dent once again, in nearly every case of major disturbance the report reveals the Protestant ang belind the RUC/L SC in the streets.
sly in Denry and Belfast dy wil established that the hined with the police in vell in baton charges, petrol The picture is simitowns. The example of Dunoffice. In dealing with the relaeen the police and the Protest* it quotes the evidence of CounLandale faced with a "Protestant sly mood": "With great luck I got I and got them to follow me into shouted 'Back to the Square od I ran towards them and to my they turned and they followed me". ant mob had good reason to think rapector would not lead them astray. arlier, as the report is forced to show, had opened fire on an unarmed crowd a injuring three of them. Landale's y demonstrates very well the relationhat existed between the police and ProScarman, instead of referring ince points to examples of police nato mite with the Protestant mobs und even testraining them from attacking The point however is not that the police always anged the mobs on or only sometimes, or the mority of the time-although it is certain that restraint by the police against the Protestants was the exception rather than the rule. The central explanation lies in a realm which Scarman does not touch on at allthe common position of the police and the Protestant mob. This was not only a common hatred for the Catholics as such, but a position of defence of the statelet of Northern Ireland itself, and the various social and political privileges this endowed on the Protestants. Thus the bulk of Scarman is devoted to obscuring this political reality under a mountain of detail about what is largely 'keeping up appearances by the RUC establishment. The study of the 1969 events is made in a complete social and political vucuum. Rarely are the fundamental differences in aspiration of the religiously divided people raised and never as a contextual basis for understanding events. Absolutely no light is shed on the social grievances that lie behind the Catholic resistance to the armed bodies of the Orange statelet. Comrada, bhur chairde.
We, the Martin O'Leary Republican Club, Cape 3, Long Kesh Concentration Camp. wish to appealto our fellow-socialists through the column of your paper. Our appeal is for socialist literature of any shape or sort, books, pamphlets or periodicals or even records of working-class songs and music.
We are determined to educate ourselves in Socialism, despite the efforts of the Campapparat to prevent us, indeed, to prevent us, it seems from learning anything other than to loathe this gray monstrosity.
Despite Mr Heath's neatly packed 'initiatives (?) we feel that anyone with even a lukewarm attitude to socialism need not be in any great hurry to pack their bags.
You will realise that at this time many people, specially in the ghettos, will be inclined to drop their guard. Stormont has disappeared, but, of course, all the other evils will remain.
The establishment is depending on this cuphoria to put the lower orders in their places again, and socialist counter-propaganda is urgently necessary, to expose the realities of this situation.
Aonthaighthe.
Scan Mag Shambrain L. K. 250.
Hut 22, Cage 3, Long Kesh Concentration Camp.
P.S. Please ask your readers to send their gifts to us through the Central Citizens Defence Committee at 39, Falls Road. Belfast 12.
Dear Comrades, 1 am writing on behalf of the Manchester Branch of the International Marxist Group to dissociate us from the letter purporting to deal with Manchester I.S.C.. and particularly the role of 1.S.. that appeared in The Red Mole of 13 March 72 (No. 38). pondent. For example, it is not true that I.S. as an organisation ever took part in I.S.C. It is not true tit any agreement with them was reached to use both Victory to the IRA' and For a 32-County Workers Republic'. For our part, we consider the latter sloga : to be a cop-out from the present concrete tasks facing manes in Britain, and we would not have ac cepted such an 'apreement". We do, of course, abide by a rote according to which Manchester I.S.C. has dopted the slogan "For a Workers Republic. But that slogan was proposed by Workers Fight, and we both spoke and voted against its adoption. Your correspondent is also wrong to claim that the "Socialist Women's Action Group had affiliated. There is no such organisation. The Women's Action Group held a meeting with an I.S.C. speaker shortly after the Derry killings. There is no such organisation at the "Gay Action Group", and contrary to your correspondent's suggestion neither the Gay Liberation Front nor the College of Commerce Students Union had affiliated. The Socialist Society at the latter instiLUDOn BEs done so.
