Hands off BT!

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'Stop Privatisation of Public méeting called the Islington Labour Parties Monday December 5, 7.3 at Central Library, Fieldway Crescent, NS. Speakers include Jeremy Corbyn MP, Jock Campbell, and a member of the POEU Executive. stop the cowboys. Only the workers controlling the hospital - controlling the administrators and physically controlling access can stop raids and snatches. An occupation provides a tangible focus for solidarity. Occupy in good time -not at the last moment.

5) Force the officials to fight: since workers pay large salaries to union officials, work them to death. Ensure that they come to the hospital, encourage and support the staff and deliver the goods.

6) Build links with the community, especially relatives and other work places. Raise collections and get physical support on the picket lines. Work towards sympathetic strike action inside and outside the health service.

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Socialist Organiser no.155 November 17 1983 Page 4 People's March: its opposition to politics united both factions of the By Harry HEADS have begun to roll as the chronic factional divisions within the Communist Party have begun to take tangible form with the ousting of hardline pro-Moscow Stalinists from the Executive Committee.

The purge of the Morning Star's editor Tony Chater, deputy editor David Whitfield and industrial correspondent Mick Costello is the most visible evidence of the determination of the Party's "Eurocommunist"

majority to impose its authority.

And General Secretary Gordon McLennan made a clear threat that his old-guard Stalinist opponents could face expulsion if they continue to defy the Party's line.

Despite the enormous heat generated within the CP over the factional divisions, there has been little political light. The conflicts between the "Eurocommunists" and the "Moscow liners" defy any attempt to brand either side as to the "left" of the other.

While the "Euros" speak openly about their hopes of a cross-class "anti-Thatcher alliance" , and exercise themselves in thoughts of how to draw into such an alliance forces from the SDP, the churches, and 'anti-Thatcher' Tories, the 'hardliners" , too, lent eager support to the vicious suppression of polities and the cross-class platforms which summed up this year's People's March. are described in the Tory press Though the "hardliners" as "more revolutionary even 'Marxist-Leninist" , their orientation is just as counterrevolutionary and reformist as the "Eurocommunists" • In each case the political orientation is derived from the reformist, parliamentary, "British Foad to Socialism" , which first received Stalin's seal of approval in 1952.

On international issues, too, the differences are not what they appear. The "revolutionary" hardliners give uncritical support to the Jaruzelski regime in its ruthless suppression of the mass struggles of the Polish working class and its ten millionstrong union Solidarnosc: this Out — Derek Robinson tionary policies and choice of "friends" on a world scale.

The "Euros" on the other hand took a stand - albeit feeble - in support of Solidarnosc: but this distancing from the more embarrassing recent politics of the Kremlin is plainly related to placating middle class liberal supporters in Britain rather than any line of principle. This same petty bourgeois orientation is obvious in the trajectory followed by the Party's magazine, marxism Today under 'Euro" editor Martin Jacques.

The differences also have a practical dimension. The hardÎiners have recognised the growing danger to the Party's dwindling base in the trade union bureaucracy and have vocally opposed any more critical FOLLOWING the recent campaign around the threatened deportation of Muhammed Idrish, another black worker faces the racist and intimidatory policies of the Home Office.

examination of the politics of the TUC 'left' or the shop stewards' movement.

The publication in Marxism Today of an article pointing to the (real) signs of bureaucratisation amongst top layers of the stewards' movement provoked a torrent of heated correspondence from leading Party trade unionists and fellow travellers defending the status quo in the The hardliners - though they have their own project to 'broaden' the base of the Star -also fear that the 'Euros' "

increasingly close relationship with the Labour "soft left"

could further erode the Party's dwindling membership base or even lead to its disappearance as an independent entity.

The differences reached a peak earlier this year with the attempt by the 'hardliners" to consolidate their position in control of the Morning Star as a last bastion.

Mick Costello resigned from his Party controlled post as Industrial Organiser and moved to the Star's industrial desk. A bitter and successful struggle was mounted by the *hardbreakdown of his marriage.

Despite an appeal where the Adjudicator cleared Vinod of any suggestion that his marriage was " a marriage of convenience" to provide a basis to CP liners' to defeat a CP majority slate in elections for the body that controls the Star.

Now the 38th Congress has seen the tables decisively turned: for the first time since the paper was launched as a Stalinist daily in 1930 the editor will not be on the executive of the CP. Two of Chater's staff, however, were brought on to the new, Euro-controlled executive, in changes that also saw the ousting of victimised BL convenor Derek Robinson and GMWU hureaucrat Tess Gill.

WITH THE first cruise missiles arriving at Greenham the Tories have opted for a classic 'reds under the beds" witch-hunt directed against Bruce Kent and the Communist Party, designed to defuse the massive opposition that exists to cruise deployment.

In a press statement, carefully prepared by Conservative Central Office, Tory Party chairman John Selwyn Gummer has called for the resignation of Bruce Kent from his position as General Secretary of CND.

roh job The struggle for the Star could yet be one for the custody of a corpse: despite • frenziled appeals to boost sales, circulation is 285 down on the January figure, and there is no sign that the latest purge will assist a revival.

It remains to be seen whether Yuri Andropov's vocal fan-club within the CP will accept their latest setbacks sitting down, or embark on a new round of struggle which could further weaken the CP as an obstacle to revolutionary politics in the British workers' movement.

By Tom "He's either congenitally confused or purposefully blind. Unilateralists and multilateralists can unite on one thing -Bruce Kent must go."

Bruce Kent's great sin is that he spoke to the Communist Party's Congress last weekend and "praised" them for their work in the disarmament movement.

Socialist Organiser has work!

disagreements with the , UNEMPLOYMENT in Britain has at last gone down - very slightly. Unfilled vacancies are rising fairly steadily.

This is part of a general trend in the advanced capitalist countries. There is an economic upturn - but it is very limited, and the prospects of it becoming less limited are dim.

Only in the US and Canada has unemployment been reduced more than very marginally. The US unemployment rate currently stands at 8.8%, as against 10.5% a year ago.

US industrial production, boosted by a whopping government budget deficit, has gone up 12% over the last 12 months.

The UK increase is only 2.4%, and nowhere else in western Europe is doing particularly well.

An index of the shallowness of the recovery is that UK manufacturing investment was still falling in the first half of 1983. Production in the investment goods sector is stagnant.

Profits have gone up. Figures in the Financial Times and the Economist suggest that industrial profits this year are about 20 to 25% up on last year. Behind this is a growth in productivity in manufacturing industry of about 1.5% a year -in other words, an increase in the rate of exploitation.

Other advanced capitalist countries also show a rise in profits the Economist suggests a 20% rise in the US between 1982 and 1983, 10% in West Germany, and 200% (starting from a very low level) in France.

But it is still not clear that capitalists can get a better return on their money from investment in UK production than from lending at interest. A real boom, centred round a rapid rise in investment, is still only a speculation for the future.

Gas prices will go up 5%, probably in January next year. Electricity prices will go up about 3% next year.

These price rises will cost consumers about £600 million. And they come on top of big