A squalid truce in Madrid

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to oli ha fol pu pe th afl Ar foI pu ad th rig co 'HEN Yuri Andropov invited the Soviet Union an 11 yeard American schoolgirl who id written to him pleading r peace, it was reportedly a ıblicity triumph for the USSR. When a family of Siberian entacostalists was given ermission by the Soviet auorities to travel to the US ter being holed up in the merican Embassy in Moscow r years, it was reportedly a iblicity coup for the Reagan Iministration.

Rather less publicity surrounid the signing of the Madrid cument earlier this month. lere have been 8 years of gotiation: first at Helsinki, en Vienna and finally Madrid. Now the two "human rights" g-of-war teams, led by Sectary of State Schultz and ›reign Minister Gromyko, ch claiming to represent the nith of human civilisation rainst their barbarian rivals, ive reached a point of diploatic exhaustion.

This bust-a-gut tussle has 'en resolved by detaching the sue of "human rights" om the disarmament question id postponing any real desion on both. An. agreeent to be proud of!

The "Morning Star" hailed is conclusion as an 'Eastest compromise in human ghts". • Perhaps the headle writer learnt this kind of y yet biting satire serving ADMISERS as a secret saboteur of Soviet prestige in Moscow's State Publishing House.

Over 75 years ago a revolution genuinely proclaiming the beginning of the final act of human liberation took place in Russia.

Stark contrast today, the counter-revolutionary warderbureaucrats who preside over the Soviet cell-block begrudgingly - under pressure from the world's mightiest imperialist power! - are forced to concede a further conference (in Berne in 1986) which "will seek new charter for contacts between Socialist (!) and non-Socialist countries, like travel, mixed marriages and re-unification of separated families"

The Helsinki agreement had, on paper, committed the Stalinist bureaucracy to conceding, certain limited "human rights"

The initiative groups and Charter groups set up in the Stalinist states to monitor the fulfilment of these commitments immediately became targets for state repression.

Activists were jailed, exiled or interned in psychiatric El Salvadot Solidarity Campaign: c/o 29 Islington Park Street, London N1. units. This was the crowning triumph of Brezhnev-Carter detente.

Once again US imperialism swings away from a strategy of creating or accelerating rifts within the Soviet block towards a strategy of plain confrontation.

In the new phase the opposing champions of human liberation - the ones that are trying to crush freedom in Central America and the ones who are doing the same thing in Poland and Afghanistan -can drop the rope they have been tugging on for 8 years and shake hands on a compromise agreement: "human rights" will not even be on the agenda for a while.

A sigh of relief from the two teams after years of taking the strain... posed by Jaruzelski is of course designed to appeal not to the ten million Polish workers who built Solidarnosc as the biggest and most democratic union in the world, but to the Western bankers and the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Reagan has already made clear that Jaruzelski's gestures towards "normality" in the freeing of many political prisoners are sufficient to procure a relax ation of trade sanctions and talks on rescheduling Poland's massive $26 billion international debts.

For all their Cold War rhetoric the imperialists have no interest in procuring freedom of organisation for the Polish workers' permanent place in Polish society. This sop to the Catholic Church which demanded it is unique among Stalinist constitutions.

But it also indicates the direction in which the regime is looking in order to bolster its support. For the working class there is nothing but continuing repression - institutionalised in the revamped state "unions". For the conservative layers of the peasantry - the actual owners of private property in the "socialist" state - there are concessions.

So much for those apologists of the bureaucracy who attack Solidarnosc as "restorationist" and "counter-revolutionary"! held for the maximum seven days; in Northern Ireland, 77%.

The Tories are now bringing in a new Bill to extend the law to all 'international terrorists' Strike figures remain low. 498 stoppages began in the first five months of 1983, and the total number of strike-days was 2,014,000. These figures are similar to those for low strike years like 1981 and 1976.

Up to and including 1978-9, 65% or more of non-oil direct investment in Britain was in manufacturing. In 1980-81, the proportion in manufacturing

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