Afghanistan: Troops out now!

NZ  SAS trained to kill

The Labour Government sent NZ SAS troops to Afghanistan in 2001 on the basis that a UN resolution justified the ‘war on terror’ in that country. This was never anything more than a pretext to invade and occupy a strategic pivot in the ‘big game’ –Al Qaeda was always a label attached to any militant opposition to US interests in the struggle for control of central Asia to plunder its oil and gas. NZ became the US deputies dog snapping at the heels of the Taliban for the price of some trade concessions. Back then we said “Defend Afghanistan” in what was an imperialist war against a poor semi-colony. There could be no defence of Afghanistan without the defeat of the invading army; the NZ troops included.

The outrage that met Sumner-Burstyn’s comments on the recent deaths of 5 NZ soldiers, shows how mindlessly jingoistic the NZ authoritarian populist rump has become in a global crisis where many retreat into racial national chauvinism. As we have said before, crisis and recession brings out the underlying racism, sexism and reactionary attitudes towards ‘liberal’ values. Classic is Matthew Hooten on Radio NZ rubbishing opposition to the war in Afghanistan by “Grey Lynn liberals”. In a period of social crisis those with a need for authority feel threatened by breakdown of social order and lash out at any scapegoat group they can blame for their fear. The NACTs and their attack dogs like Michael Laws exploit that fear in their baiting of easy targets including paedophiles and welfare frauds. Women who speak out like Sumner-Burstyn are easy targets for rape or death threats.

The logic of this reactionary scapegoating is to exploit fear and build public hysteria to justify a drive to war and for NZ’s involvement in more invasions and wars so that the NZ ruling class gets its share of the imperialist spoils. And as this causes resistance, it justifies more ‘anti-terror’ legislation and against free speech and assembly, and for more spying and restrictions on legal rights as we have seen in the aftermath of Operation 8. This is a slide towards fascism where all those who are perceived as a threat to the ‘social order’ of capitalism became the targets of reactionary groups in society ith the complicity of the state.

In the decade since the last Afghan war began, the invaders have met with the same fate of as all previous imperialist invasions, a long retreat before defeat. The US has no major strategic gains and apart from heavily fortified garrisons like Bagram, has shifted the moving front on the ‘war on terror’ to hit and run Drone warfare. Iran is next and China is not far behind with NZ now roped back as a junior partner in RIMPAC and the US plan to isolate its new global rival China politically and militarily.

Workers have to stand up against the revival of militaristic nationalism (jingoism) and wars of conquest wherever they are; get the troops out of Afghanistan; withdraw from all NATO and UN military forces in the Middle East, and from all RIMPAC and ANZAC agreements in the Asia Pacific. These are all designed to suck NZ into new intelligence sharing, surveillance, wars and invasions in the interests of the US and its allies, against its newly emerging imperialist rivals, China and Russia.

Sri Lanka: The Collapse of the Ethno-Nationalist Project of LTTE and the Tamil Question

We reprint this article here to further debate around its position on the Tamil National Question. It seems to us that New Wave confuses two aspects of the National Question; first the right to self-determination, and second the support for that right in the form of a national liberation struggle.
The article seems to say that revolutionaries consider the national question a formal question stating a position against national oppression only. If that is their position, we disagree. Where national oppression clearly exists leading to a mass national war of independence, as in the case of Palestine, the question is not a formality. It becomes the revolutionary duty of workers internationally to enter that war on the side of the oppressed nation to win the leadership of the struggle from the bourgeoise and to ensure that it goes all the way to a socialist revolution.

However, as the article suggests, the Tamil national struggle may not have had mass Tamil working class support and be in fact a bourgeois project that oppressed not only Sinhalese living in the Tamil zones but also Tamil workers. If this is the case then new wave is correct in refusing to recognise a right to self-determination for Tamils in Sri Lanka since it is in contradiction with social liberation as they put it. In that case the duty of revolutionaries is to unite Tamils and SInhalese behind a revolutionary party for a socialist revolution against both communalist wings of the national bourgeosie.


UPDATE 4 JULY 2009
new wave has responded with this statement:

"Thanks for forwarding the publication of the article on Sri Lanka on 'redrave', from 'the new wave'. We must make clarify ourselves on this point to avoid a confusion which has emerged from the note of 'redrave':

We are for the 'Right of Tamils for Self-Determination' and that up to 'secession', but only for the right. We oppose striving of the Tamil Bourgeois to carve out a separate Tamil statelet and dividing the Sri Lankan working class into Tamil and Sinhalese factions. Support the right, oppose the division! This is in absolute conformity with the principles of Marxism and the experiences of the past history of more than a century. We support 'the right to self determination' not with a view to aid the bourgeois project of 'secession', but with a view that existence of this 'right' and the 'freedom' to secede for oppressed national minority, would remove the ground from under the feet of bourgeois and its demand for a 'secession', which on the contrary is a divisive agenda, harmful for the international unity of the proletariat. Anyway, and with the same logic, the opposition to the 'right to self-determination, up to secession' is equally damaging for the proletariat of both nationalities, being an outright support for the oppressor bourgeois. The two extremes, thus, fall outside the precincts of the policy of revolutionary Marxism. We are for the 'right to self determination up to secession' but we are totally against the bourgeois agenda of secession. We call for the unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, to overturn the bourgeois."

