[Back page, page 2 and page 15 for…]

Scan page 1

Back page, page 2 and page 15 for the advantages possession the Falklands adventure to and Galterd Thatcher hypocritically talked of her concern for the violated rights of the Falklanders, brutally seized by the armies of a foreign military dictatorship.

Nationalism

The ruling junta wrapped itself in Argentine nationalism and Foreign Minister Costa Mendes. who had recently been negotiating with the USA, Britain, South Africa and Brazil for the cattino un of a Sonth Atlan_ tic Treaty Organisation (with military bases in the Falklands), and had been talking of sending Argentine troons MMMU to help put down the guerrillas in El Salvador, now emerged as a passionate antiCant and hypocrisy on both sides. The rights of the Falklanders are important and so is the struggle against imperialism. But Thatcher is the bloody oppressor of Northern Ireland's Catholics. Galtieri's Junta is the organiser since the 1976 coup of large-scale increase in imperialist investment in the exploitation of Argentine Thatcher and Galtieri are Galtieri's Junta started FIGHT REPORTS AND COMMENT strike had been called for the beginning of April). It was a bold attempt to harness the political tiger of Peronist chauvinism to haul the floundering Junta out of the mud of Argentine economic chaos and social disintegration. Only victory would have made that possible. Now there are riots in Buenos Aires and the hunt is on for the "National traitors", The defeat is a crippling blow to the military caste which it cannot survive for long. A writer in the Financial Times puts it like this:

.. the military as a caste have failed the country in a contest that they themselves chose . : • those military values which generals said for generations gave them the right to interfere in any and all aspects of Argentine life, are in 1982 lying ruins"

A restoration of civilian rule is now unavoidable, peacefully or otherwise. The military caste, shaken if not shattered in its prestige, in its political, moral and national authority, and perhaps even in its grip on he Army's conscripts, will )e less capable of "intervening" in politics for some EL time to come, and for a long time.

Mrs Thatcher's comeuppance won't be long delayed either. Dockers on strike against Tebbit's anti-union laws and miners on sympathetic strike for the health workers' claim -these are the signs of a real revival of working class militancy. The brief patriotic splurge has changed nothing basic for the Tories.

In no sense is this a victory for the British working class. In no sense is it ă defeat for the Argentine working class. This unnecessary, irrelevant and fruitless war was a runng class stunt and diversion on both sides.

Now the cornered Junta talk of continuing the war. And Thatcher raves about making the Falklands into a British fortress in the area.

We urgently need the unity or Argentine and British workers to fight against any attempt to continue the diversion by either side.

The TUC and the Argentine unions should immediately meet to try to work out a joint common working class policy on the Falklands and to bring about reconciliation between the Argentine and British peoples.