AROUND THE WORLD
Britain Miners still need support EIGHTEEN months after the end of the miners' strike, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is still fighting for the reinstatement of 468 sacked miners. Six languish in jail. And that means the National Justice for Mineworkers Campaign still has a lot of work on its hands.
In an article in the August 29 issue of Socialist Action, Bill Etherington explained the difficulties facing the miners. Bill is the chair of the Justice Campaign, and general secretary of the Durham Mechanics.
"In many cases the Coal Board is refusing to take part in conciliation and totally ignoring decisions of industrial tribunals. We have a classic example of that in Durham. One of our members was alleged to have hit a scab on November 5, 1984. On April 14, 1985, six weeks after he'd returned to work, he was summarily dismissed and remains sacked to this day....
"We have managed to get one Durham Mechanics' member reengaged, but that means he loses all his previous rights and conditions in addition, of course, to having been without wages for 18 months. This particular man was involved in a bizarre incident. A security guard came upon three miners stealing coal and set his dog on one of them. In the scuffle that ensued, the man escaped but was caught by the police, whose evidence made plain that he wasn't involved in the assault. The Coal Board kept him sacked for 14 months because he wouldn't give them the name of one of the other men who escaped. That miner lost 18 months wages because of the Board's malice....
"There are hundreds of examples of the Coal Board's attitude. Our sacked members are victims of the Tory government's attempts to decimate the coal industry and smash the National Union of Mineworkers -and we still need the support of the whole labour movement.
"Although the receivership of the NUM's funds has been lifted, we've yet to get our money back. It is important the labour movement understands that money is still needed.
"Over 400 organizations have affiliated to the Justice Campaign. That includes a hell of a lot of Labour 26
Party branches and many trade unions ... But the financial situation of our sacked and jailed members is worse now than ever it was. The majority have fallen into the social security poverty trap. The NUM's national solidarity fund needs your money more than ever ... (this is) an opportunity to show your determination to defend the victims of the Thatcher government's attack on the unions." For more information on the Justice for Mineworkers Campaign write to: Durham Mechanics Office, 26 The Avenue, Durham DHI 4EH. And don't forget to enclose a donation! • USA Anti-apartheid action NATIONAL anti-apartheid protest actions are being planned in cities and at college campuses throughout the United States for October 10.
Backed by student committees, trade unions, community organiza. tions, churches, political parties, and other groups, these actions demand that the US government cut its ties with the apartheid regime of South Africa through divestment and the imposition of trade and other sanctions.
October 10 coincides with the International Day in Solidarity with Southern African Political Prisoners. So the protests will likewise promote campaigns for the release of South African and Namibian political prisoners, with participants encouraged to wear black armbands in solidarity with those jailed by the apartheid authorities.
The protests are backed by the American Committee on Africa, the Call to Conscience network (encompassing many local anti-apartheid organizations), the US Student Association, Mobilization for Survival and other groups.
Many of the campus actions will feature the construction of shanties, as well as sit-ins and other forms of protest. Other demonstrations will target the offices of US corporations with investments in South Africa.
The DC Student Coalition Against Apartheid and Racism is organizing a march in Washington, DC, which will include protests near the embassies of other governments that collaborate with the apartheid regime.
In Los Angeles, an anti-apartheid march set for October 11 is being organized by the local Free South Africa Movement and a broad list of sponsors. It has also been endorsed by a coalition building a November 1 demonstration to demand "US out of Central America." Activists plan to organize a large Central America contingent in the anti-apartheid action, under the banner "Boycott South Africa, not Nicaragua."
Among other locations, protest demonstrations are also being built in Miami, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
According to the American Committee on Africa, plans are also under way in Europe for actions to protest US aid to the South African-backed counter-revolutionary bands operating in Angola.
For further information on the local actions, contact: American Committee on Africa, 198 Broadway, Room 402, New York, NY 10038, 212) 962-1210. [From the September 19 issue of The Militant. / Ireland Season of terror THE SUMMER period of sectarian loyalist marches is always a tense one for the nationalist community in the North of Ireland. It is a time when loyalist blood runs hot - marching, throwing bottles, and asserting their so-called "British" identity by a reign of terror. But this year, as the reality of the Anglo-Irish Accord becomes even clearer, the period of summer loyalist marches was particularly chilling.
The marching season reached its first peak around July 12. After weeks of inflamatory outbursts by Unionist politicians, the loyalists vented their feelings in attacks on Catholic women, men, children and their homes and property.
Two young married men were shot and killed by loyalist paramilitaries on July 12 itself in Belfast. According to official figures from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), which grossly underestimate the real situa tion, there were 71 attacks over the weekend of the twelfth. Nationalists defended their areas as best they could - in some places such as Dunloy and Ligonield erecting makeshift barricades.
