7 Days 2 February 1972

RHODESIA:Chrome -hungry US makes Dealby the African Research Group

THE U.S. TREASURY lifted the embargo on imports of chrome ore and other

strategic materials from Rhodesia on January 26. This move was partly expected following Con­gressional legislation last November required the ban on chrome to be lifted by January 1. But the lifting covered all minerals, not just chrome, and the President of the Rhodesian Chamber of Mines was reported as saying that he had been surprised by the extent of the US relaxa­tion. In a recent study the US-based Africa Research Group have analysed the background to this move, in particular stressing that the US has enough chrome stockpiled for several years and had no reason, apart from political ones, for lifting the ban:

United States corporations will once again be able to purchase chrome from white-dominated Rhodesia. This is the result of the so-called “chrome amendment” to the Military Pro­curement Bill passed by Congress in November. For two major American corporations, Union Carbide and Foote Minerals, as well as for the British government, the Nixon administration and the white-minority government of Rhodesia, the decision to allow the purchase of chrome will be very welcome.

$56 million investedIn 1967 the United Nations Secretary

Council passed a resolution applying mandatory economic sanction against Rhodesia. Johnson issued an Executive order enforcing the resolution in the United States. The intent of the appli­cation of sanctions was to bring to an end white minority rule in Rhodesia. In support of the resolution the United States government initiated several court actions against American corpora­tions accused of breaking sanctions. In the meantime the Rhodesian govern­ment, through its agency the Rhodesian Information Service, started extensive lobbying in Congress against sanctions. The lobbying focussed around the question of chrome imports. Two American corporations, Union Carbide and Foote Minerals, own chrome mines in Rhodesia. Together they have about $56 million invested there. Both cor­porations supported the lobbying effort.

Byrd's KitePrior to the implementation of

sanctions against Rhodesia, the United States had imported about 35 per cent of its chrome from Rhodesia, and about

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30 per cent from the U.S.S.R. (the remainder coming from South Africa, Iran and Turkey). Since sanctions the United States has been importing about 55-60 per cent from Russia. Using cold-war arguments to bolster their position, the anti-sanction lobbyists solicited Congressional support. On March 30, 1971 Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia (a friend of the Smith regime) introduced a bill to permit the im­portation of chrome from Rhodesia. The bill read: “The President shall not prohibit the importation of a strategic material from a Free World (sic) country if the same material is being imported from a Communist country.” (Chrome is classified as a strategic metal in the United States.) The bill was first submitted to the Foreign Relations Committee where it was blacked in the spring.

Byrd then submitted the identical bill to the Armed Services Committee where it was tacked onto the $21 billion defense bill. Military experts argued that the U.S. was dependent on Russia even though the US government’s strategic stockpile is so over full that an official has suggested that 1.3 million tons should be declared in excess of re­quirements. This excess is sufficient for supplying all strategic chrome needs for the next ten years! The administration made no attempt to kill the “chrome amendment” on the floor and inNovember it was passed as part of the entire defence legislation. The date for the termination of the ban on the importation of chrome was set for January 1, 1972. This was done tofacilitate British negotiations inRhodesia.

US Backing RacismThere is no question that the decision

of the United States to initiate a process of sanctions breaking had profoundpolitical implications. Most important it indicated that the United States was not committed to upholding sanctions until majority rule was a reality in Rhodesia — even when there was substantial evidence that the effect of sanctions was finally cutting deep into the Rhodesian economy. Africans have interpreted this as an overt act of support for white racism coming as it did in the middle of the negotiations between Smith and the British government. As an African member of parliament in Rhodesia said:

“How can any country in the world continue sanctions when America with all its strength says it must break them. This is the beginning. The rebel government will now be able to claim the victory on sanctions it has always promised and we may loose the only real form of international support we have.”

Ronald Sadomba M.P.The United States, by breaking the

Security Council resolution on sanctions paved the way for the British sell-out to white rule in Rhodesia.

United States support for Britain was critical. Anticipating extensive criticism from all sides if it successfullynegotiated with the racist government in Rhodesia the Conservative government realised that its own position would be buttressed by the United Statesdecision. Especially in the UnitedNations the British government will be protected given that the United States has itself acted counter to SecurityCouncil policy.

In Magunje village, African spokesman wait to speak to the Pearce Commission. Officials "explain" the proposed settlement to the Rhodesian people.

