Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways.  The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 0854 May 21th 1996                                                                                                                               10p

British colonialism prepares the ground for further retreats over Ireland, confirming EPSR's long struggle for a Marxist analysis of the national liberation struggle against the infantile defeatism of the British 'left'.

The world imperialist system continues plunging towards unprecedented humiliations, not least in Ireland, and this will be a key factor in routing the defeatism of the anti-theory 'left' which so damages the workers movement in Britain and elsewhere.

The ruling class's greatest weapon against any serious revolutionary challenge to their economic, social, and ideological dictatorship is the widespread negative feeling among workers that the establishment will always win.

Through anti-communism, the most nightmarish phenomenon imposed on the 20th century by imperialism, - the majority of petty bourgeois 'revolutionary' sects made a 'positive' living out of this defeatism, led by the SWP and other Trots.

With their shallow intellectual idealism and their faint-hearted middle-class opportunism much daunted by the enormous unprecedented difficulties of maintaining unconditional solidarity (however critical) with the Soviet workers state in the face of each and every 'free world' denunciation of USSR problems and mistakes, these petty bourgeois 'lefts' rapidly evolved various styles of avoiding anti-communism's too-obvious extremes and pitfalls while at the same time making sure not to get 'caught out' believing too strongly in anything ever again.

Thus the hopeless cynicism of Trotskyism and state-capitalism were born, and their most destructive feature by far was the deadening influence they had on all attempts to continue the fight for revolutionary theory.

This philistinism allowed on one side such rampant idealist nonsense as state-capitalism to survive the entire lifetime of colossal anti-imperialist struggles and achievements by the Soviet-led socialist camp, - and on the other side allowed revisionist stupidity to slowly strangle the Third International.

The worst legacy is the continuing defeatism and hostility to theory which is now worn by generations of petty-bourgeois-minded workers in Britain as a hard but brittle superficial survivalist polish, now beginning to rush round the centrist adventure in ever decreasing circles.

Smooth operators of all descriptions have been buzzing around Scargill's SLP, for instance, (as well as genuine revolutionaries, obviously), hoping to gain an extension of life for their cynicism.

Heroic failure is the essence of this Trotskyite defeatist mentality, all stemming from the 'what might have been' idealism which quickly asserted itself from the 1920s onwards as the imperialist economic system continued its phenomenally rapid expansion and modernisation (based on consumerist greed and exploitation), - easily, of course, leaving the initially catastrophically backward Soviet workers state very far behind.

With their 'perfect revolutionary paradise' daydreams quickly in tatters, the petty-bourgeois minded 'lefts' soon built up their "if only Trotsky had taken over" fantasies, the widespread ideological counter-balance to the withering anti-communist onslaught to which the world was subjected to an unparalleled degree for the next 70 years.

In such an extraordinary historical epoch, only defeatism could flourish on any mass scale, easily dwarfing (and eventually taking over) the dwindling ranks of outright revisionist enthusiasts still bowing the head towards Moscow, and effortlessly drowning out the few remaining sparks of genuine Marxist-Leninist endeavour with sectarian contempt indistinguishable from anti-communism itself.

This widespread defeatist mentality is impossible to crack just by correct Leninist polemics alone. It is impossible to even get the majority of the 'left' to recognise it is defeatist and hostile to theory.

Only the major earthquakes now trembling under imperialism's seemingly all-triumphant exterior will finally shatter this cynicism, first and foremost ripping apart the quiescent self-fulfilling creed that "they will always find a way out of their crisis", etc, about the repeated undoubted economic alarms.

Preceding and surrounding the major earthquakes undermining the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie will be scores of lesser tremors, helping to disturb accepted defeatist prejudices, - of which Ireland is a classic example. 

The main cogs of the bourgeois anti-communist propaganda machinery automatically poured ill-concealed triumphalist scorn on the IRA's 'defeated' revolutionary national liberation struggle following the original ceasefire declaration by the Republican movement.

And who immediately fell into this same illusion-filled trap but virtually the entire defeatist 'left' in Britain, - albeit with its own usual shallow anti-imperialist gloss put on things, issuing fantasy threats to the Tory establishment that a united workers revolutionary movement, north and south, will soon drive capitalism out of business, - simultaneously disassociating themselves from the 'losers' Sinn Féin and the IRA, who of course had failed for not being 'revolutionary Marxist' enough, etc.

As the potentially momentous developments of the June 10 talks about a complete new deal for Ireland rapidly approach, the bourgeoisie's counter-revolutionary propaganda machinery is as usual quicker to react to the unusual stirrings connected with that approach than are the fake-'lefts', complacent in their untroubled defeatism.

But before analysing the capitalist press's own interesting signals that perhaps the IRA has not been 'defeated' after all, but might even be winning, assessing the significance of Major's Irish Times statement, the release back to Irish gaols of leading IRA prisoners-of-war, and psychological preparation for possible subsequent press releases with the sudden startling revelation that the Ministry of Defence forensic laboratory evidence for convicted bombers trials might all have to be declared 'unsafe', - it is necessary to recall just how the defeatist 'left' mentality automatically operates in such situations as the imperialist retreat over Ireland.

For more than 15 years, the Leninist comrades supporting the Review have fought to put across an examination of the Irish national liberation struggle in its historical context (see ILWP Books vol.8, first published following the 1985 Anglo-Irish Treaty, - and countless Reviews since).

Briefly, this noted the repeated signs of retreat in the way British imperialism handled its Ireland crisis, and explained the background to this in the collapse of the British Empire's economic and political viability which made subsidizing its Occupied Zone of Ireland no longer industrially, commercially, or strategically worthwhile, - and in the general unbeatability of national-liberation movements in the modern era ever since such colossal constraints had been placed on too-blatant colonial bullying by the history-making expansion post-1945 of the socialist camp of workers states, and the subsequent mighty movement for colonial freedom. It also noted the parallel beginnings of collapse of the old colonial-community solidarity and arrogance of the so-called 'Ulster Unionist' state of the entirely fictional 'Northern Ireland', - i.e. the British-occupied colonial zone of Ireland, which could not possibly survive much longer.

For nearly 15 years, the EPSR's Leninist views have challenged the fake-'left' in Britain to a polemic over its defeatism which hides an incapacity to understand the viability of a nationalist struggle and a fear of declaring unconditional solidarity with such uncompromising guerrilla-war terror tactics, making relieved predictions of 'defeat' for the IRA instead. To this is added obscene posturing about how the 'real revolution' should be fought in Ireland (all workers north and south against all capitalists, etc, - something the Trots never have the conscience and courage to unleash themselves against the UK state (of which 'Northern Ireland' is still part).)

It was even necessary to challenge Sinn Féin itself (see ILWP Books vol 8) for its own bout of traditional British-Isles defeatist hostility to theory which initially just could not grasp what a colossal admission of imperialist defeat the 1985 Anglo-Irish Treaty was, not a piece of triumphalist intransigence as Sinn Féin first tried to describe it.

