Kevin Cadwallader shows his Army identification card.
Kevin Cadwallader is a deserter from the British Army who is now seeking political asylum in Sweden. His case is being fought by the Revolutionary American People's Party (RAPP), a group formed mainly of American war deserters in Sweden which works closely with the Fourth International.
On arriving in Sweden, Kevin Cadwallader made the following statement: "I Kevin Cadwallader, came to Sweden for asylum because of Northern Ireland. I do not think that what is happening there is very good. As I see it there must be a simpler way of ending the fight without more people being killed. So I have left rather than fight in something I think is wrong."
In Swedish law. "a political refugee is a fo. reigner who in his home country runs the risk of persecution on political grounds". RAPP is fighting the case on the basis that: "The army from which he deserted is engaged in an undeclared war in Northern Ireland. It must be clear to everyone that to go against the policies of one's own government, and in protest. to desert to a neutral country, is a political act."
RAPP need funds urgently to fight this case. Please sendto RAPP, P.O. Box 64, 13201 Saltsjo, Boo, Sweden. Currently going the rounds of the local students union elections is a leaflet written by members of the NUS executive, headed What is the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Students Unions?'. It is not as one would hope, however, an attempt to grapple with the Liaison Committee's arguments politically-rather, it is an attempt to use the McCarthyite tactic of discrediting the LCDSU by branding it as an IMG front organisation' and slandering some of the individuals most closely involved with it. To do this, of course, those members of the NUS executive involved (notably John Randall, Deputy President) have had to distort the facts somewhat. Not only do they give an incomplete listing of the LCDSU slate for the NUS elections, not only is it incorrect (see The Red Mole 38 on the IMG's decision not to participate in the slate)- but to the two actual IMG members in their list they add two more alleged IMG members, one alleged IMG sympathiser, assert that "the non-IMG members of this slate can be relied upon to toe the IMG line" with one possible exception, and then, hey presto, "the composition of the slate indicates that the LCDSU has now become nothing but a front organisation for the IMG"! They then confirm this conclusion by listing the members of the Steering Committee and again, by falsely alleging that certain people on it are members or sympathisers of IMG, produce an IMG bloc of 10 out of 17 steering committee members. positions of the LCDSU is to say that these are by and large the product of the confused analysis of the IMG (an analysis which only recently led them to call for the complete destruction of student unions and their replacement by "red bases' within each university or college. So much for the Defence of Student Unions'.)" This last is, of course, rubbish, as a glance at anything we have written on students recently will show. The reference is to a questioning (not a call for their destruction) of the role of students unions in an article written by an IMG member in 1968 ("only recently?).
The leaflet, first produced by NUS executive members for the elections at York University, concludes that "the LCDSU are the unwitting agents provocateurs of the right wing", andcites as evidence three colleges in which, "in the wake of LCDSU union leadership", the left has suffered setbacks. No doubt the writers were hoping for a further defeat for the LCDSU at York. Unfortunately for them, however, their candidate was soundly beaten by an LCDSU supporter who is not even a revolutionary socialist, let alone a member or sympathiser of the IMG. We really must be losing our grip but then, of course, we are unable, unlike certain members of the NUS executive who belong to the Communist Party, to dräw on such a long and widespread experience of rigidly controlling "front organisations".