Thus there would have been no need for the national orpanisation of I.S. to worry about one of its branches using the Victory to the IRA slogan. Nor did I.S. leave I.S.C. after an A.I.L. was set up: their real crime was that (during the week after Derry) they decided to set up an A.I.L. with Clann and Sinn Fein, and not to support I.S.C. This decision was taken at an open 1.S. mecting (in the case of the Manchester branch of 1.S.), against strong opposition from individual members of IS. Characteristically, I.S. did not see fit to enforce the line of conduct which it had decided on, but chose to let those of its members who wished to continue to work in I.S.C.
From the above account it can be seen that the letter you published previously was almost totally inaccurate. Such errors in fact, make it more difficult to explain to I.S. members what is, in practice, really wrong with the activity of their organisation.
fraternally, G. Elliot p.p. Manchester IMG.
We have received a letter from Gerry Doherty of Clann na hEireann, about the article IS Hypocrisy in Glasgow' in The Red Mole 38. Due to lack of space we have had to hold over this letter to our next issue, where it will be published together with a reply by Bob Purdie.
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IRISH SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN Public Meeting Speakers: Bob Purdie on "The Aims of I.S.C.' Gerry Lawless on "The Current Situation".
Thursday 20 April, 7.30 p.m. at the Irish Centre, Murray Street, off Camden Road (nearest tube Camden Town).
BUILDING THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL IN BRITAIN The following article is part of the Tasks and Perspectives document submitted by the Tendency, a minority of the International Marxist Group, for discussion at the May, 1972 National Conference of the IMG. The Tendency rejects the general line of the main document submitted by the National Committee of the IMG to the conference, a compressed version of which appeared as the four page special supplement of the 30 March, 1972 issue of The Red Mole. The amount of space allocated to the Tendency only permits the pretasks have had to be omitted from the article.
obtain the complete documentation. THE TASKS OF THE IMG Our central responsibility in the coming period is the development of a mass campaign in defence of the right of the Irish people to self-determination Given the objective openings and the size of our forces, major efforts must be made in our student work and in the development of a mass action abortion-contraception campaien as the central focus of our work in the women's liberation movement.
We have few forces in the labour movement but the receptivity to our ideas is increasing and the opportunity to attract a small but important number of militants to us is the greatest it has ever been in the history of the IMG. We should take advantage of every opening we have in the labour movement to put forward our fundamental political programme around which a class struggle left wing will be built. We must restructure a framework to carry out mobifisations in defence of the Vietnamese revolution. VIETNAM SOLIDARITY It is as important now as ever for Trotskyists to shoulder their responsibilities in defence of the Vietnamese revolution, The capacity to defend the Vietnamese revolution remains a revealing test for all those who consider themselves internationalists and revolutionaries.
The most effective strategy for mobilising broad sup port in defence of the Vietnamese revolution is through the building of a non exclusionary united front solidarity action campaign around the central demands of im ediate withdrawal of American troops and aL and an esd to balsa coope city. This is based on our fundamental principle of unconditional support to the right of the Vietnamese people to self-determination. The initiative taken in Glasgow by the April 22 Indo-China Committee to organise an action on April 22 in response to the international call of the American anti-war movement should be emulated. It is an indication of what could be done in major cities throughout the country if the solidarity appeal of the Fourth Inter national was responded to with initiative on our part. FOR A MASS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN ON IRELAND The building of a mass campaign in solidarity with the Irish struggle for self-determination is the key task before us. It should be the central axis of our work in the coming period. Such a campaign must be on-going, have a massaction perspective and make concrete demands on the British government. The principled basis of all our activity, as revolutionaries within the impenalist oppressor, is unconditional support of the right of self-determination of the Irish people. It involves building a united front type mass action oriented coalition of all organisations and individuals prepared to work for the following demands: (I) Withdraw British Troops Now; (2) End Internment: (3) Release all Political Prisoners. The key demand is Withdraw British Troops Now.
