appear mortally trustworthy.
their word * authorised * refused prosecute Smith regime;
to the Muzorewa;
ground the and doing delay the Robert Mugabe.
Guards All but the second these are explicit violations of the lancaster House accords Most publicity has been given to the presence 0f an estimated South 'guarding' Beit Bridge. deployed up to seven miles inside the and are equipped artillery. It is less well known that the section of the Lancaster agreement in which it was agreed that would LICTE involvement, including by The Supplement to not included in White recording the talks, despite the fact that was only the commitment on the South Afriean troops issue which Patriotic Front to sign the agreement.
Lord
te ormciple actually worth. any less than how they collective LYCI the E, the omitted of Bingham Report oil Unfair belatedly possible and last of officially Africans They яге forces, since House South Grounded Annex E is The Rhodesian air induced the January. Soames Foreign Office officials insist that Carrington's commitment to of non-intervention is still valid. — an instructive example of what an English gentleman's word is Whitehall is evidently stricken by amnesia. well forgetting the Supplement to Annex government mysteriously notify MPs of the publication of the third annex to the oil sanctionsHUYCELICEI suggestions that this had something to do wiln tue andex suue, bovidence of Criminal Offences, and the fact General's announcement that there would be no criminal prosecutions as knowledge that the Rhodesian army is operating at will inside the country.
given to what was laid down in the units of the security forces should be restricted to within four kilometres of grossly unfair, since the cooped up assembly areas under the eye of the _ but obviously not unfair enough for the white khodesians. is difficult to estimate the extent of the casualties caused by the security the Patriotic Front rock the boat, but there have been at least two incidents in which half a dozen. or more people have died, and possibly dozens with one or two casualties.
supposedly 'grounded' force . was vuly minutes away from being sent into action against 450 guerillas on 7 only refrained
THE INVASION of Afganistan by Soviet troops has raised once again the issue of whether there is ever any justification for the Red Army to intervene in the internal affairs of another country. The issue is not new.
Itarose in 1920 when the Red Army marched on Warsaw, Uptill then it had been, as Deutscher puts it, 'a canon of Marxist politics that revolution cannot and must not be carried on the points of bayonets into foreign countries'. Trotsky resolutely opposed the Polish venture; Lenin, who had hoped that the advance of the Red Army would act as a catalyst for the Polish workers, subsoquently admitted his error (Klara Zetkin: Reminiscence of Leniu). For the same reasons, Trotsky opposed the Ked Army's invasion of Menshevtk-ruled Georgia in 1921, though Georgia was even more of a hot bed of imperialist intrigues than Afganistan today, where, effectively, Moscow has been the dominating influence since 1968.
To come a little nearer to the present day — in his interview with a correspondence of the St Lou's Post Dispatch (March 1940)
Trotsky was asked if he, as former. head of the Red Armies, felt it necessary for the Soviets to move into the Baltic States, Finland and Poland, the better to defend themse ver against aggression. The question concluded, 'Do you believe that a socialist state is justified in extending socialism to a neighbouring state by force of arms?" Trotsky replied:
...The defence of an isolated workers' state depends much more on the support of the labouring masses all over the world than on two or three stratemic boints.. that does not exclude the right and duty to give military aid from without to peoples rebelling against oppression. For example, in 1919 we naturally had the right to help (the Hungarian revolution) by military means ... Unfortunately we were LOD weak..
"The invasion (of the Baltic States etc) is seen by the populations not as an act of liberation but as an act of' violence and thereby facilitates the mobilisation of world opinion against the USSR by the imperialist powers...' (Writings 1939-40).
There is no evidence of a mass. popular uprising in Afganistan which called for revolutionary intervention of the Red Army. Trotsky's strictures on the Soviet invasions of Poland, the Baltic States and Finland can be cogently applied to the current situation, a situation even more complicated by the existence of not one isolated workers' themselves on opposite sides of the battle-lines.
We must not and cannot give any support to the imperialist campaign against the USSR. Trotsky, quite correctly, while opi osing the march into Georgia in 1921, nevertheless subsequently staunchly countered the imperialist and social-democratic campaign for the restration of Menshevik rule and the withdrawal of Soviet armed forces. Similarly, he never demanded the withdrawal of the Soviet armies from the Baltic opport the steel scales of meetings Kick our the Tortes Pm. Digbeth Civi Thine2 Speakers e Laker o0l san 7001 CARINES, WGl 30 han • Phone Cardiff 394755 for TALO/SHANE Monera (form er eevor METELD. Tues 29 Jan Broke:
Sacictes Chadrags states and Poland in 1940.
We, in our turn, while conderning the policies which sent the Red Army into Afganistan to bolster up a bureaucratic satellite regime, do not join the chorus of' imperialist jackals who call for their withdrawal as this would create a power vacuum which would be quickly filled by imperialism.
