Thatcher-a Tory First

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one of the trials of the 20th century and Georgi Dimitrov's finest hour.

At first Dimitrov didn't think he was going to be charged with complicity in the Reichstag Fire, but it soon became clear to him that the Nazis were trying to frame him. He decided to embark upon a course of defending not only himself but also the working classes of the world who were also going to be menaced by the Nazi menace.

He planned to utilise the inevitable show trial as a platform for launching a Communist counter-attack on the Hitlerite lies and fascism.

Brilliant In the long months before coming to Trial, Dimitrov, permanently handcuffed, met with much obstruction, as might be "The leader of the short-liv of 1919, a much-loved hero, B Executive Committee of the C charge of the Balkan countries.

Une day in the spring of meeting of the Executive C Around the table were Dim organised labour and its parties, he began to put the Hitlerites on trial. Dimitrov in order to show his awareness of the situation he was in, quoted Goethe to the court, "He who does not want to become an anvil must be a hammer!"

it was because he succeeded in turning himself from an anvil for the Nazis into a hammer to attack them, that the Nazi (!) court was forced to acquit him. After a couple more months in prison, while Hitler tried to think up ways of liquidating him, Stalin granted Dimitrov Soviet citizenship and he was deported to the USSR, to a hero's welcome.

On the strength of his fame and prestige Dimitrov was made Secretary General of the Comintern and his talk of a united front against fascism appeared to be taken up by Stalin.

red Hungarian Soviet Republic lela Kun was a member of the ommunist International and in 1937 Bela Kun arrived at a ommittee of the Comintern. litrov, Manuilski, Varga, Pik, Social Democrats in Germany, before 1933, in order to combat the rise of Hitler. ( The Popular Front which Stalin pushed, through the medium of the Reichstag hero Dimitrov was a bloc of the workers' parties with 'liberal' sections of the bourgeoisie against the fascist threat to 'democracy' To achieve this the Stalinists watered down their programme in order to woo bourgeois democrats. This class collaboration led to more defeats for the working class in Spain and in France Where such Popular Front doversmens were suooorteu governe nts tinie supportee the Stalinists to the exclusion of revolutionary action - and similar policies brought catastrophe in Chile in 1973.

As Secretary General of the Comintern and puppet of Stalin, Dimitrov became more and more iden tified with the disastrous ropular ront policies and the use of the International as a mere instrument of the Soviet bureaucracy's foreign policies.

Dimitrov was an antifascist up to the 1939 HitlerAT the national LPYS conference 1980 there first appeared a caricature of Margaret Thatcher on a poster.

The poster called Plunder Woman portrayed Thatcher dressed in an overtly feminine sexy bikini suit.

My reaction as a socialist and feminist was to deface the poster with anti-sexist slogans as did others, after repeated but unsuccessful attempts to convince members of Militant that it was sexist and why it was sexist.

With the production of that sexist, backward caricature on plastic bags more progressive members of the YS, sympathisers and supporters of Socialist Organiser carried an active campaign against its use.

At YS conference this year only one was visible on show (though unfortunately we were inundated with personalised Ted Grant "he's my hero" posters).

Why did we object to this caricature? Plainly Militant saw Thatcher as a woman.

Whilst this may be biologically indisputable, her politics are far from sympathetic with the rights and emancipation of women -so first point.

Thatcher is a Tory first and in the capacity that she is a woman, it is in the role as the defender of capitalist ideology which oppresses women.

Secondly, that it regards women as sex objects by using women as mere bodies caricatured by the bikini.

It reinforces a stereotype of women - one which has a double standard under captalism - women as sex objects as in magazines and adverts, and women as passive beings, wives, mothers, housewives.

Why, oh why, then does Socialist Organiser of which I am a supporter degrade itself by the of sexist cartoonery • as the of SO 87?

Thatcher may see herself as a Brittania ruling the waves, she may •also be a woman, but why exaggerate the size of her bust?

Sexism

This may be something palatable to the Sun comic strip readers, no doubt, but to readers of Socialist Organiser? If the cartoonist is so concerned with a clear expression of gender in his/ her drawing (my thoughts implicate a him) are we to expect bulges on male caricatures where the balls and prick are?

Some of us will not tolerate any degree of sexism -language, comic or cartoon.

• would hope all so sympathisers dissociate themselves with such sexism.

JUDITH BONNER Coventry