The Review has continued to use the example of Ireland frequently to illustrate the philistine defeatism of the British 'left' (and the crucial role of correct revolutionary theory for the future of anti-imperialist struggle) because of the complexities of the national question, because of a particular blindspot among British middle-class 'revolutionaries', and because the possibly relatively-short timetable until the general lines of the outcome of this particular anti-imperialist fight become clear make it potentially priceless for the crucial testing process of putting theory into practice.

This is more a question of identifying general historical trends rather than making firm predictions of precise outcomes, but these broad outlines offer a clear-enough choice of assessments. 'Defeat for the national-liberation struggle, or success?" "Retreat for world imperialism, or advance?" "Further decline for dying British imperialism, or continued successful vicious intransigence?" "Vindication of Marx's historical materialism which analyses progress from the standpoint of objective necessity, or triumph for the 'Marxism' which postures its own subjective perspectives as reality?"

Almost without exception, the entire spectrum of petty-bourgeois 'left' ideology in Britain has replaced objective analysis of what is happening to imperialism in Ireland with posturing subjectivism about what ought to happen, which is nothing whatever to do with Marxism.

The most recent misleading nonsense the Review has dealt with in a long record of exposing every fake-'revolutionary' group within British petty-bourgeois 'left' ideology contained the following rubbish published by the CPGB's Weekly Worker:

I am a Marxist. I have never been in favour of the armed struggle, it is an anathema to me that a small group of people set themselves up as the liberators of my class. I have never been too infected by attachment to the romantic forms of Irish nationalism.

The armed struggle has been a total dead end. There was never any possibility of any return commensurate with the time, effort and sacrifice that was put into it. It could never work.

■ When the ceasefire was declared there was an air of triumphalism in and around the republican movement and a belief they were on a 'high road' to a united Ireland. 

They lack any class perspective. Even so, the triumphalism has faded: a certain disillusionment has set in. Impatience and discontent is expressing itself. Among the rank and file there is a deeper disappointment and a feeling that they must re-examine how they got into this cul-de-sac.

This re-examination must involve facing some painful truths. You would have to be a fool nor to understand that the strategy that was presented to them simply has not worked.

This is just a giant subjective wank by a posturing 'left' nincompoop.

What has childish self-promotion about 'being a Marxist' got to do with equally egocentric declarations of 'not being in favour of' the armed struggle? This is petty-bourgeois moralising, not historical materialist analysis, and it is an outrage to serve up such individualistic posturing to workers as worthwhile 'revolutionary theory'.

It would certainly be possible, although profoundly mistaken, to conclude that "nationalist revolutionary armed struggle has utterly failed to force colonial imperialism to retreat one inch in Ireland and has only done harm to the real perspective for anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland", and explain why this has happened from an analysis of the international balance of class forces, leading on to perspectives of what sort of struggle "would drive imperialism back now", such as the fantasy of an immediate Trot-led workers revolt north and south against capitalism.

But the declaration "I am a Marxist. I have never been in favour of the armed struggle" is just self-righteous exhibitionism of the most ludicrous kind.

A statement saying "I am a Marxist. I have always been in favour of the armed struggle" would be closer to the truth of the historical record since the 1840s, but would be equally fatuous as a revolutionary-theory argument to meet a specific historical situation. It is just middle-class emotional blather.

The analysis, such as it is, simply claims that the national-liberation's armed struggle has been a total disastrous failure. The ready alternative anti-imperialist struggle, it pretends, is to just nip down the Shankhill Road and recruit the 'protestant' working class (whatever that means) out of the grip of the 'loyalist' (a sick euphemism, hiding its rotten colonial lineage) reactionary stooges of bourgeois imperialism.

For the moment, these can only remain ridiculous fantasies, - a complete joke as a pretended 'alternative policy'. This is a British colonial working class; calling it 'protestant' simply conceals the reality. It will be broken from British imperialism, of course, as will the entire British working class eventually. But not remotely possible for the moment, not until British imperialist defeat in Ireland, part of the inescapable longterm collapse of British imperialist positions in the world, has become much more obvious. What Marx wrote about the English working class never being free of its racist subservience to the British imperialist state all the time that British colonial control over Ireland, or part of it, prevailed, must inevitably be even more true of the British colonial working class which was settled in the Occupied Zone of Ireland (see last week's Review, Marx's letter to Meyer and Vogt, 1870).

And the vehicle for delivering that defeat to British colonialism is the Irish national-liberation struggle, - completely contrary to these CPGB urgings and opinions, - as will become more and more apparent as the coming few years bring Ireland's reunification closer and closer, arising from the British imperialist retreat-settlement which will be reached not far in the future, subsequent to the talks on a new settlement (which will probably commence at last on June 10), and following all that has gone before in this triumphant anti-imperialist struggle.

The attempted Weekly Worker justification for its sectarian confusion about Ireland and ignorance about Marxism, - that the Republicans "lack any class perspective", - is just more petty bourgeois 'leftism', - sounding clever but saying nothing. It is just a glib 'revolutionary' phrase serving to conceal the poverty of the analysis.

Sinn Féin and the IRA obviously have a bourgeois-nationalist class perspective (whatever they like to claim for themselves). But it is just infantile ignorance to imply that this national-liberation struggle in Ireland could never win Marxist critical support, therefore. Just the opposite. Marxism-Leninism has frequently given enthusiastic critical support for anti-imperialist struggles led by nationalists on the obvious grounds that given the objective necessity of such a conflict, imperialism could well emerge gravely damaged, to the clear ultimate advantage of every prospective further anti-imperialist struggle. Marx and Lenin were particularly clear about the benefit which the proletarian class war in Britain would eventually derive from a successful national-liberation struggle in Ireland putting an end to Britain's colonial-imperialist relationship to Ireland and the Irish, which was corrupting British workers (and obviously British workers in the Occupied Zone) along racist lines.

Of course the bourgeois nationalist Sinn Féin and IRA do not have a proletarian revolutionary perspective against all capitalism in Ireland. But it is dishonest and imbecilic to drop smart-alec hints about this as attempted 'justification' for a sneaky 'left' denunciation of Sinn Féin and the IRA, right in line with the imperialist bourgeoisie's own hypocritical 'horror' at such 'terror tactics', etc:

I am occasionally struck by how blithely those who wish to solidarise with the republican movement accept the deaths of innocent workers.

Workers with an ounce of serious anti-imperialism in their brains will be struck by the sheer humbug of such anti-IRA posturers. These could equally be charged with "blithely accepting the death of innocent workers" by solidarising with the forces which have opposed or denounced the armed struggle, led by most sections of British bourgeois ideology, large and small, whose imperialist-tainted mentality (see Marx's letter on the corrupting influence on all British workers of their country's epoch of colonial dominance) has blithely accepted the death of literally tens of millions of colonial subjects over time.

