Whose Army? That Sl Whose Whose Defence?

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= SOCIALISM:&, THE IMPERTA LISTIC WILLO THE WISP.

SOCIALIST PARTY TO THE BRITISH WORKMAN " If you follow that work waiting to be done at home on solid growid!" AS Tories and top generals bicker about the allocatinn of innraacad defence LULL UL LILIFODOU MLIVIANT spending in the wake of the Falklands war, Labour leaders have not been able to resist offering them some advice and solidarity.

Shadow defence secretary John Silkin has backed the naval lobby. The government's strategy, he complains:

"Does not actually defend us and doesn't adequately defend NATO either... We need to be a strong maritime power if we are to play our part in defending our country and NATO. It is still of the utmost importance to be able to have sufficient sea power with air cover to send a fleet half-way across the world."

(on Radio 4 ''Today" June 21)

Silkin is perhaps the most clumsily outspoken, but far from the only, Labour leader to take up this debate.

The start of the war brought a succession of labour movement figures arguing that it proves that the Trident missile system would not have been any use - and that therefore there should be a shift of resources from costly largescale nuclear weaponry to smaller "conventional" units.

And with a question mark hanging over the future of Britain's naval dockyards - involving the jobs of thousands workers - union leaders too have joined in the debate on the structure of British "defence"

TGWU official Mick Martin, ( for instance, secretary of the trade union side of the Defence Shipbuilding Trades Joint Council, has argued that the Falklands crisis proves that Britain cannot afford to run down its conventinal navy.

But all such discussion on defence policy leaves out the main issues. WHO is being defended? Against WHOM?

Why, should Thatcher's viciously anti-working class government in Britain be allowed - let alone encouraged - to dispatch any ships, planes or weapons to wage war half way around the world?

Thatcher has used the Falklands war to try to reassert the armed might of British imperialism as a force to intimidate the peoples of the "Third World' countries in the Southern hemisphere.

Now the Tories want a strengthened Navy and air force to enable them to do - or threaten - even more of the came thinn and ul bie same villig, auu establish a real, longterm military base on the Falklands: and Silkin ION WORK wants to help them!

The British army has been at war every year since 1945 - and not once could it be said to have been defending the British people.

Jn Kenya, Cyprus, Aden and now in Ireland it has waged wars against oppressed peoples fighting to free themselves from imperialism — against the allies of the British working class.

And its other main actions have been directly against the British working class itself, in strikes. These have been limited so far. But top army commanders openly state that the main use of the British army in coming years will be for civil war, not awar against other powers.

Vur enemy: Is to be found at home- the capitalist class of industrialists and bankers; the Tory INCREA CAPITANTY BARLON IMPERIALISM HOUSTRIAL SLAVERT HOMES POR THE PEOPLE FOGO FOR THE CHILDREN THE UNEMPLOYED AND you'll only sink in deeper, e Besides Lusted he government which acts for them politically; and the state machinery, courts, police and armed forces, which uphold their rule and authority.

Any serious development of mass working class struggle in Britain will see these mechanisms for the "defence" of the capitalist state used as a means of attacking the workers' movement.

So what, then, should be the response of the labour movement to this talk of defence? One apparently very democratic approach has been spelled out recently by Peter Tatchell, Labour's non-endorsed candidate for Bemondsey. He argues that: •Though I support nuclear disarmament, 1 am not a pacifist. As much as I abhor war, I would be prepared to fight to defend Britain if we were attacked by a foreign aggressor...

"One ... non-nuclear alternative to the present policies is a strategy of territorial defence by a mass citizen's army."

Pointing out that such a policy would raise no danger of being utilised for aggressive purposes, and offer effective defence against invasion, Tatchell goes on to claim that:

•The civilianisation of the armed forces entailed by a mass citizen's army would facilitate greater democratic control of military power. It would lessen the possibility that the armed forces could ever seize power in a coup This of course has a certain truth and charm to it: but it is when Tatchell describes his proposed means of getting to this point that the weakness is exposed: "Of course a citizen's army could only be created in the context of a long overdue democratisation of the armed forces...

This renders the proposal simultaneously abstract and utopian.

It is one thing to take up or support demands for democratic rights for rank and file soldiers - while recognising the difficulty of mobilising around such demands in a professional rather than a conscript army.

It is quite another to cling to the illusion that the standing army - a backbone of the capitalist state - can be "democratised" effectively out of existence and peacefully transformed from an instrument of repression into a mass democratic body incapable of attacking the working class.

Tatchell is plainly sincere in his advocacy of a nonaggressive defence policy: but despite the fact that he is hounded by the right wing for advocacy of "extra parliamentary" politics he has failed = we think -to grasp the nature of the capitalist state itself, and the need for mass nroletarian

to smash

state.

