Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. - V.I.Lenin
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions (£20 p a.) & circulation:078679 96074    [P&P Bulletin Publications PO 80X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]   
No 1099 July 24 2001                                                                                                                                              25p

During August, the EPS Review will miss publication on some weeks, dates uncertain.

Genoa brutality, the racism problem, and the jailing at last of a typical ruling-class fraud, all demonstrate clearer than ever that 'democracy' and anti-communism are the real danger to the world. The global economic crisis worsens by the day, driving the 'free world' summit leaders deeper into vengeful panic. 'Democracy' of all kinds is making a nonsense of the race question, including all the fake-'left' varieties. Moral reformist urgings are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Abstract 'socialist principles' divorced from any actual revolutionary analysis of real-life imperialist crisis conditions, will fail to make sense to any workers, and will only continue to drive part of the proletariat into the hands of fascist or black-nationalist extremists. Refusing to link all racism solely to the crisis of capitalism and reaching the correct revolutionary communist conclusions will condemn the whole fake-'left' to deserved oblivion.

The continuing racist rumbling around Britain; the monstrous 'democratic' aspects of the Archer scandal; and the murderous brush-off to the world's poor by the G8 Summit leaders; all put anti-communist fake-'lefts' in an ever more contemptible light.

The Socialist Alliance is being urged by headlines from its 'revolutionary' wing to "fulfil its duty to the working class only by fighting for consistent democracy".

Is this the kind which allowed the billionaire media mogul Berlusconi to obviously do well enough in the recent Italian elections for 'his' party to be able to form a coalition government with fascist-chauvinist parties?????

And if that is dismissed as "inconsistent democracy", then what about Blair at the head of a TUC-backed government telling the world that killing the unelected 'anarchist' protester made sense because the 'rioting' background was making it difficult for the 'democratically chosen' representatives of 'all' the people to get on with their work of 'reducing or eliminating' poverty, discrimination, alienation, exploitation, etc, etc, in the world????? Is any of that Nazi bullshit 'democratically' believable? Bush and Putin both criminally stole their way into office backed by Big Money, and all of the rest head longstanding 'parliamentary' regimes where the corruption and crookedness is only marginally less visible or obvious, but where more and more of the bribery and gross larceny is coming to the surface (and to the courts) all the time.

Democracy in the sense of societies finding the right way to make progress for everyone, and finding the correct solutions to problems which will convince most people in the long run is the best route to happiness for all, is clearly how the overwhelming majority of people in the world would want to live.

But the idea that this is all achievable via the process known to modern Western history as "democratic elections" or "consistent democracy" is so stupid that it is obscene.

Developing this knowingly foul deception, this decadent CPGB 'revolutionary' wing of the ludicrous 'Socialist Alliance' as usual tries covering its anti-communist class-collaborative tracks with a tiny bit of pseudo-Bolshevism here and there.

With its routine snipe at even barmier fake-'lefts' for pretending to 'oppose' monopoly-imperialism just by Britain pulling out of the European Union, the Weekly Worker sums up its opposition to such a boycott tactic with the words: 

"National isolation or defence of the national currency offers no solution for the working class.....For a democratic EU. Elect a constituent assembly of the EU on the basis of universal suffrage and proportional representation....End all immigration controls....Citizenship rights for all that have resided in an EU country for three months.... Developing a correct orientation towards the emerging EU superstate is vital"

and so on.

Not only does all this completely miss the 'Bolshevik' point as to why the slogan "withdraw from the EU" is a useless diversion (because it would leave monopoly imperialism as much in control of Britain outside the EU as inside it,(which is why the most rightwing Tories and fascists don't at all mind the slogan 'Get Out of the EU' but positively welcome it); and because it completely fails to raise the question of the WORLD imperialist economic crisis which is the real threat to the survival of the working class everywhere including in Britain). But such 'transitional' (i.e. reformist) demands clearly dismiss all thought of a world imperialist economic crisis completely by putting forward these slogans which obviously assume that some permanence must be attached to this temporary, unstable, opportunist lash-up of former European imperialist rivals (for the purposes of trade war against the USA and Japan).