Comradely Yours,
Editors
'the new wave'

FURTHER DISCUSSION IN COMMENTS BELOW

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Rajesh Tyagi/28 May, 2009
[reprinted from New Wave which is an Indian Revolutionary Trotskyist group]

The ruthless suppression of the armed secessionist movement led by the LTTE, at the hands of Rajapakse government of Sri Lanka, has put to an end the 26 years old civil war on the island ongoing since 1983, between Tamil nationalists and the Sri Lankan establishment. The entire top brass of LTTE has been wiped out by the Sri Lankan security forces in cold blood under a pre-plan, simultaneously inflicting enormous sufferings upon the civil population. With this, the project for a separate Tamil homeland, proposed by LTTE in the northern and eastern parts of the island, has also lost the ground, almost completely.

The ethnic conflict took a toll upon around 80,000 human lives, before leaving the question of ethic repression of Tamils, unresolved. The recent offensive undertaken by the Sri Lankan government to uproot LTTE, has resulted in one of the biggest human tragedies in South Asia, over several decades. Apart from the cadres of LTTE perished in the war, stepped up since January 2009, 7000 civilians have been killed and 16,781 are wounded. Sri Lankan Army has lost 6,261 soldiers, with 29, 551 injured and 2,556 permanently disabled. According to an estimate of UN, more than three lakh [lakh =100,000] Tamil civilians are trapped in the relief camps, virtual detention camps being run by the Sri Lankan Army. The 32 such camps in Vavuniya alone are home for more than 1,60,000 Tamil refugees. The government, during the military operation, is stated to have blocked even supplies of life saving drugs to the population trapped in areas dominated by the LTTE.

Sri Lankan bourgeois, in order to defend its rule, has raised an army which is largest on the globe in proportion to the size of population of the country. It already had an army of 1,20,000 soldierie, by 2007, which it had replenished with induction of 80,000 more young recruits, mostly Sinhalese, in 2008 alone. To recruit the Sinhalese youth, it had kept its military plans for a major conflict in complete secrecy. In addition, very low level of youth employment i.e. 22.4 percent of the total youth on the island, facilitated the project of this mass recruitment to the Army. Without this fresh recruitment, the war itself and success achieved in it by the Colombo establishment was improbable. By keeping the war plans a secret, the Sri Lankan Government succeeded to lure the Sinhalese youth for recruitment in the Army and then used it as cannon fodder to win the war against LTTE. Even during the war the Rajapakse Government has banned all reporting of conflict from the war zone, while denying access, both to foreign and local media in the zone, with express motive to prevent a public outrage on the quantum of such huge casualties of human lives.

After wiping out the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government has unfolded its plans to further reinforce the already colossal armed force, by raising its strength to a soldierie of three lakhs, which would mean one and a half times of its present size. It is clear that the Colombo rulers are preparing themselves for the future challenges to their regime from their eternal and the real enemy -the working class, emerging from all ethnicities on the island. It is the working class which would be made to bear the burden not only of the recent war, but also of the future plans of the bourgeois rulers to accentuate their rule through the strength of a colossal armed force at their disposal.

Sri Lankan island is habited by around 20 million people, out of which 16% are Tamils, spread over the northern and eastern part of the highland, 8% Moslems who are mostly Tamil speaking and rest of the 75% Sinhalese, who occupy the larger south of the island. After occupation of the island, British colonialists had transported Tamils from India to Sri Lanka, mostly to work as plantation labour in tea gardens. While the working class in Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known) was one of the most radical section of the world proletariat and had played immense role in the anti-colonial national liberation movement, through its party Lanka Sama Samaj Party (LSSP) and later Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (BLPI) whose members gave immense sacrifices, was illegalised in 1940 for opposing the war and fighting in the front ranks of the liberation movement, the Sri Lankan bourgeois did not play any role at all in the liberation movement. It remained an auxiliary to the British colonialism.

Till 1946, Sri Lankan bourgeois did not have a party of its own. The bourgeois elite organised the United National Party only in 1946 on the advice of British colonialists, who bestowed upon it the political power handing over the establishment of Island to it in 1948, to look after their interests in absentia. The national bourgeois took power in Colombo, not as a leader of the oppressed nation or in a fight against colonialism, but as direct agent of Imperialism. The only demand the Sri Lankan bourgeois raised was to separate the Island from the Indian State so as to prevent the integration between the working class of Sri Lanka and India. It borrowed the readymade project of national development, like other decolonised countries, from world capitalism and thus failed to resolve even a single basic problem, including that of the nationality, ethnicity etc. Entrenched in the social crisis, and threatened by the revolutionary proletariat, it resorted to most reactionary elements, traditions and forces of the past for reliance and support to its regime. Its fragile regime, however, could stabilise itself again and again, in the face of uninterrupted crisis, for the betrayals by the leadership of the working class.

