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10p NEW AGE PAPER OF THE COMMUNIST WORKERS' MOVEMENT No. 2 Mid-March to Mid-April 1978 TUC BOSSES IGNORE BLACK WORKERS TUC Bureaucrats Not Interested in Solidarity with Black Workers of Azania (South Africa). By the time you get around to reading this article the TUC-sponsored international week of solidarity with the South African people will be over. If you can't quite recall the events of that week, then read on! In contrast to last year when, had it not been for the servility shown to the courts by Tom Jackson, postal workers would have stopped mail to South Africa, this year's campaign is about "putting pressure on companies in this country" to recognise a "Code of Conduct" an idea put forward by the foreign ministers of the Common Market countries. Shop stewards in comp- anies with subsidiaries in South Africa are being asked to press for information about the activities of that subsidiary, the object being according to a TUC leaflet to "show what arguments to use to get the company to recognise unions of black workers and negotiate with them." British investment in South Africa has clearly been well-documented by a Parliamentary Select Commit- tee and numerous experts in the 'Guardian' newspaper, so why the hell is the TUC still at the stage of 'gathering information'? The Code of Conduct the TUC is pressing for contains a clause explaining, with what can be described most charitably, as a considerable degree of naivety that Black trade unions are not illegal and that companies with sub- sidiaries in South Africa are free to negotiate with them. Some comfort this plat- itude, written by some 'lib- eral' imperialist diplomat, must have provided for the Black trade unionists who sought recognition last year at the South African associ- ate company of the UK glass manufacturers Pilkingtons! Non-recognition there became a strike issue; workers were interrogated by the police and pickets were arrested. In South Africa only the stooge unions of the whites are allowed to operate without state harassment. And that's not the only case. British Leyland, now linked directly to the state, has consistently stalled on the issue of union recognition. So much for this 'Labour' govern- ment! How can all this in- action be explained? It may have a little to do with the full-time employee and secretary of the TUC Inter- national Committee, Alan Hargreaves. Hargreaves, who served with the Foreign Office in Thailand, is noted in TUC circles for his fierce anti-communism ('comm- unism' being interpreted rather loosely!) which has led him on other occasions to back the right wing of the trade union movement in Spain and Portugal. But the week of inact- ion cannot be fully ex- plained in terms of one perverse individual. This ludicrously ineffective campaign results from the TUC's affiliation to the 'International Confederation of Free Trade Unions', a creation of the cold war that has frequently been used by the CIA for its 'labour operations', part- icularly in Europe (at an earlier period), and Latin America but also in other places, including South Africa. Indeed, in 1958 the ICFTU sent two representat- ives to South Africa to set up 'moderate' black trade unions and smash the mili- tant South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). British imperialism makes vast superprofits from its investments in Azania. It is these profits that strengthen it as it with- stands the assaults of the British workers as the class struggle sharpens. It is these profits that enable the British imperialist ruling class to bribe a Labour aristocracy to defend its interests. The TUC is just such an agency and gets amply rewarded for betraying the working class by preach- ing reformism. British workers will only be able to smash the imperialist state that ex- ploits them by supporting the Black people of Azania against the same enemy. It is there that British imp- erialism is weakest and very threatened. It is there that heroic struggles are Contents PAGE EDITORIAL 2 CHINA'S NATIONAL PEOPLE'S CONGRESS 2 LETTER - YOUTH 3 ECONOMIC NOTES 3 WOMEN AND THE NF 4 FRENCH ELECTIONS 5 ETHIOPIA 6 STAR WARS 7 STRIKE AT GARNERS AND MORE 8 being fought by the students of Soweto, the workers in the mines and factories, and the peasants on the land. They must be supported by backing the liberation movements there, in parti- cular the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. This is the only way to develop revolution in Britain and liberate all our oppressed and exploited people!

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