POLAND: No flowers for Rosaby Tamara DeutscherPOLAND — Following the resolution of the last Congress of the Polish United Workers Party in December, a many-volumed history of the Polish labour movement is to be published in Poland between 1976-1982. The Editorial Board consists of about 10 historians and an equal number of members of the Central Committee. The First Secretary of the Party, E. Gierek, met the editorial team and exhorted them to prepare “a document showing the greatness of the Polish workers’ movement, and to present with integrity and objectivity the historical truth about the class struggles and about the deeds of Polish Communists . . .”

How far back into history will the authors look? The Editorial Com­mittee will have a difficult task: how to explain “with integrity” the fact that the Polish Communist Party was dissolved in 1938 by the Comintern, under the pretext that it was corroded by “Trotskyists and Pilsudskist influences” and had become an agency of fascism and the Polish political police; how to explain that those members of the Central Committee, who had sought refuge in Moscow from the same Polish police, were executed by Stalin’s political police. It is small consolation that the party was “rehabilitated” after 1956.

On January 5 , 1942, a new Party was created and it has just celebrated with great solemnity its 30th birthday. Leader writers and orators reminded us that the Polish Workers’ Party was “a continuator of the glorious revolutionary traditions of the Polish working class” . To this “glorious tradition” belongs Rosa

Luxemburg, the greatest Polish Communist, who was as active in Poland as in Germany. Yet her name was not even mentioned, and no memorial meeting was called on the anniversary of her assassination on January 15. She was commemorated in the German Democratic Republic, not in her native Poland.

F IG H T TH E S E L L O U T IN RHODESIA

DEM ONSTRATE SUNDAY 13th FEB R U A R Y

Meet Speakers Corner (Hyde Park) 1 p.m.March to Trafalgar Square for rally 2.30 p.m.

Platform will include:BISHOP MUZOREWA, Chairman African National Council, Rhodesia

M ICHAEL FOOT M.P., A LT H EA LECO IN TE JONES STU A R T H A L L , JIMMY R E ID , M IK E T E R R Y

Chairman: R E V . DR. COLIN MORRIS

NO INDEPENDENCE B EFO R E M A JO R ITY R U LE SUPPORT TH E STR U G G LE OF TH E ZIMBABWE PEO PLE

Rhodesia Emergency Campaign Committee Anti Apartheid Movement 89 Charlotte Street,London W1P 2DQ. Tel. 01-580 5311

7

7 Days 2 February 1972

Drug-running Corporation NabbedFOR THE LAST 21/2 years US

narcotics agents and customs officials have been crawling all

over the US-Mexican border, fouling up traffic, stripping travellers, and ruining the tourist trade. The purpose of this harrassment is “Operation Blackjack” , designed to stop the movement of illegal drugs between the US and Mexico. Last week the US Justice Department caught its first big villain: not a Mexican gangster chief, but a US pharmaceuticals corporation, the Pennwalt Corporation, based in Philadelphia, which is the 258th largest manufacturing company in the US, and sells over $400,000,000 worth of goods a year.

Narcotics agents have been working on the Pennwalt case for ten months. A division of the corporation makes amphetamines called Bifetamina in New York State, and exports them to another

corporate division in Mexico City. From Mexico the amphetamine capsules are imported back into the US, where they are sold, illegally, for about 60p a capsule. According to US law, amphetamines can be exported only for medical use in the importing country.

The Bifetamina capsules have been brought across the Mexico-Texas border in small planes, or hidden in lorries. They have been found by US drug squads in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, Colorado, Mississippi and Arkansas. They sell on the streets as packaged by Pennwalt’s pharmaceu­tical subsidiary in Mexico City — but under the names “Black Beauties”,

“‘Black Mollies” and “Black Widows” . A Pennwalt spokesman in Philadelphia has commented that “the whole implication that we are doing anything by design is upsetting” .

Financial Boost for Nixon Backersby Victoria Strauss

THE NEW US BUDGET hands out financial cheer for the coming election year: for

Republican voters and for the Republican corporations who will subsidize Nixon’s election campaign. Support is promised for consumer protection, cancer research, hovertrains, sewage- treatment, community develop­ment, national technology and new limousines for the Supreme Court. But the most notable beneficiaries of the Nixon Budget are the US defence corporations — as the New York financial press put it in an enthusiastic headline, “Increased Pentagon spending promises Boost for Defence Industry’”

In the coming year, the Pentagon will be entitled to spend $83 billion, or more than the entire annual wages and salaries of everyone in Britain. This high level of defence spending marks the end of Nixon’s three year cutback i n armaments accumulation. It is particu­larly encouraging for the US defence industry because a high proportion of the military budget will be spent on elaborate new weapons systems: as US troops are withdrawn from Vietnam, less money need be put aside for soldiers’ pay and simple equipment, and more is available for high-technology, high-profit projects.