The strength of the LSSP, at the eve of transfer of power to the national bourgeois by the colonialists, can be gauged by the fact that it emerged as the largest opposition to the government in 1948, where on its call, 50,000 people had gathered for a demonstration against the transfer of power. The biggest challenge before the Sri Lankan government was thus to weaken the labour movement under the leadership of Trotskyist LSSP, which could be done only by dividing the working class on ethnic lines. The bourgeois has learnt this lesson from the colonial legacy of divide and rule. Immediately after taking power at Colombo, the government of rightist UNP thus got passed the most controversial enactment- ‘The Citizenship Act, 1948’ whereby the Tamil Plantation workers of the highland were deprived of the right to franchise and citizenship. While Tamil traders collaborated in that, the BLPI opposed the move. There were demonstrations against the unjust discrimination meted out to the Tamil workers. The government, however, answered them through organising a spate of most violent pogroms against Tamil civilians, through Sinhalese chauvinist groups. This Act has virtually sown the seeds of ethnic conflicts of the future between Sinhalese and Tamils.

In 1953, the rightist elite government of UNP, adopted an economic policy aimed at benefitting the rich, which led to a steep price hike. The LSSP mobilised the working class against it and called for a general strike. Working class actions in cities found an unprecedented support among the rural poor and consequently the entire country came to a grinding halt. The government soon took account of the really grim situation. The cabinet met in emergency on a British warship then anchoring in Colombo harbour and reversed the economic policy without delay.

The proletarian action of 1953, had profound political implications. The bourgeois elite, fearing of the strength of working class, sought refuge in the outdated Buddhist legacy, in order to woo the petty bourgeois peasantry, with a religious appeal. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) was thus organised under the leadership of S.W. Bhandarnaike, draped in a Buddhist cloak, which took power in 1956 elections. It passed the enactments declaring Buddhism the state religion and the Sinhalese the sole official language of Sri Lanka. This further aggravated the ethnic divide among the two communities and this was the avowed purpose of the ruling bourgeois.

These were unfortunate times as the LSSP falling into the trap of the then bogus leadership of the Fourth International (FI) to which it was affiliated, which under Michael Pablo and Ernest Mandel, had lost its orientation. With the re-stabilisation of capitalism on a world scale, the then leadership of FI, adapted to it and misdirected its national sections to adapt themselves to the political situation existing in their individual countries. Pablo and Mandel did not see any need for independent movement of the working class either globally or nationally. According to them under the changed conditions the old parties themselves would be forced to take to radical path. With this perspective, the LSSP shared the path with Stalinist Communist Party of Sri Lanka and entered into collaboration with the SLFP, and supported its government. In 1964, the LSSP members entered into the government itself alongwith Stalinist CP, demonstrating complete degeneration of the party. It made a United Front with Stalinists and SLFP which got a landslide victory in 1970 general elections. It introduced a few reforms like nationalisation of the plants still under the control of foreigners, and bringing down the drug prices, but the 1972 constitution prepared under supervision of LSSP leaders, not only restated the privileged positions of Buddhism as the state religion and Sinhalese as the sole official language, it introduced quota for Sinhalese in admissions in Universities and employment in Public Sector.

The working class found the leaders of LSSP sharing the political rostrum with the bourgeois, their mortal enemy and acquiescing in its policies. The working class was pushed into frustration and hopelessness.

The betrayal of the working class, on the part of LSSP, directly led to the emergence of communal forces like the Maoist Janata Vimukti Peramuma (JVP), and the separatist LTTE. In 1970, Rohan Vijeveera, organised JVP mainly from among the Sinhalese students and youth, with a program to bring down the coalition government of Bhandarnaike through urban armed resistance. The movement was soon crushed by the government taking toll upon the lives of more than 15,000 young activists. The JVP leaders retreated to hiding in rural areas, but were wiped out by the army. It then turned to parliamentary democracy and gradually shifted its position to Sinhalese Chauvinism rendering support to the bourgeois establishment. In 1980, three Trotskyist activists were killed by the JVP.

The LSSP having illusions in the bourgeois leadership, was kicked out by it from the United Front government. The 1977 general elections decimated the LSSP, with the UNP once again coming to power. UNP immediately started a wave of rabid liberalisation through economic reforms shifting burden to the shoulders of working class and savagely attacking its movement. In opposition to the policies of the UNP government, a strike of Railway workers began, which soon turned into a general strike. The government crushed this strike by jailing all labour leaders and organising lumpens on a large scale to attack the strikers.

