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Writebach MOST OF us are only too aware of the class conscious Thatcher government's attacks on the hard won rights of the working class: massive cutbacks in housing, education, welfare and the health service; depriving people of the right to earn a living; attacks on basic trade union rights; policies designed to increase inequality and to prop up a crisis-ridden capitalist system.

However. until now, most of you will not have been aware of one particular attack which means that the Tories are depriving workers of sickness and Writeback to list Organiser Middle Lane London N8 paid. Staff are now busy clearing the backlog of work.

However, those claimants who both 'signed-on' and 'signed off' during the period of industrial action are going to have to wait an awful long time for ther full benefit entitlement!

These particular claims were filed separately in Benefit offices, to be dealt with when normal work was resumed. But, instructions have now been given to Benefit offices that these claims are to remain 'filed away" and no further action taken on them. Consequently, many claimants will now be deprived AS A former supporter of Militant I was very interested to read Ray Saunders letter (SO 48) comparing the Militant's position on Algeria with their position on Ireland.

Ted Grant and his pals certainly owe us an explanation. A graphic example of the point Ray makes was Pontecorvo's film 'Battle of Algiers' which showed what Ted then called liberators and now would call terrorists indiscriminately shooting up the colons in a manner technically more reminiscent of the UDA than the Provos.

However, we all make mistakes. Perhaps Ted thinks that Mitterand should send troops back to Algiers to arrest the Algerian leaders on the basis that they were terrorists all along? After all there were French settlers in Algeria long before the actual military occupation of 1832 - nearly as long as the planters in Ireland in fact -and some of them were undoubtedly workers.

Shouldn't we support their right to return, or is Ted Grant just mixed up?

No, he isn't. This line of reasoning is all wrong. It is not a lack of clarity but cowardice that makes Militant take up their positions on Ireland.

It was relatively easy to defend the FLN or the Vietcong in the British working class movement. But to call for Catholic and Protestant workers to unite is not marked by wooly-headed idealism but by rank fear and spinelessness.

Finally, in a recent article. in The Guardian, the rrencn Gaullist leader Chaban Delmas was quoted as saying:

VICHY "Today in the French Establishment it's about as popular to admit that you opposed withdrawal of troops from Algeria twenty years ago, as it was to say you supported Vichy and collaborated with the Nazis."

GRANT

One can imagine in a few years time when children ask: "Who actually opposed the withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland?" The reply would begin "Well, there was Ted Grant ROBERT BROUGHTON • Manchester AUEW 15