HUNGER STRIKERS WIN SMASH SMASH HBLOCI ciation and visits..
This concession on clothing is backed up by others. ment continues that "Prisoners who end their protest will be able to associate within each wing of at weekends".
It continues that "We want to work out for every prisoner the kinds of available activity which we think suit him best - work (including, of course, the work of servicing the prison itself), vocational trainThe statethe prison blocks in the evenings and SPREAD Finally, the statement adds: "On the question of remission - and this The reason for the Tory government's back-down is not, of course, Despite the barPROPAGANDA as diverse as the French trade union In the weeks preceeding the end of protests swept through Ireland. The Moreover, the protests developing SET-BACK Continued from Page 1. cians responsible for the crisis ("Sentence them to death', an elderly woman cried). Others asked when the independent union federation.. would set itself up as a political party to rival the CP."
It is clearly this growing threat to the very core of their repressive rule which sends shivers up and down the backs of the Kremlin peace. leaders. They realise, of course, that military intervention into Poland would meet fierce resistance and that a "victory" would only be won after a long and bitter fight.
Confronted with the growth of Solidarity, however, their room for manoeuvre is limited. Brutally crushing the fight for socialist democracy may become for them a life-and-death matter.
They are only too aware that a victory for the Polish workers would find many imitators in Eastern Europe and the USSR. If a similar movement did erupt in the USSR, the bureaucratic leaders would find themselves in a free fall with little chance of regaining their footing.
This explains the growing attack on "anti-socialist elements" that has recently been issuing forth from Kremlin press releases. As with the propaganda preceding the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, such words are nothing more than double-talk.
The Polish workers are not seek. ing to overturn the major gains of the Polish revolution of over 30 years ago - the ousting of the capitalists and the creation of a planned, nationalised economy. On the contrary, as Lech Walesa. the prominent Polish union leader. has spelled out, they are their foremost defenders.
What the Polish workers are fighting against is that bureaucratic layer which is the worst enemy of socialism in Eastern Europe: that layer which stands for privilege, inequality and repression and which seeks to turn workers into unthinking tools at the service of high-living managers.
If the Kremlin does intervene in Poland - to defend its repressive regime - this will not only be a setback in the struggle for socialist democracy in Eastern Europe. It will be an attack on working people around the world.
It will give the Thatchers and Reagans of this world a priceless propaganda weapon in their drive to step up the arms race. The sight of Soviet tanks rumbling into Poland will allow them to justify their hawkish ambitions by posing the USSR as a "threat" to world Moreover, they will use it as a convenient cover for stepping up their intervention against working people in countries such as El Salvador or Nicaragua.
HANDS OFF!
This is why it is important that working people everywhere are Fighting for socialist democrac aware of the high stakes in the Polish situation, and express their solidarity with the Polish workers. The rallying cry should be "Hands off Poland' Such a call has nothing in common with the hypocritical support offered by Western leaders to Solidarity. Reagan or Thatcher have to interest in the victory of the Polish workers, which could serve as an inspiring example to workers here fighting austerity plans and curbs on democratic rights.
On the contrary, while secretly supporting the crushing of the Pol ish workers, they would merely use the Soviet intervention as a propaganda weapon to justify their own repression at home and abroad.
Moreover, there was clearly anxi-