C'apitalism is in crisis. The leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions offer solutions that are in not of the workers but of the capitalist class.
Socialist Challenge believes that two vital tasks revolutionary socialists are:
• To build broad-based struggle tendencies in opposition class-collaborationism in the labour movement. These should be non-exclusive grouping Ingether militants holding a wide range of political views.
• To begin to fight for the creation of unified democratic revolutionar! socialist organisation which can. all application united front begin lo be alternative thousands workers engaged in struggles.
Such an organisation should be based on the understanding that:
The for seeks io unite the fight I workers with that of other oppressed layers of society — women, black people. liberation. This socialism can only struggling be achieved by creating new organs of power and defeating necessary means the power of the capitalist state.
socialism than what exists in Britain today, with full rights for political parties and currents that do not take up arms against the socialist state. The Stalinist models 'socialism' in the USSR ard Fastern Europe have discredited socialism in the eyes of millions of workers throughout the We are opposed to them and will offer full support all fighting for socialist democracy.
* ona sorts cale: Capitalism The interests of workers and on a world scale. Capitalism has created market. if has created politics. Thus we fight for working class unit! on an scale. This unity will in the long run be decisive in defeating both the imperialist regimes in the West and the brutal dictatorships they sustain in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
I mimen item plies dramanding immediate withdrawal British troops from Ireland and letting the Irish people determine The Communist parties in L Europe are in crisis. Neither the 'Eurocommunist the pro-Moscow wings have any meaningful strategy for werthrow of the capitalist state.
dew revolutionary socialist parties more necessary than belore. Conditions today more favourable than over the preceding three decades. But such parties can only rejecting sectarianism and seeing internal democracy not as a luxury but as a vital necessity. This means the right to organise factions and tendencies.
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•...............Tel Socialist Challenge 26 June 1980 Page 2 and through latest toll is of socialism eleven-year-old of retarded boy. bosses their actly four South Africa.
and driven into exile.
all commissions, speeches, and editorials.
Reforms those machine - and do sysicili But there current wave nor 'coloured' community.
eve the Khoi people, are built century onwards.
Privileges Throughout to give the privileges over source of eature bcanscives do Africa, backward ONCE again the police of the racist South African state are killing unarmed demonstrators. The 40 dead and 200 wounded. Among the 'hooligans' tryside, and 'criminal elements', as the South African police contemptuously call those they gun down, are a nine-year-old girl and an mentallyThis new round of bloodshed is not hard to understand. Almost exyears ago of thousands of black school children came out on to the streets of Soweto to fight for their right to live as decent a life as any white person in For that crime they were beaten, murdered, imprisoned, For four years the political leaders of 'white' South Africa have been discussing, and rediscussing, what to do about black opposition to the apartheid system. Millions of words have been poured out by goverment politician's newspaper gle.
But almost nothing has changed. A few cosmetic. reforms now allow black people to stand in the same queues as whites and sit on the same •park benches. But they remain class- tions, ed as 'foreigners' in the land of their birth. They remain in poverty in a country whose wealth they produce. A small white minority continues to benefit from their suffering. They remain daily at the mercy of a heartless lacisi employers, bureaucrats, and policemen who can - separate husbands and today, wives, children and parents, in order to preseve the logic of the apartheid are developments in South Africa. The of resistance to the government has come not from the downtrodden section of the population - those officially classed as 'black' — but from the so-called This group is technically made up of all those of 'mixed' racial origin, but in fact most are descendents of the original inhabitants of western South Africa whose communities were destroyed in a genocidal holocaust launched by the first white settlers from the 17th South African history the whites have always tried "coloureds' small the main black population, in order to use them as a support for white rule Thus for many years they (along with the small Asian community) were the main source of clerical, professional, and skilled workers used to carry our those jobs which the whites cold so really b an able to fithe cos rede grand design South however. According to this the bulk of the land - and the cities in particular - belongs to the whites and the blacks are only entitled to a 'homelands'.
But the coloureds have been living in the cities for as long as the whites, have no connection with the coun and there Is no ICTION which even by the most roundabout and twisted logic could be said to be their "home'. Participate At the same time they are obviously not white and cannot allowed to participate as equals in a ystem based upon racisn This uncertainty has driven th coloured community to throw in their lot with the black majority whenever important struggles have taken place. But now coloured youth and students are actually placing themselves in the forefront of the struggle rejecting he passive and wait-and-see attitud of many of their elders. They knocked away any illusion that. they could be transformed into a prop of a 'new mode!' apartheid.
The other significant development has been the growing role of black workers. 1976 it was the students of Soweto who led the strugThe workers - their parents -while sympathetic were involved in a lainly passive way, supporting th tay-at-homes? (general strikes) cal ed for by the student leaders.
The present upheavals in South Africa include a big wave of strikes in the same region as the demonstrawith workers in sixteen tories in the industrial town of Por Elizabeth (which includes the mai Ford factory) and in the neighbour ing town of Uitenhage fighting for their own demands There in the coloredo "coloureds". While the are allowed to join unions (and there are 250,000 of them in trade union organisations) 1012 recently hindered black organisations being formed. Despite this fact some 85,000 black workers joined 'unofficial' unions and milibe have facblack 750,000 tant action forced many employers to until negotiate e workers' 5. face African state is in the process neith te of this the South of aevelopmichl. and divide them, Ing played working class Africa today the its history. their = Souct they South Africa to the sort desperately need. attached to limit their fighting ability By and large black workers have rejected this poisoned offering and extending their organisations and social needs as well as better wages and working conditions.
The combined effect of these two the growing unity militancy of the entire black population, rejecting all attempts to , and the central part beby the powerful black - is creating in South dangerous situation the racist state has faced in Assistance In the storms that are to come South Africa is counting upon the sort of international assistance it has always had from foreign business and governments. The biggest backer bas alsays beez Britain, with over 700 Britist surpates mresting Afiz DE je arTiEs de strike in South Africa todar wort for British firms or multinationals with an important base in Britain. British works organisations should fighting for the international isolation of the South African racists; but should also be building links with black workers' organisations in provide them with of help. that they so
African John of Group, council since 1973.
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granting trade union rights to black beyond the factories and into their workers, but with all sorts of strings communities, fighting for civil rights Effect