[PLANS • are already well advanced for a…]

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PLANS • are already well advanced for a Labour Movement Conference on Palestine to take place on May 19.

The first steps towards this ambitious project were taken some months ago, when the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine approached various other campaigns on Palestine with a view to mounting a big conference, with a special emphasis on trade unions and trade union rights.

The proposal was received sympathetically by Palestine Solidarity and by Women for Palestine and the London Office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. (PLO) agreed to support the move. Since then many MPs and leading union officials have offered their sponsorship as has the AUEW-TASS.

The task is not an easy one. Not only is the Zionist lobby in Britain extremely strong it has influential MPs including the last two Labour Prime Ministers and the support of trade union leaders like Bill Sirs of ISTC - but its central message has been part of the 'common sense" of the British labour movement for over half a century.

The idea that Jewish people have a right to settle in what used to be Palestine and build their • state there while the Palestinians have not, is a view strongly entrenched in the British labour movement.

Today, under the cover of a humanitarian concern for the victims of the Hitler Holocaust many people — including a large number on the left -find themselves supporting a state — Israel - which is racist and expansionist.

Taking these issues into the labour movement means taking into the movement the questions of imperialism and the link which sections of the labour movement itself have with imperialism.

Two years ago the Labour Party adopted an Emergency Resolution which condemned Zionism and supported the national struggle of the Palestinian people.

The May 19 Conference provides a platform for reraising the issue and mounting a drive within the labour mvement to establish a firm commitment to the Palestinian cause and a firm opposition to Zionist and imperialist oppression.

We urge all readers to try to get their labour movement organisations to send delegates to the conference.

LABOUR FOCUS ON EASTERN EUROPE FOR N ROCK : MUSIC = E8 LABOUR front-benchers are busy bickering with the Tories about whether Britain is getting a good deal from the current EEC negotiations.

But the issue of how the costs of international capitalist reorganisation are divided among the different ruling classes is - or at least should be - of little interest to the labour movement.

Besides, the argument over the British budget contribution has now been narrowed down to a difference of £150 million in the 1985 starting level for a new contribution schedule. £150 million is a lot of money - but very small change in Britain's overall state finances.

The Financial Times came closer to the essentials when it commented on the March 31 agriculture ministers' agreement: "Despite reservations, last weekend's deal is at least a step along a route that Europe's steelmakers, shipbuilders and miners have already been treading for several years"

Although worktorces in EEC agriculture have declined as drastically as in those heavy industries, the Common Agricultural Policy has provided much more cash to lubricate that rundown. Now, with the expansion of the EEC and the worsening position of capitalism, the CAP is being revised and made more austere.

The big farmers will still do very well. The smallest farmers and farm workers will feel the squeeze - and so will working class families as they pay higher food prices. land.

army to be used against workers here.

"Ireland should be reunited - that's determination."

North and South".

these sectarians."

inter-communal conflicts there.

These are the issues which should concern the labour movement. How to protect working-class living standards by automatic cost-of-living escalators in wage agreements. How to take over the big farms and run them under workers' control, and how to safeguard the livelihood of the smallest farmers.

How to increase food production for the benefit of the 800 million people worldwide who live constantly hungry, rather than cutting production or producing for expensive stockpiles. How to work out a Europe-wide workers' plan against the EEC-organised rundown of the heavy industries.

Nationalism no help to answering any these questions: OVER 90 people have been killed since the beginning of March in clashes between Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab area of India.

The Sikhs, a religious sect which split off from Hinduism in the l6th century, are concentrated in the Punjad, and are demanding special religious and provincial rights.

India's constitution theoretically gives each state extensive autonomy, but in practice the central government has frequently intervened against state governments and come into conflict with minority ethnic and religious groups.

India's ruling Congress Party is supposedly secular, but the problem is made worse by frequent identification of Indian national consciousness with the majority Hindu religion.

Unlike some other groups in conflict with the central government, India's Sikhs are better off than the average.

They were heavily recruited into the army under British colonial rule, and still make up 11% of the army (they are only 2% of the total population of India). The president of India, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, the Chief of Air Staff, and the Bombay Commissioner of Police are all Sikhs.

Punjab is one of the better-off states in India where the 'Green Revolution' has been relatively successful, and the Sikhs (52% of Punjab's population) are more likely to be landowners there than landless labourers.

Only the fullest and most flexible rights for minority groups, however, can allow communal conflicts to be overcome and clear the way for socialist class-struggle politics in India. EARLY reports on El Salvador's presidential election indicate that the Christian Democrat, Duarte, secured about 45% of the vote, less than required for victory on the first round.

This means that there will be a run off sometime in May between Duarte and the extreme rightist D'Aubuisson, who got 30% of the vote.

Meanwhile, it has been report. ed that the Democrat chairperson of the US House of Representatives Appropriations Sub-Committee has warned Reagan that escalating violence in El Salvador make it unlikely that he will get the $ 62 million in military aid that Salvador's government has been demanding. • The Democrat, Clarence Long, was in San Salvador when a civilian court released Captain Avila, who is charged with the murder of two US land reform advisers in 1981.

President Cordoda of Honduras has exiled General Alvarez, a member of the military high command. Alvarez was central in the current US-Honduras joint military exercises.

Cordoda has told US ambassador Negroponte that Honduran foreign policy will remain unchanged.

PAKISTAN, Turkey, the USSR, El Salvador, Guatemala, zaireUganda are singled out in a recent Amnesty International report as practising particularly widespread and brutal torture.

The report claims that one government in every three worldwide is using torture as a "tool of state policy"

Italy and Spain* are among those charged with using torture. Amnesty says that suspected members of the Red Brigades jailed in Italy have alleged "burning with cigarette ends, exposure to jets of icy water, twisting of feet and nipples, tearing of hair, squeezing of genitals, and the use of electric shocks."

In recent years Amnesty has criticsed mistreatment of prisoners by the British Army and RUC in Northern Ireland but stopped short of calling it tor.

NOT heard much of David Owen recently? Well, he's been busy.

Between April 1 and 4 he was shut up in a special meeting of the Trilateral Commission, a sinister international capitalist think-tank.

And before that he was busy drafting the report to be discussed at that meeting, on the world prospects for capitalism and imperialism.

The co-authors with former Labour foreign secretary Owen were Japanese politician Saburo Okita and the ultra-hawkish former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

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Socialist Organiser no. 173. April 419 Socialist Orgar

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- QZECHOSLOANH NO POOR