The failure of the strike and the betrayal of the leaders of LSSP, created an environment of hopelessness and desperation among the working class and a defeatist mood took over for the time being, which was accentuated with the stabilisation of the economy through liberalisation and reforms. Taking benefit of this general depression and disintegration of the working class, the bourgeois UNP government, in order to further demoralise and weaken the working class by widening the ethnic divide, once again resorted to anti-Tamil pogroms. The youth leagues of LSSP however were deployed to protect the Tamils from hoodlums, but in absence of an effective resistance from the working class, the State terror became the device to widen the ethnic divide. As the Tamil parliamentary opposition remained totally ineffective, activists in youth wing of Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) the largest formation of Tamil bourgeois, organised itself into a militant wing and formed LTTE. Calling for a separate Tamil homeland LTTE engaged in armed conflicts and ambushed an army convoy on 23 July 1983, killing 13 soldiers. This resulted in new spate of anti-Tamil pogroms, where 3000 Tamils were massacred at the hands of Sinhalese chauvinist groups. Thus started the long drawn out war on the island for which the main responsibility lies on the shoulder of LSSP leaders, for their betrayal of the cause of proletarian revolution, which provided space for this war.

As for LTTE, since the days of its emergence, it remained a petty bourgeois organisation, with a limited and reactionary separatist program of a Tamil homeland. It attacked and killed the Sinhalese and Moslem poor with impunity and thus assisted the Colombo establishment in widening the ethnic strife among the working class of both communities. It relied upon the same rabid communalism against Sinhalese working class, like the Sinhalese chauvinists did against Tamil workers. It started to form a pseudo-socialist rhetoric, but soon found itself not only in the arms of local Tamil owners of Transport and Trade, but remained dependent upon this or that big foreign power, in addition to support from wealthy Sri Lankan NRIs. At one time it counted upon support of the Indian Government under Rajiv Gandhi and agreed to the IPKF, the Indian Security force to take charge in Sri Lanka, under the Indo-Sri Lanka accord. The devastation it brought to Tamils in Sri Lanka is part of the history. Even after its abrogation, LTTE continued to curry favour with other powers. Its 2-3 million dollar annual budget continued to be financed by big powers. Out of this budget it could maintain a navy (sea tigers) and an air force in its embryo, which though was no match for the colossal power of the Sri Lankan state and the Imperialism as a whole, which Rajapakse could mobilise against it. Even then, LTTE continued to appeal to the United Nations, a forum dominated by big powers in the hope to mobilise support of sections of big powers for its project of separate Tamil homeland.

However, these illusions of the LTTE, in big powers, proved fatal. The big powers, continued to play a double game, by assisting in aggravation of the crisis on the island and then seeking material benefit out of this crisis, manoeuvring between the warring parties, solely for their own political designs. In 2008, China sold weapons to Sri Lankan government for $ 75 million, in 2007 India had supplied arms for $21 million, in 2006 Ukraine supplied weaponry for $ 22 million and finally Israel had sold arms for $16 millions in the year 2000. China assisted the Colombo government by time and again deflating the international criticism of the mass civilian casualties committed at its hands on the island and in turn got a strong strategic foothold in Sri Lanka by wining access to a key Sri Lankan port, next to world’s premier shipping lanes.

LTTE never raised an issue against the acute exploitation of the Tamil Tea plantation workers in the highland. The concept of Tamil Ealem advanced by it remained through and through the idea for a bourgeois statelet on the island. This was the idea favouring the aspirant Tamil bourgeois who wanted to establish direct links to the world capitalism through its political power over the independent Tamil Ealem, by-passing the bourgeois establishment at Colombo under Sinhalese domination. Many times it has repeated that the model for Tamil Ealem was the ‘Asian Tigers’ i.e. the capitalist states, like South Korea and Japan. The whole idea of this dreamland of Tamil Ealem was to take hold of the statelet and then offer the cheap labour of its workers and peasants to world capital. LTTE never proved itself distinct from the Colombo establishment, as far as its class and political character goes. In the region under its domination, it treated the Sinhalese minority in the same way as Tamil minority was treated in the south. Its dreamland of Tamil Ealem even if realised, would not have been different in any manner than the Sri Lankan State. More recently, it had taken resort even to a hindu religious stance, making religious appeals to Hindu supremacists in India by shouting that the Sri Lankan security forces were destroying the hindu temples.

It was from this limited nationalist perspective, that LTTE failed to muster any support among the Sinhalese working class, or even among the Tamils in Tamilnadu. Instead of appealing to the world proletariat it continued to appeal to the bourgeois states. However, the big powers-bourgeois states, on whose support it counted for its success, betrayed it at the crucial moment. Even the conscious sections of Tamil working class had turned their back upon its campaign for separate Tamil homeland, realising that it means nothing but another capitalist state. The limited support it could mobilise among the Tamil youth, cannot validate its otherwise essentially invalid program of establishing a capitalist Tamil statelet. The support behind it was in essence the result of failure of the working class leadership and its political crisis. Even this support base among the poor specifically among the working class was gradually eroding because of the proximity of the leaders of LTTE to the rich and the policies it adopted, in the areas under its control, favouring the rich while shifting the entire burden of the war upon the shoulders of the working class. As reports from the war zone show, LTTE leaders have ordered firing upon the fleeing Tamil civilians from the war zone.

