AROUND THE WORLD I
International Viewpoint #248 September 1993
EUROPE
THE tenth annual European youth camp organised by the Fourth International took place in Sweden this year. About 800 youth under 25 gathered from 15 European countries. Sweden was chosen as a result of the recent growth of the Young
Socialists, the youth organisation linked to the Socialist Party, Swedish section of the Fourth International.
As in preceding years, the camp attrac ted youth from organisations of the socialist left with which the European sections of the International have relations.
The average age at this camp was 20. About 40% of the participants were women and 65% of participants were attending their first camp. And even though this camp was held far in the north of the continent, the delegations from Portugal and the Spanish State were quite large. This is without a doubt the expression of a real political will and concrete expectations: to demonstrate that a radical and anti-capitalist European youth does indeed exist and that it wants to discuss its struggles and exchange its hopes.
Once again, the political programme of the gathering dealt primarily with antiracism, anti-fascism, ecology and feminism. From year to year, while the average age does not change, new generations come to the camp on the basis of specific political and social experiences.
It is interesting to note the evolution of debates and concerns over the years. The generation that came in the 1980s brought with it the experience of the student movements such as that of 1986 in France, the mass anti-missile movement in Belgium, or the anti-NATO movement in the Spanish State. Some participants had played leading roles in these struggles.
Today, the youth do not have these experiences but, instead, the social and political crisis has given them a high level of radicalism and a will to fight the established order.
Inasmuch as the coming years will be marked by big turns in the European political situation, these youth will have a decisive role to play in the new forms of struggle that emerge. No surprise then that a meeting has already been set to plan the eleventh camp, in 1994, somewhere in Europe! *
BOSNIA THE convoy organised by Workers Aid for Bosnia set off from the striking Timex factory in Dundee, Scotland on 9 August. It has been touring Britain holding meetings and collecting aid for Tuzla. Despite 36 the summer holidays there has been a growing response from the labour movement. Two national trade unions - Graphic, Print and Media Workers Union and the National Union of Journalists — have •given their support and further backing has come from local union branches, Labour parties, Labour councillors and a few MPs.
The convoy will visit the annual Trades Union Congress on September 6 before leaving for France where meetings are planned in Rouen, Lille and Paris. From Liege the convoy will split into north-east and south west European convoys. The north-eastern leg will be joined in Hamburg by another Workers Aid convoy from Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The larger convoy intends to make its way to Tuzla in Bosnia via Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Nancy, Besançon, Basel, Geneva and Lyon before moving on to Brescia in Italy and then Slovenia. where the campaign will be setting up a full-time office.
In Geneva there will be a joint press conference with the Bosnian government on September 18, to coincide with the weekly demonstrations against the United Nations and European Community carve-up of Bosnia.
Tuzla was chosen as the destination because it is the heartland of multi-ethnic, multi-national unity against the division of Bosnia. It is the most industrialised region of Bosnia and its workers are renowned for their solidarity with the struggles of workers throughout the world.
After this first convoy the organisers are establishing international Workers Aid as a permanent body and expect to be sending convoys every few weeks - not least because the response has been so overwhelming that it is impossible to send all the aid collected in one go.
One of the aims is to collect communications equipment to help the development of independent workers' organisations emerging in ex-Yugoslavia. There is an urgent need to establish Workers Aid Committees throughout the world.
For more details Workers Aid can be contacted in London, Britain on (44) 81 694 9799. *
KATE TRUSCOTT (1950-1993)
IT is with an acute sense of loss that we say goodbye to Kate Truscott who has died at the age of 43. She was an indomitable fighter with a life-long commitment to socialism, internationalism, feminism and personal politics.
Her entry into socialist politics, in Britain, was shaped by the great social events of the late 1960s. She was an activist in the National Abortion Campaign and the women's liberation movement as well as Vietnam, Chile and Irish solidarity campaigns.
Kate joined the revolutionary organisation Big Flame and served as a member of its leadership. As a shop steward in her health workers union she became an active anti-cuts campaigner and later, after participating in an 18-month hospital occupation, became the first national organiser of 'Fightback'.
In the late 1970s she shared a Socialist Unity election platform with the exiled South African Trotskyist Charlie Van Gelderen and became active in Southern Africa solidarity. Around this time she also joined the British section of the Fourth International (then called the International Marxist Group).
In 1981 she left Britain for Zimbabwe. Kate had no illusions in the radical nationalist regime of Mugabe and in fact helped to build Marxist study groups. She was a founding member of the Zimbabwe Women's Action Group, and worked on a development project as an organiser of rural women's groups.
Kate was working with exiled South Africans and entered that country as a courier establishing contact with the early Congress of South African Trade Union's and clandestine socialist groupings. In order to aid the socialist struggle more directly she eventually settled in South Africa, on the eve of Deklerk's concessions in February 1990.
In South Africa Kate joined the Workers Organisation for Socialist Action and served on the Central Committee with specific responsibility for the Women's Commission. She was involved in the production of WOSA's theoretical journal and newspaper and was researching and publishing work on the history of women's oppression in South Africa, on gender issues in work and education.
She has bequeathed her legacy to establish a socialist education centre in South Africa, to promote the politics she believed in.
Kate died as she lived - fighting for life. Hamba Khahle, comrade Kate. *