But this would be a sick route to pursue, and all the more shame on the CPGB Weekly Worker for starting down it with this contemptible sneer at Marxism's unconditional (though critical) solidarity with the Irish national-liberation struggle, past and present.

This defeatist petty-bourgeois philosophy is all-pervasive, however, throughout the opportunist 'left' (57 varieties) in Britain. In the very week that the IRA's resumed guerrilla war exposed the nonsense all the Trots had written about its original ceasefire being just a thinly-disguised admission of 'defeat' (exactly as the most reactionary bourgeois ideology was saying), - the CPGB came straight out with yet more blinkered pessimism, seeing only continued defeat for the national-liberation struggle, and groundless fantasies about immediate revolutionary communism, north and south, as the alternative:

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberation struggles and hot spots throughout the world are being resolved in imperialism's favour.

The failure of Irish republicans to take any other course is a failure of the whole of the working class oppressed under the same British state.

It is this failure that has left republicans in the north facing monolithic opposition, with all bourgeois parties singing with one voice, and no independent working class voice to be heard.

This failure has meant that it is not just the republican struggle upon which imperialism is wreaked its revenge. The British state has wielded its weapons of oppression, steeled in the north of Ireland, against the working class on its mainland. Troops against the miners in 1984-85, police tactics against anything from anti-poll tax demonstrators to anti-road and even anti-live animal export demonstrators. Repressive legislation, honed against revolutionaries in the Six Counties, has been brought home in the Criminal Justice Act.

It seems increasingly clear that this bomb and the IRA statement to end the ceasefire were part and parcel of the strategy of negotiations and commitment to the 'peace' process.

This was not a breakaway aimed at restarting the war against British imperialism.

Republicans in the north, left isolated by the lack of solidarity of workers in Britain, now see little alternative.

The ending of the ceasefire in these circumstances does not contradict the fact that what is taking piece is an imperialist-brokered peace in the context of the US-dominated new world order. In many 'hot spots' around the world, the negative resolution of revolutionary situations have been accompanied by flashes of violence, contradictions end temporary 'setbacks'.

The basic solution remains the same; The working class of Ireland and the UK needs an independent revolutionary communist party of its own.

Though all struggle is for the moment directed towards what can only be an imperialist-brokered 'peace', the battle is far from over.

The new situation makes new demands and places new responsibilities on all revolutionaries. To take our common light for liberation forward demands a unity capable of destroying once and for all the British imperialist state which keeps us all in chains. Revolutionaries in Britain and Ireland need to be organised for that task now •

Despite all their pretence about open polemic and rapprochement, the CPGB has still not replied to the EPSR criticism of its defeatism, and so it has to be partially-repeated:

As these anti-communists see it, "imperialism has got the whip hand worldwide at the moment; the nationalist attempt to influence the historical outcome via pressure on the bourgeoisie is doomed; the Docklands bomb was just another part of this same hopeless peace process; and the only real way for Irish national-liberation interests to extricate themselves from a losing scenario is to join forces now with such revolutionary hotshots as the CPGB and go directly for a communist overthrow of imperialism in Britain and Ireland."

It would, of course, be the EPSR's own wish to join in such a happy dream, but meanwhile the immediate practical way forward is at least to make a correct analysis of objective reality, - the international balance of class forces and the decisive movements within it, - not to sow total confusion by a complete misreading of what is going on.

The first crucial requirement is to grasp the nature of the epoch we are living in. Far from it being the time when everything is resolved in imperialism's favour, it is just the opposite, - the epoch of terminal imperialist crisis.

Purely temporarily, a brief 'new world order' period is taking place which gives a superficial appearance of US imperialism easily dominating every situation with its bullying 'unchallengeable' military and economic might.

But the immediate obvious reality of this 'order' is total unsatisfactory chaos, - and underneath it all, an inter-imperialist crisis of unprecedented proportions is relentlessly brewing, - as the more honest critical-realist outpourings of the bourgeoisie itself, of course, continuously confirm (see endless past Reviews).

The artificial postwar inflationary boom and arms race can only result in eventual all-out trade war, markets collapse, and warmongering confrontation between all the great 'free-world' powers (and their various areas of stooge influence.)

The revisionist self-liquidation in the former Soviet Union is part of the crisis of bourgeois anti-Leninist ideology, the crisis of international class-collaboration, - not a crisis of anti-imperialist struggle. The Cold War 'balance of class forces' was always essentially a phony balance at root because the revisionist Moscow ideology no longer believed in anti-imperialist revolution as the essential way forward for civilisation (see ILWP Books vol 13). Liquidating that colossal revisionist influence on the world (especially on these anti-communist CPGBers), exposing it as a 'Leninist' fraud (Gorbachev used to quote Lenin too, the posturing oaf), - was an essential step for helping revive international revolutionary science, a step which should have been fought for not through the Trot/Eurocommunist anti-Soviet anti-Leninist continuous treachery to the East European workers states in their difficulties, but through unconditional support for the proletarian dictatorships, only criticising (from a communist angle) Moscow's pro-world-collaboration delusions.

The examples these defeatists give of 'imperialist domination' are only superficially plausible, concealing the underlying anti-imperialist reality.

South Africa, for example, is currently a sad spectacle of bourgeois-nationalist delusions usurping the ANC's revolutionary defeat of apartheid-imperialism temporarily, but in no way able to detract from the colossal overall historical significance (for Africa and the world) of that final mass-movement triumph over monopoly-capitalist international tyranny. Reaction wanted to, and did, hold onto apartheid for as long as possible. Reaction only finally gave in when it could see that a deal with the ANC nationalists would be better than risking total communist mass revolutionary overthrow later on. So which direction is history heading for, towards imperialist domination, or towards communist domination? Obviously, more towards revolution all the time.

So the anti-imperialism of the Irish national-liberation struggle is going with the grain of history, not against it. And only some superficial word play enables these bogus 'Leninists' to label Irish republicanism a 'failure' - by identifying it as part of "a failure of the whole of the working class oppressed under the same British state".

But what is failing the whole working class in Britain is its entire anti-communist past leadership, - Labour, TUC, Trots, Eurocommunists, and bogus 'lefts' of all descriptions, all of them complete Philistines who only ever posture about 'Marxism' in order to kill it with revisionist distortion and demoralise the working class. And that is a failure to be welcomed as opening the door at last to a serious revival of Leninist science, greatly in harmony with the revolutionary spirit with which Irish republicanism has triumphantly challenged British imperialism.

The essence of that challenge is now being seen to be coming to the boil by everyone (except the isolated sectarian 'lefts', of course) as the June 10 talks (which should effectively result in declaring the beginning of the end for 'Northern Ireland', the diseased historical racket fraudulently pretending to be a separate country when it is just an occupied British-colonial zone of Ireland), at last come into view.