In our epoch, there being no scope for any combined national project of working class and bourgeois, much less in the countries with a belated development, the slogan of national state has become obsolete, losing all its political significance. The struggle against national oppression and for national liberation, so far as it has meaning and relevance for the working class, is integral part and subordinate to its historic task of social liberation. Segregated from the task of social liberation, the national question has no meaning at all for the working class. Only the rightist and centrist advocates of petty bourgeois, still chant the sermons for dogma of nation-states, when the same has lost all revolutionary significance. For us Leninists, the theoretical meaning of the ‘right to self-determination of the nation , even up to secession’ has never gone beyond a formal recognition of this right and a political resolve on our part against the national oppression of minorities. We are strategic opponents of the demand of secession and division of states in statelets. These divisions, run counter to the interests of working class and are the agenda of aspirant native bourgeois.

Doubtlessly, the cadres of LTTE have displayed utmost sacrifice and courage in this war against the Sinhalese chauvinist Colombo establishment, responsible for handing out ethnic discrimination and injustice to the Tamil minority. But this note of appreciation for the cadre, must not deter us from evaluating, from the standpoint of working class, the shortcomings of the politics of LTTE leadership and from calling into question the correctness of their perspective, under which this war was prepared and fought.

For a Workers’ Tamaki Makaurau!

The Royal Commission Report on Auckland [Tamaki Makaurau] has come and gone. After 18 months of deliberation its conclusions have been binned by the National Government. Its proposals for a single city remain, but all the existing councils are abolished. The single city will have no more than 30 elected councilors, a number elected at large. The real power will be in the hands of the Mayor. The model is a corporate Board of Directors. By abolishing the urban and rural councils and creating a new Super City, the NZ capitalist class is set to privatise $28 Billion of Auckland assets.

The bosses’agenda

The campaign for one city has been driven by business interests for years. Their target has always been to get local government out of business and confined to provision of basic services. It wants to remove all local body legislative controls on investment, particularly property speculation. The new city will extend from Pukekohe to Warkworth, encompassing three harbours, a Gulf and the most valuable coastal property in the country. Corporates have always opposed the Auckland Regional Council [ARC] which has statutory authority over much of this land and which owns the major asset of the port of Auckland. The first great land theft was from Maori in the nineteenth century, the second is from all the working people of Auckland today.

Rodney Hide the new Minister of Local Government is the leader of the ACT Party whichs says that local government will be required to “shed its commercial activities”. Hide is now overseeing the Grand Theft of Auckland. A Transitional Agency headed by Hide with a few of his cronies will take charge of all the local authorities on the 14th of May for a period of 18 months to prepare the transfer of all their assets so they can be sold off when the Auckland City Council is elected in October 2010. The new Auckland City is therefore the bosses’ way of abolishing the ARC, divesting it of its business assets such as Ports of Auckland, and dispensing with the ARC role in providing subsidized services such as public transport.

Bosses’ abolish the ARC

On the same day as the Royal Commission released its report, Alastair Thompson, chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association of the Auckland region, published an article in the NZ Herald “ARC swimming against the tide with its port holdings”.

Thompson makes the business case for the ARC to sell its majority shareholding of the Ports of Auckland because it makes a profit and uses the money to pay social subsidies to public services. Thompson is saying that state owned assets should not make a profit, or better still sell these assets so that private business can make the profits. Nothing galls the capitalists more than seeing the ARC actually taking profits from the private sector and spending it on workers.

It is clear that the National government is a government of the capitalist class in crisis and that they will impose the costs of their crisis onto ordinary workers without any concern for “democracy” or for our welfare. The seizure of power in Auckland and stripping of its $28 billion worth of assets will increase the costs of basic services and amenities to workers.

Workers Fight Back

The National ACT asset grab in Auckland is a repeat of Rogernomics, imitating the “shock treatment” used by Roger Douglas in the 1980s. Douglas said then that his neo-liberal reforms could only work if they were introduced quickly before there was time for organize resistance. The result was the defeat of the unions and of all other workers organisations, including the desertion of the Labour Left that split from the Labour Party to form New Labour in 1989.

We have to learn the lessons of the defeats we suffered under Rogernomics Mark 1. First we must reject the abolition of the existing councils and their elected representatives. This means junking the feudal institution of the Royal Commission used by the Labour Government to decide on Auckland’s future. Second, we have to fight the plans of the National ACT regime to use this feudal process to seize power and privatise Auckland as a Super City council dominated by councilors elected by the corporate class under a Super-Mayor.

We have to demand that any Auckland Super City should be elected by proportional representation on the basis of democratically formed local and existing city wards, including constituencies that represent Maori iwi in the Auckland region.

