The growing international crisis is bringing home to people in Britain the danger of nuclear war. No wonder, then, that a campaign nuclear alliances is being seriously discussed on the left.
Not only the international situation, but the siting of Cruise missiles in Britain, and the rise of the anti-nuclear movement has promoted this trend. Socialist Challenge has argued consistently that the threat of war arises not merely from the existence of nuclear weapons, from the posture of world imperialism — and especially the United States.
A new campaign has just been launched which aims to focus the increasing alarm about the possibility of nuclear war. This campaign, 'For a Nuclear Free Europe', has been launched by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, with the support of a number of leading Labour MPs. The prime movers of this campaign are Ken Coates of the Russell Foundation, and E P Thompson, well known historian and author of the recent CND pamphlet Protest and Survive.
There is absolutely no doubt that a campaign against the United States' war drive and the placing of Cruise missiles in Britain is vitally WITH the return to work at Jaguar last week, the main fight against management's imposition of the 5 per cent pay deal and the 'slaves charter' is ended.
Yet the fight is not completely over. The company has not yet implemented all aspects of the document u ne blanls At Cowley and Longbridge, for example, has careful• to Hlove sluwEy reduce the likelihood of a BL-wide However, with the struggle ended, ancaa inrougnoul tne comoine.
The successful imposition the document represents, a major in its attack on shopfloor organisation at BL.
Staffing Line ena or mutuality on such questions as manning levels mobility will seriously undermine SHOD stewaros.
The stewards have been traditionalfor negotiating all aspects or staro leves ano conci. nons in their sections. The document goes a long way towards en ding that role l removes oargaline on many such issues, not just from section level but also from plant level. All local agreements and practices are superseded by it.
quote the 92-page document: "The agreement is in full and final settlement of all outstanding claims. supciscucs agreements, customs and practices relating to within, except those resulting from rcievant acreements perweer and Engineering Unions employers other words, negotiations that Leyland want to engage in are at a national level Joint Negotiating Committee.
Clause 1 ne document also contains a compreensive strike which has been reinforced by conctons oi une reluro TO WOrk.
Although the action has been taken all procedures had been exnausted, the company threatened o sack nose on sinke This is unprecedented in postwar trade union struggles.
Locemner Wilhe VIC timisation of Derek Robinson, it is a major attack on any attempt even verbal opposition to BL plans.
There can be clearer demonstaton or me treacherv oi the trade union bureaucrats. They have not merely refused to fight but against nuclear weapons and but aggressive military neutral, BL been of needed. The upsurge of imperialist militarism is being reflected in the increasing proportion of the British budget being spent on defence by the Thatcher government.
But the campaign proposed by the Russell Foundation is seriously misguided in its approach; it threatens to seriously demobilise any attempt to build a movement based on anti-imperialist opposition to militarism.
The statement Foundation says: 'We do not wish to apportion guilt between the political and military leaders of East and West. parties.' In line with this, the statement appeals equally for disarmament of both the USSR USA, and appeals for a and pacific Europe'. completely misunderstands the nature of the world crisis and how to fight the war threat. CND Experience In fact the campaign of the Russell Foundation is an attempt to resurrect the politics of the early CND; neutralism and pacifism. fact these politics are a regression from the political stance which many CND supporters came to adopt in the early 'sixties.
CND started in 1957 as a movement which Congolese mercenaries, hostilities liberatión circulated by the Russell anti-imperialism.
Guilt lies squarely on both Solidarity 'united, This approach defensive.
But in The AUSTIN concentrated on the intrinsic evil of a particular type of weapon. But in the early sixties, after the US blockade of Cuba, the US-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the repression of the revolution by CIA-financed and the re-starting of serious Americans and the Vietnam, numbers of CND's supporters moved towards This transformation was completed by the decline of CND and the rise of the Vietnam Campaign, which broke with the politics of appeals for 'peace' and militantly identified itself with the Vietnamese struggle against US imperialism.
The equals sign that the Russell Foundation draws between the USSR and the USA is completely wrong. However much we oppose the ruling bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, the arms effort of the USSR is overwhelmingly revolutions in progress Nicaragua and El Salvador threaten not the interests of the USSR but those of American imperialism. It is the United States, not the USSR which wants to resurrect its role as world cop, large trampling on progressive movements the world over. The Russell Foundation appeal complete ly fails to register the differing social systems in Russia and America which lead to a completely different military posture on a world scale.