Thé objective situation makes it possible for a mass campaign to be built with sumcient power to force the government to withdraw its troops from Ireland.
This would mean a gigantic step forward for the Irish peope in their struggle for self-determination and change the balance of forces in the class struggle in Britain. Trotskyists should therefore be active in the Anti-Internment League, helping to build it and giving leadership to the efforts to turn it into a powerful united front type organisation fighting for and able to win the above three demands. Our goal is an action coalition based on non-exclusion, onented toward mass mobilisation, imposing no restrictions on the banners carried by participants in the actions.
We must make every effort to convince the united front coalition of its responsibility to propagandise and agitate amongst the British troops on the fight of the Irish people to self-determination and draw them toward the mass movement of solidarity. We must also do this work in our own name. This is the application of a revolutionary socialist policy towards the British troops being used in Ireland.
Failure to do these things will mean that the campaign in solidarity with the Irish struggle will be diverted into the dead ends of reformism or ultraleftism. We should propose this perspective to the members of the Irish Solidarity Campaign and move the dissolution of this group. We should present our full analysis of the Irish revolution under our own name in our own paper.
This is a necessary principled component of our responsibility to the Irish revolutionaries and the British working class. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT The permanent thrcat of large scale unemployment nd rampunt inflation ant symptoms of decaying apitalium. Productivity deals, factory mergers and osures, laws restricting the independence of the trade unions, and incomes policies are all weapons of the ruling chasthat the workers confront more and The ruling class has decided that a confrontation with labour is an economic and political necessity. Massive defensive strugpes will have to be waged by the labour and trade union movement to win decent living and working conditions and the right to a job. The demand for a sliding scale of hours-for the work week to be reduced in proportion to the work available with no reduction in pay -along with the slogan for an extensive and bold public works programme, is fundamental in the fight for jobs for all with the continual threat of increasing upemployment. With the increasing cost of living, the trade unions must demand collective agreements which guarantee automatic wage increases -a sliding scale of wagesgeared to the real rise in the cost of living. This is the key demand in the fight for protection of income under the permanent inflation of capitalism and is always advanced as a complement to, not a substitute for, demands for periodic increases of wages with no strings attached. The popularisation and sensitive application of the transitional demand for a sliding scale of hours and wages must be at the centre of our propaganda and agitation in the labour movement. No ceiling on wage increases. Capitalism, not the worken causes mEanon When the capitalists argue that the economic situation cannot justify wags increases and better working con ditions, the workers must demand an end to business secrets and that the books be opened, thereby posing the question of who actually controls and owns industry. The workers or the bosses? In the face of factory closures, we must aim to win the labour and trade union movement to demand nationalisation under workers control. To defeat the industrial relations act and the strategy - which the ruling class must try to implement in this epoch-of integrating the trade unions into the state apparatus, we must take up and fight for the slogans: Hands Off the Trade Inions, Repeal the Industrial Relations Act. For the Independence of the Trade Unions.
It is in the process of directly fighting the ruling class for demands such as these that workers will come into conflict with bureaucratic misleaders and build a new and revolutionary leadership in the labour movement. Thus, the fight for rank and file democracy is inseparable from the fight for a class struggle line. We must explain the need for the trade unions to support the progressive struggles which are taking place as part of the deepening radicalisation and are helping set the example of independent mass extra-parliamentary action against all forms of capitalist oppressionfull support to the campaign to get the British troops out of Ireland, to the student struggles, to the action of the women's and Black liberation movements, against British complicity in the imperialist war in Vietnam.
Our teachers caucus is almost as large as all our other union caucuses combined. Our teacher comrades should utilise the trade union avenues open to them to popularise and promote our tundamental transitional programme for the creation of a class struggle left wing in the unions. This can be a valuable testing ground for the concretisation of our slogans and a transmission belt to other industries where we as yet have no significant forces.
