated her inner dicative the genera Elections Prior to the assassinaBOSI Indira Gandhi speculation was rife that the promised elections would be postponed - conloopholes that already exist could have exploited to extend the life of this parliament for up to six months. Was questioned whether the elections would have ever taken place.
Ironically the ination of Indira Gandhi may well mean that the elections can take place and that a constitutional change attacking the electoral process will therefore be postponed. Most commentators are advising RaThe regionally based oppositions to develop, and while their democratic rights must be defended, these generally based on reactionary sections regional bourgeoisie. The regional character of their demands, often leading Will neighbouring areas, , or to engage in a battle for state subsidies directly counterposed to other areas, mean that they are exceedingly unlikely to be able develop a national alternative to the Congress (1)
The Punjab is a case in point. of the key economic demands of the Akali Dal — the legal Sikh is for the redirection of water to the Pun jab. This leads to a direct conflict with neighbouring Hindu states, which then becomes interlinked with deepens communal Even when these motley regional and ethnic opposition groups can be welded into national Hinduism richer creates chasm CHIV DO repression.
peasantry deed. will hand, it religious, nuinely economic aspirations Rajiv Gandhi is certainly not inheriting an easy job, but one thing we can be sure of. He is not She big be de leader in the world', his future can be more accurately summed up as a constitutional La repressive system.
LAST WEEK Socialist Action carried the first part of an interview with TONY BENN, heading 'Politics of Movement'. He argued that the campaign against nuclear weapons was too narrowly conceived and that, in fact, the peace movement was part of a broader social movement across Europe.
You have outlined that you think the Hoveniell framed in terms of nuclear weapons, ‹nal I is in tacu part or a broader movement, force capable developing 'a new Europe free from the threat of the superpowers.
If it shouldn't be organised just around defence policy, what should be the chief plank of such a Euro-left?
It must unk disarmament. ment and human rights. and freedom' is not a bad formulation; it was in one of Labour's recent manifestos. It would be capable of attracting an awful lot of support. It we were to try and develop foreign policy along those lines, quite naturally we'd find outselves slipping dependence on the United States and reassessing the potential for cooperation with Eastern Europe.
And the fact that some East European countries would like to establish direct contact means that such contact could even be built up with the existing regime in Eastern Europe, if it doesn't appear to threaten military security of the Soviet Union. If it did, the Soviet come down on luke a ton or bricks. Superpowers have a genuine interest in their security and the power to enforce it by a cordon sanitaire.
The space we have to manoeuvre in is partly ideological space and partly geographical, but it is a space that can't be only Euro-centred. the whole of the African continent, Latin America, South East China — we should be moving over, diplomatically and politically, a much wider area of the world. In that way, I think we would really have some iniluence The think twice about what they were doing, and the amount of money they were spending on defence.
I agree that the Soviet Union is under military threat the States. This raises a relevant question.
free Hurone Poland to Portugal military security of the Soviet Union — nobody's going to attack the USSR by conventional weapons. To achieve would require no weapons Europe, no nuclear weapons. and no frappe.
First there are no safeguards against proliferation, that's one thing I did learn as Secretary of State for Energy. The spread of nuclear weapons is going apace now, through the development of civil nuclear technology. whole time I was Secretary of for Energy Minister nology, plutonium from civil power stations was going to America to be made into bombs, and all the time the civil servants were talking swords and ploughshares and atoms under the Peace of develop'Peace, jobs out of the would happening.
1000 — There's spread of nuclear weapons.
Asia, have the bomb. reasons, the resolute.
would Not inspection programmes -knowing whether United they'd moved the stuff?
guarantees the American British ment about nuclear force de We say ine State of Tech- pening now.
this absurd armchair strategy has unfortunately begun too much interest on the left. Mass die-in at CND's Barrow demonstration against Trident, 27 October 1984 for peace — and I didn't know it was can't stop the spread of nuclear weapons unless you take a ferent. really hard line, which the West is not bicoalcu lo lane. nuu li ular conleat. I must say the Soviet Union has been per cent agallist lne Maybe because they didn't want the Chinese or their allies in the Warsaw Pact to But, for whatever Russians have been Second, there's no effective form Supposing tomorrow Mr Chernenko met Mr Reagan and they said they'd both decided to completely discontinue nuclear weapons there'd be no way of they had or 11UL.
What about the US troops and bases wolfel The real danger is not so much the weapons systems, but the poison in people's minds that makes them contemplate using them. It's this poison -we've got to deal with. If you succeed in stopping the poison, then the argu- States wcapols would become a sort of economic argument.
we need build homes, to assist the Third World, not failed build Trident. That would be driving the argument in a different direction.
