examine how the SAU gets its distinctive political line. Single sector organisations arising out of the youth vanguard tend to see themselves initially as conducting an autonomous struggle, they are unable to understand the role of the working class for their own struggle, and even if understanding it intellectually, are often unable to draw organisational conclusions which would necessarily liquidate the organisation into the revolutionary struggle.
These features are shown very clearly in the SAU. School students are not the working class, therefore school struggles cannot change the mode of production.
school is impossible without the abolition of bourgeois society, the revolutionary schools struggle has to take place in the context of social revolution under the leadership of the working class. Does it make sense to have an independent revolutionary bolshevik schools organisation? Only if you believe the schools are totally autonomous from bourgeois society. If you agree that the schools are linked with bourgeois society in a multitude of ways, and that you can't understand what is happening in the schools without an understanding of the processes at work in bourgeois society as a whole (which is by the way the Marxist position), then schools action has to be linked in with other struggles, not just in theory but in practice as well. From this basis we can then work out a strategy for the schools in the context of the struggles of the working class, the students, and other sectors.
The SAU is therefore stuck in a contradiction between the need for a total theory and the need for only a partial and fragmented practice. Of course, when a single sector organisation leads a mass movement, the logic of the movement can go beyond the limit of purely sectoral problems and large numbers of young militants then become politicised around the revolutionaries, but because tional system, the development of generalised struggle has been very much retarded, and the SAU has experienced this contradiction over a long period at two levels. In the membership, the lack of even a moderately sane political strategy (latest document gives the aim as "dual power in school") leads either to ultra-left adventures resulting in victimisation and expulsions, or more often in demoralisation and apathy leading to a lot of paper membership. In the leadership branches in London, however, this contradiction results in strong pressures to downgrade schools work and put much more emphasis on solidarity work, antiracist work, etc. Thus, the London rump London leadership has only two alternatives to its present paralysis: either to continue to follow the logic of the define itself against all other tendencies on the revolutionary left and destroy its pretensions to being a mass organisation for school students; or, it will have to build itself as a school student organisation, in which case it will have to return to the policy of the united front with other political currents on the revolutionary left, thus destroying the validity of its past and present positions.
What then should be the attitude of revolutionaries to the SAU? If there was at the moment a tremendous upsurge in put a great deal of emphasis on work in the SAU, both in the local branches and nationally. Revolutionaries would be working for their ideas, and trying to broaden the movement and give it political direction. Very obviously this is not the situation today. There is no schools movement, and if a political mobilisation did develop amongst school students, it is most unlikely that the SAU would be in a position to lead it. The SAU is essentially an irrelevancy, formed during a brief upsurge in the schools, but quite unable, because of its structure as an independent schools organisation, to give a coherence to that upsurge and politically develop it. With no movement that would have developed the SAU itself, it degenerated into a mere structure without content the same people discussing increasingly irrelevant topics quite divorced from what was and is-happening in the schools.
If this was all, we could safely leave it to its sectarian gymnasties, but because of the lack of any revolutionary organisation doing serious schools work over the last period, the SAU-without any competition -has been a certain pole of attraction to school student militants. Revolutionaries should therefore continue to propagandize for their ideas inside the SAU, as part of of the task of winning militants in the schools. In preventing this, the present leadership of the SAU is objectively helping to prevent revolutionary activity in the schools, helping in its own small fashion to hinder the building of the revolutionary party and behaving in a bureaucratic and sectarian way. We demand that the SAU immediately reinstate the expelled organisations and comrades.
-Chris Caldwell RESOLUTION PASSED BY THE POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE SPARTACUS LEAGUE The Political Bureau of the Spartacus League notes that the National Committee of the Schools Action Union decided at its last meeting to expel the comrades of the Spartacus League working in the SAU. The Political Bureau considers that these expulsions can only increase the isolation and impotence of the SAU and hasten its continuing decline as a viable mass schools organisation. The Political Bureau therefore calls upon the SAU to readmit immediately the expelled comrades and organisations in order to establish the SAU as a genuine united front of militants working in the schools.
BANGLADESH SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE DEMONSTRATION Saturday 23rd OCTOBER 2 p.m.
TUC UNEMPLOYMENT DEMONSTRATION ISLINGTON SQUARE, LIVERPOOL 2 P.M.-30th OCTOBER Meetings in support of the Irish struggle.
featuring speakers from Ireland and the film Urban Insurgency in Northern Ireland, have been arranged by the Spartacus League for the following place Further details should be available locall or can be obtained by phoning 01-278 2616.
OCTOBER lunchtime London School of Economics University of Manchester Institut of Science and Technology afternoon Manchester University evening Manchester (Moss Side)
University of Kent, Canterbury Aston University afternoon North London Poly evenine Birmingham University Coventry Notting Hill lunchtime Ealing Technical College evening Essex University, Colchester Rush Green Technical College, Dagenham Unchume Goldsmiths College, London evening Enfield College of Technology University of East Anglia, Norwic lunchtime University of Surrey, Guildford North-Eastern Polytechnic, London evening University of Sussex, Brighton Cambridge University lunchtime Brunel University, Uxbridge Oxford Polytechnic evening Oxford University Watford evening Oxford Brixton Further meetings will also be held in London-details will be posted locally.
The violence in the North of Ireland flowed ove onto the streets of Glasgow on Saturday 16th October, when a mob of fascists led by Pastor Jack Glass, the local Paisleyite leader, attacked a 250-strong demonstration called by the Irish Solidarity Campaign to demand the withdrawal of British troops and the release of all internees.
As the demonstration, organised by the ISC, and supported by Clann na h'Eireann, the International Marxist Group, I.S., the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Front, and the Spartacus League, formed up in Glasgow's Blythwood Square, the raising of the Irish flag proved to be the signal for the start of a series of attacks which continued for about an hour. In the incidents over 34 people were arrested, the bulk of them Paisleyites. The Glasgow police, althougt giving protection to the march, arrested a number of demonstrators, including 70-year-old Harry McShane, an associate of John MacLean and one of the last remaining leaders of Red Clydeside. McShane, who together with Seamus O'Tauthail (former editor of the United Irishman was due to address the rally, was released when the police realised who he was; but one member of IS who exclaimed "Good God" when he saw the arrest taking place was himself arrested.
Other demonstrators were arrested for calling out "Victory to the IRA" and police seized all anti-army recruitment posters carried by the demonstrators. Mark Steedman, an ISC supporter from Edinburgh, had his throat gashed by fascists using a meat cleaver. As we go to press, reports are now coming in that several of the ISC supporters arrested have been remanded in custody for eight days. Funds are urgently needed to conduct the defence. Send to:
Bob Purdie, 97 Otago Street, Glasgow W2.
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Fascists Attack ISC March