The defence corporations tottered in the slump of the US economy, and Nixon hopes that they will lead its election-time recovery. Early last year, the value on Wall Street of aerospace shares was at a record low. Investors could buy part of a defence corporation for as little as a couple of dollars. By now, the price of most defence shares has doubled. The largest defence corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought,announced last week that its aerospace business was in the “strongest financial condition in the firm’s history” . North American Rockwell, another major defence contractor, also announced increased profits. Even Lockheed is now considered a financially desirable outfit. All these corporations have laid off thousands of workers, permanently, and most actually boast about their “cost reduction programs” .

Navy LarksThe major part of the new Pentagon

budget will be allocated to the US Navy. Nixon is fond of remembering his past as a naval officer, and naval power is an

essential aspect of the Nixon/Kissinger strategy for world leadership. The argument for naval rearmament has been supported recently by such propagandists of US domination as the Economist, in a cover story last month, and Time, in a scare-style cover story on Soviet naval power, published in the week of the US Budget. According to the Nixon / Kissinger theory, heavily armed American ships can cruise around the world, intimidating insubordinate countries, but seldom disgorging live American troops.

The two most lucrative contracts in the Budget are for naval use. The ULMS (undersea long-range missile system) program builds nuclear-powered submarines at a cost of £1 billion each: both Lockheed and the General Dynamics aircraft corporation are toiling away on these submarines. The CVAN-70 is a nuclear aircraft carrier, and is being built by Tenneco Inc, in Virginia. 19 other important weapons programmes were described in the Budget: all the powerfull defence corporations received some sort of handout. Even the British firm

Hawker-Siddeley is remembered, with a $19.4 million increase in the price to be paid for the Harrier jets being made in Britain for the US Marines.

Good PoliticsNixon’s Budget can be expected to

yield immediate financial results for the Republican Party. The- three states which do best out of defence contracts are California, New York and Texas, the three largest states, with the most electoral votes. Last year, the large southern state of Virginia doubled its share of the Pentagon military budget. One advantage for Nixon of the increased emphasis on naval rearmament is a further refinement of political payola: most naval ships are built in the usually right-wing areas of Southern California, Virginia and the South.

The huge defence corporations have traditionally supported Democratic presidential candidates, as being more consistently belligerent. By his new Budget, Nixon proves his expansionary intentions, and his eligibility for corporate support from defence contractors.

“FRIENDLY PEOPLE PRODUCE MORE: Life is different in San Antonio. People are friendly. There is an absence of racial or labour strife. San Antonio has a good supply of people, skilled and unskilled, who appreciate good jobs. The friendly and bountiful labour supply is only one reason for locating in San Antonio . . . ” (From an advertise­ment in the “Wall Street Journal”, paid for by the City Public Service Board of San Antonio, Texas.)

One of the easiest ways for multinational companies to keep their labour costs down is to build elaborate factories in poor, under­developed countries. A recent study of five “satellite” locations — Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Okinawa and Mexico — shows the pattern of multinational foreign investment. Of the satellites’ exports to rich industrialised countries, about 60% are of manufactured goods. Of the exports of non-satellite under­developed countries, only 16% are of manufactured goods. 92% of all transistors exported to rich countries from the underdeveloped world are made in satellite countries, as are 96% of all radios, and 100% of all television sets.

Marginal Error

Workers of the West Coast Longshore­mans Union on strike again. The U.S. Dock strikes have had serious economic effects and are another sign of the growing militancy of American Workers.

The US government recently suffered an embarassing setback in its economic policy. Statisticians at the Department of Commerce last month published a selection of encouraging facts about the recovery of the US economy. They have now revealed that the figures were false, and based on “faulty data from the Census Bureau” . Consumer spending, build­ing, and the real rate of growth of the economy were all seriously overestimated: the annual value of the US economy was overestimated by a matter of $7,000,000,000.