As the capitalist press itself admits about the imperialist disarray in its own ranks over fears of what John Major's notorious Irish Times article last week was trying to tell the world, the panic is now on that imperialism is accepting defeat:

Is the IRA winning?' asked the Daily Telegraph and called Major's initiative 'a fudge'. A restrained Times observed: 'The wisdom of his current approach must be questioned.' An unrestrained Daily Mail referred to it as an act of appeasement' and the Daily Express claimed Major had 'performed a soft shoe shuffle... to the fury of his critics.'

'Even close allies are baffled,' said the Express. The announcement 'clearly worries some Ministers', alleged the Telegraph. And the Times quoted an unnamed MP who said he and 'one or two colleagues are seriously considering resigning the whip if the Government persists with this'. In reality, 'both London and Dublin have danced to the Republican flute,' said its leader. 'They have placed courting the IRA above attempting to make progress without it.'

It is blindingly clear that the British Government's enemy in Northern Ireland has been the IRA. How, therefore, can the Times' leader writer argue that substantive peace talks exclude the IRA's political wing, Sinn Féin?

The answer lies in the assumption of right-wing newspapers that the original ceasefire represented some kind of military victory and that its proponents do not merit a place at any peace table. That is why papers, along with Unionist politicians, have placed so much emphasis on the surrender of arms. Then apparent victory becomes real.

The London Evening Standard said as much in arguing the point the other way round: The IRA would never concede such a step [disarming], because it would be an admission of military defeat.' However, the paper seemed happy - in line with Major's view  - that some kind of gesture by the IRA, such as 'a token handover of Republican weapons to some neutral supervisory body', might suffice.

For the most Unionist of papers, compromise is irrelevant. The Daily Telegraph cut through semantics with what amounts to a call to arms: 'Do Ministers not realise that they risk driving Loyalists towards their own resumption of terrorism — and bloodier violence than before?'

To grasp just how irresponsible, and bigoted, this statement is, simply substitute the word 'Republicans' for 'Loyalists'. What newspaper would dare to threaten the British Government's peace goal by encouraging the IRA to bloody violence? Yet readers accept this outrageous Orange bias because of the years of press coverage in which only one enemy of the British state, the IRA, has been identified.

In its four grudging paragraphs on Major's article, the Sun quoted Democratic Unionist spokesman Sammy Wilson as calling the Prime Minister 'a pathetic man of putty'. Elsewhere we heard Major called 'a sheep' and 'a doormat'. Major might want peace but Tory papers clearly favour war. To adapt the Telegraph's leader writer: Do newspapers not realise that their continuing bias risks driving everyone to a resumption of terrorism — and bloodier violence than before?

Another Fleet Street rag tries to put a 'progressive liberal' gloss on the same imperialist retreat:

London will not now stall the talks over the issue of weapons decommissioning.

This is a genuinely welcome change from the British position last year. Fifteen months ago, Sir Patrick Mayhew set out a precondition for all-party talks which became known in Ulster-speak as Washington Three. It demanded ''the actual decommissioning of some arms as a tangible confidence-building measure". That precondition created an impasse, and arguably helped to provoke the end of the IRA ceasefire. It has taken most of this year to extricate Britain from its self-created hole, but Mr Major's article is a vital step in completing that process. Decommissioning, it says, must be ''addressed at the beginning of the talks" and the Mitchell Report's recommendations taken forward. But this must be done, says a crucial phrase in the article, "without blocking the negotiations".

This is not the end of all discussion on the subject. But it unquestionably aligns the British with the Irish government in seeking to place decommissioning into a separate but parallel talks process, the so-called "fourth strand". It also means that, once the May 30 elections have taken place, the two governments will be back on the track of using the Mitchell Report as the basis for future progress. Decommissioning is no longer a precondition. The way now lies clear for substantive discussion on all issues. The agenda is open, says Mr Major's article, and Britain is committed to "a genuine and serious effort to reach a comprehensive settlement covering all the issues of concern and acceptable to all concerned."

At the start of this week the Sinn Féin hierarchy asked for reassurances from Mr Major himself that the talks would be comprehensive and unencumbered by preconditions. Within days, Mr Major has given a public and positive answer. There are still preconditions, above all the requirement for the IRA to resume its ceasefire, but the road is open on the basis which Irish nationalists and republicans alike (and others too) have long advocated.

The bourgeoisie's 'anti-terrorist' self-righteousness is steadily being softened up prior to breaking down completely as the post-June 10 dealing gets under way.

Far from there being any serious Tory attempt to renew their Curragh Mutiny treason (to thwart Home Rule for the whole of Ireland prior to the First World War, threatening civil war on the streets of Ulster against the Liberal Government), - most of the cowed British ruling-class pressure will go on advising the die-hard colonist 'Unionists' to not push their luck too far on what is now a historically spent issue, (given the clear directives from Washington and the Common Market partners that they would prefer British colonial history in Ireland to be brought to as dignified and trouble-free an end as possible, and as soon as possible).

That means capitulating to the IRA's determined 'shot across the bows' at London's Dockland in early February and at last agree a firm date for peace talks (June 10), and giving way on every other bogus delaying-tactic as well, such as the earlier posturing drivel about ceasefire conditions, about prior de-commissioning gestures, about initial de-commissioning promises, and about a host of other provocative pre-conditions designed to create a false picture of 'British imperialism negotiating from strength' and the national-liberation struggle negotiating from a position of enforced surrender and weakness.

To prepare the humiliated British ruling class for even bigger climb-downs to come, the astonishing announcement that the legal forensic proof of all bombing-convictions since 1988 might now all be declared a mistake must rank as one of the most self-destructive propaganda retreats of all time. The unchallenged repatriation of more IRA prisoners-of-war is one obvious immediate purpose of such a frank admission of colossal stupidity and incompetence, but the speculation must be that a more devious purpose of such an extraordinary own goal was to undermine any remaining British colonial intransigence/confidence from the die-hard 'Unionists' which is the real remaining threat to British imperialism's purpose at the June 10 peace negotiations.

The more perceptive sections of the capitalist press are already tuning in to this new key for the final movements on a 'bash the Orange troublemakers' theme:

The symbolism is entirely apt, for the Unionists' attempts to reposition themselves in the political marketplace require a tactful rewriting of history. They have perceived the need to distance themselves from the image of their creed conveyed by Ian Paisley and his acolytes - that curious amalgam of whingeing defensiveness, racist triumphalism and religious bigotry which has been such a turn-off for the mainland Brits who, in the end, subsidise it. In its place, Mr Trimble and his advisers seek to insinuate a picture of Unionism as the very soul of sweet, democratic reasonableness, and of themselves as a persecuted and much-misunderstood minority whose only desire in life is to make 'progress' on 'difficult and complex' issues.