The problem with this approach is not that there may indeed be more years to add to the 50 years that the Franco-German postwar alliance has already been in existence, but that the political perspective is completely wrong, totally (and deliberately) lacking in the faintest scrap of revolutionary understanding.

What needs to be projected is the reason why the 'European Union' has been so slowly, painfully, and traumatically cobbled together in the first place, - to prepare the defeated or dying older European imperialist powers for the next great international confrontation for supremacy (i.e. for survival) with the newer more thrusting US and Japanese imperialist powers when the great world postwar boom finally explosively crashes into slump once it has run into global 'overproduction' problems, and the 'surpluses' of investment capital everywhere have to start being DESTROYED (which might take at least 20 years of depression, trade war, and shooting war) before a new international boom can begin again on the wreckage of the previous 'new world order'.

The artificial 'European Union' is nothing but a patched together political gimmick hoping to persuade its dominant economic force (revived German imperialism inevitably and unavoidably on the globalisation supremacy trail once again, where all successful imperialist economies must end up) to lead the rest of Europe into trade-war and territorial-influence battle next time that an 'overproduction' crisis requires a universally destructive capitalist sort out, - rather than wage war on the rest of Europe like last time.

It is precisely because of this real purpose behind the 'European Union' that the British Establishment (under both parties), which has traditionally been a stooge-ally for US imperialism in most previous imperialist warmongering on earth, - is so tortured, divided, (all parties), and paralysed over whether to take its obvious inevitable trading advantages of EU membership any further into the political tie-up with its old rival European imperialist powers. (Although popularly measured by a shorthand economic summary: 'Into the Euro, or keep the pound', - the dreadful doubts crippling the British ruling class (both parties) really solely concern the longer-term political trade-war dimensions of the coming inter-imperialist crisis).

But why is there not a single word of this sole-possible Marxist historical science view on imperialist crisis-development, raised throughout the 'Socialist Alliance'?????

Because their 'consistent democracy' is nothing whatever to do with the confident revolutionary-propaganda aggression of the Bolsheviks who imaginatively described their winning of sufficient support among the Soviet-oriented workers, soldiers, and peasants so as to be able to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat by seizing power and keeping it, as 'winning the battle of democracy'.

These ridiculously academic middle-class posturers really do want to encourage and strengthen the sad illusions workers have in bourgeois or 'parliamentary' democracy.

This is the 'democracy' which let George Bush steal the presidential election by mob-mafia tactics in Florida (where the 'family' held all the important local 'boss' influence), having 'won' (thanks to billions of dollars in Big Business advertisers political brainwashing) the 'support' of less than 20% of the adult US population (the same as the 'rival choice'. Some 'choice').

This is the 'democracy' which will let the neo-fascist elements now authorised to show their face more inside the Italian imperialist-state Establishment, smash-up the anti-globalisation protest in Genoa, and get away with it.

This is the 'democracy' which blitzkrieged little Serbia (totally defenceless) to dust on trumped-up 'ethnic cleansing' charges (just because the Serbs were the most successful bullies in the Western-induced civil-war break-up of the former Yugoslav Socialist Federation, and refused to play the break-up according to NATO's tune), but which turns a blind eye to the genuine 50-year-long ethnic cleansing genocide of the Palestinian nation 6-million-strong but now all effectively stateless refugees in stinking camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, the West Bank, or Gaza, - all because their deliberately colonising Zionist-imperialist tormentors are a 'democracy' too. And this is the 'democracy', ultimately, which put actual Nazism itself in power in Germany in 1933, 'legally' voting the parliamentary deputy Adolf Hitler into the Chancellor job as head of government, and sustaining him there, after having voted the Nazis as the biggest single party in previous general elections.