At this stage in the development of the class struggle and given our relatively small number of cadres, we should not see the Claimants Unions as major work areas or take responsibility for organising them. Where there are unemployed comrades in areas where viable CU's exist, and it doesn't cut across our priority campaigns, we may decide to participate in them. If we do so, our main responsibility is to fight for the CU's to become affiliated to the organised trade union movement, and for unemployed workers to remain or become union members with full rights. We must raise the key transitional demands, especially the sliding scale of hours and wages and a massive public works programme. We must fight to orient the CU's toward independent mass actions to win these demands and force the trade union movement to use its power to organise the unemployed.
These are the next steps in our battle to propagandis on and agitate for a class struggle left wing in the trade unions, the first step towards their transformation into revolutionary instruments of struggle by and for the working masses. LABOUR PARTY Without a clear understanding of the dynamics of the relationships between the trade unions, the working class and the Labour Party, a Leninist orientation able to win the leadership of the proletariat, is impossible. We must clearly understand that the loyalty of the working class to the Labour Party represents both the strengths and gains as well as the limitations of the working class movement. The loyalty of the working class to the Labour Party represents a gain in working class consciousness, a recognition of the necessity of the workers having their own party independent of the capitalist parties. Working class loyalty to the Labour Party indicates that the workers understand that their problems cannot be solved solely at the factory or local level At the same time loyalty to the Labour Party is an indication that the working class has not come to the realisation that policies of class collaboration cannot answer their pressing problems. The working class will only break with policies of class collaboration and their class-collaborationist leaderships in the process of struggle Tor the realsavon of ocmands whien une capitanst class and its state-regardless of government-will not grant.
In the next general election, when the electoral choice before the workers is that of Tories or Labour, we must be unconditionally for the defeat of the Tories and for the retur of Labour. The three major ways in which we intervene should be: 1) To say unequivocally that we are for returning Labour to power and at the same time put forward our series of class struggle demands which will offer the workers a programme of struggle-not class collaboration and dependence on parliamentary reformism. 2) To struggle against the Labour Party bureaucracy we call:
(a) for the Labour government to carry out Labour Party conference decisions.
(b) for the recall of any MP who fails to carry out these policies.
(c) for an end to all bans and proscriptionsfreedom for organised political groupings. 3) To look for openings to enable us to enter the electoral arena. We should put our own candidates forward in selective safe Tory constituencies that will get our ideas and organisation maximum publicity (e.g. Tariq Ali against Enoch Powell). The purthus afforded us to put forward our ideas and poputarise our transitional programme to thousands and possibly millions of workers.
It is impossible to transform the Labour Party into a revolutionary instrument. The policy outlined above is part of the strategy necessary to win the allegiance of the workers in order to construct a mass Leninist party. It isa key component of the Leninist strategy of party building.
The problem of the Labour Party has contounded the British communist movement since its formation. Despite the fact that Lenin explained this problem half a century ago, the British Trotskyist movement has never surmounted the twin errors of ultra-left abstention on one side and opportunist adaptation to Labour reformism on the other. While there are, at this time, no general openings for meaningful revolutionary work in constituency Labour Parties, it should be the norm for comrades working in industry to be a delegate from his or her Trade Union branch to the appropriate-constituency Labour Party.
STUDENT MOVEMENT The key conjunctural task before the radicalised students is to continue and extend the fight against the Tory attack on the autonomy of the student unions. At the same time the sympathy of the students for the miners strike, and to the Irish struggle, shows that we must be alert to link up any major eruption in the class struggle with the student movement. The National Union of Students has become the main arena for the discussion of contending ideas and political programmes for advancing student struggles and relating them to struggles in other sectors of society. We should organise a class struggle wing of the NUS, projecting a programme to mobilise the students in independent mass actions to win their demands, and organising to draw support from and extend support to other sectors of the population also engaged in struggle.