In effecting this transformation, they are considerably assisted by the historical illiteracy - not to mention the newt-like memory span - of much of the British mass media. As a result, some violence has been done to the truth. An impression has been created in the public mind, for example, that the only obstacles to progress in the Northern Ireland peace process are Mr Adams and his friends in the IRA. To anyone who knows anything about the filibustering intransigence of Ulster Unionism, this impression must raise a wry smile, for David Trimble and his crew make Sinn Féin look like poodles on Valium. Dr Paisley's celebrated mantra - 'Ulster Says No' -may not be blazoned on the walls of the UIO, but the sentiment underlying it remains the motivating force of the party and its grassroots constituents.

The New Unionists are likewise making a lot of noise about their commitment to democratic processes. In their response to the report of the Mitchell Commission, for example, they insist that 'the democratic bona fides of those seeking to influence the future of Northern Ireland must be firmly established'. There is, they maintain, 'a fundamental principle at stake. It is the principle of democratic procedure, without which no civilised politics and no basis for agreement can be established... We are calling for elections in order to establish, on behalf of those who seek to engage in all-party talks, a mandate based on subscription to democratic procedure'.

Splendid stuff, eh? And terrific to hear it from a party whose founders were so committed to the democratic process that when said process looked like granting a measure of Home Rule within the Empire to a united Ireland - a measure supported, incidentally, by a majority of the elected representatives of a United Kingdom which then included the southern as well as the northern part of Ireland - they denounced this democratic consent as a 'conspiracy' and pledged themselves in a solemn league and covenant to 'use all means' to defeat it. The means in question included forming a huge paramilitary army called the Ulster Volunteer Force and importing 35,000 rifles, 2.5 million rounds of ammunition and assorted other munitions.

One's delight at the New Unionists' conversion to democracy is further heightened by the memory that for 50 years their heroes - and in many cases, their current members - ran the nastiest, most repressive little statelet outside of Verwoerd's South Africa. Northern Ireland under the Craigs and the Taylors and their farce of a parliament at Stormont was a vicious place in which a substantial ethnic minority was systematically disenfranchised, discriminated against and terrorised, in which a sectarian and heavily armed police force maintained a brutal semblance of order and in which civil liberties were available only to those of the right religious and racial stripe. The fact that this all went on with the connivance of the Mother of Parliaments is, of course, a blot on the British escutcheon, but it should never be allowed to obscure the fact that Stormont and its excesses were the product of a Unionist family business.

Mr Trimble, who was but an earnest, bespectacled law student in 1968 when the RUC were kicking the living daylights out of civil rights marchers, wants to divert our attention from these squalid facts. But he presides over an organisation whose members still routinely commemorate them - as we shall see shortly when the so-called 'marching season' begins. This is that demented time of year in which something like three thousand processions of bowler-hatted toffs and working-class yobs turn out to celebrate their ascendancy over their Catholic neighbours. You won't hear much about this from the Ulster Information Office, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Messrs Trimble, Taylor & Co will be on hand to lend support.

And the striking of this new anti-'Unionist' note follows the quite remarkable capitalist press silence or muted response to the amazing London announcement that the notorious forum to be elected on May 30, so bitterly-denounced by Sinn Féin and the entire nationalist Irish cause, would have no independent role at all at the June 10 talks, — as big a kick in the face to all past British imperialist 'democracy' posturing as could be imagined.

There has been equal silence (apart from Paisley) over the repatriation of some of the IRA's top figures in UK prisons, which the capitalist press itself had admitted was one of the IRA's own preconditions for agreeing to a new ceasefire to help British imperialism with its June 10 peace-talks difficulties.

And all these humiliating reverses to blind British stupidity, deluding itself about an IRA 'defeat', came on top of the staggering revelations in press and book that a Back Channel had been kept open between Downing Street and Sinn Féin for years to work out a peace settlement while in public the IRA was still officially being denounced and ostracised:

THREE separate initiatives in progress during the early Nineties are tracked by The Fight for Peace.

The third, clandestine and hazardous, was the Back Channel.

'It survived many acts of violence - indeed the Government used it to complain about IRA attacks.

'It was not broken by the mortar attack on Downing Street, by the Teebane crossroads killings nor by the many other killings and bombings in Northern Ireland, Britain and mainland Europe.

'It was not broken by the deaths of the two children in the Warrington bombing; nor when, in a series of incidents, the SAS killed IRA volunteers...

'It began to function in Mrs Thatcher's time under her Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, and was kept open by John Major and Sir Patrick Mayhew.'

Looking back, the idea of the delegate meetings may have been a Machiavellian British scheme to test the readiness of republicans to talk about ideas short of a British declaration of intent to withdraw.

'After the disclosures, many were left angry about the thought that John Major, who had proclaimed to the Commons that the thought of talking to Gerry Adams would turn his stomach, had actually been maintaining indirect contact with him for years.'

IN 1995, after he had left office, Peter Brooke readily confirmed that he had authorised the opening of contacts [with Sinn Féin] in 1990. In doing so he contradicted the official Government assertion that the Back Channel opened in 1993 and confirmed the timetable outlined by Martin McGuinness. 

Asked whether he had ever come across a message saying that the IRA wanted to surrender and wanted the Government to help them [a claim made by Government sources when the Observer story broke], he replied:

'No, I certainly wouldn't say that.

According to the Sinn Féin version, the Back Channel had existed for more than 20 years.

Imperialism is in crisis, and defeatist hostility to correct revolutionary theory is the worst obstacle facing development of a Marxist-Leninist workers movement to exploit the deepening crisis all the way to revolution. 

Build Leninism. Douglas Bell

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No. 171. Sunday 19th May 1996

Economic insecurity and fear of revolution underlie all Washington's bullying bluster.

Again and again, it is the capitalist press itself which gives the most damning running commentary on the crisis of the world dollar economy which is now driving all class-struggle developments. Centrism may he slow to accept the need for a theory of imperialist crisis to explain this live phenomenon, but the FT mouthpiece of monopoly capital can't pile up the crisis data fast enough, whether on the plight of British imperialism — 

UK manufacturing is lean and mean, but its output is barely to be seen. It has managed, since 1979, to combine dynamic productivity with stagnant output. Many hoped the recovery would mark a change to this disconcerting pattern. But, after a short surge in 1993 and 1994, manufacturing is back to its habitual ways.

The stagnation of UK manufacturing over the past two decades has been almost total.

the total increase in manufactured output between 1973 and 1992 was a derisory 1.3 per cent. Over the same period, manufactured output rose 68.9 per cent in Japan, 68.6 per cent in Italy, 55.2 per cent in the US, 32.1 per cent in West Germany and 16.5 per cent in France.

This combination of fast productivity growth with virtually no increase in output is quite extraordinary. It has also had two inevitable consequences - job losses and declining shares of manufacturing in gross domestic product. Between the cycles of 1964-73 and 1979-89 UK employment in manufacturing declined by a third (2.5m), against only 10 per cent to 13 per cent in France and Germany (0.5m and 1.1m, respectively).

