AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND
THE
WORLD
U SA SWP announce 1988 ticket THE SOCIALIST Workers Party (SWP) announced its candidates for the 1988 US presidential elections at a new conference in New York on March 9. James Mac Warren, a longtime activist in the labor and Black rights movement, is the SWP candidate for president. Kathleen Mickells, a West Virginia coal miner, is the vicepresidential candidate.
"The stock market crash last October signaled that a devastating world crisis is looming," Warren told reporters. working people need to unite with fellow workers and farmers around the world, especially in those countries oppressed and exploited by the United States and other imperialist powers, to protect ourselves. The semi-colonial countries are already suffering hunger, soaring infant mortality and massive unemployment under the weight of their mammoth debt burden.
"In the US, the crisis has brought devastation to the most impoverished sections of the working class — especially the Black community, immigrant workers, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans....
Warren said that the generalized social crisis that is coming will engulf working people as a whole, not only in the US but in Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australian and New Zealand. It will hit the colonial world even harder, which is already suffering its worst crisis since the 1930s.
He outlined a number of key proposals that the socialist candidates are raising, including a shorter working firmative action; a fight against farm forefor cheap governmentfinanced credit for farmers; international solidarity to demand cancellation of the foreign debt, an end to protectionism and a halt to the dumping of low-priced goods on
Kathleen Mickells said that the campaign "opposes the increased use of US military force around the world, from the Persian Gulf to Central America to southern
Campaign director Doug Jenness announced that the SWP will seek ballot status in 20 states. Because it is a working-class party, it is denied automatic access to the ballot and is forced to collect massive numbers of signatures, pay high fees and meet other undemocratic requirements. 10 Jenness added that the SWP will also be fielding several dozen candidates for ConInternational Viewpoint #140 • May 2, 1988 gress, US Senate and governor. * [Abridged from The Militant, March 18, 1988] FRANCE Funeral soured by sectarianism THE RESPONSE to the assassination of the ANC's representative in Paris on March 29 (see /V 139) was again the occasion for a deplorable division. Following the murder, the Anti-Apartheid Movement called for a picket in front of the South African embassy, while the Communist Party (CP), the Young Communists and the CP-led trade union, the CGT, held their demonstration in front of the ANC office. This division in the anti-apartheid struggle has become systematic in France. But the least that could have been done would have been to avoid it on this tragic occasion. Nothing was done and nobody would give way.
During the day, when ex-CP member and left presidential candidate Pierre Juquin went to the ANC office, the CP members present jeered and insulted him. That evening, the CP held a demonstration largely marked by attacks on Mitterrand, while the Socialist Party and the leadership of the anti-racist movement SOS-racisme would not budge an inch and held their "own" demonstration!
The CP has declared for a long time that solidarity with Black South Africans was its property. The Socialist Party is content to rest on the sidelines and wax indignant. Both of these parties have used South Africa for their own sectarian ends. Even the death of Dulcie September did not change
18 their practices.
The funeral on Saturday, April 9, only confirmed this sad state of affairs. The CP took it upon itself to be at the centre of the ceremony. The only French personality allowed to speak was CP general secretary Georges Marchais. When the leaders of SOS-racisme tried to present a wreath, they were pushed out of the way in a militaristic manner by CP militants.
Obviously, the ANC gains nothing from the CP's sectarianism. Some newspapers commented on the alleged discomfort in the ranks of the ANC delegation about the CP's omnipresence. If this was the case, this means that the leadership of the Communist Party has some means of pressurizing ANC leaders. In the middle of the election campaign, the CP wanted to establish an image as the only force opposing apartheid. At a time when united and massive solidarity has never been so urgent to thwart the repressive machinations of the Pretoria regime, it is a pity that the ANC gave its blessing to such a manoeuvre. *
COPENHAGEN A LAST reminder for the celebration of 50 years of the Fourth International on May 14 organized by the Danish and Swedish sections.
Betty Heathfield from the Women
Against Pit Closures movement will be speaking, along with Ernest Mandel, Hugo Blanco, Tariq Ali and speakers from Nicaragua and South
Africa.
Details and greetings: SAP, Nørre
Alle 11A, 2200 København N, Denmark 01-39 79 48 NOW HEAR THIS! NOBODY DO ANYTHING RASH! 102