8

7 Days 2 February 1972

As Lonrho-lover Nim eiry faces new threat

Sudan СP denies it plannedJ u l y C o u p by a correspondent

recently in the Sudan

THE FIGHT TO FREE THE 2,000 suspected “commu­nists” arrested in the Sudan

last July after the left-wing coup has revived a tradition that used to flourish among the women of the northern Sudan. During intertribal wars, in the course of which the wishes and interests of the women were seldom considered by their men, and sometimes at the height of battle, the women would rush between the combattants and — unveil.

Though this custom has fallen into disuse in modern times, it found modern relevance in 1964 when the Abboud dictatorship was overthrown in the streets of Khartoum: as the soldiersthreatened to shoot into the crowds, it was the women who came forward and shamed the troops into submitting to the will of the masses. Women formed a considerable proportion of the few who fell that day. And to-day, once again, it is women who are leading to the fight to free their comrades, their husbands and their brothers who are still locked up.

"Accursed Infidels"The arrests in July lacked pattern:

underdevelopment affects the instru­ments of repression as much as any other branch of state. Thousands of CP members were not arrested, and many of those taken in were not Party members at all. There were also many “grudge arrests”, as bureaucrats and time-servers took out their knives in the fierce battle for promotion and job security. This was made all the easier by Nimeiry’s call for the people to “come out onto the streets” to join in a pogrom against the “accursed infidel communists” . For example, four technicians in the Sudan Mint, who had declined to sign a “petition” got up by their manager to protect himself from retirement, were denounced and clapped into jail. And they may still be there.

The country’s prisons were unable to deal with the sudden rise in inmates. Kober is the main centre, just outside Khartoum, and there over half the prisoners were at one time living in tents, and prevented from working to rebuild the delapidated prison buildings. The rights traditionally granted to political prisoners in the Sudan — visits and reading material — were stopped.

Hunger StrikesThe response of the prisoners to these

conditions was to organise. Soon after July, a two-day hunger strike won the Kober prisoners the right to supervise the preparation of the food. Two women militants, Su’ad Ibrhaim Ahmad and Fatma Naim, carried out their own four-day hunger strike in Omdurman Central Prison, demanding improved bedding, reading material and access to all visitors.

Up to half of the original 2,000 detainees may now have been released.

The Arabic on the jeep says "A rm y": tens of soldiers were killed in the counter-coup.

In the Egyptian-backed counter-coup 2,000 suspected "communists" were rounded up, and the leaders shot after kangaroo trials.

Sudanese military leader Nimeiry in statue form. The demagogue has little popular support, army rivals may topple him soon.

There have been no official hearings, and those released are still repressed outside prison. Many have lost their jobs and housing. Outside the prisons the women are mobilising around the slogan “ Immediate Trial or Release”. The first factor leading to this was the steadily increasing fear and hardship caused by the continued detention of their men. Then during the month of Ramadan,' privileges relating to the sending in of food were cut back.

The women have won two important concessions: the dependants ofdetainees have been formally granted the right to 50% of the prisoner’s previous salary — an important concession, but one which gives the Provincial Commissioners the means to control women who continue to protest. And, the Ministry of Justice has now promised the persons arrested will be taken before a court or a tribunal within 72 hours — though this verbal promise does not apply to those who have been in prison already.

Sudan is not another Indonesia. Nimeiry, who lashed out and executed tens of communists in the July repression, admitted in a Speech in December that the CP was as strong and well-organised as ever. Instead of threats and bluster he merely produced a grovelling appeal to the works to follow him as the apostle of the “ true socialism” and to avoid the “neurotic left” .

The CP itself has recently produced an analysis of its own position. It reckons that much of its rural organisation and information-gathering system has been destroyed, except in the stronghold of Gezira. But in the towns they claim to have rebuilt their structures, and to have defeated several attempts to infiltrate government agents into their membership. They also think that as the Nimeiry regime continues to discredit itself, they will come increasingly to be seen as the popular alternative to the regime.

In the same document they strongly deny that they were responsible for the July coup, The Free Officers who carried out the coup had had discussions with the CP, but were not acting on CP orders or with the CP’s co-operation. The government set up by the Free Officers received CP support once established, but the Party’s call to arm the Party’s cadres came too late, and the intervention of Egypt and Libya was able to put the toppled Nimeiry back into power.

Now the reinstated general is thrashing around for popular support, while his government rebuilds Sudan’s economic ties with the west. If Nimeiry continues to pursue his present rightist policies, such as getting Lonrho to act as purchasing agent in Europe, there is little chance of his being able to restabilise the situation. His popular following is shrinking, but a group of hostile officers may well throw him out before this anger gets too strong.