Second, to mobilise our forces to stop this coup against democracy we have to organize the unions and community organisations to put bans on the actions of the NACTs Transitional Agency as it usurps the role of the local bodies so as to prepare Auckland’s publicly owned assets and provision of services for privatization or abolition. This will mean stopping the Transitional Agency from preparing public assets and services for privatization by sacking workers and cutting spending.

Wharfies first in the gun

We can start by backing the Wharfies who are facing big job losses as the Ports of Auckland prepares for privatization. While it is owned by the ARC, the Port is run like a capitalist corporation. The threat to jobs today is only the start of the cutbacks in jobs and conditions under a fully privatized Port Company.

While the Port is the main prize of the privatisers there are a number of other “commercial” activities in their sights. The ARC uses its profits from the Port to subsidise its social services such as public transport. Other local body functions such as provision of amenities like swimming pools and libraries will be targets for the Hide axe. Auckland rail which is potentially profitable is likely to be also prepared for privatisation, as with the provision of water.

The resistance to the corporate grab of Auckland has to be on the ground. Those whose lives will be trampled by the capitalist plan to turn Auckland into a capitalist speculators paradise at their expense must mobilise locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to stop it.

What we need instead of a bosses' supercity for superprofits is a socialist supercity to socialise the provision of housing, transport, water, health, education and all social amenities that a are needed by the workers who make all the wealth.


Back the Iwi Have Influence campaign!

Back the unions fighting jobs and services cuts!

Back proposals for mass actions such as a Rate Revolt!

For a Workers’Tamaki Makaurau!

For a Socialist Super City, in a socialist Aotearoa, in a Socialist Federation of the South Pacific!

G 20: Socialist Fight Leaflet

• Internationalism Now!

• Down with Economic Nationalism, Bj4Bw and “No2 EU” Europhobia!

• Build a Rank-and-File organisation that fights the bosses and the class treachery of the TU bureaucracy!


The G20 summit demonstrates the rapidity with which the crisis is unfolding. Whole economies like Iceland and Ireland are virtually bankrupt, financial meltdown has unleashed economic meltdown and no one can say where it will end. And the political ramifications for the left are equally rapid. The Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes were the August 4th for the British working class. Those like the SP and CPB who gave them enthusiastic support have now got their reward.

The Stalinists of the CPB, who have been the traditional bagmen for the class traitors of the TU bureaucracy, have welcomed the ‘Trotskyist’ SP into the fold of economic nationalism. Fronted by Bob Crow, with no consultation with his members, the new No2 EU platform is a straight British nationalist response which attempts to steal the votes of the UKIP. Like the infamous ‘foreigners out’ demonstration in Staythorp this appalling political treachery has struck fear into every immigrant worker and much of the black and Asian community. If even ’lefts’ like Simpson, Crow, Nellist and the CPB are prepared to tack so far right for opportunist gains how can we defeat the BNP?

But divisions are not really so bad if they reveal reality in time to fight back. The SWP has swung to the left after the split with Galloway and is now recruiting rapidly on leftist demands. Despite all the problems with their own capitulation to trade union bureaucracies and the popular frontism of the UAF, etc. their members are demanding a real fight now and revolutionists should give critical support as far as they go.

The future of the working class and poor, particularly immigrants, is indeed grim and they will be joined by a vast section of the middle class who will be rapidly driven down into their ranks. A year or so ago every right-wing think-thank in the planet trumpeted low taxation, deregulation and privatisation as the neo-liberal model that lead to robust economic growth.

The number of millionaires and billionaires burgeoned but this was necessary so the poor could benefit from some trickle-down, or ‘crumbs from the master’s table’ as one patronising bigot put it long ago. Today we are encouraged to hate these greedy bankers and fat cat finance capitalists but not the system itself, which the People’s Charter assures us is reformable.

The anarchist answer is to defend localism; local communities defending jobs and fighting the oppressive state is the only way. What is wrong with British jobs for British workers, Irish jobs for Irish workers and local jobs for local workers? Down with the EU, back to fortress Britain? But the door is then opened for the far right; economic nationalism is the field of operation of the fascists, it ties the workers to the bosses and must destroy the very basis of working class consciousness, its internationalism and its objective need to produce wealth on the basis of a world planned economy. Workers are the true global class whose interests can only be truly served by a planned world economy, capitalism is a global system run by a national bourgeoisie who are only interested in the own profit.

Revolutionary Trotskyism must provide the answer then with its aspiration for the world revolution. If the Waterford Crystal occupation becomes fashionable then the sacred right of private property, which underpins all global oppression, will be raised again as an international tactic. Only when private property is overthrown and collective, effective human rights are established and when we produce food and manufactures for human need, not profit can workers begin the struggle for international socialism. We must sweep away the ‘muck of ages’, sexism, homophobia and economic nationalism which leads to racism, wars and copper fastens all human oppression.

