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united left.

Popular organisations Based initially in the east the politico-military organisations extended the areas under their control, mounted tactical engagements with government forces, assassinated leading right-wingers and ransomed western businessmen. During the 1970s in a development distinct from those in Nicaragua and elsewhere, each organisation allied itself with a mass 'popular organisation' largely comprising affliated unions linked to it by a common programme.

Thus the FPL/BPR (Revolutionary Popular Brigades) and ERP/LP-28 were established. The RN linked with FAPU and the PCS continued with its own front, the UDN.

The profound influence of developments in Nicaragua made itsell telt even before the FSLN victory.

The October 1979 junta was abandoned, first by the few leftists which had entered it, then by the PCS, and finally some of the FACED with a growing radicalisation among • its own black working class, the South African regime has not held back from its efforts to beat down black workers elsewhere on the continent.

Last week saw official acknowledgement of the fact that three white soldiers killed by Zimbabwean armed forces inside Zimbabwe were members of the South African Defence The influence of Sandinista politics was appareni in the CRM's 'Programmatic Platform for the Revolutionary Democratic Document'. This was not simply compromise document between left organisations, but it soon turned out, a reformist platform preparing for a broad front.

Reformist politicians who had left the junta set up the Salvadorean Hemocranc Front (FDS) in April 1980. Within two weeks a rally of 100,000 in San marked the establishment of a CRM-FDS alliance, the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR) on the sallit platform includes nationalisation and land reform, the language is such that Il can ve 'favourably' 'interpreted by both socialists and reformISCS Such was the opinion the time the platform was drafted, political independence was certainly to a large degree sacrificed, for example by Many mention the overthrow of capitalism socialism, favour of such catch-au pitrases 'social progress It is quite possible interpret the pontica The Force's chief, General Constand Viljoen, claimed that the men were on an 'unauthorised mission' to free political detainees from a camp in southern Zimbabwe.

But they are not the only South African soldiers operating outside their own borders. From their bases in occupied Namibia, troops from the apartheid regime have waged repeated interventions into southern Angola, striking heavy

on the streets of Britain

strategy of the Platform - whatever the intention of certain parties to it - is a capitalist reconstruction, with state control of certain sectors, and • democratic reforms.

This is what the governments of France and Mexico, and the social democratic Second International of which the Labour Party is an affiliate support, and this is doubtless the message conveyed to them by the reformist overseas emissaries of the FDR such as Ungo.

Their hope is for a negotiated settlement to the war which will leave these leaders' in control. *The Long War concludes blows at the nationalist MPLA regime.

The South Africans have supplemented their own interventions by training and sponsoring counterrevolutionary guerillas of the so-called 'National Union for the Total Independence of Angola', or UNITA.

UNITA's leader Jonas Savimbi has just been explicitly unmasked as an agent of the Portuguese fascist regime in its struggle against the liberation forces of the MPLA in the early 1970s.

Savimbi

Documents just released to the Portuguese press reveal Savimbi reporting to that this is an extremely unlikely outcome.

It is not possible to gauge the actual political balance in the FDR within El Salvador. It is in any event Dunkerley's view that for the left organisations to break publicly from the reformists and leave the FDR would be a catastrophe in the middle of the war. This may be right. What is certain is that solidarity action in Britain should have a socialist orientation whatever the 'public' FDR politics.

As James Dunkerley argues in his conclusion, the 19 million people of El Salvador, Nicaragua The long arm of apartheid intervention has aiso been seen in the abortive coup attempt in the Seychelles last November, in which the mercenaries involved were members of an elite South African army unit supplied with weapons by the Defence Force.

In a period in which economic crisis will prompt growing instability in black Africa, we can expect such interventions by the capitalist rulers of South Africa to intensify: the answer must be international action by the workers' movement in solidarity with the black proletariat in struggle against repression and exploitation. Honduras,* Guatamala and Costa Rica share similar societies and economies. In escalating its actions in defence of its own interests, US capital respects no borders.

We should recognise tọo that the 'balkanisation' of Central America, which serves imperialism well, is based on administrative and church divisions of the Spanish empire, reimposed after the collapse in 1841 of the Federal Central American Republic.

Regional conflict

Unlike the social democratic leaders in Europe, the US government has concluded that it cannot defend its interests and at the same time concede the most basic democratic and economic demands in El Salvador, or in neighbouring Guatemala, because to do so would threaten uncontrollable anti-imperialist developments.

For the workers and peasants of El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American states, the only prospect of imposing and defending even such basic demands is the building of their own leadership independent of reformist and Stalinist misleaders, during the struggle against their

Solidarity

Socialists in Britain should redouble efforts in opposition to the Reagan/ Thatcher strategy of increasing military intervention. The removal of the Tory government from office would be the greatest act of solidarity with the struggle in El Salvador. We should demand the reversal of the US policy of increasing invasion Central America and the Caribbean.

We should cạl)

Nicaragua, Cuba, the USSR and other workers states to provide arms and other concrete aid to the struggles of workers and peasants in Central America; in the face of US intervention, their failure to do so threatens the gains made in both Cuba and Nicaragua. We should campaign for trade union blacking of trade with El Salvador and all reactionary Latin American dictatorships. We should organise public meetings and demonstrations in support of these demands, and affiliate to the El Salvador Solidarity Campaign in Britain.