9

All photographs by M

ike Charles/G

amm

a

7 Days 2 February 1972

CUBA:US Pilots for Trialby Gordon Stevens

OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA

We demand that N ix o n and the State Department and their spokesmen say whether it is true or not that Jose Villa Diaz is a CIA agent; whether

it is true or not that José Villa Díaz worked on the “ Royna” ; whether it is true that Jose Villa Diaz worked on the “ Explorer” and carried out all these missions against our country

THREAT of invasion has long dominated Cuba’s relations with her Caribbean

neighbours and with the U.S. Old tensions were revived by the seizure recently of two merchant ships by Cuban gunboats.

Layla and JohnnyThe Layla Express was captured

on December 6 off Oriente Pro­vince. On December 15 her sister ship the Johnny Express was boarded after a chase 150 miles from the Cuban coast. Though based in Miami, both were registered in Panama and both were owned by members of the Cuban-exile Babum family, leaders of anti-Castro politics in Florida, and prominent in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The next day the White House de­manded the' return of Jose Villa, master of the Johnny Express, a Cuban carrying a U.S. passport. The same day, President Nixon, holidaying in Florida, was photographed with Villa’s family. State Department spokesman Robert McCloskey warned that the Navy would have “destroyers and other warships moved from the Atlantic to respond quickly to any attack” . The Guantanamo naval base in the south eastern tip of Cuba, which the United States had maintained despite breaking off all relations with Castro’s govern­ment, was put on emergency standby.

Panama accepted Castro’s suggestion to act as agent for the release of crew-members not charged with “acts of violence against the Cuban people” , and after four days in Havana, a Panama government delegation secured the release of all but three crew-members.

One of those not released was Capt. Villa, the only casualty of the incidents, despite his radio messages to Miami of “many dead and wounded, the decks

covered with blood” . All three detained, had admitted to the delegation their involvement in previous attacks against Cuba. The crew of the Johnny Express also claimed that Villa had refused to surrender until wounded because, he said, h e had made several landings in Cuba and was afraid of what might happen to him.

Decade of ViolenceSeizure of the vessels, said Castro

later, followed a decade of violence against Cuba. The first attempt on his life was made within days of coming to power, in January 1959. Significantly, it was made by a U.S. citizen. By October that year, Cuban villages and instal­lations had been bombed and fishermen kidnapped. Training camps for anti- Castro forces had been set up in the banana republics of Central America. Behind these activities, he said, was the CIA.

Men and arms were landed, and coastal areas strafed, by launches operating from ships stationed off Cuba. Parent ships either belonged to com­panies financed by the CIA, or were directly controlled by the CIA. Directintervention was climaxed when an invasion force of 1500, with tanks and artillery, and strengthened by air support, was defeated at the Bay of Pigs. Within four months, anti-Castro forces had sought to trigger off major escalation and confrontation by attacking the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo. They were captured be­fore making the attack. The attempt was repeated in 1968.

Low ProfileThe U.S. low profile image of the late

sixties, however, signalled new tactics against Havana. “Pirate ships” were replaced by merchant ships using regular shipping lines between Florida and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Re­public, and Haiti and Puerto Rico. Both the Layla Express and the Johnny

Express were used in these operations, sometimes under Capt. Villa.

Then, on October 12, according to a Cuban bulletin, “at 21.30 hours, the small village of Boca de Sama was attacked by a pirate motor boat. The attack left a toll of several dead and several seriously wounded, among them a girl who had to have one foot amputated” . At dawn, a “very suspi­cious boat” was spotted by Cuban planes, heading back towards Florida.

Within days, exiled Cuban leader and naturalised U.S. citizen Jose de la Torriente, claiming responsibility for the attack but putting the number killed at fifteen, was applauded when he announced the beginning of a new war against the Castro regime. He was addressing the New York Republican Women’s Club — Nixon’s own party. It was this speech, said Castro, that decided the Havana government to intercept such pirate boats.

On December 22, almost a week after its initial menacing stance on the Johnny Express incident, the White House made its first comment on the Boca de Sama attack. Action was announced against the “proprietors of the ship supposedly utilised for an anti-Castro landing in Cuba” but unfor­tunately “it had not yet been determined officially who the pro­prietors are” .