But we cannot do it effectively when we collaborate with a TU bureaucracy which seeks to jail militant Belfast Airport shop stewards. We cannot do it when we go on marches with Lindsey Oil Refinery strikers who shout ‘foreigners out’. Just as we must not capitulate to the trade union bureaucracy we cannot circumvent them either by ‘base unions’, we must fight and defeat them to reclaim the unions as class struggle organs.

Internationalists will then see their aspirations as real possibilities; no local answers, no trade union bureaucratic sell-out deals to save capitalism; occupy, organise and strike to unite the working class nationally and internationally, then the revolutionary struggles will begin in earnest.

Down with No2 EU, workers of the world unite!

Socialist Fight PO Box 59188,
London, NW2 9LJ.
Email: Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

Socialist Fight: No support for these chauvinist, xenophobic strikes

We reprint the leaflet of the British Trotskyist group Socialist Fight opposing the recent strike wave in defence of "British Jobs for British Workers". We publish it in the interests of furthering discussion and debate between our tendencies, though we differ on some aspects of Socialist Fight analysis (see comment below leaflet).

“A trade union led by reactionary fakers organizes a strike against the admission of Negro workers into a certain branch of industry. Shall we support such a shameful strike? Of course not. But let us imagine that the bosses, utilizing the given strike, make an attempt to crush the trade union and to make impossible in general the organized self-defence of the workers. In this case we will defend the trade union as a matter of course in spite of its reactionary leadership.” Trotsky 1939

Socialist Fight (SF) unequivocally opposes the current ‘wildcat’ strikes because they were called on the reactionary basis of ‘British jobs for British workers’ (BJ4BW), it was on this xenophobic basis they were spread, with the assistance of the right wing media and on this basis they were tacitly endorsed by the entire Unite and GMB leaderships. We place the blame for this situation squarely on the backs of the reactionary Labour movement leaders; Gordon Brown and the Labour party leaders for endorsing the reactionary slogan, borrowed from the BNP, the Unite, GMB and other TU leaderships for tacitly endorsing and pursuing negotiations on that basis. A major weight of responsibility also rests on the shoulders of those left groups and organisations, the Communists Party of Britain (CPB), the Socialist Party of England and Wales and others who have acted as left apologists for these bureaucratic misleaders of the working class. When similar demands were made on the French TU leadership they immediately rejected them as reactionary chauvinism and insisted on the demands like ‘we will not pay for the bankers/capitalism’s crisis’.

We reject the compromise of Keith Gibson of the Lindsey strike committee and the SPEW. This does not repudiate the original BJ4BWs demands, which were displayed so openly on the pickets. It is rather a cover for it, hoping we will forget, or close our eyes, to what it is really about. Gibson says that “Stewards and Union Officials asked to meet with IREM a.s.a.p. after Christmas to clarify the proposal i.e. would IREM employ British labour?” Then it explains that the walkout took place when “Shaws’ workforce were told by the Stewards that IREM had stated they would not be employing British labour.” (rb on SU Blog 3 Feb) He admits here that the initial walkout was about the nationality of the workforce, not about wages, conditions or any of the other red herrings he and his apologists have been trying to drag across the trail ever since.

The SP motion, now the property of the strike committee and the mass meeting, but not the property of the Unite leadership – Simpson, Woodley or Jerry Hicks – says “Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available”. That is simply BJ4BWs in another form. We reject the notion that “Union control of hiring is always preferable to the bosses controlling hiring. Enforcing an illegal closed shop would be a massive advance for the working class movement in this country”. On what basis would the union nominate people for jobs? The only issue that may be in question is equal access to jobs, but that is down to the subcontracting system itself, not nationality. When socialist in British trade unions fought discrimination against nationalists in the north of Ireland they were always referred back to the Irish Region (Region 11, Northern Ireland in the case of the TGWU). Here, in the best workers’ traditions, Loyalist craft engineering unions (like we have here), with all the history of privilege and empire loyalty had contempt for other workers and ensured they (nationalists) did not get to join the craft unions and did not get jobs.

Discrimination proceeded swimmingly, all in the name of the best trade union practices, the power of the unions was consolidated and the NI 'troubles' ensued. This ‘union control’ is only a demand for 'local' communalist discrimination; the predecessor of the SPEW in Ireland was quite comfortable with that. And British and Irish based union leaders turned their heads away and pretended they just did not see. In a certain sense this demand is more reactionary than national chauvinism; presumable workers from the south of England, Wales and Scotland, let alone Ireland, would quickly be sent packing by our ‘local’ TU registrar of jobs.