There is 'parliamentary' democracy, which has been the cover for 99.99% of the colonial-imperialist tyranny inflicted on the Third World (and against each other) since the monopoly-capitalist powers took control of the world 700 years ago. And then there is revolutionary democracy, which IMPOSES the dictatorship of the proletariat because it is in the best interests of the vast majority of mankind, needing not elections to justify its seizure of power (the Bolsheviks shut down the end-1917 Constituent Assembly before its uselessly-corrupted 'election' results had had time to do any damage) but needing enough solid working-class support to be able to hold onto power successfully and then build a workers state (also done successfully, the USSR being by far the most astonishing triumph of state-construction (with immeasurably colossal far-reaching implications still continuing and still to come) in all human history.)

But what about these 'revolutionary' proposals which the CPGB intends to smuggle into the reformist 'Socialist Alliance'????

Actually, even as such in isolation, they are not in the least bit 'Bolshevik'. 

These pseudo-Marxists declare boldly: "Not a penny or a cent, not a man or a woman for the EU's armed forces".

This is even dumbed-down from the Weekly Worker’s usual crap 'revolutionism' of 'demanding' armed black & white workers self-defence rights to 'counter' the threat of fascism emerging throughout the capitalist states. What an appalling load of middle-class posturing muddle-headed class-collaborationism designed purely to mislead the proletariat, and keep them away from real communist revolutionary understanding.

This 'none of my taxes for nasty weapons' is about as 'Bolshevik' as the hypothecation proposals of the Lib-Dems, the Womens Institute, and the anti-nuclear Greens etc, who variously object to their taxes going on certain power stations, or new roads, or general government expenditure instead of specifically for education, e.g. The Bolsheviks generally steered clear of all such bourgeois-democracy games, not even recommending 'conscientious objection' to enforced war-killing service in the illegally feudal and bankrupt colonial armed forces of the Tsarist autocracy. If everyone has to go, let the Bolsheviks go too, - and then stir up revolutionary trouble in the ranks, was the Bolshevik attitude.

A specific tax strike is not impossible to see as a potentially revolutionary issue (the Poll Tax revolt showed faint signs but was never backed by any fake-"left" revolutionary agitation), - but this lone CPGB gesture is so far removed from any immediate likely reality facing the working class in Britain that it sticks out like the piece of grandiose posturing that it is. It is a 'revolutionary' demand before a single word has been heard from these types about any kind of 'revolution' at all being in the offing. It is a political perspective from 'deep inside' the European Union when the actual politics taking place in Britain right now is much more about leaving the European Union altogether, or at least preserving a lot of political distance.

And what is the background picture that is presented for this lone 'revolutionary' demand to front?????

It is so exclusively reformist and class-collaborative that no ordinary worker reading it could possibly conclude anything else but that bourgeois parliamentary democracy permanently within the 'European Union' would be a marvellous new opportunity for the working class to take advantage of:

"There is every reason to seek to give new content to existing democratic forms.... Use the EU parliament as a platform to protest against every violation of democracy, every act of injustice....MEPs must also take no more than the skilled worker's average wage ....a brilliant contrast to the time-servers, careerists, and place-fillers."

It is becoming clearer. This is to be a new 'Bolshevik' revolution by example, by good deeds, and by protest. 'New' indeed!!!

A black & white workers armed self-defence corps to see off the BNP and the National Front in Oldham, Bradford, and Burnley, far example, has a tad more relevance to the real world, - but only a tad, - in terms of 'democratic demands'.

Yet once again, these posturing Alliance 'revolutionaries' evade all discussion of the actual imperialist-crisis background to the racial disturbances in Britain's cities, and end up effectively discussing only their own academic 'principles' for dealing with such matters. But these say little worthwhile about the actual phenomenon of the racist outbreaks, their reflection on the current world political situation, or their actual long-term solution:

The Bradford riots were a spontaneous reaction to a provocation, not the conscious rising of the oppressed. While we condemn provocations and defend the right to self-defence, we do not see the solution as being ultimately in spontaneous outbursts of violence. The solution is in collective, class-based action. We must begin with propaganda for defence corps to defend our communities against the fascists and police. From the word will come the deed.

