Ripe for socialism

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blood, vengeance and the big boot.

And even if they do turn on the crocodile tears and come up with schemes and grants, it will be only to cover their main priority, of showing just who owns and controls our streets.

And it isn't just on the streets where Tory repression hits. Councillors in Lothian are facing heavy penalties for not making cuts: cut that will turn their city into dead-end slums like Toxteth.

The only answe to despair and repres sion is a fightback. The energy that went into petrol bombs and barricades, the anger at the system and the hatred of the Tories, can be harnessed to the strength and growing militancy of the labour movement.

It isn't a matter of Tory law or no law at all: repressive capitalist police, or street chaos, looting and burning.

The labour movement is a highly sophisticated organism with a long tradition of fairness and democracy. Strikers decide where to hit and where not to hit. Flying pickets regulate themselves and (despite what the Tory press says) do not go on the rampage. Mass demonstrations are orderly events.

In the past the movement has been paralysed by its excessive awe and respect for capitalist legality. But it can free itself from that poison. It is beginning to free itself from it. And the convuisions and sickness of capitalist order should help socialists to speed the process.

The organisation by the labour movement, together with the local community, of self-policing, with authorised and controlled street patrols, could bring order without repression and begin to involve the unemployed and disaffected youth into a movement fighting for an alternative world to the one they have known. It should be coupled with a call for the removal of the police from areas like Toxteth and Southall.

The labour movement needs to gear itseif to replace capitalist disorder by its own vigilance and control - and not only on the streets of Toxteth or Southall, but in the whole of society.

Just as we can't afford to let fascists and racist police boot-boys rampage through Southall or Liverpool, we can't afftheir class, lashing out as their crisis deepens, devastate our jobs and our services.

The labour movement has the means to purge the poison: nationalisation without compensation of the banks and main industries, work-sharing with no loss of pay, an end to massive arms spending, and workers' control. What we need is the wili tỏ win control over our leaders, to replace them where necessary, to fight to win, and to take on the bastions of state power that protect this deadly-sick system. Send to:

Organisı Middle 1 N8.

Behind the TUC: break the Tories!

Workers' vic in South Afri Her, c/o 28 .ane, London NSIDE TGWU must back Lothian!

riots The GLC and the tube workers Tory

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THE LONDON Labour Briefing conference on Saturday lith comes at a crucial time for the Left, with Heseltine's new legialation, the penalties in Lothian, and the backtrack. ing of the GLC. by Jo Thwaites the GLC's intention to

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