Enoch Paisley

The Christmas issue of the Protestant Telegraph must have been read with satisfaction by small businessmen and well heeled shopkeepers. More clearly than ever before the paper revealed its anti-working class bias. On the front page there was an apology that ‘due to the Communist inspired and perpetuated electricity workers go slow we are unable to produce our usual 12 page paper".

Thus, thanks to the electricity workers we were spared more than two pages of the rantings of Enoch Powell. What was significant about his tirade was that he chose to pick out and attack "ecumenical" clergymen who had agreed to participate in immigrant Hindu services and clergymen who had urged christiaas to play an active part in TU affairs. These clergy were to be condemned said Powell. This is not the first time that the Protestant Telegraph has displayed its sympathy with the racialist and anti-trade unionist Powell. Thus on September 9th they recorded support for Paisley from a Mr Frank Smith, a London tory councillor who had "allied himself with Mr Powell” and ''openly advocated an end to all immigration. Whenever the PT. refers to Africa it refers to "dark Africa’' and "heathen ignorance" and add their support to the racist regimes of Smith and Vorster.

Now let us return to N. Ireland's trade unionists. The RT. swallowed all the rich men's lies about the ‘reckless few' involved in the electPrinted and Published by Peoples Democracy, \ ricity go slow. In “ict those 3,000 men in N. Irelanu uring a thankles job earn less than ~20 a week and were perfectly right to strike with their English colleagues.

This month again dockers were jailed here for their action | in stopping scabs during the dock strike earlier this year. They were i i treated every bit as harshly as the PD members when they took similar } action at Ardglass during the cement ' strike. his colleague Mrs Miskimmon pee hk pigs Bad edicts giving free rides to nuns and pr- J agca ; F m nks orc know that, it is for them to do something about it.

Consternation over Christmas amid ; . the Newry constabulary. Last week No doubt Paisley for all his | 4 déaler was driving a valuable load It is probably true that | because of his valuable cargo decidP ee a ae “ ; , 10us Nobody on the Shankill Bin RSet pes ee préhedas Th 88 Ladybrook Park Belfast. Subs. 50/ il. per year.

~ WORKERS REVOLT IN POLAND Just two weeks before Christmas the leaders of the Polish Comm‘unist Party announced massive 20% increases in the prices of basic foods. This shock measure slashed by a fifth the already low living standards of Polish workers. Within a few days there were revolts by dockers and shipyard workers in the Baltic ports of Szeczin, Gdansk, and Golynia. Communist Party and Police headquarters were burnt down, a Soviet ship sunk in Szeczin and militia men lynched in Gdansk. The riots continued for several days even after the army was sent in and fired on crowds of ese Ae SURE Ao Ne ne ete ee ee RRR RN my Oe demonstrators. Only the sacking of party boss Gomulka, the President, and Prime Minister quietened the situation down.

Local right-wingers, notably Father Denis Faul of Dungannon, reacted with glee hoping to use the Polish events to discredit Marxism in Ireland. The silence of these men over oppression in Spain, Vietnam or Cambodia was more than enough to expose their motives, but their ill-informed seribblings served to obscure a very significant developement. The Polish dockers who marched on the 'Party headquarters in Gdansk and then burnt it were singing the revolutionary anthem the "Internationale" and shouting "down with the red bourgeoisie." This was not just a sudden outburst of rage by an apathetic working-class goaded beyond endurance by the parasitic party bureaucracy. Many of these Polish workers were conscious Marxist revolutionaries disgusted at the betrayal of socialism by the Communist Party.

This is not so suprising.

Communist Party rule in Poland is only 22 years old. There are still alive today genuine Marxists who were memebrs of the Polish Socialist and Communist parties before and during the war. Though many of these men were persecuted during the Stalin era - even Gomulka was jailed juring the 1950's - and though freedom of discussion has been rigorously suppressed for most of the 22 years, some tradition of independent Marxist thinking has lingered on. This was shown in 1956 when rioting by workers in Poznan brought down the old-guard Stalinist rulers and Gomulka was brought back from jail to appease the workers, In the turmoil that followed workers' councils or soviets were established in many Polish factories and attempts were made to convene a national conference of workers' councils. For nearly two years the new government was forced to concede freedom of discussion and lift press censorship and there was a widespread growth of revolutionary socialist groups and magazines.

Even when Gomulka had re-established the party's absolute dictatorship discussion continued. In July 1965 two young Poles, Jacek Kuron and Karl Modzelewski received long jail sentences for their criticisms of party policy. They joined with friends in court in singing "The Internationale" as they were taken away. Between them they had written a remarkable "Revolutionary Socialist Manifesto" which traced the developement of the Communist Party bureaucracy into a new class managing the Polish economy in its own class interest and against that of the workers. They urged the necessity of a working-class revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy and establish a real socialist society. They believed this was the only solution in Russia and the other East European satellites as well.

Three years later in 1968 there were further riots and disturbances in Poland, this time mainly by students. Gomulka dealt with these by a combination of police repression, and diverting attention through deliberately fomented anti-semitism. Many dissidents were arrested and jailed, including Antoni Zambrowski who was no revolutionary but who had defended the right of Kuron and Modzelewski to propagate their views, and several more militant Marxists.

Kuron and Modzelewski in 1965 had analysed the current 5 year plan, 1965 - '70 and forecast that by 1970 Poland would be facing a severe economic crisis and the bureaucracy would be forced to lower the workers' living standards. They seem to have been remarkably accurate and their views seem to have gained widespread support since they advocated uprisings of the working class.

Today things are quiet again in Poland, as the party bureaucrats try to placate the workers by sacrificing Gomulka and his associates and making a few economic concessions. But the living standards of Polish workers are desperately low and the bureaucracy is incapable of giving away much more without endangering its own position. If Kuron and Modzelewski are right there will be more and more frequent economic crises until a highly-organised working-class seizes power for itself and establishes genuine workers' control.

The great obstacle is Russia.

Already the Russsan bosses have > crushed two uprisings. Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Soviet leaders visited Warsaw as soon as trouble broke out and Soviet tanks were rumoured to be massing on Polish frontiers, But already there has been a pattern of uprisings. Workers rev vo!ted in East Berlin in 1953, in Huugary in 1956 they toppled the Stalinist regime and won virtual independenc oe emwmowrnmuteas town for a fortnight; in Czechoslovakia workers and revolutionary students provided the backbone for the passive resistance to the Russsn invasion. In none of these countries have the basic contradictions been solved. Everywhere the workers live in poverty, and everywhere revolt is brewing. There are even stirrings in Russia itself.

The hope for Socialism in Eastern Europe lies in simultaneous revolts by the working-class in several countries. The significance of events in Poland is that they show the day is drawing nearer. The same spirit of revolutionary socialist upsurge is abroad in Eastern Europe as in the West and the Third World. Ireland, Poland, Vietnam: the struggle is the same. r

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