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sayıng goes, ao as tne Foreign Minister NIcanor ot Non-Aligned. Romans do" . And when in Costa Mendez put on a tries. Havana, it makes good hastily-borrowed "anti- Costa Mendez was sense to pander to the imperialist" outfit hired ing for a motion of sul sensibilities of Fidel from a local political. for Argentina in its Castro's Stalinist regime. costumiers for his June 3 with British impr So it was little surprise speech to a ministerial ism. But he realised "IF the country has a left government, the role of the SAC is to destabilise the regime by actions of infiltration and intimidation going as far as violence , an official French Parliamentary report concluded last week.

tune ''WHEN in Rome" the "61The SAC, now in discredit after internal feuds and killings last year, was set up in 1959 by de Gaulle. it provides stewards for Gaullist politicians, policemen, strong-arm men, criminals, and ultra rightwing militants in a mafia providing the French bourgeoisie with an alternative armed fist to the Harry Sloan reviews change operation of military chiefs over asks how deep it rea find that Argentine AT: official state forces.

The commission reports, 'About 10 or 15% of the members are police ... It is certain that the presence within the police of numerous SAC militants has allowed that movement to nip in the bud any proceedings likely to affect the association or any of its members ... the political quicl Ily went.

meeting of the Move: ment ounlookpport war erialthat And it quotes a retired police officer explaining why for a long while the RG (French equivalent of the Special Branch) seemed to know nothing about the SAC.

"M. Frey (interior minister 1962-65, and a member of the SAC) said that there was no point giving him reports on the movement to which he belonged, since he knew much more about it than the RG did."

the bloody record of the Argentine junta was such as to cause profound embarrassment even in the motley gathering of bourgeois reactionaries, petty bourgeois populists and Stalinist bureaucrats which makes up the "Non Aligned Movement"

Like a loud fart in a public library, the intrusion of the undisguised politics of one of the participants in the Non Aligned charade would have been a natural but inexcusable breach of etiquette.

Luckily there were friends on hand — heads of delegations from some African and Asian states -to tip Costa Mendez the wink. He came prepared with a speech ringing with apparently fervent and well-rehearsed anti-imperialism.

Pride

He began by a curtsey in the direction of the Cuban regime - "pride of the Caribbean.

He went on to sound off against "colonialism" and "imperialism"'. He claimed affinity with the struggle against apartheid, the struggles of the Palestinians, and warning of the danger of "a new neocolonial system" if Britain should win the war.

Yet Costa Mendez is no guerrilla fighter against imperialism: he is Foreign Minicter ronrocontino nne VALL of the most bloodstained and reactionary military regimes in Latin America.

The Argentina junta is no opponent of imperialism: from its rise to power it has hoen an instrument nf imperialist control over the working masses of Latin The massive slaughter, torture and imprisonment of the junta's political opponents - over 15,000 ot whom have "disappeared" since the military crackdown of 1976 - has been precisely the repression of those revolutionaries and trade unionists who were genuine opponApartheid movement. Socialist Organiser and AAM members of USDAW need to ensure it is carried out.

Meanwhile the Rowntree strike is over. There are no picket lines. Half of the SAAWU strikers are in jail. The rest have been banished to the Ciskei homeland, where there are no jobs.

SAAWU's entire leadership are in jail, including president Thozamile Gqweta, vice-president Fisa Nijikelana, and general sectetary Sam Kikine, who face trial for their lives, charged in May 1982 under South Africa's notorious catch-all ents of imperialism, seeking a workers' government and socialist policies which would free Argentine workers from imperialist exploitation at the hands of the banks, multinationals and partly-owned companies.

In recognition of this work done by the Junta, British imperialism had continued to develop trade and extend credit: and the Reagan regime (ending Carter's "human rights" charade) had re-established military links.

The Argentine junta is a keen supporter of savage pro-imperialist military regimes in Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

And , Argentine troops have only recently been in the field fighting the anti-imperialist FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador, and training the state forces of the savagely pro-imperialist regime in Honduras.

That Costa Mendez' "anti-imperialism" was purely cosmetic is therefore self-evident. But in the context of the 'Non Aligned Movement" , cosmetic anti-imperialism is easily enough.