The boat was named as the Akuarius, registered in Panama. That country had already announced its competence to deal with its own affairs. In the Colombian capital Bogota, Teofilo Babum, naturalised U.S. citizen and co-owner of the Johnny Express and the Layla Express, demanded continued negotiations for the release of those crew-members still detained in Havana.

In the tension surrounding the capture of the two boats, the Cuban army has gone on counter-invasion exercises near Havana. And in Boca de Sama, attacked last October, the people are calling for the trial of Villa and his associates to be held in their village.

NEWS OF THEWORLD

ITALY — Consultations continued in Italy last week with a view to the formation of a new coalition govern­ment. The issue of forming a new government is tied into the question of the recent reform of the divorce laws, which the Vatican is demanding be reversed. The Communists demand that any new government formed must fight the referendum demand or call a general election, and do not think any new govern­ment can be formed till the divorce issue is resolved. In another re­pressive move, the Pope last week called for a moral clean-up of Rome, in preparation for the planned Holy Year in 1975. Denouncing trends “in the name of progress and ‘cosmopoli­tanism’ ” , Vicar of Christ Paul VI called on his audience to defend “Rome’s singular character” .

JAPAN — Japan and Russia have agreed to begin negotiations this year aimed at concluding a peace treaty between the two countries. Although the two countries restored diplo­matic relations in 1965, the Japanese have demanded the return of four islands north of Hokkaido which the Russians occupied in 1945. The Russians have said in the past that they would return two of these provided Japan signed a peace treaty with Russia and there were no US bases in Japan. Last week’s announcement came at the end of a visit to Tokyo by Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, in which new agreements on economic and cultural exchanges were signed. The Soviet Union seems to want to consolidate its diplomatic position in Tokyo to offset growing Japanese interest in building ties with People’s China. And, despite the recent cooling off of Japanese-Soviet economic co-oper­ation in Siberia, this area remains a key prize for future Japanese economic expansion.

USA — They were indicted fourteen months ago but the trial started only last week. The “Harrisburg Seven” , accused of plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger, have decided to conduct a relatively straight trial, using former Attorney General Ramsey Clark as defence lawyer. Their trial is expec­ted to last up to four months, involve 200 witnesses. The most prominent defendant, Fr. Phil Berrigan is already serving a 6-year sentence for destroying draft records in 1968; a former Army officer, he is now a Josephite priest. Support from critical elements within the Catholic Church has been growing: Dom Helder Camara, Bishop of Recife in Brazil, has publicly supported the Berrigans.

USA Ports along the US West Coat from Canada to Mexico were closed last week as the dock-strike restarted after a lull imposed last October under the Taft-Hartley Act. The dockers are demanding a guaranteed annual wage and are also challenging the handling of containers from ocean liners. They want a rise in average wages from the present $10,000 to $12,500, and a shorter working week. Nixon has gone all out to smash this outbreak, and has called on Congress to declare the strike illegal. The bout last year cost the US economy $1,400 million in lost exports. The strike is led by the 60,000-strong International Long­shoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union.

YUGOSLAVIA — The special con­ference of the League of Yugoslav Communists held in Belgrade last week marked a new attempt by the party leadership to cope with the outburst of nationalism in Croatia and elsewhere. On the one hand,

discipline: 47 Croats have officially been arrested and will face trial on charges of subversion; in addition 357 party officials have been expelled, 143 have been dismissed from their posts and 255 have resigned. On the other hand, Tito in his closing speech to the 400 delegates emphasised that there would be no return to harsh rule — an answer to Croatian accusations of Tito’s (organisational) “Stalinism”. But he also emphasised the im­portance of the Yugoslav army, and said that the army would definitely be used if the country’s unity was at stake.

CHINA - The New China News Agency issued a commentary on January 26 saluting the enlargement of the EEC. After denouncing the “increased collusion between the two superpowers” — the USSR and the United States - in Europe over recent years” , which threatens the “vital interests of the countries of western Europe” , the statement goes on: “the consolidation and develop­ment of the Common Market has presented several obstacles to the coercive policies of the two super­powers. They have constituted a serious challenge to American hegemony in western Europe” . The Chinese press have recently been reprinting many official EEC docu­ments on issues such as Eurodollars and the value-added tax.