International Viewpoint 29 September 1986
The marches on the twelfth were preceded by a series of attacks earlier in July in Belfast. On Friday July 4, several homes in the Oldpark area of north Belfast were attacked. On July 10 mohs in the nredominantly lovelist 10 mobs in the predominantly loyalist Woodside Estate in Portadown attacked nationalist homes with stones and petrol bombs.
Every Catholic business in the village of Kinkeel was attacked on July 12. On the 14th, petrol bomb attacks were carried out against Catholic homes in the Lower Falls Road area of Belfast. Other petrol bomb attacks took place in Lisburn, Dervock, Dunloy, Ballyahinch, Ahogill, Rasharkin, Limvady, Ballymoney, Maghera, Armagh and Derry.
This is the background to the much-publicised loyalist march into the village of Clontibret, south of the border, which was led by Democratic Unionist Party Member of Parliament Peter Robinson.
Just before 2am on August 7, several hundred loyalists armed with cudgels and wearing balaclava masks invaded Clonibret. The loyalists daubed "Ulster has awakened" on the local school, uprooted signposts, trees and gates and attacked the unoccupied police station.
The loyalists were then marched in paramilitary formation to the crossroads at the centre of the village and blocked the roads. Simultaneously, in an incident not widely reported by the media, 500 loyalists in around 150 cars attacked the mainly Catholic village of Swatragh. The armed loyalists set up roadblocks, began searching cars, smashed windows, and fired shots into the air.
On August 12 the British army was directly complicit in a further loyalist show of strength in Derry. The army and RUC saturated the nationalist areas to police the 20,000-strong bigot Apprentice Boys parade. The loyalists, to try to break the will of the nationalist community. There is going to be no end to this type of loyalist violence until Britain "THE Place of Marxism in History" is the title of a new educational pamphlet prepared by Ernest Mandel on the basis of a course he teaches at the International Institute of Research and Education (IRE), a Marxist school in Amsterdam.
Lenin identified "three sources and three constituent parts of Marxism": German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. Mandel explains the contribution of each of them and adds some others: French sociological historiography, the experience of far-left organizations, and the early trade-union movement. The pamphlet includes some interesting thinking on why Marx and Engels became politically involved as well as an explanation of the unequal dissemination of their works throughout the world.
Many former exponents of Marxism are now claiming that it is unable to explain the new phenomena of this last quarter of the 20th century. In reply, Mandel points out that Marxism has always incorporated the latest advances made in the social sciences and by the progressive movements. He proposes an approach which makes it possible to develop a combination of ingets out of Ireland. [From the August 29 edition of the British newspaper, Socialist Action./ novative thinking and the verification of already established conclusions.
This pamphlet will undoubtedly be widely used as a reference work in many Marxist educational programmes. But its quality and the relevance of the topic merit a wider distribution among all those who are interested in Marxism and a scientific approach to the class struggle.
This pamphlet is issue number one of the Notebooks for Study and Research/Cahiers d'Etude et de Recherche published by the IIRE. These Notebooks will provide important educational material, consisting of the transcriptions of courses taught at the Amsterdam school, studies of a particular theme or country and special features and written debates. Published in both English and French, the Notebooks draw from the international experiences of the staff and students.
The English-language version of this pamphlet will be available from October 15th.
led by Democratic Unionist Party leaders Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson, led the parade.
Five days earlier, on August 7, the loyalist Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) had released a video to the press announcing their intention of stepping up the sectarian murder of Catholics. The UFF were rightly termed by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams as "gangsters" who were "tolerated by the British government because their murder campaign fits into the classical counter-gang strategy perfected by the British government in Aden, Cyprus and Kenya."
What is taking place in the North of Ireland is clear. It has nothing to do with "Catholic versus Protestant viol ence" — as it is portrayed by the British media. It is a systematic campaign by loyalist bigots, acting with the protection of the RUC and British army,
Forthcoming issues:
No 2/3
Issues and lessons of the third Chinese revolution and 1949 victory
- Pierre Rousset.
No 4
Class struggle and technological change in Japan since 1945 -
Muto Ichyo.
Issues planned:
The founding of the Fourth International - Daniel Bensaid
The Cuban revolution - Janette Habel
Populism in Latin America
Historical origins of women's oppression
The Russian revolution
The Russian and German revolutions compared
A guide to Marxist economic terms
The bourgeois revolutions
The Marxist theory of the party
The Stalinization of the USSR
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International Viewpoint 29 September 1986
Notebooks for Study and Research
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