Womens Fightback"" Stop Tory Attacks on Our

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Can truce hold

the PLO together?

Sri Lanka ELSALVADOR Organiser no.139 July 1983 Page WAITING for the economic upturn? Insofar as it is ever going to come it's here.

Over the 12 months to April or May, industrial production went up 3.7% in the US, 1.8% in the UK, and 1.7% in Japan. In early 1983 industrial production also rose in West Germany.

More spectacularly, US car production is up 31% over a year ago.

Unemployment is, however, still rising in all these countries.

28% of under-25s are unemployed in the UK. But that is not a high figure for Western Europe. Figures for other countries range from 35% in Holland and Italy to 27% in France.

West Germany has an exceptionally low rate of under-25 unemployment at 15% ' Some people on the Labour Left have made a great stir about stopping the flow of British capital overseas.

The basic idea they are driving at, quite rightly, is democratic control over the wealth of society. The picture of Britain's wealth pouring out to be 'wasted' in alien lands is, however, false.

The net result of the flows of investment and profit has for many decades been a tidy advantage for Britain's capitalists.

Direct investment into Britain was £2.5 billion in 1982. That's lower than the peak of £6 billion in 1980, but the trend has generally been a rising.one.

The total stock of foreign direct investment in Britain is estimated at £25 billion (Britain's stock of direct investment abroad is about £41 billion).

Over 50% of it comes from the USA; the other leading investors are the EEC, Switzerland, and Japan, in that order.

Israeli doctors are claiming a 100% wage increase in place of the 20% negotiated by the Histadrut.

The background to this is Israel's chronic hyper-inflation - 130% last year and still rising. Wage indexation agreements automatically give 85% compensation for inflation, but no more.

The chronic inflation arises from the peculiar structure of Israel's economy, where military spending takes 26% of national income (1982), and aid from overseas contributes 14% to it.

El Salvador Solidarity Campaign:

affiliation £5 for individual:

and £10 for organisations, from 79 LUI dl Islington Park St., London N1 (01-359 2270) A CEASEFIRE has been agreed between pro-Arafat Fatah Palestinian guerrillas and those Fatah guerrillas supporting Abu. Musa who have been fighting each other in Lebanon's Beka'a region.

According to reports the cease-fire was made possible by Arafat's having made concessions to the Abu Musa group. He is said to have agreed 'on the need for strong adherence to collective leadership and not adopting any unilateral decision before consulting the institutions of the PLO." This noticeably does not imply any changes in PLO or Fatah structure.

Given Abu Musa's profound distrust of Arafat and his methods it would be very surprising it such a generalised "'concession' were to lead to any long-lasting agreement.

The ceasefire is thus likely to have been the outcome of a number of different pressures on both sets of combatants, not least pressure from Arab regimes, from Lebanese parties supporting the PLO and fearing its break-up as well as military pressures.

Themes

Certainly: "collective leadership" has been one of Abu Musa's themes from the outset. He accuses Arafat of being a total individualist, making agreements without testing the feeling among the Palestinians.

The core of Abu Musa's stated criticism of the Fatah leadership and of Arafat in particular is that for the last ten years - from the adoption of the "Provisional Political Programme" in 1974 - the PLO has drifted further and further from its commitment to militarily reconquer Palestine.

He argues that the tactical positions have become a strategy, that a West Bank mini-state has become the goal of the PIO rather than a means towards realising their goal.

The most dramatic exposure of this tendency towards the liquidation of the Palestinians' original goals came with Arafat's personal agreement to seek a "solution" within the terms of the Reagan plan, to agree to establish a PalestinoJordanian confederation under King Hussein.

For Abu Musa this liquidation goes hand in hand with a downgrading of military activity. the withdrawal from Beirut and the more recent appointment of Abu Hajim and Haj Ismail - both accused of cowardice in the face of the Israeli invasion - as commanders in Lebanon further testify to this liquidation. Arafat Abu Musa sees Fatah's leadership as increasingly corrupted by wealth and their diplomatic contacts, as increasingly distant from the guerrillas themselves and from the Palestinian people as a whole.

These criticism are doubtless generally correct. But by themselves they do not mean that Abu Musa stands to the left of Arafat.