GERMANY — Andreas Baader, a leader of the underground group the Red Army Fraction, RAF, sent a letter to the German press last week, authenticated with a fingerprint next to his signature. Declared Baader, whose group have been the object of a massive police-hunt in Germany for months; “We are here to organise armed resistance against the existing property order and the continuing exploitation of the people. The political and military strategy of urban guerrilla includes the building of the first regular units of the Red Army in a people’s war. The struggle has begun in earnest” . Baader said that none of what had been published about his group since their return from guerrilla training in Jordan was correct. “The present activity of the RAF is the formation of political-military cadres, the improvement of our weaponry and the development of revolutionaries” .

SPAIN — The last fortnight has seen a new flareup in Spain: workers on strike in several towns; kidnappings by the ETA Basque nationalists; a fierce student fight in Madrid. At the same time a communist militant, Lucio Lobato has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for distributing tracts, only a year after his release from a 12-year stint for “incitement to rebellion” . The present wave began in Madrid university after the term began on January 10: a week later 15,000 students were on strike, and the agitation had spread to the secondary schools in Madrid. In a series of actions protesting university regulations and police intervention on the campus tens of protesters were arrested. Despite government attempts to get the students back to work through concessions, the strikers refused to go back till all their demands had been considered. The ETA action centred around the firm Precicontrol where 183 workers had been sacked for striking and the management had refused to allow the workers to form a union. After ETA people kidnapped one of the managers, Lorenzo Zabala, the management agreed to reemploy the sacked workers, but the police then arrested ten of the leading workers once Zabala had been released. On the rest of the labour front, several strikes have been organised in the light of the renewal of local labour contracts: in the Asturiasl ,100 metal workers and in Bilbao 2,000 dock­yard workers struck last week to press their demands.

10

7 Days 2 February 1972

Claud Cockburn introduces our pull-out guide to weapons of the State

THE STATE’S LEGAL AIDSIN NOVEMBER 1918 they told

Otto, then King of Saxony, that the citizens had hoisted

the red flag in Dresden’s principal square and were dancing round it, shouting for his abdication and singing the Internationale.

He asked his Home Secretary “Are they allowed to do that?”

It seemed there was nothing in the statutes and regulations specifically prohibiting this form of popular activity. The precise conditions had never previously arisen.

Otto’s question is one which all strategists of repression have to keep asking themselves. The desired answer, so far as protesters and resisters are concerned is “No” . The object of the strategists must be to frame enough “No’s” without provoking more of the type of resistance they are paid to prevent or break.

Invisible ChainsIdeally, the “no” should not have to

be expressed in any legal or formal manner at all. For the repression and persecution of hostile opinions or actions, invisible weapons should be employed to the greatest extent pos­sible. The secret blacklist, for example, nourished by computerised data from all available sources, can be widely used to ensure that employers are properly informed as to whom to hire or fire, and do general economic and social damage to the dissident.

The big, sophisticated smear has often worked wonders in Britain and, even more in the United States where the method has reached its highest development.

But there have to be public “No’s” too. Laws and regulations open to inspection.

In framing these, the Establishment strategists must ask:—

The Weak LinksFirst:— What happened yesterday, or

the year before last or a couple of years before that? When and where did we fail? When, where, and how did the other side score a breakthrough? They study the records of strikes, picket behaviour, demonstrations, student actions etc, with a view to strengthening any weak spots — legal, or physical.

But they know as well as anyone that in studying the past, they run the risk of preparing for the last war instead of the next one.

Secondly;— They ask what is hap­pening now, this week? A lot of their information under this head comes from spies and informers, earning their keep by purporting to tell what these or those groups are “really” up to, and distinct from what is publicly disclosed in the media and the statements of those involved. Such information is sometimes useful in enabling the Establishment to get in a quick blow.

But it always contains a large admixture of lies and hysterical halluci­nations. Action taken on such reports can backfire dangerously.

Over KillFor example in the early Thirties,

when the first national Hunger March converged on London, a section of those in authority actually believed on the strength of “information received” — that some form of physical, revolutionary violence was planned.

They were easy marks for other persons in authority who believed nothing of the kind, but wanted quick, brutal, intimidating action against the Un­employed.

The result was first a series of savage attacks by the police on the Marchers in Hyde Park, and then an ugly and damaging exposure of the workings of British Justice when the victims were brought to the police courts for breaches of the peace.

But the further result was a notable awakening of social awareness in hither­to somnolent quarters, and first formation of the Council for Civil Liberties, a phenomenon most un­welcome to the Establishment. At the climax of the next Hunger March, Hyde Park was patrolled by Council observers. Hardline police brasshats were told to restrain themselves, and the rank-and- file ordered to conduct themselves with reasonable decorum, avoiding public outrages upon their fellow workers.

