A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE Ву Вягту Wilkins LAST Saturday Campaign held a conference attended by about 60 feminists, socialists and trade unionists Newport and the South valleys.
The conference had two purposes - to discuss how to také forward the struggle for abortion rights and to movise support ior the mass JOBDy of Parliament on 5 February and the wo The campaign had ered ine campaign had asked.
Wales to sponsor the ference but met with refusal. Derek Gregory, NUPE full-timer represented the Wales TUC at the conference, defended this grounds that it could not sponsor anything without having organisational control!
Ros Olivier, NUT delegaie 1o Cardiff trades behalf of the Cardiff Abortion CamPor abortion ried sis tot tust le abortion rights woman's issue but also a class issue and that the attack on abortion rights is a part of the overall Tory offensive against the working class.
In the final report-back people were urged to intensify their campaigning against the Corrie Bill over crucial next three Transport is being arranged for both the messiobby of Parlament and for the women's assembly. phone Cardiff 43470.
Photo: G.M. COOKSON socialls people marched through London against the Corrie Bill last Saturday Cardiff Abortion oil-rich Persian Cardiff, Wales means military force'.
for call-up should he reimpose the military draft.
con- against the who on Cold War. It poses vital ticular, USSR itself and its defence. spoke Is not lust a Defend weeks.
We have For details unconditionally contradictory.
of workers' workers democracy.
class nature of East LAST WEEK President Carter warned that any Soviet attempt to use Afghanistan as a springboard for seizing control of the Gulf region would be 'repelled by use of any neorcer This including tough language was followed by an announcement that he was ordering registration of men aged 18 to 26 decide to This escalation of war threats Soviet Union (faithfully reflected by Thatcher & Co.) represents at the very least an ideological preparation for questions for every socialist: in parour attitude towards the Many workers, despite a natural suspicion of Carter's sabre-rattling, will ask how it is possible to oppose TCHLOES these moves and detend the Soviet Union when the latter tramples on the democratic rights not only of the masses in the USSR but also of those in independert countries (to the extent of using brute military force).
argued that it is necessary to defend the Soviet state against imperialist war threats despite the bureaucratic actions of its totantarian regime in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This may seem contradictory; but in fact the nature of the Soviet Union itself is The Russian revolution in 1917 drew a sharp line in the labour movement between those who identitied tially with this revolutionary establishment Soviet power and those who counterposed a perspective of classthe capitalists.
Subsequently, however, the issue has been confused by the rise of Stalinist totalitarianism and the liquidation of In his long struggle against the ascendancy of Stalin's regime, Leon Trotsky many times defended the the Soviet established by the Russian revolution From left to right: Grechko, Podgorny, Brezhner, Kosygin, Suslov.
Crete Saudi Arabia (its social Dasis, une property and planned economy) despite the bureaucratic degeneration that was taking place. One of his last political struggles The was struck down by Stalin's assassin was on this question (see quotation printed here.
We defend the Soviet Union unconditionally in the sense that we defend these gains. We defend it as a workers state and those things within which correspond to a workers This is not conditional on the actions of the bureacratic elle have usurped political power the working class. Here lies the essencontradictory liattic of Union. Stalin, the representative of the ascendant bureaucracy, was able to transform the Red Army from the armed expression of the revolutionary letariat to an instrument in the hands of this bureaucracy.
Clearly it is out of the question to support all the actions of such a 'Red Army'. Its character is graphically illustrated by the gold braid, epaulettes numerous medals that weigh down its generals. The foreign policy
Iceland
• Germany The points marked are US military bases of the Soviet bureaucracy, with its internal policy, concerned with the preservation of its narrow material privileges. Conservatism and defence of the status quo are the hallmarks of all bureaucratic elites.
the Detente main The Kremlin policy of peaceful co-existence pro- (détente) is directly counterposed to the policy of revolutionary interna. tionalism. national class struggle to the national interests of the bureaucracy. The outcome of the Spanish revolution and civil war was a tragic confirmation of its counter-revolutionary character: However Soyiet Union support 1o whole. in, line is entirely interests and perialist NATO.
But shoulders It subordinates the inter- perspective against workers within - and this is the con Aleutian Is.
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\7th Fleet tradiction the defence. of its own material interests also forces the bureaucracy to detend (even if very inadequately) the 'socialised property relations on which it is a parasitic growth. But we support only those actions which defend these gains; there is no question of giving political Ine bureaucracy as a It is for this reason that we also defend the right of the workers states to arm themselves against the war threats of imperialism. We defend the formation of military alliances to this end while utterly opposing all im.
military blocs such in the final analysis the defence of the gains of the Russian revolution effectively rests on the workers movement. Only through an unyielding revolutionary and antipolicy, incorporating of ruthless struggle the bureaucracy the states by the workers, peasants and rank and file soldiers these stales, will Stalinist totalitarianism be finally removed from our movement.