It is not clear whether he represents a purely "physical force" tendency or a tendency evolving leftwards.

The fact that the left trends within the PLO, the PFLP and the DPFLP, have apparently kept their distance might indicate that they do not see any leftward evolution possible in the Abu Musa group.

At the same time there has been talk of these two organisations merging. This could lead to a very big realignment within the PLO.

POLITICAL suspects, members of the minority Tamil community in Sri Lanka, have been held incommunicado under the country's Prevention of Terrorism. Act and tortured both in army camps and by the police, according to Amnesty International in a report of the findings of an inquiry conducted in Sri Lanka in January and February 1982.

The victims are advocates of an independent Tamil state.

Detainees have been kept in solitary confinement for more than eight months after arrest. torture includes handing victims upside down from hooks, beating them with metal bars and driving needles under the toe-nails and finger-nails.

For example, on 10 April this year & young farmer from Trincomalee, K. Navaratnarajah died in custody after being held without charge for two weeks. Twenty-five external wounds and ten internal injuries were found on his body during the post-mortem examination.

Of the individual cases examined by the mission, in at least six the detainees are still being held without trial, more than two years later. Since then, arrests have continued. At least, 65 people are estimated to be in detention now.

Former detainees, released without charge, told the Amnesty International delegates they had been kept for as long as six months chained to an iron grill at Elephant Pass Army Camp. One said he had been handcuffed and kept lying on the Syria and Libya have had a considerable hand in these developments. For some years now Syria has been pursuing a dual tactic - trying to contain the Palestinian struggle militarily while at the same time trying to increase her influence within its ranks.

Two organisations, el Saiqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command), function as arms of the Syrian state. Should Syria gain influence within a major section of fatah, it is possible that the PLO will tilt considerably towards Damascus.

The danger lies in the fact that Syria is quite ready to smash the Palestinian struggle - if it can - in order to establish better relations with US imperialism.

The tour now being undertaken by Secretary of State Schultz should be seen in the context - among. other things - of the US trying to find out what new terms Syria might be proposing given her newly strengthened position within the PLO.

As Syria seeks to become the mistress of the Palestinians, she herself is subject to pressures from her paymasters and protectors, Saudi Arabia on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other.

At the same time, Iraqibacked organisations within the PLO, like the Arab Liberation Front and the Abu Nidal group - the latter ostensibly agreeing with the criticisms of Abu Musa - are trying to organise opposition to any growth in Syrian influence. floor for five months.

At another camp soldiers are said to have forced a detainee to crawl on broken glass, then stuffed hot chilli powder up his nostrils with a nail. Needles were driven under his fingernails and into his arm. After ten days a captain told him: "We took you in custody on suspicion. Now we find you are innocent. So you can go.' The mission also investigated the deaths of Tamils apparently shot or beaten to death by security forces in June 1981, following the shooting of two police officers. Two young Tamils rounded up at the time said they were taken to lonely spots, one of them near Jaffna burial ground, shot by a police inspector and left for dead. Both survived, but one is now physically handicapped. The government has taken no action in any of these cases.

The report makes 12 detailed recommendations which, it says, would bring the treatment of detainees into line with Sri Lanka's constitutional human rights guarantees and United Nations standards. These include: informing detainees of the grounds for arrest; disclosing the place of detention to relatives and allowing immediate and regular access to lawyers; establishing independent machinery to investigate torture complaints, with published findings and proceedings against those held responsible; restoring the normal rules of evidence in all cases so that statements made solely to the police are inadmissible in court. BEFORE relations between the Twenty Six Counties and Britain went sour during Haughey's premiership, the British Army on one side of the border and the Irish Army on the other used to work very closely together. Under a secret security arrangement they used to swap details of the frequencies and voice codes each was using at a given moment, thus making it possible for them to monitor each other's wavelengths.

Legally the southern army can act only in support of the police and at their request. That meant that the British Army in hot pursuit towards the border had to go through the RUC and the Civic Guards to alert the Irish Army... Listening to each other's radios cut out the middlemen.

Haughey put a stop to it during the hunger strikes.

The coalition government has now restored the arrangement.