To take full advantage of the opportunities created by the new upsurge in student struggle which has brought many new forces into action during the last year, a Trotskyist youth organisation must be built. Its main task would be to put forward demands and develop campaigns which would deepen and broaden the youth radicalisation. Its main concentration in the next period would be on the students. Such an organisation would be in political solidarity with the Fourth International and its British section while being organisationally indepen dent. It would be actively involved in struggles around specific student issues and seck to link these struggles with broader social questions through the strategy of the Red University -i.e., to tum the universities into ideological and organisational centres for anti-capitalist strugeles.
A Trotskyist youth organisation would be in the forefront of building a mass campaign in solidarity with the Irish struggle for self-determination. It would mobilise womens liberation activists to help build a massive abortion action campaign. It would help to build and lead campaigns around anti-imperialist struggles such as Vietnam and Rhodesia, and on issues relating to Black liberation. Such a youth organisation would provide radicalising youth with a basic Marxist education. It would discuss the problems confronting youth and work out what to do about them. In this way youth will be educated in our political ideas and organisational concepts, and trained to intervene in and give leadership in all class struggle campaigns. In this way many new young cadres, essential to the building of the revolutionary party, will be recruited to the section. WOMEN'S LIBERATION The initial components of a programme for women's liberation have emerged around several key demands BOUGHE 1) Free, safe abortion on demand without forced sterilisation; 2) Free, safe contraception for every woman; 3) 24-hour child care facilities; 4) Equal pay for equal work; 5) Equaljob and educational opportunities. Trotskyists are duty bound to support all struggles of the oppressed for their liberation. OMs means that we give support for the demands of the Women's Liberation movement, are active in it, give it revolutionary leadership and help to develop a programme of democratic demands and transitional demands which will bang milions ol women into struggle foi their liberation. The struggle for women's liberation has a revolutionary dynamic because of the nature of women's oppression and the potential for mobilising masses of women in struggle against the ruling class and its government. The Women's Abortion and Contraception Campaign (WACC) has the greatest possibilities for modulsing women in te comms por od, and we should see the WACC as the key campaign of the women's liberation movement and actively involve ourselves in it.
This does not mean we would work exclusively in this campaign. We would actively support particular struggles or actions which women organise to fight their exploitation and oppression.
We consider Socialist Woman Groups to be sectarian and would propose that the SWGs orientate towards participating in and helping to build a mass action orientated WACC. Our perspectives would be to merge the SWGs into this campaign. Women members of the IMG would work in the s nan 's libera tion movement as a Trotskyist fraction, putting forward a Marxist analysis of women's oppression, and trying to win the best women activists to the British section of the Fourth International. We would publish our full analysis on women's liberation under our own name in our weekly paper.
BLACK LIBERATION The IMG must solidarise itself with the anti-racialist and Black nationalist struggles taking place. Through our paper, meetings, etc., we must explain the op pression of Blacks as Blacks, the character of their struggle as an independent form of the class struggle, the explosive character this gives to their struggles as workers, and the vanguard roles their struggles play in the fight against reaction.
An important educational task we have is to make available to as many black militants as possible the Marxist analysis of Black nationalism, made by the Socialist Workers Party. The writings of Leon Trotsky, George Breitman and Malcolm X especially would help fill an important vacuum in understanding that exists on the British left. They would help lay the groundwork for the basic analysis we must make of the complicated racial-national class struggles of the immigrant and British born Black population.
We must defend the right of the oppressed Blacks to organise along whatever lines they think necessary just as we must give full support to their struggles, for emancipation and liberation, however limited the se struggles might be. Where possible we must involve ourselves in and help build defence organisations for victimised Blacks (for example, Davis, Soledad, the Mangrove trial) and find out more about the existing defence committees and militant organisations of the Black community.
In addition we must intervene in the campaigns again the racist government of Rhodesia and South Africa and the complicity of the British ruling class in maintaining them. In the process we will learn from the experiences of the nationalist struggles and win valuable Black militants to Trotskyism.
