In February, the Greater London LP young socialists will be meeting once again at our annual conference. The key debate will be, of course, how to draw thousands of young people into our ranks to help the anti-Tory struggle.
The opportunities for massive growth are clearly there. The past few years have seen an upsurge among young people and thousands have begun to get involved in politics for the first time.
Many of those who demonstrated last November for abortion rights were young women from the colleges and schools. Many more who supported the mass ANL carnivals - and the Scrap SUS campaign - were young Black and white workers. Even more have been involved in campaigns such as those against nuclear energy and against the cuts. The teachers' demo against the cuts was supported by hundreds of NUSS students, for example.
RESPONSE It is clear that there is a real chance for the YS to move out boldly and draw thousands of young people into the YS in the months ahead. But will they respond to this challenge? Will it be able to adopt those policies necessary for it to grow and become the spearhead of a "Youth Against the Tories" campaign?
The prospects do not look so bright at the moment. Leaving aside a few YS branches around the country which have taken up these issues and become involved in campaign politics -- the YS as a whole does not seem able to respond in a positive way. As we meet, next month, the YS will actually be smaller than it was 10 years ago, despite the growing interest of young people in politics.
The reason for this stagnation can be laid most obviously at the doors of the tendency that dominates the YS nationally: Militant.
INWARD-LOOKING While Militant fights for socialism, it doesn't seem able to move out and relate to young people on the issues they think are important. It tends to downplay issues such as women's or Black rights and ignores almost everything that isn't on the "economic level". Thus, despite requests, it refused to affiliate - or support - the big demonstrations against Corrie or the campaigns against racism led by the ANL and, more recently, CARL.
Militant seems to think these issues are "unimportant" compared with questions like fighting unemployment or nationalising the giant monopolies. What Militant doesn't understand is that young women will not join an organisation that doesn't take women's rights seriously or fight for them. And Black youth will not join an organisation that talks of "equality" but doesn't actively fight racism today.
Whenever motions have come up at YS conferences trying to get the YS to support these campaigns -such as the Troops Out Movement - Militant has always tried to crush them. As long as the YS continues to adopt this sterile position, however - preaching at youth instead of being involved in action with them - the YS will continue to stagnate. Isn't it odd that all the struggles against the Tory government have been led by campaigns which the YS has refused to support?
CAMPAIGNING Young people don't want to be preached at. They want an organisation that is involved in real action which they can identify with and get involved in. What we should be doing at the coming conference is not "talking" about socialism -passing dull motions boring everyone to death - but drawing up plans for some serious campaigns the YS could lead in the years ahead.
It's no use talking about leading a campaign against the Tories by itself. What we need to do is draw up a series of campaigns we want to promote that can draw thousands of young people concretely into anti-Tory action. What sort of campaigns could we support and/or promote?
SUPPORT NAC. One of our main thrusts could be for all YS branches to support their local colleges into activity * SUPPORT CARL. Another major question YS branches campaign launched recently -with the support of the adult Labour Party laws that hit Black youth. * TROOPS OUT NOW. A third called by the UTOM. * AGAINST THE CUTS. A final area could be to support the mass anti-cuts campaign by w winning over young people in in supporting the unions' services.
UNITED ACTION should try and get unity with all forces on the left. Militant is often frightened of holding joint actions with other groups and try to cut the YS off from them. This is a the YS is stagnating.
campaigns. then we want to draw the maximum number of people into action. It is by showing ourselves as non-sectarian in this wing Labour leaders.
real, live organisation, no doubt turn the YS into a dead-end sect. Anyone interested, therefore, in Rd. London. SE19.
NAC groups and to try and draw young women in the schools and could relate to is supporting the - against racist could be trying to build a local TOM branch in our area and to mobilise for national activities the colleges and schools to see that they have a vested interest defence of health and education analysis of its role"
In building these campaigns, the YS sectarian idea and also explains why there.
If we are truly fighting for these way, that we will persuade a lot of people who get involved to join the YS and to help us oppose the rightIn fighting to make the YS a its character? we'll have to fight the "preaching" attitude of Militant which wants to trying to make the YS active in the way I've indicated, please write to:
Socialist Action, c/o 58, Auckland invasion It wasn't the UN that got troops out of Vietnam but mass action by working people "The idea has often been raised of a United Nations "peacekeeping' force being used in N. Ireland" writes Paul Shaw of Cambridge. "How should socialists view the UN? Does it have any progressive elements? I would like to read an "United Nations" was the name adopted on January 1, 1942, by the wartime alliance led by the US. British and Soviet governments. In October 1943, the foreign ministers of these governments - along with a representative of Chiang Kaishek's regime in China -- agreed that after the war "united action... will be continued for the organisation & maintenance of peace* Fine words which did nothing to change the real aims of the pow. ers involved. While making speeches about 'peace' in the UN, British troops continued to pour into Kenya or Malaysia to curb the liberation struggles there and France carried out its colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina.
Instead of opposing these aggressive acts and calling on Western powers to withdraw from the colonies, the UN backed them up to the hilt. The US invasion of Korea in 1949 was carried out under the UN flag. while UN "peacekeeping forces in the Congo in the carly 1960s helped destroy the anti-imperialist upsurge CHANGED ROLE?
That may have been true in the earlier years. it could be argued. but isn't the UN different today? Aren't the majority of countries that currently make it up workers states or semi-colonial countries that won their independence atter it was formed? Hasn't this altered Well, it is a fact that the General Assembly of the UN has sometimes served as a forum in which these countries have denounced the crimes of imperialism. This is what happened when the Cuban revolutionary government exposed the US Bay of Pigs' While this is true however, it is effective tool to pursue their aims or who synically disregard it, when it isn't useful to them. If it didn't serve their interests, they would simply split it wide open and withdraw their financial support.
It would be utopian to expect anything else. The drive for profits forces the Imperialist powers into an endless search for markets, sources of raw materials and areas for profitable investment. The need to maintain and expand these nordings icads to constant aggress ion against the colonial world and the workers' states (as happened with Vietnam).
The UN, because of its more independent image. actually affords them a chance of pursuing their aims while appearing before their own people as well-intentioned seckers after peace.
CONFLICT But if this is true. it could be objected, why haven't conflicts between the imperialist countries and the Third World torn the UN apart? The answer is not so complex as it may appear. Most of the governments of the former colonial countries in the UNare capitalist.
While they may have taken actions aimed at establishing a degree of independence for their own capitalists, they are still dominated economically by imperialism. This is as true for a country like India as for Angola which recently won its independence from Portugal.
This is why these governments inevitably go along with solutions that uphold basic imperialist interests .. whether in South Africa or Indochina - even though they may use the UN General Assembly sessions for anti-imperialist speeches that win popular support at home. WORKERS STATES? Unfortunately, the bureaucracies that rule the workers states in Moscow and Peking lend their support to the United Nations and uphold myths about its 'neutral' role. They have the power to