[most repressive governments. Independent working class activity and…]

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most repressive governments. Independent working class activity and organisation are banned. 'Women have been reduced to mere objects by the 'Law of Retribution". A genocidal war is being fought out in Kurdistan to deny its inhabitants the right to self-determination.

There are 30,000 political prisoners in the country's jails, and the use of torture and summary execution is commonplace.

The Tudeh Party's response to this viciously anti-working class regime was to support it.

Twisting logic into its opposite imperialism.

Thus, in the interests of the reactionary Kremlin bureaucrecy, anti-imperialist Creden credentials of the IRP regime. It's "anti-imperialism" was in fact a fairly spurious affair (it bought arms from Israel and executed members of the Fedayeen minority who had fought alongside the PLO), but the Tudeh Party ignored such minor details in its efforts to arrange a marriage of convenience between the IRP regime and the Kremlin bureaucracy by an uncritical wooing the thirties the Stalinists in the Soviet Union perfected the technique of forcing prisoners to confess to being spies for a foreign power. Now the same technique was being used against Stalinists themselves.

Kianouri's recantation was the signal for a total clampdown on the Tudeh Party. The commander of the Pasdaran (so-called- 'Revolutionary Guards") ordered all members of the Party to report to the local centre of the Pasdaran within a week.

This order was issued immedIRP regime and covering up for its repression, the Tudeh Party has now itself fallen victim to that repression.

While socialists must stand for the defence of the Tudeh Party against the repression of Khomeini, its fate is a grim warning for all others who elevate the "objective anti-imperialist struggle" above the general class struggle and tailend third world nationalism, in the Middle East or anywhere else, by imputing a "progressive content" : to thoroughly reactionary regimes. THE REACTION of the Polish authorities to the successful May Day demonstrations called by the Solidarnosc underground has been to pretend that little happened.

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They portray Walesa as a has been' ', and say that they have no reason to talk to him.

Their real face is revealed in their actions.. The brutal beatings of demonstrators could be seen on your television screens. Walesa and all those around him are harassed continuously - arrested and then released.

Underground Solidarnose leaders are arrested in raids and show trials prepared.

All this takes place in the background. The public face is one of 'normality' One section which does have a role to play, according to the bureaucracy, is the church.

The May Day events will not stop the invitation to the Pope.

As Premier Jaruzelski said on Saturday: "The more deeply the Church sees the socialist state as the embodiment of higher national interests, the greater the bilateral benefits in (Church/ State) co-operation.' The Church hierarchy have responded to this. They realise that they have a privileged position in Poland, and they mean to preserve it. They also realise that from this position they can gnaw away at the foundations of the nationalised property relations.

Beating the workers will not stop the Pope's visit, nor the harassment of Walesa, nor the imprisonment of the Underground leaders.

Because the bureaucracy does not want to antagonise the Church, who it sees as its defender, many workers have been using Church services as a starting point for demonstrations.

Cardinal Glemp, the head of the Catholic Church in Polant, also on Saturday attacked 'political demonstrations in churches'.

Polish workers will have to break from this church hierarchy if they are going to make a political revolution.

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