Washington gauges cost of Thatcher's war

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were the CDU/CSU, who actually won over SPD voters and the "Greens" the ecological party, who in a number of areas broke the 5% barrier needed to get representatives elected. The Greens look likely to replace the FDP as the third major party:

In Hamburg, where elections took place in June, they hold the balance of power and there is a minority SPD administration, in a very strong SPD area which is Schmidt's home town.

Survey A recent survey pinpoints where the shift comes from. In 1980, 51% of people under 24 voted SPD; in recent elections only 33%. Of those shifting from the SPD to the CDU/ CSU 63% are 'professional' but as many as 25% are workers. Of those shifting from the SPD to the Greens the figures are 56% and 20% respectively.

These figures - and the results from Hamburg -show that now even the traditional working class support of the SPD is shifting to some extent. put forward positive conservative policies, rather than just the slogan of 'Safety first' At the same time, the politics of Schmidt and state governments (such as Hessen, where the SPD has used massive forces of heavily armed police to attack protestors occupying the site of new runway for Frankfurt airport) have alienated young people in particular, who have few of the traditional SPD loyalties felt by older organised workers. They see the Greens as the only. movement offering anything radical.

Expel

These pressures have found expression within the SPD itself. For a long time, the party leadership was able to expel any left wing dissidents with little opposition. In the last two years, increasingly, a left of sorts has begun to emerge in the SPD, particularly on the defence question. At the SPD Congress in April they were defeated in trying to get decision against missiles. Schmidt successfully argued for postponing FROM Britain it is difficult to form a picture of the impact of the Falklands war on Latin America, and especially on relations between the Latin American countries and the USA.

Before the war the fikelihood was that Argentine possession of the Falklands would have led to US bases on the islands as part of the knitting together of a South Atlantic Treaty Organisation (involving the USA, Argentina; Brazil, South DESPITE Latin America's dismay at US support for Britain in the Falklands conflict, Washington's relations with much of the continent may not have ing to diplomats, govern= Africa, and possibly Chile and Britain).

In the aftermath of the war things are likely to be different. But how different? US-Latin America relations are US-Latin America ruling class relations. They need each other.

Here we reprint, for the information of Socialist Organiser readers, a shortened version of a report from Mexico City by Alan Riding of the New York Times Service.

ment officials and other experts in the region.

A senior • official in Mexico said he thought the impact of the crisis on United States-Latin American relations had been exaggerated. "Yes, they have been affected. but not in a very serious way, said. "In each country, it's the bilateral relationship with Washington that really counts.".

The United States' relations with Argentina, diplomatic sources said, would remain badly scarred by the conflict, although much would depend on internal developments in Argentina and on Washington's ability to persuade London to adopt a conciliatory attitude about the Falklands.

But they argued that since most Latin governments gave more importance to their relations with Washington than those with Buenos Aires, the Falklands issue would soon fade as a major point of friction with the United States.

Despite the perception some Washington ica had lined up as a bloc with Argentina and against Britain and its US ally, reactions in Latin America were more varied and complex.

Because Argentines have never disguised their feeling of superiority over the rest of Latin. America, often boasting of pure European stock, they have generally been disliked in the region.

Many Latin officials, who in public expressed solidarity with Buenos Aires, privately hoped to see Argentine "arrogance" deflated by a humiliating defeat in the Falklands.

Even in public there was less than unanimous support for Argentina. Chile, which faces an Argentine claim to islands in the Beagle Channel near Tierra del Fuego, took a neutral stance in the war, and the Caribbean.

Brazil and Mexico, the region's largest and most influential powers, also maintained a low profile throughout the crisis and their relations with Washington have not been affected by the conflict.

The chorus of criticism of the USA from Latin America was in fact little more than a quartet comprising Venezuela, Peru, Guatemala and Panama. And, in each case, special circumstances may have been as important as direct sympathy for Argentina: Venezuela claims two-thirds of neighbouring Guyana, Peru has a longstanding territorial dispute with Chile, Guatemala claims Belize as its own, and* Panama remains sensitive to the US presence in the former canal zone.

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no.92 July

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been permanently dam- aged by the crisis, accord-