And a subsequent piece tentatively derides multiculturalism as being deliberately aimed at destroying far more important notions of class solidarity; and equally correctly repudiates the idea of getting the capitalist state to ban fascism, aware that communists would be the next to be banned. But instead of a ban, the proposal is made to the workers movement to ensure that fascist views "are drawn out into the open so that they can be exposed and comprehensively defeated intellectually"; & at the same time warns workers never to automatically believe that every capitalist state is necessarily 'racist':

"The SWP's acceptance of the state's 'institutional racism' leads to fundamental mistakes and a soft underbelly when it comes to tackling the negative consequences of multiculturalism, not least white working class alienation."

But this gets everything wrong. All workers are 'alienated' basically by capitalism. An endlessly escalating cycle of racist blame and revenge seeking are only reflective symptoms of frustration, envy and fear, no doubt sparked off by politically correct multi-cultural nonsense and a chauvinist reaction against it, but still only CAUSED by capitalism and the endlessly wretched effects on all human relationships flowing from the basically inhuman system of exploitation.

Maybe it might lead to futile pedantic wrangles to insist on naming every capitalist state as 'racist' as such, but every capitalist state certainly is deliberately divisive of the working class when needed, with racism the usual obvious means to an end.

Wanting to exonerate the British capitalist state under its current Blairite management from being describable as 'racist' as such, however, is not just far more pedantic than any pedantry diversions which might arise from calling all capitalist states maintainers of a basically racist system of society, but it is also just calamitously wrong. As these Trots themselves come close to recognising elsewhere, the modern British state, like all the rest of the West, has never ceased to play the race card in one way or another, either via overt or covert 'institutional racism',  or more recently, via overt or covert 'institutional anti-racism', or multi-culturalism.

And what is the difference??? Very little or none whatever. The potential for ghettoisation (and all the political mischief that can be made from it) remains as rancid as ever, no matter which of the four regimes has been predominant (and invariably all four descriptions continue to be partially valid simultaneously).

Why? Because the fabulous economic expansion potential of the capitalist system rat-race depends on the rampant individualism and social envy of cut-throat competition. The capacity for souring all relationships in society, - within families, between generations, or capable of dividing nations, different regions within nations, or different communities within regions on a nationality, religious, racial, or ethnic basis, - is built into the system.

As an abstract principle, the urging on of anti-racist propaganda and class-based action is worthy but not much different from what the 'left' has always tried to do for 50 years of immigration, and what official anti-racism has nominally been trying to encourage for a long time too, including anti-racist laws and positive discrimination.

But what has it all produced???? The 'racist' mess of the current situation and the recent disturbances.

Let the former bourgeois anti-racist optimism make the admissions itself. The really crude racism was being steadily conquered, allegedly. But look at the reality now:

It was the morning after people had been fighting in the streets, setting fire to cars, smashing and looting shops, terrorising the neighbourhood.

"Are you scared?" I was asked by my pupils, who wanted to talk about the weekend's violence. There was nothing to worry about, I said, and diffused the tension with a joke.

After these first terrible riots the children were unsettled and rumours were rife. They had seen the violence of the night before and had heard rumours that people were planning to torch and bomb the neighbourhood.

I am a science teacher in a secondary school in Bradford. I have been teaching for 20 years and my classes have about 30 children -  almost all of them white.

Some years ago the council actively encouraged segregation, bussing children to Asian or white-only schools. It thought that this action would solve problems because in the short term it made people happy. But in the long term it has created a sense of two cultures in the city.

There is within our community an extreme right wing under-current; this was the day I learnt how deep it flowed. Weary of questions about how to make a petrol bomb and whether I was going out tonight with some bricks, I eventually stopped my lesson. I went against my instincts and began to talk about tolerance and acceptance.

Eventually I asked my class of 12 and 13-year-olds if any of them considered themselves to be a racist. Strong words for a difficult situation, I thought. 