We can, of course, go along with the call for a mass citizen's army: we too stand for the arming of the working class. But in today's conditions it is important to see that this is counterposed to the existing standing army, not the result of peaceful reforms within it.

Rather than seeking legislative changes through parliament and hoping for pressures for democratic reforms inside the armed forces, socialists must recognise the need to take up now the fight for policies and action which will lead towards the policy of a mass popular army as part of the struggle for a revolutionary workers' government.

Let us start from the problem of defending the working class and its most oppressed sections.

How can black communities defend themselves against racist and fascist violence? Should they wait for the police to act, or look forward to a mass citizen's army?

Immediate

No, the task is an immediate one. Defence of black people can only come from the formation of workers' defence squads, drawing the most militant blacks, together with the best forces from the organised labour movement to form independent bodies that will drive the fascists off the streets.

This same lesson holds good for the workers' movement. Jobs, living standards, working conditions and social services must be defended against the employers' offensive. This calls for mass action in which unions must be defended against the legal attacks waged by Tebbit and Prior, and against the vinlent assaulte of nalino ATTATARA anti-picket squads.

Such defence of the working class again calls InT workers fair indonandant

detachments, defence

squads to protect picket lines and mass meetings.

To defeat the Tory government requires more than piecemeal struggles: it requires all-out general strike action in which we as workers organise collecour own control over emergency services and essential supplies, and to defend ourselves against state harassment and attack.

Disband army

From such local groupings the workers' movement must establish its own militia, an organised challenge to the centralised military power of the capitalist class and its state machine.

The toppling of the Tory government must be followed not by a return to the Parliamentary charade of Labour governments this century but by the fight for a workers' government which will be answerable to the workers' movement and set out to disband the capitalist standing army and nationalise the major industries, banks and trusts without compensation under workers' management.

The moment such policies were put forward would mark the time when this country became our country - not the country of our main enemies, our ruling class -for us to defend against external aggression.

And we should do so with a workers' army, a mass people's militia firmly under the control of the labour movement.

In contrast to the capitalist standing army, based on separating off an armed force from the rest of society and training it in rigid, mindless discipline to make working class recruits the bliable tools of the Thro AVAJ top brass, such a militia would be integrated with and controlled by the unrlin rlace cammunitica HARRY SLOAN rais- HARf es some questions es son that should be asked by La by Labour's leaders after 1 after the Falklands War war It would be based on universal military training and election of officers.

In contrast to the capitalist standing army's glorification of violence and military values, the people's militia would base itself on discussion and education about exactly what must be defended and how.

Instead of preaching the mindless patriotism of "my country, right or wrong" " the people's militia would see itself as first and foremost a force for the liberation struggle of working people internationally. It would defend Britain against reactionary enemies - but central to such defence would be ottering clear proof to the workers' movement on a world scale that the British workers' government was an anti-imperialist government which would immediately withdraw troops from reland, the Falklands and every other colonial outpost.

It would pledge material and political assistance to every struggle against imperialist oppression.

The struggle must certainly begin now. But it must focus not on 'democratising' the imperialist armed forces but building our answer - mass working class action, for workers' defence.

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riteback CORRECT TO CARTOON THATCHER con - cougn ine grosser page cartoon - based excesses of the Falklands upon linking Thatcher to war could mark a new a giotesque Britannia Organiser no.90 1100Deas S.0, We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words.

Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28, Middle Lane. London N8. rUSSIBLY It Is a sign of political progress that the old stock images and symbols of British imperialism are no longer readily recognised, and are less widely utilised by the capitalist class. ...Ths does not mean of course that there is less imperialist propaganda: rather that it tends to be slightly less brash and brazen in its presentad: ... 4 La 1 11. - period regression in this respect.

However, it is clear that what used to be the familiar daily sight of Britannia, the armed female figurehead of British nationhood who appeared on the back of the old large penny piece, no longer rings a bell with many men, women and young people today.

And probably for this reason the recent SO front figure rowing a dead body across the ocean towards the rising sun of a General Election - appears to have incurred more anger at its alleged 'sexism' than examination of its politics among your correspondents.

This criticism seems to be wide of the mark. The cartoon is plainly not just an attempt to portray Thatcher as a woman; how in that case could the Britannia headgear be explained? Nor is it an attempt to deny that both Thatcher and Britannia are female figures standing for the armed might of British imperialism.

Correspondents have claimed that the figure has grossly enlarged breasts: I do not think this is true -part of the immediate impact of the cartoon.

It may not be the world's greatest. example of caricature indeed facially the figure is to my mind much more like Mr. Punch than Margaret Thatcher! — but I think the cartoon is a serious attempt to depict a situation in which the Thatcher government is plainly hoping to

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