As one comrade said, “But the SPEW states that it is the bosses who are setting one nationality against another. Yes but why play the same game? It is the BNP, say the SPEW, who are attempting to sever fraternal relations between workers from different nations, but the SPEW want union control of a register of locally skilled workers presumably to facilitate local jobs for local people. Some are trying to find socialist gold under this militant dross of nationalism. But that seems like an attempt at alchemy’ (BB). You cannot endorse the strikes and repudiate the aims, they are the same. If you endorse and seek to spread these strikes you are dealing a crippling blow to the British Labour movement.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Workers Power (WP) and SF are not siding with the Gov/bosses. The line-up is clear. The strikes have the enthusiastic support of the BNP, they have the support of the capitalist media, more enthusiastic the more you move to the right. The TU bureaucracy as a whole who would scarcely lift a finger to fight job losses or pay constraints while countless billions are handed over to bankers almost without conditions are enthusiastic supporters of these illegal but highly reactionary strikes.

The CPB, the SPEW and the TU bureaucracy are supporting it for entirely reactionary reasons. The bosses are 'opposed' because that is in their immediate short tern financial interests, but they are not anything like as opposed as they would be if the plant was occupied, and the right of private property was thereby challenged, as in Waterford Glass. The government are 'opposed' but really not like they would oppose a real workers action, in the long term interests of the class as an international whole, like Gate Gourmet. They are for ‘law and order’ and against ‘trouble’ in general but if they have to have ‘trouble’ they could not get better than this from their point of view. Where are the threats to sequestrate the union funds, where are the high court judges injunctions, where are the brutal police attacks? Where is the class consciousness of those who cannot see the difference? And we reject with contempt those backward workerists who say we are siding with the Tories because Kenneth Clarke made an anti-racist statement criticism of the strikers. Tory anti-racism bad, workers racism good, declare these political idiots.

It was entirely correct of the Campaign against Immigration Controls (CAIC) to picket the Unite HQ and SF endorses the action. The prejudices of localist craft trade unionists would have been easily overcome and the strike orientated in a healthy direction if it had got a lead from the top. But Unite gave them their head. Principled socialists would seek to argue and struggle politically with these workers to explain that workers cannot win in national, let alone local isolation. No, we need a rank-and-file movement in the unions to combat this. It is entirely nonsensical to talk of the form being reactionary and the content being revolutionary as if this was some kind of Marxist dialectic.

These are reactionary strikes for reactionary ends which can only win by driving foreign workers out of the country and setting in train the destruction of the entire working class and its organisations and all their historical gains. Fight them now, fight the reactionary leadership of the class who are responsible for this appalling situation or it will get worse. Do not try to find the silver lining; it is not there. They do mean what they say. If they occupied the plant and forged international solidarity that would be an entirely different strike, with entirely different leaders. To pretend otherwise is to defend the existing leaders and to prepare more defeats. This is differentiating the left in Britain; it goes to the core of class politics. Fight the reaction without reservations and you will find new revolutionists who will come forward to champion the interests of the class as an international whole.

In conclusion we quote from an Italian socialist group, the Communist Workers Party, “Our hope is that the SWP may be physically present in the struggle to denounce what is becoming a falsified reality i.e. that by which Great Britain is being occupied by foreigners, and British workers are being forced out of jobs because of them”.
Yours Ottaviano Scipione, PCL-Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori - Italy (Abruzzi Region)

• Occupy to prevent plant closures and job losses!
• For a comprehensive programme of public works, council house and infrastructure building to overcome unemployment!
• The trade unions must take responsibility for organising the unemployed now, before they fall prey to fascism!
• For a militant ‘no platforming’ of fascists combined with United Front demands on workers leaders to fight capitalism AND fascism!
• No to Popular Fronts compromises with capitalism like the Peoples Charter!
• Make the bosses and the bankers pay for the crisis – not the workers!
• For a rigorous progressive taxation system, comprehensive prevention of tax avoidance scams by transnational companies and the rich and a wealth tax to make the capitalists pay for the crisis!
• For a genuine rank-and-file movement in the trade unions to fight the bureaucratic labour lieutenants of capital who lead today’s trade unions!
• For direct employment by all firms of all labour, end the pernicious system of sub-contracting and agency working!
• For an open conference of all those political groups and individuals who oppose these reactionary strikes!
• Build a revolutionary socialist leadership to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism internationally!

Contact: Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ. Email: Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

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Socialist Fight sees the workers involved in these strikes as "craft workers" while we would see them as part of the "labour aristocracy" that benefits from the privileges of skilled workers who share in some of the super-profits of British imperialism. Labour aristocrats have history of social imperialism supporting their imperialist ruling class in return for the defence of their privileged jobs. It is the breakdown of this historic partnership as British bosses are looking for cheaper EU and other contractors employing non-British workers that explains why these workers took 'wildcat' action. The role of the 'left' bureaucracy of the Communist Party and Socialist Party is to cover the naked chauvinism of British Jobs for British Workers is part of the international left aligned to the World Social Forum and the Bolivarian revolution that brings together Stalinist, Castroists, Maoists and fake Trotskyists. The role of the 'left' bureaucracy is to use the unions to pressure the bourgeois state to the left rather than call for independent unions, occupations, and the general strike. It is the left leg of the Menshevik International aligned to "socialism in the 21st century" that has abandoned Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism and the "dictatorship of the proletariat".