Thirdly:— What might happen next month, or next year, the year after?

What Next?Even the most politically expert of

the Establishment strategists cannot answer that question ,in any useful detail. Like everyone else, they study trends, calculate probabilities: estimate, for example, what the economic policies of the present Government are likely to produce in terms of strikes, action by the unemployed, general, increasingly bitter, political protest by millions of people.

It is in preparing blanket measures, means of repression and attack, so broad, and sometimes so vague, that almost any anti-Establishment be­haviour can, if the Establishment chooses, be shown to be criminal, that British Governments excel.

The mutiny of the British Navy at lnvergordon in 1931, gave the Establishment a frightful shock. Its spy-system had, apparently, mal­functioned. The situation was the more disgusting because it could not be exploited as part of a red scare. For that would have required enormous and sensational treatment in the newspapers. Which, it was feared, could have brought most undesirable aid, comfort and encouragement to workers in many other spheres, including, notably, the Army. Instead, the media were in­structed — they scarcely needed instruction — to play it down: the word “mutiny” , for instance, was never to be used. “Some unrest due to regrettable misunderstandings” was the favoured term for it.

But the rather longer term reaction of the Establishment culminated in what was popularly known as the Sedition Bill.

TroublemakingOstensibly this was designed to

provide more effective penalties than those already existing for people seeking to sow disaffection among the armed forces. And that, certainly, was a genuine part of its objective.

In that sense, it could be represented as a “defensive” measure by the Establishment and could expect 'at least tacit support from all who thought it only right and proper that working men in uniform should be kept, so far as possible, in ignorance of the facts of political and economic life in Britain, and should certainly not be allowed to listen to anyone who urged that these facts be changed, forcibly or otherwise.

But it was immediately pointed out that the Bill was, in fact, a weapon of offence. For under its provisions it could be held that almost any statement

of opinion hostile to the Establishment which might, if heard or, particularly, if read, shake or erode the discipline and enthusiasm of sailors or soldiers con-stituted criminal behaviour.

There was a parallel with the obscenity laws as then existing. How could a publisher or bookseller prove that a book might not fall into the hands of persons liable to be depraved and corrupted by it? How could a newspaper prove that any vigorous statement of hostility to the authorities or, for example, to the pro-Nazi foreign policy of the Government, might not be read by loyal Tommy Atkins or jolly obedient Jack Tar, and cause dis­affection in his mind?

In other words, the Bill was a general and vicious attack upon freedom of speech all along the line.

Handle with CarePublicly, the originators of the

measure swore in the name of Fair Play, Justice, and the Public Weal, that of course, of course, of course, the pro­visions of the Bill would be carried out with the strictest discrimination. Only the deliberately seditious would suffer.

Privately, they agreed that the Bill was just as catch-all as its opponents declared it to be: that, from its makers’ viewpoint, was indeed its supreme virtue.

And like all such measures, it was designed not for particular or immediately foreseeable situations, but as an armoury from which legal weapons could be drawn wherever and whenever it might suit the Establishment to draw them.

The advantages to the Establishment and the danger for everyone else, is that this technique, in which the weapons are perhaps not used for a long period after the armoury has been stacked, can

produce public political apathy on the subject, until those legal guns suddenly fire.

Time BombsThe situation does sometimes force

the Establishment to adopt more immediate and specific means of attack.

A notable example was the intro­duction in the 1930’s of the so-called “Trenchard Ban” — named after Police Chief Trenchard who (probably illeg­ally) introduced it. Its simple essence was to make it an offence punishable with fine or imprisonment, for anyone to make any kind of speech on any street within hearing distance of the door of a Labour Exchange. It must be made criminal for speakers to com­municate their views of the situation to the long queues outside the Exchanges.

Like all such measures, it was ef­fective or not according to the degree of resistance offered to it. If there were no orators organised and willing to defy the ban, then the ban was a success.

Whenever and wherever enough speakers were available to set up their box within shouting distance of the queues, the Ban was actually counter­productive.

The repeated arrests and court appearances of speakers drew the attention of numberless people who might otherwise have become apathetic towards the situation of the un­employed. And to the men in the queue was conveyed the message that the Government was so frightened of them that it dared not let its opponents even speak to them.

As on all the other sectors of the front, the success or failure of the Establishment strategists depended upon the energy, determinat ion and political astuteness of their enemies.

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Hom

er Sykes