We must demand that the Soviet troops respect the rights of the people of Afganistan to determine their own future, which must include the right of the Afganistan people to demand the withdrawal of foreign troops from their territory. We must give every support to any movement toward the establishment of organs of popular control, even where this will meet — as it will -- the violent opposition of the occupying Red armies.
CHARLIE VAN GELDEREN, London NW10 AS COMRADES McNair, Andrews and Shuja correctly point out (Letters, 17 Jan), to raise the slogan 'Soviet troops out of Afganistan' is to effectively condone Carter' sattacks on both the Afghani revolution and the USSR. However both comrades Andrews and Shuja commit the inverse mistake to that of Tariq Ali by assuming that the USSR could go some way to meet the aspirations of the Afghani masses.
Of course it is not excluded that the Soviet army may be used as it was in Eastern Europe to create a deformed workérs' state but this is only a possibility and even so would result in the political expropriation and domination of the Afghanı masses by the Soviet bureaucracy. It is ub to revolutionaries to chart a course that is independent of the bourgeoisie and the Soviet bureaucracy.
The intervention of the USSR was not because Brezhnev might still have a sentimental attachment to proletarian internationalism but designed to stave off increasing destabilisation along its southern borders. The revolutions in Iran and Afganistan, coupled with the imperialist military build up in the Persian Gulf and Pakistan, meant that the bureaucracy had to intervene to prevent a serious dislocation of the status quo in a strategically vital area.
The fact the invasion delays the machinations of imperialism should BULICIS LERSNEC LIP10• intentions of the USSR are for once SOCIALIST CHALLENGE EVENTS satur days apm-spes orsie she Ro man Bals dan furdays 2рm-3рn available from- Fourth Idea Fullmarks, H1O Cheltenham Road, Montpellier, Bristol every apm Thursday HUDDERSFIELD: SC kurday 1 lam-lpm. The Paorae FORUM, SWINDON: SC cei sale 11-1 every Sa.. Regent Si s bifotapei tube. Stinda 10.30-12.00 Brist Lane 31 Jancary 1900 Prge14 PROPLE FANNING FOUND honourable (and comrade Shuja seems to imply that the USSR should intervene militarily wherever there is a revolutionary situation). However to large sections of the Afghani masses, particularly in the cities, the Soviet invasion is a progressive move. in such a situation revolutionaries must put demands on the bureaucracy that correspond to both the objective needs of the Afghani toilers and their existing consciousness. by comrade McNair (Imperialist hands off Afganistan; No sanctions against the USSR etc) demands such as 'Soviet arms to the Afghan masses' and Make the government responsible to workers' and peasants' organisations' give revolutionaries an orientation to the self-organisation of the Afghani masses while attacking imperialist designs on Afganistan. the Soviet bureaucracy and the world bourgeoisie fear most, the self-organisation of the masses, revolutionaries can give a clear lead not only to those people outside Afganistan in solidarity with the revolution but also to the Afghani masses in their fight against TONY VANZLER, Hull ways IT WAS predictable that some people should try țo use the columns of Socialist Challenge to organise welcoming committees for the Red Army. 17 January) defends the invasion of Afganistan by explaining that: "The only way forward is to create a working class from above with Soviet help' -Soviet Union in the 1930s.
hardly guess the Soviet army was in Afganistan. Amid tired rhetoric about imperialist war drives we find the Soviet 'invasion' - in inverted commas! If 80,000 troops are not an invasion this is truly a breakthrough in revolutionary nomenclature. It opens the way for the alleged 'persecution' of soviet oppositionists, the imaginary 'labour camps' and of course the so-called 'invasion' of Czechoslovakia.
sole virtue of consistency. They are convinced of the revolutionary potential of the Soviet army and will, one hopes, cheer it all the way to Islamabad and New Delhi.
The editorial of Socialist Challenge wants to have it both ways.
because it strengthened the counterrevolution in Afganistan and the region as a whole. But because of forced to take sides. Therefore, now that it has happened without our being consulted, we support the invasion.
Unfortunately what passes for dialectics in Upper Street is not Sc also avata ble necessarily good sense in the real world. Since when have NIACCAE1 O C98 Ę 7*0 bureaucracy and the politics of stare shops in leveland imperialism? If the invasion helped O Spencer Marker, Sraciot the counter-revolution at first at what point did it stop doing so? Above all, ат 1р-12.30рп whatever happened to Socialist Challenge's much trumpeted support IT'S THE OLYMPICS! self-determination?
Coupled with the demands raised try convincing them.
By developing the thing that both errors Morrison.
consultation.
Thus comrade Andrews (Letters, needed defending.
- an ominous echo of the From comrade MacNair we would redundancies' But these comrades do have the It argues thus: the invasion was wrong these new 'political conditions' we are jobs.
revolutionaries been forced to choose for the right of nations to Your editorialist will no doubt say (remember Finland and all that) that such piftling questions go into abeyance when great international class conflicts are at stake. That is nonsense. With a moment's thought it would have dawned on your editorialist that this is precisely when we ate most required to defend self-determination — for not surprisingly it is then that it is most under threat.