WEEKLY PAPER AND INTERCONTINENTAL PRESS A weekly paper, the essential political organiser of any serious marxist organisation is now possible given our resources and size. It must explain and promote the pontical line and organisational lasks as outlaned in this resolution and the fundamental Tendency doCumCHIs.
At the same time we must write for and increase the circulation of Intercontinental Press-the English language weekly joural which reflects the viewpoint of the Fourth International.
This will mean the views of the Fourth Internationa will be more widely known and help our membership and periphery to gain a better understanding of worl polties, inereby curang across tne insular concopt prevalent in the British left.
Marx and Keynes- The Limits of the Mixed Economy by Paul Mattick (Merlin Press (2.50).
A serious Marxist study of the limitations of Keynesian economics is an essential tool for combatting the ideology of social democracy especially today when capitalism everywhere faces mounting difficulties. For that reason alone Mattick's book pertorms a useful function despite its serious short comings on the question of state capitalism. Leaving aside for the moment our objections to his state capitalist position, the book's main value lies in the central role it attaches to capital accumulation. Though Mattick discusses other topics such as price movements, wages, money supply, inflation, balance of payments, ete., he never loses sight of the fact that they are dominated by changes in the rate of capital formation. These phenomena are regarded as reflections and accommodations of the tensions produced in the economy by the expansion or contraction of the means of production.
CAPITAL ACCUMULATION Competion-the mode of motion of capitalist production-demands accumulation. Accumulation can only be the accumulation of capital goods for what is consumed cannot be accumulated-it is gone. But because the organic composition of capital is rising, profits can only be maintained by an accelerated capital formation. This is the grand tragedy of capitalist production. Thus, capital expansion, not the supply and demand for consumption production, becomes the major determinant of the size and nature of the economy. Progress is measured by 'growth", by increasing the productivity of labour, etc. and not by free time. Indeed, increased leisure for the working class is viewed with alarm by capitalism for it breeds social "indiscipline".
Mattick highlights the problems confronting highly capitalised countries seeking to accumulate. The U.S. for example entered the post war period with its productive capacity intact and. Unüke the capital forma tions had been largely destroyed by the war, the U.S. was unable to undertake rapid capital formation. But Government intervention in the coonomy did not break this relative tion in all U.S. inWorld War Two, the problem Im despair a symposium of twenty American cconomists dismissed sian categories as inadequate and lor a "meta-Keynesian' approach to disnew permanent sources of demand for a capital. With two thirds of mankind t on starvation because of a lack of the ol production the solution to the probould be obvious. The answer cannot of be found in Keynesian economics, which ry little to say about the irrationality of talism as a world system a system which La in an overproduction of capital (relative (tal in one area confronting a chronic THE LIMITS OF KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS Keynes himself was pessimistic about the long acmahaty of private enterprise to undertake the nectary in vestment for capitalist stability. But he avoided the issue and sought to save the sysat least until after his death, leaving the reformists to carry the can. The opercal tools which he left filled the theoreI gaps which riddled social democracy when it abandoned socialism. The U.S, experience however vindicates the Marxists' analysis that Sayse offers a pseudo-solution only; a solution ch in inherently inflationary and blinded by tism from an understanding of its precal. The key weakness of the Keyneis that they insist only that the volume of duction be subject to Government planning 182. Pentonville Road, London N.I.
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Place of Work: not its content. Existing class relations are therefore maintained leaving intact the general tendency of capitalist production to accumulate capital for its own sake. The lack of effective demand, which reflects insufficient capital formation, increasingly involves Governments in stimulating investment, either directly or indirectly. But there is a limit to this type of mixed economy. For the capitalist class the growth of the non profit sector must be stopped at the point where it threatens the existence of the private sector. Deficit financing and Government induced production, since they draw on the social pool of surplus value, are a drain on the profit source. As likewise are the subsidies and unemployment benefits which Governments have to draw from the declining pool of surplus value in order to counteract the social consequences of the declining rate of capital accumulation.