Meanwhile, "the share of manufacturing in GDP collapsed from 32 per cent in 1973 to 28 per cent in 1979 and 21 per cent in 1993.

— or on the "hollowing out" of US capitalist production —

The miracles of the great productivity revolution of the 1990s are starting to ring hollow	

the so-called productivity resurgence has been built on slash-and-burn restructuring strategies that have put extraordinary pressures on the workforce. This approach is not a permanent solution. Tactics of open-ended downsizing and real wage compression are ultimately recipes for industrial extinction.

Therein lies the trap of this productivity-led recovery: labour cannot be squeezed forever, and corporate America can't rely on the "hollowing" tactics of downsizing to maintain market share in an expanding global economy.

That raises critical questions about competitive strategies for the millennium. As China, India, Russia, central Europe and the rest of the developing world propel the global economy in the years ahead, growth in productive capacity in mature countries, such as the US becomes all the more essential to maintain market share, let alone expand it.. some form of worker backlash is an inevitable by-product of an era that has squeezed labour and yet rewarded shareholders beyond their wildest dreams. 

Leaving aside the certifiable assumption that the "global economy" is about to be "propelled" smoothly into a contradiction-free new millennium (with the
rising challenge of rival monopoly capital and the development needs of the rest of the planet all to be miraculously reconciled with the unprecedented wealth, authority and firepower of "mature" US imperialism in crisis), the underlying trade-war message is unmistakable, as is the fear of communist revolution concealed within the anodyne phrase, "some form of worker backlash".

It is these pressures of crisis which are making the aggressive little tit Holbrooke so full of bile against "the Europeans" for getting under US feet in the Balkans. No sooner had he finished bragging about how Washington had lied for months to the international community (claiming to be abiding by the supposed boycott on arms to all sides, whilst all the time opening the door for Iranian arms to be flown into the US-controlled airbase at Tuzla for forward transmission to the "Bosnian Muslim" reactionaries) than he was moaning about everyone else's bad faith over the Dayton accord:

In an article in Time magazine, the former US assistant secretary of state complains of "disturbing signs of backsliding'' on the implementation of Dayton pledges on the prosecution of war criminals, the return of refugees and economic reconstruction.

Mr Holbrooke complained that "a messy, ineffective arrangement. insisted on by the Europeans" had made it difficult to achieve the treaty's political goals. His attack reflects revived American irritation with what is perceived as Europe's lack of commitment to the peace process, which was supposed to re-establish a single, unified Bosnia.

In his article, Mr Holbrooke warns that failing to bring together the Serb and Muslim-held areas of the republic under a single government could lead to the "involuntary dismemberment of Bosnia'', leaving a tiny Muslim "ministate" around Sarajevo.

"It is, therefore, distressing that some important European officials are privately writing off Dayton's political provisions and preparing the ground for de facto partition next year," he said.

In particular, he says, the Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, must be removed and tried for war crimes. Both have been indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague but Nato has said it has no plans to try to arrest them. 

The West's hope for an internal coup against the existing Bosnian Serb leadership that has now been outrageously stage-managed by Washington serves to remind everyone of just how US imperialism likes to try and achieve its "political goals". As for its 'concern' for the welfare of refugees, that was on recent display as it cheered on the Zionists as they bombed Lebanese from their homes, slaughtered them as they fled, then committed deliberate mass-murder against those taking refuge in the UN camp at Qana. As for "economic reconstruction", America's sole interest (like all the other imperialists) is in carving out the biggest slice of the pie (which was why Ron Brown was taking the vice-president of AT&T and sundry other corporate nobs on that recent ill-fated junket to the Balkans).

The CIA's preference for blunter forms of interference, for fear that Clinton might posture too hard for imperialism's own good over the 'freedom and democracy' propaganda, had already resulted (prior to the completion of the anti-Karadzylic coup) in a deliberate leak to the press which said as much about internecine feuding within the US ruling establishment itself as about Balkan divisions:

THE WEST is heading for a new debacle in Bosnia, according to a leaked United States document which concludes that the Dayton agreement which ended the war last autumn is rapidly falling apart. The draft report, compiled by America's top intelligence analysts, warns President Bill Clinton and his allies that optimism about Dayton is misplaced, and that elections due in September will create a country as bitterly riven along ethnic lines as at any time during the war.

It concludes that the Muslim-Croat federation brokered by the Americans in 1994 has become a meaningless farce, with the two groups preparing for bloody confrontation.

The report throws doubt on whether elections can take place on schedule

An intelligence source in Washington told the Guardian that the report, summarised in the New York Times, was "a draft, not the final thing, and wouldn't have leaked out unless its authors were worried that it might not end up looking like that".

A former US senior policy maker said the report was part of a campaign by the CIA and other agencies to convince Mr Clinton to avert a bloody debacle by delaying the elections, and tying them in with the war crimes issue.

So US-led imperialist policy over the Balkans degenerates into an orgy of backstabbing recrimination, with everyone blaming everyone else for the failure to transform the partial containment of Serb resistance to imperialism into a stable "new world	 order" opportunity for capitalism to flourish unimpeded on the ruins of Yugoslav socialism. Instead, all imperialism can build is one more hellish nightmare of insecurity, fear and ethnic tension, where only the strongest stomachs and thickest wallets can carve out a tolerable exploitation-existence.

Meanwhile, the "new world order"'s first major outing after the official end of the Cold War continues to haunt imperialism. Six years after the Gulf War, all that has been 'achieved' is the semi-partition of Iraq, with the southern Shi'ites cynically manipulated by the West into exhausting themselves in an unwinnable civil war, and the Kurds now bounced into oppression by Turkey instead of Iraq.

Divisive speculation refuses to die in the capitalist press that Washington actually prefers to keep Ba'athist rule weakened but intact, fearful that a 'Yugoslavia solution' (e.g. giving the Shi'ite south to Iran and Kurdistan to Turkey) would send the whole region spinning out of US control for good. So the suspicion grows amongst Washington's 'free world allies' that in the end, the whole war was about nothing except a cynical short-term attempt to prop up America's waning influence in the region, and help protect its control of the oil market.

And because such a jaundiced trade-war competition view of America's behaviour reveals the chink of dog-in-the-manger weakness in US imperialism's armour, suggesting that even America's rearguard defence of its "mature" economy's strategic market positions does not really carry any longterm conviction, international public opinion starts to get more confident about reacting with real hostility to stories about the sick games that US imperialism plays with ordinary people's lives.

There is now a grim gusto about the way in which documentaries and press reports are prepared to detail imperialism's warcrimes (though never daring to account them such), whether the burying alive of Iraqis in their own trenches, or their incineration whilst in full retreat, let alone the wilful exposure of allied troops to untested chemical-cocktail 'antidotes' (one possible source of the widely reported "Gulf War syndrome").