But it isn't any good focusing on the details. vou've got to turn vour mind to what it's really about: are we going to allow nuclear technology to extinguish democracy? That's hapWe need a change in eople's perceptions, rather than pu uing indefinitely the ins and outs o which to absorb A credible non-nuclear defence strategy is all about playing military games. The real issues are quite difWhat is your attitude to the political role the United States has played in the world?
This may surprise you. saying that the United States is the biggest the only capitalist country in the 1930s that swung to the left. When the others — Germany.
Portugal, France, and Britain too -swung to the right, America became Keynesian. weal beacon of light in the 1930s.
Then, if you take the number of people in the United States who are socialists 'in the closet', that's a huge number: local trade union leaders, the black community — Jessie Jackson's rainbow coalition environmentalists, the civil rights movement, the alli-war anti-intervention movement. Quite a lot of opinion in the United States is progressive.
The time has come for the United to discover its own socialls! tradition. After Mondale is beaten, then it will be shown that the last of the New Deal politicians have totally to unseat militarism and monetarism Also it's very important recognise that if we had progressive governments in Britain or Europe, we'd have allies on the other side of the Atlantic. My position is not an anti-American position.
But if you look at American government policy, dangerous. In the guise of defending the free world, it is actually protecting its own investments and world-wide interests. It will arm any filthy dietator who will promise to hold the working class down By its own policy of supplying arms and forcing imports to make a profit for American companies, precipitated the debt bring the economic and financial system down.
It is not in our interests to be a semi-colony such system. resolution ference to get rid of all US bases, not just nuclear bases, from Britain. We should free ourselves dependence and subservience in order to play a part in this new, broader world-wide political movement.
The argument isn't about Per shing politics of American policy. got OUTl language, affairs That's Labour Party should be going.
Would you like to see the withdrawal of American troops from Europe as a whole?
would like to see a non-nuclear Europe which has liberated itself by its own ettorts with Hitler got nearly to Stalingrad and English cancerous growth and fascist expansion. When Western heritage it left was the Iron Curtain.
It's been over don't want to go on living under that. I would like to have a perspective that contemplated change, Europe is entitled to be Europe. very We not in a nationalist sense. not in a third superpower sense -sense that we no longer accept the Socialist Action. 9 November 1984 that.
with. limitations detente.
The forever Moscow another Photo: JOHN SMITH primarily liberalisation establishment military it's crisis which whole Western an imperial conthat it's about the We've this technical back into the politics of next few years.
where the Channel, through collapsed, 40 years that said should reoccupy Europe -but in the propaganda that leads us to believe the divisions in the world are permanent and inevitable. I don't accept The future for Europe poses the ques tion of America, which you've dealt But what about the Soviet There Calt opposition movements — Solidarnosc in Poland groups movements — inside Eastern Europe. How do you see these fitting in?
We've got to begin by being realistic We've got to make clear to the Sovie that we are not trying destabilise or threaten its security, but anxious to develop detente, a relationship with Eastern Europe.
If you want to break down the on civil liberties establish a legitimate concern the best way to do it is by cooperation and We should do everything we can to build up trade and contact Russians have a problem: their cordon sanitaire is now too proforever and er the control or ahe under control of the leadership. But the liberalisation of Eastern Europe has potentially great dangers. If the Russians saw such moves as a threat (as in the case of Poland) there could be intervention Czechoslovakia. That would be in tensely dangerous for world peace and very damaging for the Soviet The war propaganda in the West is to hold working people down and make them subservient, and in the East those who would like al C denounced Western agents, There is a huge task to be undertaken, and a genuine desire to underlake Il. And we must work al whal ever level we can — trade union con. tact, personal contact, trading contact, cultural contact - to isolate the in the West establishment in the East. Both are able to use the cold war to re tain a rigid and authoritarian hold over their own people Now, that's not a very clear con cept, but it is different from the idea hat we're all lined up in eithe : Rus sian or American uniforms, and hav to face each other •across the Berlin wall forever. I don't believe that for a moment, and I think an awful lot of people reject it too.
No' is still a very powerful wor in the political vocabulary. If you sa you don't accept it — if you withdraw your consent from what is central to the defence strategy of the country o the alliance of which you're a member • if you begin doing that, it would really create a change That, I think, is our task over the
Socialist Action 9 November 1984 THE 7 NOVEMBER day of action is the most fight:
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