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vador junta weakened fared with the prospect of certified the junta's respect simply fail The company's response was a significant shift from their claim that the strike was over.

Obviously concerned at the potential effects of such a strengthening of SAAWU's action; management offered to take back the strikers as vacancies arose, on condition they joined the company's Sweet Workers Union.

A mass meeting of SAAWU completely rejected this, and reiterated their demand for unconditional reinstatement of their workers, recognition of SAAWU and an end to victimisation and state harassment. • Victory for the workers at Rowntrees is crucial, since SAAWU is spearheading the struggle in South Africa for trade union rights.

Strength If Rowntrees workers are defeated and the alliance between East London employers, the South African state and the sham independent" Ciskei authorities succeeds in smashing SAAWU, the struggle i for independent trade unions outside the reactionary TUCSA (Trade Union Congress of South Africa) would be a massive setback for black workers in South Africa.

Last week; SAAWU's offices were closed down by the South African and Ciskei * 200 authorities. The mobilisation of the strength of the organised labour movement in Britain is urgent.

Small beginnings towards this were made at a meeting last Saturday 6 February, of Anti-Apartheid Rowntree Activists. They supported a resolution adopted by the Rowntree Mackintosh Joint Cratt Shop Stewards meeting at York last month, which calls for a TUC-convened conference of all shop stewards and officials of all the unions organising in Rowntrees to hear a representative from SAAWU and discuss the ways they can assist.

Workers should pass resolutions on the same lines in the relevant trade union branches (TGWU, GMWU, USDAW, AUEW, EETPU, UCATT).

The meeting also called for an investigation into the shipment of Lecythin from the UK to Rowntrees in South Africa with a view to organising blacking.

Anti-Apartheid will also produce a broadsheet in conjunction with Rowntrees shop stewards. This can be used as an agitational and educational weapon to inform workers at the Rowntree-Mackintosh plants in the UK and their suppliers such as Metal Box and British Oxygen to provide a network of support.

The possibility of international action through the ISFTU and IUF and their affiliated. unions will be investigated.

The meeting deferred a decision to organise jointly with the TUC a week of action (when trade unions could black all movement of Rowntree's products) and a York where Rowntrees have their headquarters.

These positive moves towards real class solidarity by the meeting was despite attempts by the Anti-Apartheid Executive to go instead for a consumer boycott of Rowntrees. Such a policy would be a dangerous diversion away from international action by the workers' movement-the only source of victory.

Unfortunately the decisions of the meeting have yet to go to the AAM's National Committee. Socialist Organiser supporters should raise these policies for labour movement action in their local AAM groups, and ensure AAM mobilises for them. ERNA OVER THE last two weeks substantial advances by the guerrillas of the FMLN have brought the national liberation struggle in El Salvador to a critical phase in which the Duarte junta and Washington find themselves of policy is needed in the TGWU and other unions.

Yet it took an SO supporter who works. at Rowntrees three months to obtain information on the South African Rowntrees dispute from his union, the AUEW (bureaucracy in action!) The TUC International Department have urged Basnett of the GMWU and Evans of the TGWU to put maximum pressure on the parent company Rowntree-Mackintosh to reinstate the locked out workers and recognise SAAWU.

It's the task of Anti-Apartheid and socialists to inform workers here of the repression of workers in South Africa so that solidarity action is organised.

the brospect of defeat in the civil war.

The FMLN has broken the year-long military stalemate by consolidating its hold on the key provinces of Chalatenango and Morazan and launching fresh offensives in regions where its presence was previously slight -Usulutan in the south and Sonsonate in the west.

The FMLN now has firm control over a quarter of the national territory, and in many regions the army only maintains a precarious hold by supplying its isolated garrisons by air. Its depleted forces are incapable of fielding more than one major operation and are increasingly being forced onto the defensive.

Lying

There was no more striking example of this than the destruction, a fortnight ago, of the bulk of the Salvadorean airforce stationed at llopango, 14 miles from the capital. Without air power the regime is gravely weakened in a war. Where there are no clear lines and mobility is all-important.

The success of the FMLN attack had severe repercussons in Washington, coming a lew days after Reagan's unparallelled. display of hypocrisy and lying when he AN open air rally of 100 people held in Edinburgh on February heard Ron Brown MP and Robin Cook MP condemn the torture, executions and general repression being carried out by the Khomeini regime in It was the first event to be carried out by the Iran Solidarity (Scotland) and as such proved quite success. ful.

The rally provided .. a very effective visual as well as vocal display and many people were attracted to it to sign a petition against the Iranian government.

Messages of solidarity were given by the Turkey Solidarity Campaign and the El Salvador Solidarity Camcertified the junta's respect for human rights a day after the massacre of nearly 800 civilians by the National Guard appeared in the press.

The destruction of the airforce and the FMLN's advances meant that much of the proposed $55 million of US aid will have to be spent on replenishing the dictatorship's dwindling stock of weaponry.

The adminstration's crisis-ridden anti-communist crusade in Central America relies upon a degree of consensus not just to its objectives but also over its means; this it is manifestly losing. The opposition in Congress differs not one jot from Reagan on the need 'to crush communism'; it is increasingly frightened that the tactics being used will mammi. ........... paign, emphasing the links between the regimes of all three countries.

In his wind-up speech the chairperson took special care to point out the non-exclusive, non-sectarian nature of the campaign. This was shown by the decision not to make support for the National Council of Resistance of the Mjoaheddin and Bani-Sadr a condition of support for Iran Solidarity.

IS (Scotland) will now be furthering its attempt to build support within the Scottish labour movement and working towards a fringe meeting of the Scottish Conference of the Labour Party which will be held jointly with the Turkish Solidarity Committee.

by Santiago Fortin simply fail with disastrous regional consequences.

This fear has now entered the government itself, with the State Department hawks (Haig and Enders) continuing to lurch towards direct intervention with a jingoistic glee while Weinberger and the Pentagon start to back off such a course. They fearwith good reason-that support for the dictatorship without any fallback measure in negotiations with the reformists in the FLMNFDR will land them in the same situation as in Nicaragua in 1979.

We urge readers to ensure that their union branches and Labour Parties affiliate to the El Salvador Solidarity Campaign, 29 Islington Park Street, London N1.

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