We need regular column on housing

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Boyd with henchmen Laird and Dufty Debendox in this country) tested. The study, funded hee been on the markei for by Merrell, then sungested nearly 24 "care, during done. Merrell investigated which time it has caused no further, and withheld and heart defects in child- the study from the USA ren whose mothers took it Food and Drug AdministraI AM writing this letter in the hope of getting some lively debate in the letters column of the new weekly.

There seem to me to be two crucial areas for revolutionary socialists at the moment. They are youth and 'urban problems. To a certain extent they come together in the present riots because it is the streets Which have been chosen for rebellion.

The significance of these riots cannot be overplayed. Nationwide rioting in nearly every major city in mainland Britain is something the ruling class and its political allies have not experienced for perhaps 50 or 60 years.

BIG SLEEP It is like an awakening from the big sleep, although in some respects it does reflect the weakness of organised labour. (On that same weekend Rover workers voted to accept massive redundancies).

But what are our slogans in Socialist Organiser - little more than an echoing of the left bureaucracy of certain trades unions, e.g. 'real jobs', and a front page that makes The Times look uke a comic.

At a time when many youth are rejecting the whole mentality of wageALMOST TWENTY years after the horrors of Thaidomide, the cifects of a drug prescribed to pregnant women suffering from nausea and vomiting are coming to light.

They are not unlike Thalidomide, although in this case about one per cent of women who take it in early pregnancy are affected, whereas Thalidomide affected nearly 100%. n._Jantin Iralled slavery and seeking an identity elsewhere, we completely miss the boat for the spreading of Marxist ideas, which can be presented in a readable form without destroying their essence.

The other point we are missing out is revolutionary ideas on the state. The youth more than any other section of the working class have few illusions about the benevolence or neutrality of its various forms. We should use this to get over our difference from the Benn 'statist' policies Many revolutionaries think the direction for workers' control will come from the workplace and spread into other areas.

This is a dogma. In Trotsky's writings on Germany, he points out that the initial spark for workers' control may indeed come from consumption and not production. It depends on the circumstances.

I would suggest that the direction of capitalism since the 1950s and the present areas of struggle suggest that the circumstances are such that it is the area of consumption which is ripe.

From my own experience housing is becoming an important area, whether it be fights over rent increases or urban renewal. What 1 would like to see is a regular column on housing in the paper, to break down the solation and to give a wider perspective. Also, some thought on how to build independent movements, independent of councillors.

We need to examine the ideas in the Transitional Programme over price committees and how these ideas can be brought up to date to cope with massive extension of state services into the working class.

Historically the link between residential area workplace has been very important for a revolutionary situation - the Red Clyde 1915, the Turin Councils 1919-20, more recently Free Derry. With a government which is hellbent on class war in the cities as well as the factories, we must seize the opportunity to put the socialist alternative.

D.J.WELLS, Birmingham.

P.S. on areas such as child care the paper is excellent, and a real difference to other left papers which. seem tokenistic towards this type of area. LAST WEEK'S Press Gang gave an excellent treatment of the isss raised by the Down's Syndrome child, except for one.

Mongolism is not 'more accurately known as Down's Syndrome". . It is a racist term produced by Victorian pseudo-science which sought to link Down's Syndrom with the Mongoloid/Oriental races.

The same era of 'science' busied itself with theories such as explanations of why black people and women were less intelligent than the white man.

CHEUNG SIU MING, South London.

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Avoic racist term