THERE'S BEEN a few changes in Tilmanstone colliery since we visited it some two months ago — especially among the Largely result of the constant intimidation and harrassment by the thousands of police who have invaded the village the women have taken on a far greater role in the running of 'In 1974 we were constand behind the men, today its different we are up front with them When they are down we them golg WIlt they can't stand on the picket line we take their place, when they speak at meetings we are tnere on the platform with them.
It was therefore no surDare is at attendant Lyn were more than happy LO SOCIU a WeeK touring local workplaces meeting local DeoDle in Ealing borough.
Southall miners support group through WeeK beneve in many wavs. women, we are more credi ble tnan the men. we speak from the heart unlike the men who are hampered by trade union language.' The was such a success they decided to come again and visit even Not that they sorting office, nalite stewards meetings at EMI records, a gate meeting at Acton WUIKS, organised by receptions NALGO NÚT, LOCa Asian women in Southall.
Their visit opened doors which had been shut to the miners and collecfollowed were the biggest yet.
If you'd like to get in phone Eve Vasudha on 843 2333 (days) miners' support group. shall continue to where I can.
I have been asked if I 'don't do too much'. I am amazed. How can loving caring people, wanting jobs an peace in •IT coalfields be much'?
whilst we have this oppressiveness, my little contribution will never be enough.
The miners do not condone violence. But whilst everyday they are batoned beaten, rode over horses, vans backed into them legs broken, and without the slightest - there wil Coalfields. Fee us!
A Yorkshire miner's mother.
EVER SINCE he became party to find a way out of his dilemma on 'defence' policy.
On the membership is now totally committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. To attempt to openly that out would destroy Neil Kinnock's support just as much as his position on the miners' strike has done.
On the other hand, abandonment of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable for the British ruling class. Kinnock has tried to square the circle with the new Labour Party defence document.
This takes as its framework current American and NATO plans to boost conventional weapons spending in Europe. The defence document therefore commits Labour more firmly than ever to NATO, and therefore to an American veto over military policy, while trying to specialise Britain as a 'non-nuclear' contributor of conventional armed forces inside the Atlantic alliance.
The aim of the policy, for the Labour right and centre, was that THE Moscow Agreement last week was a triumph for the peace movement and the labour movement. If carried through by a Labour government, it would be the first time in East-West history that ment led to an actual reduction of nukes on both sides. It would make Britain a nuclear-free would thus protect the people of this country from being a nuclear target.
There now coherent policies weapons here. the more nukes we have, the more we try to frighten the USSR the safer we are, and any deal with the Reds getting rid of our nukes will mean they they have always wanted to do kill us all at the first opportunity; British sues scrapping nuclear security guarantees Soviets that will take Britain out of the target area and make Britain hand, the party Moscow, sell British ones. policy, the big increase in conventional British policy. KINNOCK-Chernenko into an agreezone and voters.
only LWO on nuclear One is Thatcher's:
will probably do what that by nukes and US bases here we can have the where does code US, spending would ment to abandon nuclear weapons would be dumped in practice.
But on his recent visit the Soviet quietly blew up Kinnock's line by proposing serious abandonment of nuclear weapons. Namely that, if removed all weapons from its soil, the Soviet would unconditionally guarantee that no nuclear weapons would be targetted on Britain and that Soviet nuclear arms would be destroyed in the same numbers as It is the same eminently practical proposal the Soviet leadership has made to other countries proposal completely unacceptable to both the United States and the British ruling class.
OLIVER MACDONALD argues that the left has to take up and campaign on the Soviet offer. He shows this is in contradiction to the rest of Labour's present 'defence' in particular the Labour leadership's support for and acceptance of a US veto on Kinnock and Chernenko more secure than at any time in the last 35 years.
The muddle-heads in the middle who feel reluctant to go openly 'bash horde' camp now have no coherent policy at all for dealing with Britain's nukes, no policy, that with any clear-cut meaning for the Peter Jenkins of the Guardian gleefully raised the menace of the nuclear winter. The line was: just because Labour's policy stops us being a nuclear target, we will still get the nuclear winter to kill us, so there. If he thinks that will wash with the voters, he's more befuddled by his Foreign Office briefings than we thought.
But the right has one argument that may not have voter appeal but certainly wins over the bulk of the leadership.
simple: no European NATO goyernment can take any initiative in defence policy. or East-West relations that conflicts with the basic view of the US administration.
This point is, of course, never stated openly like that. To do so would be disastrous electorally in a country whose people like to think of themselves as sovereign, people Reagan administration as dangerous war-mongers.
So the argument is wrapped up in code words:
not mean disarmament by both sides (eg the Moscow Agreement). It means disarmament with NATO (ie American) agreement.
'Loyalty to NATO' is another phrase meaning NATO government (apart from the of course) can do business directly with Moscow on its own account. You must do it with US approval. Another be imto leadership atomic - a the Red IS, being in talk Agreement This is very regard the 'Multilateralism' see security.
superiority that no destabilising such code phrase is 'alliance solidarity' None of this, of course, is in the NATO treaty — hence the difficulty many people in the labour movement must have in grasping all this talk about the Moscow Agreement conflict with commitment. What this means is that the IS in conflict American policy.
Of course it is! Any idiot can see that Reagan would not wish to remove US nuclear bases from Britain. More than that, any idiot can the entire US policy towards Europe runs counter to the interests of the European people's US policy is geared to achieving OVCI the USSR and it. Let us ourselves of some facts:
• The Reagan administration had declared it has political ambitions in the East: at the Stockholm conference earlier had rhetoric, into the American sphere.
Moscow with quidating the Polish state. tions with the Russians. 'The be adopted fighting Eastern sphere. surely remind realism, ABC.
this year, after begun his peace Schultz explicitly called for roll-back in Eastern Europe -the aim of pulling Eastern Europe • The Reaganite wing of the Koh government in West Germany has been raising the claim for a return to Germany's 1937 frontiers — li" The Reagan administration has rebuffed recent suggestions from some West European governments that it should freeze the deployment of first strike missiles like cruise and Pershing to aid negotiaFollow-On Forces strategy coupled with Air Land Battle methods of Blitzkreig war will by this December for no other reason than that the US insists upon it. This war approach consistent with the idea of a sudden strike to 'liberate' this or that country in Europe from the Soviet The virtually unanimous condemnation of it by West European military experts has simply been brushed aside by the United States. (The Lionheart exercise this autumn, by the way, showed that NATO is going over not just to FOFA as the media says, but the AirLand Battle plan as a whole.)
Against this background it is blindingly obvious that no government commited to any sort of peace policy can allow the US administration a veto over its dealings with the East. For the left, this is not a matter of nationalism right decide everything at all costs - but of
of the
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Socialist Action 7 December 1984 leader Neil Kinnock has been trying plemented and that the commit-