Letters

May Day greetings

The Poder Obrero (Bolivia) conference on May 1 sends its greetings to the Weekly Worker and acknowledges all the space and help that the paper has given to us.

The balance sheet after the last five weeks of general strike was discussed. It was the third month-long indefinite general strike in two years. The strike was based on daily violent street actions and blockades. Nevertheless it could not completely stop production and the government managed to impose a small increase in wages and the privatisation of the state oil company (YPFB). We think that the strike, despite the fact that it produced some elements of a pre-revolutionary situation, could not end the neo-liberal reactionary offensive.

We also discussed the coup d’etat and the two-day general strike in Paraguay. Poder Obrero (Bolivia) and the Socialist Labour Party (Paraguay) signed an agreement in which we decided to launch a campaign for the coordination of our two national general strikes. The Paraguayan masses smashed the coup. More than 100 workers were injured in the Paraguay strike on May 2 and 3 which paralysed 80% of the economy. It was resolved to create a Liaison Committee of all the comrades and groups that broke with the League for a Revolutionary Communist International when it adopted a pro-imperialist position on Bosnia. The LRCI/Workers Power said that they would not defend the Serbs bombed by imperialism, that Nato actions had some progressive elements and that the superpowers and the bloodiest Middle East dictatorships should give weapons, tanks, missiles, money and men to support its Balkan allies. The Liaison Committee is based on the CWG (New Zealand), PO (Peru), PO (Bolivia) and comrades in European countries.

The conference discussed the report on the discussions with other international currents. A delegation from our group was invited by the Brazilian Internationalist Bolshevik League and the Argentinean Bolshevik Party to their international conference in which they also invited the CWG (NA). A delegation from our group met several Argentinean organisations. The PTS, an organisation with which the LRCI is now involved in fusion talks, was very friendly with us and invited us to make a speech on Bolivia. They were very critical of WP and its internal regime. In Bolivia we are in discussion with other groups.

These groups have condemned the way in which the LRCI leadership is giving security information to everyone, putting former comrades in physical danger. Despite our few resources POB has managed to establish a monthly paper since we broke with the rightwing LRCI bureaucracy. At our week-long conference, between 40 and 60 supporters and friends participated in daily discussions.

José Villa
Bolivia

Paraguay

On May 2 and 3 Paraguay was shaken by a general strike. One week before the strike the masses took to the streets and central square of Asuncion, defeating the coup d’etat and an attempt by president Wasmosy to give the defence ministry to the general actually responsible for staging the coup.

The strike was organised by the four union confederations: CNT (National Labour Centre), CUT (United Labour Centre), CPT (Paraguay Labour Confederation) and CESITEP (Central Union of State Workers), and the powerful National Coordination Body of Peasant Organisations which organised the March 15 mass peasant march against neo-liberalism.

For the first time since the re-establishment of “democracy”, the elite units of former president Stroessner were used to attack the demonstrations. More than 100 people were injured in the crackdown. On the first day of the strike, 23 union leaders were arrested, but the same day they were freed by pressure from the masses.

Public transport was paralysed by street demonstrators who used stones and Molotov cocktails. The transport companies said that more than $US100,000 were lost when 53 buses were attacked. The government said that around $20 million were lost because of the paralysis. This is the equivalent to three weeks of national exports to the rest of the world.

Poder Obrero (Bolivia) and the Socialist Labour Party (Paraguay) launched a campaign demanding that the unions of both countries to coordinate their strikes and fight for a national strike committee with delegates elected who are recallable by mass rank and file assemblies. The Paraguayan unions and peasant organisations now have the task of organising a Popular Assembly with delegates from all the sectors and to prepare an indefinite general strike.

Juan Fernando Bossio
Paraguay

Turkish May Day press release

Istanbul security chief Kemal Yazicioglu ordered the police to open fire on May Day demonstrators. As a result three workers were killed and dozens were wounded.

Approximately 150,000 people, including 30,000 Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKC) supporters, gathered for the May Day celebration, to celebrate the struggle and solidarity of the workers of the world.

As on May Day 1977, the police and counter-guerrillas who had occupied the high-rise buildings started shooting at the crowd. They were particularly targeting DHKC supporters, but the people retaliated against the attack by the police by defending themselves for hours using sticks, stones and slogans of resistance. They also showed their bravery and heroism by creating massive barricades.

On May Day 1996, the anger of the people rose up and defeated the fascist attacks, causing the assault by the state to backfire. The people will no longer tolerate these actions.

We call for solidarity from all revolutionaries, democrats, progressives, patriotic people, associations, organisations and all people who have a concern for human rights to protest against this massacre and show unity and solidarity with the martyrs’ families, the injured and the May Day detainees.

DHKC information bureau
London

Polemical terrorism

The process of communist rapprochement, initiated by the CPGB, was long overdue and is to be welcomed. All forms of sectarianism must be routed and we should not allow essentially sterile ‘ideological’ disputes to act as a barrier to revolutionary unity.

Unfortunately, this spirit of rapprochement has failed to penetrate Workers Hammer, newspaper of the Spartacist League. Indeed, it appears to be business as usual for this odd American-based sect - ie, semi-crazed sectarianism, made flesh by their near unique brand of polemical terrorism. It is quite clear from the last two issues of Workers Hammer that the Spartacist League regards all other revolutionary groups and organisations as bitter enemies, who must be ideologically exterminated.

Workers Hammer coverage of the SLP perfectly magnifies its topsy-turvy world view. For WH, obviously, all the “various fake-left groups” (April/May) have got it wrong.

However, in the world according to WH, the truth is far more sinister: “Far from providing a revolutionary alternative to the SLP’s reformist programme, they have stood to the right of the Scargill leadership on key issues of the class struggle.”

What this actually means, if you read on, is that some left groups actually had the audacity to criticise Scargill’s tactics and strategy during the miners’ Great Strike. They now have the mark of Cain stamped on them forever.

WH’s absolutism is remarkable. All other organisations are “Labour-loyal”. Workers Power, for example, is accused of not being able to “stomach the idea of a party in opposition to the Labour Party” (February/March). This is all due, apparently, to WP’s “parliamentary Labourism”. Therefore, when WP says ‘vote Labour’ they must be to the right of the SLP. QED.

The truth is, of course, is that WP’s ‘vote Labour’ approach to the SLP is the result of a mistaken and disastrously applied tactic, which over the years has become an inflexible dogma (itself the result of a fetishisation of Lenin’s advice to communists in Britain in the 1920s). Sinister rightism it is not.

Sectarian dishonesty reigns supreme, as always. Thus, the Scottish Socialist Alliance is a “lash-up of Labourites and ex-Stalinists, to the right of the SLP. The primary aim of this ‘alliance’ is to campaign for a Scottish Assembly. Their whole programme is based on getting Blair elected to Westminster ...” (Ibid). Or, for good measure, the CPGB is accused of opportunism for its work within the SSA, where “mum’s the word on Militant’s chauvinist position on Northern Ireland” - and so on.

For all those who genuinely favour rapprochement and revolutionary unity Workers Hammer shows what not to do.

Andrew Sheridan
Newcastle