Gerry Róche of Dun Laoghaire, a leading member af the IRSP, Republican activist and a sometime Trotskyist, was given 18 months by a Dublin judge for demonstrating outside the British Embassy in July 1981 during the hunger strikes in Nor. thern Ireland.

He was convicted on photographic evidence which showed him 'aggressively' holding a long pole. He said he had been helping dismantle a banner. Three witnesses, including a barrister, backed him up on that. But still he got 18 months.

Roche then commented: "1 would like to thank your honour for the sentence. I have the honour to be sentenced by the same judge who sentenced my friend Nicky Kelly. It is a pity you do not bring drug offenders who wreck the lives of working people up before the court. People like that are allowed trial by jury. Yet I asked you for a jury trial and was refused...

For this 'speech from the dock, commenting on the sentence 'with obvious contempt for the court, he was given an extra three months, and is now doing 21 instead of 18 months.

SHORTS Aerospace and Harland and Wolff have long been notorious in Northern Ireland for blatant discrimination against Catholics. It has been said that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a Catholic to get through the gates of either Harlands or Shorts.

This in turn has meant that the metal workers' unions in Northern Ireland are politically gutted, because their membership reflects this job preferment.

Now, in pursuit of a £50 mil lion order from the US government, Shorts has been forced to make a formal commitment to change its ways.

A high-powered delegation from the American TUC, the AFL CIO, has been to Northern Ireland to check up on the reports of job sectarianism. They have met with the Northern Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and the Confederation of Shipbuilding Unions in Northern Ireland.

The US government contract is not sewn up yet, but Shorts commitment to end sectarian hiring practices is expected to help.

Shorts' formal agreement with Northern Ireland's Fair Employment Agency is entitled, 'Affirmative Action Programme'. It includes agreement by Shorts to:

comply with the Fair Employment (NI) Act of 1976;

* have a special personnel manager to ensure the Act is complied with and to make regular reports to the Management Board on the subject;

* monitor patterns of applications for jobs;

* provide the Agency every six months with full details of all job applications received and of all personnel appointments;

continue by all practical means to encourage job applications from Catholics who in the past would not have wasted time trying.

Shorts has added a 'saving clause' insisting that this agreement is not an admission that they have practised sectarian discrimination in the past. But that is exactly what it is. It is a damning. self-indictment. On the other hand, the agreement is progress, of a sort.

THE SUMMER of their discontent: Fianna Fail is in militant mood. Charlie Haughey led all his deputies out of the Dail last week after a clash on Dail procedure. The example was catching: the FF contingent on the Dublin city council then walked out in protest at being passed over for the position of Mayor of Dublin.

British Labour could learn something from these Green Tories!

IN THE early days of Northern Ireland civil rights agitation back in 1969, student activists came marching down across the Border waving condoms, intent on fighting sectarianism' in the 26 Coun ties too.

All forms of contraception were then banned in the South, according to the demands of Catholic Church doctrine. In the '70s contraception was legalised -for married couples only, on a doctor's prescription.

Contraception is still an explo: sive issue in the South.. An attempt by Labour Party Minister of Health Barry Desmond to make contraception more widely available has triggered a revolt by Fine Gael backbenchers, and may even threaten the unity of the coalition government.

Some of these backbenchers, like Alice Glenn, are also leaders of the campaign to write the present ban on abortion into the constitution.

The crying need for reform is being brought dramatically to public attention by the case of Kildare GP Dr Andrew Rynee.

Two weeks ago he was fined t500 for giving a packet of condoms to a patient who did not qualify under the present law. Rynee was once an anti-abortion activist in Canada, believing latestage abortion to be infanticide. Unlike the Alice Glenns he wants an alternative to abortion.

Rynee says he is prepared to go to jail to expose what he calls this 'outrageous law. He may have to.

OFFICIAL figures just out for unemployment in Northern Ireland put it at 113,411. With 1662 recorded vacancies, that makes b8 jobless for every job. The figure is 7600 up on this time last year.

In fact the figures are falsified. They exclude unemployed men over 60. and school-leaver, who together would add a further 5600 to the total.

