Dear S.0, Why oppose these plans?

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anent revolution and Ireland evidence.

We just cannot tell Scargili to 'pull miners behind' South Wales, they have to be convinced of the necessity of solidarity action. For all their cohesiveness and militancy, mining communities are often introspective. The union has always been plagued by sectionalism.

The present disunity is partly due to the insidious productivity deal pushed through against the miners' wishes by Gormley, the NCB and the Judiciary.

This has turned "rich" miners in areas like the Midlands against their South Wales workmates. This division has been exploited by the NCB's Coal News which has promised Midlands areas a rosy future.

Therefore the ballot result is not only due to the leaders who did make a mistake. We must bear in mind the sectionalism and frightening spectacle of closures of other industries in mining areas.

For instance the tragic steel closures in mining areas like Scotland, the North East and Wales must have made miners think twice about the prospect of a successful fight.

I hope these points will help us understand the state of the NUM so that together we can reverse the recent setbacks.

Yours fraternally, MARTIN HOARE Bridgend ship as meaning that 'correct' leadership can automatically, always, and at will, generate and win struggles, is to crudify it impermissibly.

I think we need more careful and detailed argument before we can denounce Scargill's retreat.

Martin Thomas Islington So whilst I would agree with comrade Collins that what is required in Ireland is working class revolution - there is nothing "permanent' or uninterrupted about this revolution, in the sense that Trotsky understood such a perspective.

To insist that there is, is to ignore the real content of Trotsky's theory - his actual analysis of social relations - and substitute Militant-type platitudes about 'only socialism...

Second, Trotsky's theory had nothing to do with the 'un-natural' or (worse) 'un-national' character of capitalist development in Russia. His argument was that the combined and uneven development. of capitalism internationally (which requires no utopian judgements in terms of how 'natural' or 'national' it is). created particúlar conditions in which capitalism in Russia, and so the working class in Russia, was inextricably linked to capitalism internationally, determining both the potential of the working class power in SOCIALIST Organiser has consistently denounced the witch-hunt. Please explain how you reconcile this with your attitude towards counter-proposals.

The proposal put forward and Hendon South CLPs is that only Annual Conference should have the power to take action against pressure group. The most the NEC could do would be to make recommendations.

The Greenwich CLP proposal, on the other hand, explicitly authorises the NEC to declare membership of a pressure group to be incompatible with membership of the Labour Party. As with the proposal merely to reject the Register, the powers given by the Party constitution for the NEC to take action against pressure groups are left untouched.

Clearly the Manchester Withington/Hendon South proposal would prevent the NEC proceeding against Militant, while the alternatives would not. Yet sO has campaigned for the last nine months with everything at its disposal against the former and in favour of the latter. The contrast between left-wing rhetoric and right-wing reality speaks for itself.

Some other explanations are also called for. John Bluxam's report of the London Labour Party conRussia and the necessary perspective for maintaining it.

The purpose of workers' revolution in backward capitalist countries is not to secure 'national development' , but - along with revolution in other countries - to secure workers' interests.

My objection to comrade Collins' • argument is not therefore an objection to a perspective of united working class struggle -that is what the debate in SO is about - but an objection to a method that abandons actual analysis for a set of ritualistic assertions.

Trotsky ference (SO 123) describes the Hendon South proposal as "a sanitised version of the Register". Just which part does he object to, and why? even if he can cobble up some pretext, his allegation fundamentally remains no more than a smear against the only proposal which could stop the witch In the same report, John says that the Hendon South proposal was 'thrown out" . In fact it was simply declared lost on a show of hands. If the mover's request from the rostrum for a card vote had been accepted, the proposal would almost certainly have been carried.

Lastly, a footnote to John's report claims that CLPD's AGM rejected the Hendon South proposal. This is only half true. The AGM also called for Annual Conference to be the only body entitled to curtail the activities of pressure groups, thereby in principle endorsing Hendon South and rejecting other proposals.

All in all, SO's position on the witch-hunt seems every bit as dubious as its campaign against conference sovereignty, and its aburtive takeover bid for CLPD. Your answers are awaited with interest.

Yours fraternally, VICTOR SCHONFIELD London W10 Of course - this is not in dispute - the national question remains central to the class struggle Ireland. Of course this indicates a certain incompletion of the bourgeois revolution in Ireland. Of course what we need is socialist revolution. But these three 'of courses' do not amount to the basis for talk of 'permanent revolution'.

The national question in Ireland is historically specific and exists in the context of a capitalist economy (in which certainly the working class has been divided and oppressed by British imperialism) in which there is no land question, no mass of peasants. The problem of the border is a problem for the working class: its abolition does not constitute a 'bourgeois revolution' in any méaningful sense.

We cannot derive socialist strategy from timeless recitation of a few misunderstood elements of Trotskyist theory.

CLIVE BRADLEY Manchester SO