We see a good example of the dilemma facing mixed cconomies in the antics of the Heath Government. The Tories realised that the growth of the public sector indicated the decay of private enterprise and in their early days confidently announced that the State would withdraw from some of its economic activities. Private enterprise was to be revitalised by having to stand on its own feet and so on. Tory ideology however did not conform with reality, for large sections of British industry (notably shipbuilding and aircraft produc tion) were unable to proceed with the capital formation necessary to maintain profitable activity. Hence the Tories were forced to reverse their policy. Fundamentally, however, Government induced production,designed to save capitalism, is limited by private profit production itself. When the capitalists decide that the limit is reached the solution to the accumulation problems can only be found by a return to the traditional methods of destroying capital values by intense slumps and imperialist wars. It is for this reason that Mattick reaffirms that the old phrase 'socialism or barbarism' states the only real alternatives facing the world today.
STATE CAPITALISM Unfortunately Mattick introduces some unnecessary confusions into his book when he attempts to characterise states by their ability to accumulate capital goods. Quoting The Economist (1) in support of this view be makes the assertion that because the USSR engages in capital accumulation it is a state capitalism. He goes on to make the startling claim that since the Bolsheviks regarded a swift growth of the means of production (capital formation) as a key task, the Revolution of 1917 can best be described as a "Keynesian Revolution". This is the final absurdity which the state capitalist theory of Soviet Russia leads to. More confusion arises when Mattick states that State Socialism and State Capitalism are the same thing. It all depends, he says, on what point of view one takes. For the worker Russia is state capitalist, for the capitalist it is state socialist. This erosion of the scientific meaning of concepts is, of course, unavoidable for those who adopt the state capitalist position no matter how astute their analysis on other matters. Fortunately however Mattick confines his confusions on this matter to a few pages only and itisnot necessary to regard his book as a signiticant contribution to the Kidron/Harman position.
P. Kneafsey FOOTNOTE Economists may find the book somewhat vague and wordy on certain topics -there is a complete absence of diasrams and formulas. Students of economics. in particular, will find it useful to read Lawrance Klein (Effective Demand and Emplopment, J.P.E... April 1947). Fan-Hung (Kevnes and Marx on Capital Accumulation, R.E.S., Oct. 1939) and S. Tsuru (Post Acynesian econom, to backgroun inco, tinar ly economies can be made by joining the Merlin Book Club which permits one to purchase the book for Cl only.
INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP (British Section of the Fourth International)
Please put me in touch with IMG militants in my area. ANGELA DAVIS PORTRAIT OF A REVOLUTIONARY An article in a recent issue of Time Out states that, "the Argentinian director Fernando Solanas has made definite steps towards defining the relationship of film, politics and ideology to the individual. For him the film becomes a 'film act which allows an open and active participation by the audience. The viewer ceases to be a spectator, the film becomes a detonator, an element which provokes a participation in the themes concerned. "We maintain that an art of the masses should avoid making the audience feel marginal to the experience but rather a participant, and encourage responsibility and conscience' (Solanas)." If we take his definition as a useful yardstick for a discussion of political cinema, then Portrait of a Revolutionary cannot really be talked about in the same way. Produced by Yolande Duluart, a former student of Angela Davis when she was professor of philosophy at U.C.L.A. in California, this hour-long film is a fairly predictable adulatory collection of Angela's speeches, interviews, and related personal background. Insofar as the film raises the question of black political prisoners in the USA and Britain then it has a certain political function, allied to a political campaign here in Britain to secure her release. In terms of a "detonating' experience, Portrait fails on two counts.
Firstly, like the Free Angela campaign itself, the film does not substantially break through the myths which surround Angela Davis and her particular role in the struggle. For all intents and purposes, she is still a brilliant Marxist scholar, "black and beautiful, fulfilling in every way the liberal desire for perfection and for all criteria to be fulfilled before support can be given. Her academic record is defended by the Head of Department at U.C.L.A. who accords to her the finest scholarly credentials. We see her making speeches un campuses and at public meetings, chatting amiably with students at a seminar, VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN Public meeting on eve of International Day of Solidarity Friday, 21 April 7.30 p.m. Camden Studios Speakers on the latest developments in the war plus slides of the electronic battlefield.