Male unemployment is 82,931 - 26%: Female unemployment is 30,480 - 12.6%. The figures for women are grossly falsified, too, of course. They take no account oi tens of thousands of women who would go out to work if they could.

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stepped up pa THERE are currently over 100,000 South African military personnel in Namibia, a ratio of one to six with the civilian adult black population.

In 1983/4 Rossing will become the largest single taxpayer to the illegal regime maintaining this horrific rule.

Up until now, Rossing has paid income tax, sales tax, rates and non-resident shareholders tax, but has been deferred company tax, the largest portion oftax.

This is because Rossing's shareholders like RTZ are still getting their initial capital investment back (approximately £200 million). However, in 1983/4 Rossing will have to pay £30 million or more in company tax according to local newspaper estimates.

This will be spent on the South African occupation army and police payrolls, on subsidies to white farmers in the war zones and on quasi-military and Bantustan infrastructure (roads, fencing, etc) and personnel (security guards etc). ;

Over and above this, Rossing is directly involved in helping South Africa's war effort Trade union solidarity conferance for Namibia - Sunday July 17, 10am at Oxford House, Derbyshire St, E2. Details 01267 1941-2. through its maintenance of a 65strong , "security force' at the mine 'To maintain a state of preparedness against civil or labour or terrorist attack" according to a leaked Rossing "security document" which the RTZ chairman has confirmed is true.

During previous strikes at the mine, Rossing has used this force and the South African police to brutally put down legitimate protests of the black workers and their efforts to get recognition for the National Union of Namibian Workers, a suppressed union which supports SWAPO.

ROSSING mine, with an annual production of 5,200 tons of uranium oxide, is the largest uranium mine in the world, producing about one-sixth of the world's supply.

Rio Tinto Zinc, Britain's largest mining company, owns just over half of Rossing and manages the mine. The other main shareholders are: the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (13.2%), General Mining of South Africa (6.8%), and Total of France (5%).

Rossing has currently 4% of RTZ's total investment, but earned 26% of RTZ's profit in 1982. RTZ claim that it has less 'voting' shares than the IDC but won't reveal any figures.

The UK contract began in 1968 between RTZ and the UKAEA, but changed in 1974 to a Rossing-British Nuclear Fuels Ltd contract.

In 1980 the CEGB took over the UK contract from the BNFL. When this happened, the UK government admitted that the contract had 'two agreements' It is not known whether this refers to the original order of 6,000 tons, plus the 1,500 added in 1971, or whether, as pull UNDER sustained pressure from the South African military machine and American imperialism, the Angolan government appears ready to agree to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from the country.

The Cubans have been supporting the forces of the embattled MPLA regime against a consistent South: African-backed offensive by guerrilla forces of the FNLA/UNITA.

UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi is known to have collaborated closely with the Portuguese in the days of colonial rule, and was backed by the CIA and South Africa as a pliable stooge "nationalist" to take over after the Portuguese withdrawal.

His murderous activities have been assisted by South African troops and planes, sometimes under the pretext of waging "hot pursuit" raids after AS A vast force of American "advised" Salvadorean troops continue their grotesquely named "Operation Wellbeing" other aspects of American strategy for the crushing of the workers and peasants of Central America were meeting mixed fortunes.

Salvadorean President Magana has visited Washington with begging bowl in hand, attempting to undermine the healthy scepticism in the American Congress on Reagan's claims that there are real moves towards democracy in El has been speculated, the Tory government increased these again in 1980. Clearly, however, secret new 'agreements' can be made to increase the contract.

The government have admitted however, that far more uranium from Rossing over and above the CEGB contract is clandestinely imported into Britain for processing and re-export. Edmonsons, a small anti-trade union lorry firm based in Morecombe, delivers the material to BNFL at Springfields once it has been brought from Namibia by ship.

SWAPO guerrillas border from Namibia.

The apartheid regime has refused to discuss withdrawal of troops from Namibia unless this was 'matched' by a withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.

Yet the South African army is an aggressive army of occupation, while the Cubans have been there on the invitation of the MPLA.

While the USA is confident that the new 'withdrawal' plan will break the long deadlock over Namibia, there is no reason to believe the South African regime is at all willing to take any chance of losing control over Namibia, or to renounce the activity of its sponsored guerrillas inside Angola.

