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the military authorities at no moment threatened the strike leaders. The police and army kept out of the way, and Wednesday passed practically without incident"

"The union leaders" , say: INDIA'S SECOND largest city, Bombay, is paralysed by a general strike.

The general strike was triggered by a police-force strike. The police want better wages, allowances, and conditions. The government won't budge. So half the 25,000 Bombay policemen struck.

When the government the Financial Times, "were reported to have been promised by President Reynaldo Bignone on Wednesday night that the Government would formally repeal legislation restricting union activity...

«On Wednesday morning President Bignone appeared to have opted for a de facto lifting of the ban"

Union leaders are also discussing pay with the military government.

These events reflect both the weakening of the military regime caused by defeat in the Falklands war, and the pressure of a deep economic crisis forcing the working class into struggle.

Le Monde gives the following figures: In six years of the military regime, living standards have fallen by almost two thirds, and there was a fall of about 20% in the first half of this year.

"An unskilled • worker earns on average a bit more than 50 dollars a month. According to the official institute of statistics, the minimum income necessary to purchase the contents of the 'housewife's shopping basket' is 124 dollars.

Meat

"The rise in the cost of living was particularly sharp in July... A revealing fact: meat consumption went down almost 50% in July by comparison with the average of the three previous months"

Gross national product fell 7% in the first half of According to the Guardian and the Financial Times, internal dissent in the armed forces is running high. Some groups of officers are pushing for more traditional Peronist-type economic policies - nationalist, protectionist, populist, stallst - as against the orientation towards foreign capital and free-market economics pursued since 1976. (The chances, in present circumstances, of such a shift in policy curing anything much, must be slim).

Others have less radical politics but want a more complete purge of the senior commanders involved in the Falklands defeat.

The Guardian concludes: "it may be only a matter of weeks before President Bignone follows General Galtieri into anonymity"

For the Argentine working class, the question is whether it can equip itself with a socialist programme to take advantage of its rulers' disarray - or whether it will once again be prey to the bourgeois demagogues of Peronism.

Committee for Human Rights in Argentina: c/o 29 Islington Park Street, London N1 9QB.

Newsletter subscription £3 per year. The "Committee against the War' . organised a 5,000 strong demonstration in the main streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday 7th. It called for immediate withdrawal of the Israeli army from Lebanon, and Israel, Palestine, two states for two peoples.

It was a joint demonstration of the left, layers of the intelligentsia, and Arabs from the occupied territorSharon and Begin Conference views with horror the elecuon of Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Falangist Party, to the Presidency of Lebanon and notes that it is no coincidence that a fascist president was elected as the PLO started leaving Beirut. Conference condemns the forced evacuation of the Palestinian guerillas from Beirut whilst the Israeli troops are free to impose their will politically and militarily on the Lebanon.

Conference believes that it is the Israeli troops that should immediately and unconditionally withdraw, not the Palestinians, who driven into •the were Lebanon by the Zionists 34 years ago. ies, mostly mobilised by the Communist Party.

The "Peace Now' movement broke a month of silence about the war to hold a 2,000 strong torchlight demonstration in Jerusalem, on August 5. The first speaker, an ex-general, however, denounced the Lo and rejected the idea of a 'split with the government. The Labour Committ ee on Palestine is circulating this draft emergency resolution for Labour Party conference Israel, through mass destruction of towns and cities of Lebanon and the enormous loss of life this has entailed, has been rewarded for its aggression with the departure of the main armed force of the Left, namely the PLO.

State

Conference is opposed to any state based on religious racial supremacy and calls for a democratic and secular state of Palestine as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. Conference supports the right of the Palestinians to return to their homeland.

Conference is opposed to the confessional + structure of the Lebanon, with its Maronite supremacy.