IRISH SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN The second conference of the I.S.C. will be held over the weekend 29/30 April in the Suxton Hall, Ruskin College, Walton Street, Oxfard. It is open to all those who support the struggle of the Irish people and their armed vanguard, the IRA, and stand uncompromisingly for the defeat of British imperialism in Ireland.
For details of the conference, please contact:
Gus Fagan, 116 Summertown House, Banbury Road, Oxford. Tel. 0865-57883.
Or Bob Purdie, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1. Tel. 01-278-2616.
MILLINGFORDS STRIKE Ashton near Wigan This small Engineering Factory has been on strike for 36 weeks. There will be a solidarity DEMONSTRATION on Sat. 22 April, 10.30 a.m.
Arrangements are being made to take people from Manchester and Liverpool.
Contact 061-224-8292 or 06/-226-2664 (Flats 5 or 6) for details.
North London Red Circle meets every Tuesday at 8.30 p.m. to discuss revolutionary politics. All welcome.
General Picton Pub, Caledonian Road, (nr. Kings Cross Station) N.1.
GLASGOWRED CIRCLE Weekly Discussion Group for Revolutionary Socialists - Thursdays at 7.30 p.m.
lona Community Centre, 214 Clyde Str.
NOTTING HILL RED CIRCLE Meets every Monday night at 7.45 p.m. in the Britannia pub meeting room, Clarendon Road (near Ladbroke Girove tuhe). Buses 52.7,15.
All Welcome. studying British philosophy at her home to the background of classical music. We do not see her as merely one leading figure in a broad, drawn-out struggle which can boast many intell ectuals and courageous leaders, but as the intellectual and the spokesman for a movement which is never shown, never concretised, one which certainly cannot be covered in shots of demonstrators at a meeting, or marchers. Though Angela herself in an interview stresses the need within a revolutionary struggle for individual roles and feelings to be subordinated to the collective unity of the struggle, ironically the film places her own role at the centre of any discussion of the subject. No real visual relationship is ever established with the struggle at the Secondly, and related, the film does not break down the alienation between film and audience which we have come to accept as the norm for most cinema in Western capitalist society. We remain a spectator to her cause, and are simply asked to applaud the rightness of her case and her ideas without feeling the need to contribute in any way to the struggle. This is reinforced, as the Time Out article points out, by the limited outlet for political films in Britain, which tends to shove them into the 'specialist cinema' category; as such that label contains them and does not make it at all impossible for them to be shown at the National Film Theatre or even West End cinemas. The fact that such films almost never reach the general release cinemas, and thus the audience to which they are most relevant, is crucial when we are talking about the effectiveness of political/revolutionary cinema. Solidarity with Angela Davis and the struggle for which so many revolutionares have given their lives is essential as her trial drags on; but her book, If They Come In The Morning, is likely to remain the most important expression of that struggle and the significance of her involvement in it. Portrait of a Revolutionary does not explode in your face and send you hurtling for cover; it fails ever to explode at all and ends not with a bang, but if anything, with a whimper. - Phil Cohen INTERCONTINENTAL PRESS specialises in political analysis and news of interest to all involved in the labour, socialist, colonial independence, Black and Women's Liberation Move mEns Pierre Frank's History of the IV International is currently being serialised in Intercontinental Press.
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advantages for the shop floor, and to put them CONTROL?
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sentation in a condensed form of the main tasks which the IMG would under- take if the Fendency became the leadership of the IMG. The sections of the document giving an entire analysis of the current situation in Britain and the generalisation of the method used in the analysis and the formulation of the
We hope readers will discuss this article and comment on it. All those in general agreement with the ideas expressed are invited to write to the IMG for details of the IMG conference. Visitors to the conference will be able to