Until now, the South Africans have effectively sought a Cuban withdrawal as a precondtion for further moves. It remains to be seen if this has really changed. By Harry Salvador.

He hopes to ease the repeatedly interrupted flow of US funds for military spending and 'economic' measures designed to isolate the liberation forces of the FMLN.

Putting on a brave face for a President whose armed forces have been consistently losing out to the popularly supported guerrillas, Magana claimed that there was no need for the dispatch of American troops to crush the left wing fighters:

"With enough military aid, we can handle it ourselves."

One of the tactics now being employed is "Operation Wellbeing", , a Vietnam-style "pacification" scheme in which troops are following up a sweep through San Vicente department by staying put in the area and attempting to win the trust of the peasants and small businessmen, enlisting their aid against the FMLN.

Such tactics failed lamentably in Vietnam, and it is no more likely that Salvador's notorious. butcher squads will win willing support from terrified villagers today.

But the present war on the ground is not the only means being used by the USA to crush the rebels. Neighbouring Honduras is key to plans which involve both the training of new soldiers for the Salvadorean regime - 2,400 are being trained by the US at Puerto Castilla in Honduras - and the mounting of mercenary cross-border raids into Nicaragua by counter-revolutionary forces ('contras') who laughingly call themselves the 'Nicaraguan Democratic Force."

Using CIA funds - channelled through the US embassy in the Honduran capital of Tecucigalpa — and CIA trainers, the US now openly claims to have assembled a task force of up to 9,000, many of them former members of dictator Somoza's National Guard, committed to harry, disrupt and if possible topple the Sandinista government.

By thus going onto the offensive and beginning seriously to threaten the revolutionary gains secured with the defeat of Somoza in 1979, the American imperialists hope to multiply the isolation of the Salvadorean fighters, and force concessions from the Sandinistas that will strengthen the hand of Nicaraguan capitalists. Organier Faced both with a de facto I blockade which has cu a credit, loans and sugar expor: and with a US-run minar offensive, the Nicaraguar nader have been forced to look else where for support.

The sugar quota rejected b the Reagan governmens been taken up by Algeria.

Meanwhile, arms and equip ment supplies from the Sorie Union and Eastern Europe e reportedly arriving at double d usual rate, in attempts to up the Nicaraguan army quick-response action.

20 newly trained Nicaragea pilots, equipped with Mig-z fighters are on their war bec via Cuba, and Cuban force in Nicaragua itself are 201 estimated at 2,000, led 5. General Arnaldo Ochra, «bo ba been on active service in Angola and Ethiopia.

It is with supreme hypocris that Reagan's warmongers poe to this limited, defensive. bak up of military forces as Cuba o Soviet 'expansionism' in Cere But it is also clear that unde this pressure both the Cestr leadership in Cuba and the Sec ists - whose control the FML fighters are challenging.

Nicaragua has urged a mee ing between their Foreign Mir ister Miguel D'Escoto and U Secretary of State Schultz.

And Ruben Zamora, a leade of the Salvadorean politica opposition, the FDR, has als called on Washington to hell negotiate to settle the war.

But it is obvious that as long as they scent even a faint pros pect of crushing their enemies ir El Salvador and Nicaragua there is no likelihood that the US imperialists will wish talks to obstruct their anti-communis crusade in Central America.

Only once the left has the Salvadorean regime by the throat and has crushed the mercenary gangsters will Wash. ington opt for talks in the hope of stemming the tide of struggle and minimising their losses.

The objective must not be talks, but the defeat of imperial. ism and its puppets in Central America - and this means aiding the development of struggles until now heavily repressed in Honduras and Guatemala as well as El Salvador and Nicaragua.

To assist that fight, tbe workers' movement in the imperialist countries - in particular the USA and Britain -must step up the fight for political and practical solidarity with the workers and peasants of

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VOTEI URI

INSIDE: Why we're voting Women Agairist the Tortes Labour...

-Internatior Figures

News Bulletin No20 May-June 1983 REAGANI VIETNAM: El Salvador Solidarity Carhpaign

St ate terror in

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