After all, its ranks include representatives of the Spanish imperialist monarchy, the Indonesian dictatorship, the savagely repressive regimes of Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, the despotisms of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and (until he was toppled hur an unmannerly mace CALI • ALALALIN movement) the "Movement' even boasted the Shah of Iran!

None of these representatives are likely to probe too deeply for evidence that the new anti-imnerial. ist rhetoric would be transformed into practice: some of them would certainly prefer that it wasn't!

So, of course, the resolution moved by Costa Mendez sailed through the conterence - and into tne special oblivion reserved for the various scraps of paper emerging from the "Non Aligned Movement"

All this is unremarkable. But what is surprising is the leaders now on trial.

recently issued by South Africa's Department of Manpower Utilisation to employers on how to break the power of SAAWU.

A programme of solidarity should include:

* messages of support, * shop stewards committee's protests to management, * sympathy strike action and blacking where appropriate, opening company books to show their links with South Africa, and the that some comrades who would regard themselves as Trotskyists have wound up not simply accepting Costa Mendez' speech at face value, but actually promoting it as evidence of a change of heart by the Argentine junta.

Mary-Alice Waters of the American Socialist Workers Party was in Havana at the time of the Non-Aligned meeting. Her report of the proceedings has since been featured by the swr and MITT --1 in Socialist Challenge, which reflects the views of the British International Marxist Group.

She describes Costa Mendez' speech as 'the high point" of the conference. With a mind-boggling naivete (or irremediable cynicism) she proclaims that:

'Ten months ago [Argentina's] military government was playing a central role in US imperialism's war against the peoples of Central America and the Caribbean. Today that same military junta is being forced to turn to the oppressed and exploited the world over including Cuba and Nicaragua to appeal for support and solidarity against a powerful Anglo-US economic and military oppression."

This is doubly ridiculous: not only has the Argentine junta maintained its savage repression of the Argentine. "oppressed and exnloited" . but it has not turned to the we w masses 'the world over" simply to their repressive, reactionary and bureaucratic rulers in the Non-Aligned Movement Waters admits that only by emphasising "Argentina's common bond with the other semi-colonial countries" could Costa Mendez get away with it at all.

'Costa Mendez' uncomprumsing speten maut i manminina annanh mada it nearly impossible for those delegations which were resisting adoption of a critical, anti-imperialist stance, to hide behind the excuse of the Argentine African regime, * a fight against secret diplomacy, to uncover the imperialist links and deals with South Africa.

National Anti-Apartheid demonstration Saturday July 3, 1.30pm, Heworth Green (by Monkgate roundabout), YORK AAM factsheet on the Wilson-Rowntree dispute - 5p per copy plus postage from AAM, 89 Charlotte St, London W1 junta's reactionary, pro-imperialist policies.

She offers an extended quotation from the speech (which is reprinted in full, without criticism in Intercontinental Press, the international journal of the 'United Secretariat'), and concludes that:

'Costa Mendez' words had the impact intended."

It is unlikely Costa Mendez fooled any of the delegates. But he certainly fooled the SWP and the IMG - who now apparently believe that Argentina has moved firmly into the ranks of "anti-imperialist" regimes.

Such a standpoint is both deluded and misleading. It fails to grasp the partial nature of the Argentine conflict with imperialism. It refuses to point out the cynical motivation of the Argentine junta's initial invasion of the Malvinas.

It fails to expose the meaningless play-acting of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement in which dictators and exploiters posture as "anti-imperialists" while Stalinists manoeuvre for diplomatic advantage.

And, in giving quite spurious progressive • . anti-imperialist" credentials to the junta, such a position can only politicall!

disarm the Argentine workers whose prime task remains now as before to organise their own power for the overthrow of the military regime and estab- militor, ronima and octahlishment of a workers"

government.

The IMG had until now insisted that their position of defence of Argentina in the war did not mean supnot to the Maline into But the SWP attitude the Costa Mendez speech.

which the IMG echo. certainly throws this into question.

This would not be the first occasion on which the supposed "anti-imperialism" of a bourgeois regime was seized upon by the USFI as a basis for extending its political support: but it would perhaps be the least excusable.

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Playing the non-aligned

the Argentine recent weeks, and

The campaign is made more urgent by guidelines