As far the silent slaughter of innocents caused by the sanctions against Iraq, the commentary is unsparing:

The findings of researchers from Harvard University and the London School of Economics support World Health Organisation claims that more than 500,000 children may have died in Iraq in the last six years because of sanctions.

Teams measured mortality and health in identified clusters. The main causes of death in children were found to be infections and illnesses flourishing due to malnutrition and weakness. Basic medicines were not available to the vast majority because of cost - hyper-inflation makes a doctor's monthly pay worth around £3.

The centre has launched a legal challenge to the UN, claiming that the sanctions breach recognised international human rights principles.

A deal to allow a minuscule 700 barrels of oil a day from Iraq would, according to official estimates, push the price of oil down by $3 dollars a day at a cost of $30 million a day to the Saudis alone. This compromise deal, which would finance basic medicines, ran aground last month in New York when the US and British negotiators insisted on 20 new conditions before the deal could be ratified.

Technically, basic food and medicines are not embargoed, but Iraq has no money to pay for them. Hyperinflation over the past five years means a doctor's salary is worth two dozen eggs a month. A survey of children in 3,000 households indicates that around one million children are now malnourished in what was once one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East.

Britain and the United States have consistently been the most hardline voices on sanctions. Britain has used its position on the UN Sanctions Committee to reject Iraqi requests for pencils, school textbooks and hospital beds on the grounds that they are non-essential items.

There was rage in the April 24 meeting of the UN Security Council when Italian, German, Russian and Egyptian members demanded to know why the Americans and the British had vetoed current attempts to strike a deal on oil for food. "The other member countries were very angry. The only people who are told what is going on are the Americans and the British. We have asked them for a copy of the draft agreement and a copy of the 20 conditions they have set, but we have not been given anything," said a member of the Security Council sanctions team in New York, who asked not to be identified for diplomatic reasons.

The World Health Organisation is cagey about calling publicly for sanctions to be banned, but its representative in Baghdad, Dr Habib Rejeb, told me: "I've had one donor sitting in the very chair you are sitting in, telling me that cancer drugs were not a priority in Iraq, because cancer patients were going to die anyway. That is the level of inhumanity we have reached.

Before the devastation unleashed by imperialism, Iraq was fast becoming a modern industrialized country (despite Zionism's earlier bombing of its projected nuclear reactor), and sooner or later must resume its development. If imperialism is to discourage Iraq's growing proletarian population from eventually following the logic of anti-imperialism through to its communist revolution end, a way must be found of starting to meet the aspirations for material and cultural development which such a social existence inevitably brings in its train.

Capitalism has always known this in theory, and in its period of postwar boom confidence had enough practical guile to recognize Saddam's phony Ba'ath 'socialism' and brash nationalist talk as a price worth paying for keeping civil 'peace'. But now things are different.

The policy of blitzkrieg, followed by semi-partition of Iraq's unitary state and sanctions-misery for the most vulnerable, was always as hopelessly makeshift as it was vicious. And now the signs are that time is running out for the semi-partition game, with Turkey driven by its own crisis-agenda:

THE United States said yesterday it expected a positive outcome to talks with Turkey on maintaining an air "umbrella" to protect the Kurds of northern Iraq from President Saddam.

But the comments of the US air force secretary, Sheila Widnall, on a visit to Ankara, were contrary to mounting opposition to the mission here and the fears of Kurdish representatives that the north will be exposed again to attacks by the Iraqi army.

Mr Sungurlu told a leading Turkish newspaper this week he would propose that Turkey should take over the operation, patrolling the no-fly zone over northern Iraq with its own warplanes, perhaps backed up by American Awacs early-warning aircraft.

At present more than 50 American, British, French, and Turkish planes fly from the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey. More than 50,000 sorties have been flown since 1991 under the joint command of an American and a Turkish general.

Under Mr Sungurlu's plan, most of the allied planes would leave Incirlik, along with many of the 1,500 allied personnel stationed there. America, Britain, and France would pay Turkey to continue the mission.

The Americans are against a Turkish takeover, which could be interpreted by Iraq and other countries in the region as Turkey becoming sole aggressor and seeking a territorial advantage in the north. Last week Iraq objected strongly to a three-day incursion into its northern region by 1,200 Turkish soldiers in pursuit of separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas. Last year 35,000 took part in a six-week operation inside Iraq against PKK bases. Since then, there have been periodic cross-border strikes.

Whether Washington really opposes Turkey's move, or simply wishes to preserve 'deniability' in its relations with its stooge, makes little difference to the trade-war frictions which this will exacerbate. Turkey's own survival in the crisis rat-race must at some stage or other take priority over its stooging for America.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the Soviet Union is paradoxically opening up new trade alliance opportunities for Iran to out-manoeuvre the economic, trade and diplomatic isolation Washington has sought to impose:

Iran's attempts to strengthen its economic influence in former Soviet central Asia were significantly boosted this week after it opened up its railway network to the region and finalised two sizeable oil deals.

Twelve regional heads of state gathered yesterday at Sarakhs, on the Iran-Turkmenistan border, to open a $216m rail link re-establishing severed transport ties stretching from the Gulf to the Russian hinterland and on to south-east Asia.

Iran would now play its historic role as a bridge linking central Asia with the world, Mr Rafsanjani said.

In Soviet times, almost all of Central Asia's transport links ran through Russia, making it difficult for countries in the region to re-establish links with neighbouring countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But, since 1991, Turkey and Iran have attempted to strengthen their links in central Asia, where they have long historic and cultural ties.

Although Turkish President Suleyman Demirel participated in the opening ceremony, most foreign policy observers in Turkey say the railway is a further reverse for the country's ambitions in the region by allowing Iran to establish a trade corridor to its port of Bandar Abbas. Iran has out-manoeuvred Turkey with a pragmatic policy focused on developing trade and infrastructure links, rather than attempting to spread radical Islam in the predominantly Moslem region.

Relations between Iran and Turkey have deteriorated sharply this year. Turkey accuses Iran of supporting Islamist extremists and Kurdish separatist guerrillas in Turkey, while Iran has bitterly criticised a defence agreement between Israel and Turkey.

Last week, Turkey admitted defeat in its struggle with Russia to control oil export routes from Azerbaijan, when Mr Hiisnu Dogan, energy minister, withdrew a Turkish proposal to rehabilitate pipelines to carry Azeri oil to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa.

The heads of the ECO states, which also include Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are due to hold a summit meeting today in Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital, to discuss how to breathe life into the organisation and further improve transport and trade ties in the region of 300m people.

Iran has spent $171m building a 165km stretch of railway on the Silk Road railway linking Mashhad to Sarakhs, while Turkmenistan has completed a 130km link to Tedzhen. The completed network will significantly cut transport times between China and Turkey. 

