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Published by the Socialist Organiser Alliance, 28 Middle Lane, London N8. Printed by East End Offset, London E2. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the SOA. Salvador and CIA-run mercenary forces* harassing the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime.

Indeed prior to the upheavals in Grenada which gave Reagan an opportunity to implement longstanding CIA-Pentagon plans for the invasion, Nicaragua was quite clearly in the front line of resistance to US aggression.

Bands of gunmen organised, financed and controlled by the CIA have for many months been mounting cross-border raids into Nicaragua from bases in Honduras in the North and Costa Rica in the south.

Bombed

Most recently, in moves which Washington has proudly admitted were planned by the CIA, Nicaraguan of ports and installations have been bombed and sabotaged, with claims that mines have been laid to obstruct oil tankers arriving from the country's sole suppher, Mexico.

The result of this has been the announcement by Esso that it will no longer carry oil to Nicaragua, while freight rates for the trip have already quadrupled and may go as high as ten times the previous $90,000 per trip.

The Sandinistas have been forced to bring in severe measures to cut fuel and electricity consumption - including a cut in the working week from 5½ days to five, cutbacks in streetlighting and airconditioning, and rationing of petrol and diesel.

Grave danger

The regime has stated it may be forced to evacuate the whole 25,000 population of the oil port of Corinto, who would be in grave danger if raiders were to blow up gasoline and diesel tanks.

Significantly it has been this selective hit and run action against economic targets - which also include power plants and Nicaragua's gold mining industry - which has scored the most dramatic successes for the USA. force of recently, the claimed Until some 7,000 Honduranbased "contra" guerrillas had failed dismally to make any headway in the more populated areas of Nicaragua or win any measure of popular support. They have been beaten back by Sandinista army and militia units.

Politically they are recognised as reactionary left-overs of the hated Somoza dictatorship ousted Annual General Meeting, Sunday October 30 at County Hall, London SEI. Day school on organising for the politics of Middle Lane, London N8 by the Sandinistas in 1979. Despite the very real problems of the Nicaraguan economy and the shortcomings of the Sandinista leadership, the working people of Nicaragua are prepared to fight rather than face the reimposition by the contras of a US puppet dictatorship.

With the situation of the blockaded, sabotaged and pitifully weak Nicaraguan economy increasingly desperate, there is no doubt that if Reagan gets away with the invasion of Grenada, the pressures on the Sandinistas -and the dangers of a US-inspired Honduran invasion - will be substantially increased.

Great urgency

And - as the Grenadan experience shows - neither Cuba nor the USSR can be relied upon to provide military support if such an invasion takes place.

The international workers' movement must take up with great urgency the fight in defence of Nicaragua and Grenada.

US hands off Central America!

Troops out of Grenada!

Scenes in Managua during the Nicaraguan revolution IT WAS the biggest political demonstration any of us have seen in Britain. Police estimates of 200,000-250,000 were plainly conservative.

So indeed were a fair number of the demonstrators.

Ironic cheers greeted one cedented Saturday crowds.

group of "Tories Against Cruise and Trident" placards, while Christian and ecological contingents pulled out forces seldom if ever seen in political life.

Grenada - from page 1 forces invade a Commonwealth country, pushing aside the objections of the British government.

That should see off what's left of the Falklands Factor in British politics.

The Caribbean states are bitterly divided about the invasion. Trinidad and Tobago is opposed to it and Forbes Burnham of Guyana has talked idly but significantly about sending Guyanese soldiers to defend the integrity of Grenada.

The disgusting hypocrisy and double standards in play when Reagan, for example, denounces the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan are now going to be visible to more people than at any time since the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

In Britain the main casualty of paper.

Reagan's invasion, apart from Thatcher's cheap Churchillian pretences that Britain is a gréat power, is the credibility of US guarantees that there will be joint US-British control of US missiles in Britain. Even Dennis Healey has asked what credence now be given to such guarantees. None at all.

We must raise a storm of opposition in Britain to the invasion and in support of the Labour Party's demand that the government should condemn the invasion, and around the demand socialism with words alone. for the withdrawal of the invading armies - West Indian as well as US - from Grenada. 2SY SEO Socialists, pacifists, Liberals ended by nuclear holocaust. and not so liberals - all con- "Eighteenth century fops verged on bus and rail against the Bomb" seemed to stations, bringing huge queues have a less defined proand bumper takings. The gramme - but appeared at London tube system least as clear on the issue and struggled to cope with unpre- the next step forward as many of the Hyde Park platThey came from all over - form speakers. and there were some rarely seen st the Bomb" complians "Historians Gesture ed about the threat to their Indeed for many of the time to $28.

I0 from BirmingEIGHT extent of the furces we're fighting. was a final gesture of resistance before what they saw as ment and hostility to nuclear barbarism need not be allowed to die away. A stubborn defence of unilateralism and a continuing fight for labour movement action is See page 3 GROUP Glasgow Edinburgh Liverpool Manchester Rochdale Stockport Wirral Durham Halifax Harrogate HuddersfieR Hull Leeds Leicester Sheffield York Birmingham Coventry Northamptc Nottingham Stoke Basingstoke Oxford Cardiff NW London Hackney Haringey Hounslow Islington SE London E. London Southwark Others But that anti-war sentiAugust, Sept and October 20.50 26.00 40.00 141.00 33.00 15.00 20.75 11.85 13.20 14.50 38.00 32.50 15.75 45.70 30.00 71.00 166.10 10.00 53.90 23.40 ..1.50 108.24 205.47 53.30 58.00 34.75 88.50 50.60 48.50 79.50 483.94

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Socialist Organiser, Satur day October 29, Crouch Hill Recreation Centre, Hillrise Road, London N19. Details from SO, 28

the inevitable deployment t of Cruise missiles next month.

vital to prevent the momen- tum being lost.