The only alternative is to argue that the Soviet Union can violate other people's self-determination at will because it is a workers' state. That is the basest polițical opportunism Editorial Board members who believe that should be despatched forthwith to the Ukraine or Czechoslovakia and RICHARD CARVER, London SW2 Men's group I WAS pleased to see that my article on men' s groups was included as a Speakout in the last issue of Socialist Challenge. Untortunately the pleasure was marred by two mistakes.
For some inexplicable reason the article was wrongly attributed to Paul Secondly the title of the article was changed from 'Men's Groups Achilles Heel and Socialism 'to 'In defence of men's groups', without To me the two titles have a very ditterent orientation. The article was intended as a positive assertion of the usefulness of men's groups and their role in the struggle for socialism, not as some dubious phenomenon that JAMES SWINSON, London N5 COVERAGE of the steel dispute has been good, but there's a sore thumb — the absence of the fight against closure. It is not good enough just to say 'stop the closures', or "no The reformist bureaucracy is intent upon separating the question of pay and jobs, though most steelworkers probably want them linked. The solid support for the pay strike among steel workers only weeks away from closure like Shotton and Corby is testimony to this.
The bureaucracy is after a deal or pay ar tne expelse or Jous. Du position is obvious enough, but witness too the pressure the TUC nationalised industry committee applied upon the Welsh TUC to get it to postpone or abandon a real fight agalnst uneinpioyich.
Incidentally we should probably raise a call for the sacking and re-election of the TUC nationalised industry committee. It showed its own bankruptcy by refusing to support the Welsh TUC action on jobs and offering no alternative defence of Bevolutionaries need to prepare steel workers for turning the tight on pay into an active defence of jobs. Apart from saying no to closures Socialist Challenge has emphasised work sharing. This ignores the practical problem that to impose work sharing one has to be in control of the plants in the first place!
The sharpest way to pose work sharing is for an immediate 35 hour week in steel and for à scale of future hours to be decided by workers themselves. However all slogans on the organisation of work in steel, on nationalisation of the private sector, and for a workers' plan for steel, revolve around the same pivot, that is workers' control.
The key demand against closures must be one which allows the body of workers to take action, against the opposition of their leaderships, to prevent the further rundown of steel. This has to be through occupying piants hence effectively vetoing the plans of the BSC management and their cupboard backers, the Tory government.
Time is short but now is the time to raise a slogan like 'From a strike on pay to occupations against closures'. STEVE BELL, Cardiff. Solidarity is key IT's time that the TUC and the trade unions united with the BSC strikers.
The steel strike is now a few weeks old and the nickets ar‹ getting organised. The movement of steel is virtually at a standstili. But the time has come for the rest of the workers in this country to support them The fight is not just for percentage rises and protection of jobs in BSC alone. It is a fighi against the Tory proposals which are affective all of the working ciass The media are often, if no always, asking the question: 'How long can you last out on strike?' We should ask the question: "How long will the steel bosses and the Tories last?' The answer will be 'Not very long at all' if the workers unite and support the steel strikers.
If the Tories defeat the steelworkers there is little chance of anyone else putting up a fight. They have been picked by the Tories as being 'easy" to beat, but we must prove them wrong.
The backlash of the cuts in jobs in BSC will be severe throughout the country, especially in South Wales, which will be "left for dead' by the Tories. It is also pretty obvious that those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs will not earn a decent living wage.
This is why the TUC and ourselves must not sit idly by and see the Tory cuts in the NHS, social services, jobs, eduçation, and an ever rising dole queue make the lives of the working class even more unbearable and hard. Sadly this is the capitalist way.
It is time for united action against the l'ories, because 11 evel there was a need for solidarity amongst the working class it is now.
- Thatcher hasn't done swinging the axe yet!
Support the steelworkers now and kick out the Tories.
P.H. WILSON, Mansfield
A CAPTAIN Willard is sent by military intelligence up through Cambodia in search colonel whose atrocities - committed through a fanatical pagan sect beginning to attract altention back home.
Vietnam inte of an American - are too. a $30m war epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola, has attracted attention not only among the bourgeois press but in socialist newspapers general release, are presented by ANTHONY By Valerie Coultas war.
•cavalry WAR films are usually memorable Apocalypse Now is no exception. The audience leayes the cinema stunned into silence by the sheer brutality of the bombastic US colonel in the That who strides • across
----- pull-quotes -----
Afganistan - not a new issue
spa tars: Yara aiea Tari Th *e Vir Ce pae Sina Rd car ip ti,ri 1 Fet, =% saa
Soviet arms to the Afghan masses
Afganistan: having it both
Steel: now let's fight for jobs