Khomeini's 'revolution' is a million miles from socialism, as is Saddam's 'Ba'athism'. These semi-feudal thieves of Iran's revolution, now running capitalism, have a long and bloody track record of doing in communists, socialists and trade unionists, and are currently engaged in helping prop up 'Muslim' reaction in former Yugoslavia. But the Mullahs' rule is one of permanent crisis and contradiction, as evidenced for example in their opportunist support for Hizbollah's courageous struggle against Zionism. The regime's pronouncements sometimes reveal these contradictions in a very striking manner, as in these samples taken from Khameini's thoughts on the Hajj (the regular flood of pilgrims across sensitive Saudi borders to visit Mecca):

This great ummah includes nations well-known tor their talents and intelligence, some civilizations that go back a few thousand years, and great individuals in the fields of science and politics, this great part of the world's population, better known as the Islamic ummah possess a very rich culture

The geographical location of this great ummah is perhaps the richest region of the world in natural resources, with the single commodity or oil being the support and sustenance of today's industrial civilization; and it the ummah were to stop, for only a few months the flow of oil to its customers, the larger part of the world, especially those countries whose governments have for centuries made the Islamic nations the victims of their greed and arrogance, shall face a dark, cold and helpless prospect.

Now we turn to the big problems that this great part of humanity, the Islamic ummah, is today facing problems that have made it highly impossible for such a great, rich and gifted portion of mankind to exploit its exceptional, practical potentials, which has left the Islamic countries behind in the caravan of scientific advancement, deprived them of their own abundant, material wealth, subjugated them to foreign cultures, subjected them to others on the international, political scene, and militarily exposed them to aggressions and aggressive policies or arrogant powers.

• Submissiveness towards interventionist powers, turning certain governance into satellite states of the big powers.

• A dread of the arrogant powers, particularly of the United States, on the part of some political, cultural leaders in the Islamic world.

• The presence of the usurper, Zionist regime in the heart of an Islamic region, that is the root cause of many other difficulties.

These and scores of other problems equally grave, though with historical roots mostly, were solvable if the religious and political leaders had shown any sincerity, determination and independence. They are the source of the present predicament of the Islamic world, bringing in their wake poverty, backwardness, ignorance, superstition, prejudice, discrimination, political servility, war and destruction.

Today everyone who knows the plight of Muslim nations under the tyrannical domination of the United States, whoever is aware of the crimes of the Zionists and their convert conspiracies against Muslim countries, whoever senses the danger of the growth of this malignant, cancerous tumour within the political and economic body of the regional States, whoever observes the gloomy conditions of the homeless Palestinians who suffer in refugee camps, seeing their country and homeland under the occupation of their oppressors, whoever is aware of the condition of South Lebanon, of its territories under Zionist occupation and its parts under perpetual threat of aggression, whoever has heard about the recent catastrophic events in Lebanon, where the Zionists, now for the twelfth day and with the support of the US government, have been bombarding more than half of that country from air, land and sea, massacring children, women and ordinary civilians, whoever is aware of Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Tajikistan, and Chechnia, whoever knows about the successive hostile measure of the roguish US regime and the anti-human Zionists against the Islamic Republic which today is the manifestation of the sovereignty of the Quran and Islam... yes, anyone who knows these facts and possesses a sense of Islamic honour and religious duty, will not doubt that to forego such a great opportunity as the hajj and waste such a powerful God-given source of support to Islam and Muslims is to incur an irremediable loss and commit an unforgivable sin.

The present weakness of Muslim states and the sorry disunity of the Islamic countries cannot be concealed or denied. Today the Arab world by its own deeds placed itself in such a condition that, regrettably, it is unable to defend the Lebanese people who are victims of the crimes of the usurper Zionist regime, and face, even for a single day, an enemy that has usurped its territories. While stockpiles of fighter planes and air defense equipment brought stupendous cost from Western factories exist today in these countries, the aircraft of bloodthirsty Zionists freely destroy the homes of Arab people and none of these governments is able to stop it. These bitter facts, along with the increased political influence of imperialist powers within many of these countries, as well as the unchecked offensive aimed at achieving a complete cultural invasion of these countries and many other regrettable and alarming events are sufficient to make every sane mind and wakeful conscience realise that Islamic countries and nations whose representatives sample is now present around the holy Kabaa and other sacred premises of this land of revelation, stand more than ever before, in greater need of the spirit and spirituality of hajj. With their lies and slander, they are trying to raise a wall between triumphant Islamic Iran and other Islamic countries, where they are afraid of the world's terrorists, that is, the leaders of the usurper Zionist regime and their terrorism. At the slightest pretext, the US and Israeli leaders are quick to raise accusing finger at the Islamic Republic and to mention in their political statements, after every few words, the sacred majestic and radiant name of Islamic Iran with resentment and rage.

If is a matter of pride for us that the world's infamous scoundrels and disgraced should hate us. We too regard their ugly character and polluted hands with disgust and resentment.

Thank God, the massive propaganda of the enemy serves us as the indictor of our increasing power and the greatness of our people and country.

ask the revered clergymen to raise these issues in an appropriate manner in the gatherings of Iranian and non-Iranian caravans and bring the spirituality of hajj and its political message to the hearts and souls of the pilgrims.

I beseech God, the Exalted to grant honour to Islam and Muslims and give real independence to Islamic countries, liberating them from the political and economic domination of the imperialists.

This is not "intuitive revolutionary genius" (as the old WRP frauds used to pretend), but nor is it easy listening for imperialism, who cannot rely on the Iranian masses indefinitely to leave the job up to the almighty.

Meanwhile, back in the "Great Satan" itself the prayers of the underclass are wearing thin. Farrakhan's reactionary black nationalism threatens to mislead and divide American workers, not assist them to overthrow the US imperialist state. Yet Washington was not wrong to be so fearful of what signals his recent travel itinerary might send back to America's massive underclass - black and white:

A coalition of Republicans and Democrats will vote next week to condemn Mr Farrakhan for a world tour last month which included stops in Iran, Iraq and Libya and meetings with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadafy.

The Clinton administration is considering prosecuting the cleric — widely condemned as a black supremacist and anti-Semite — for making unauthorised visits to countries classified by the US as sponsors of international terrorism.

The state department said he was guilty of "cavorting" with the dictators of countries with which the US has severed relations.

The ire of Congress was stirred most by Mr Farrakhan's acceptance of a pledge from Libya for $1 billion (£650 million) in aid, and his reported comment to an Iranian news agency: "God will not give Japan or Europe the honour of bringing down the United States; this is an honour God will bestow upon Muslims." 

Any third world revolt against US diktat, under however rancid a leadership, is a shot in the arm for anti-imperialists everywhere. The Palestinians at once understood the significance of the Iraqi scuds passing over into Tel Aviv, cheering them on.

And once the mighty US proletariat is driven by the reality of warmongering imperialist slump to start examining seriously the monopoly capital link between their own troubles and the violent oppression dished out to the third world, then it will take more than Farrakhan's black nationalist nonsense to put them off the scent of revolution.

Build Leninism.

Paddy Chambers