Two girls looked uncomfortable. Everyone else's hand shot up -  proudly.  

It was probably the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. Another small mistake among many. But I knew instantly that I would be haunted by the image of that class forever. I was stunned.

The chaos of the day continued until it was time for the children to go home. Many pupils saw the events as a fantastic game and were excited and eager to get out of school to see what would happen next.

They talk as though they understand what they are saying but I know they don't. They are obviously just repeating opinions they have heard from their parents or other adults. For instance, some of them mentioned Jews. I can't think why children around here would start thinking about Jews unless there was propaganda around. I think there have been leaflets and graffiti, presumably put out by the BNP.

Only a year ago the LEA changed the way that schools are organised in Bradford from primary, middle and secondary to a two-tier system - so we are all relatively new secondary schools. I believe this move was to save money, although the LEA argued that its purpose was to raise standards.

I am sure that if teachers talked to children in a primary school environment they could probably make them think a little more about what they are saying, asking them: "Do you mean this, do you mean that?"

But in a secondary school we don't have time to talk any more. If we did then I believe that we could help to make children more tolerant about other cultures, although you would always get some whose feelings are ingrained: you would not be able to shift them.

We have Asian teachers in our school. Their views range from those who feel that the subject is too hard to tackle because racism is in the children's psyche, to those who get angry when they hear children making racist remarks.

I grew up in an urban area where there are a large number of different races, but I have never come across anything like this - schoolchildren in my own classroom expressing their animosity to other races so overtly. I have always known this attitude exists, but now, because of what is happening on the streets, these children seem to feel that it is safe to let their racism have a voice.

I am used to going home tired. I now go home exhausted and upset. I see a terrible problem before us with no solution. I feel ashamed of my city and my community. Both communities, because Bradford has two.

If we do not tackle this crisis I cannot imagine what the future will hold. I hope that there is someone out there strong enough to lead us on from this dark day.

I am full of fear.

Phil Woollas, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, told me: "If an unemployed white boy comes into my surgery I can get him a job by tomorrow lunchtime. For an Asian boy, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's much, much harder." Why? "Racial prejudice,' he says. Ashid Ali, a Bangladeshi youth worker, had the same story: "I know a PhD driving a taxi because he can't get a job. People end up opening restaurants.' Then he added: "But the youth don't want to work 16 hours a day like their fathers. They've been educated."

Oldham used to be rich. In 1890, this one town produced 13 per cent of the world's cotton. In 1900, it elected Winston Churchill as a Conservative MP. Into the Seventies, anyone -  black, brown or white -  could walk into a job here. The mills, which brought the Pakistanis and then the Bangladeshis to Oldham in the first place, were still spinning away. Now, though, 20 years after most of those mills closed, parts of Oldham are very poor. The Government ranks the 8,414 local government wards in England on an index of deprivation. Four of Oldham's 21 wards are listed in the worst 103 wards: the bottom one-and-a-bit per cent. So one-fifth of this town, almost 50,000 people, experiences some of the worst social conditions in England. About 20 per cent of the people in these wards are on income support. About 30 per cent are under 16. Many of the one-eighth of Oldham's houses that a 1995 survey thought unfit for human habitation are here in these four wards. Most of the one quarter of Oldham's houses built before 1919 are here. It rains a lot, too. And Oldham Athletic, some of whose fans like to sing "Stand up, if you hate the Pakis", are still in the Second Division.

Deprivation cannot fully explain a riot, but the riots happened here, in these four wards. They didn't happen in the nice villages up in the moors, any more than they happened in the nice parts of Burnley or Bradford. In these four wards, fanning out southwest and southeast from the city centre, live the Muslims of Oldham. In Westwood, the Bangladeshis, about 7,500 of them. In Glodwick, the Pakistanis, about 11,500 of them. That leaves about 30,000 whites - for many of whom, of course, the city-wide statistics are meaningless: they are every bit as poor as the Muslims. Westwood is where the 76-year old white war veteran Walter Chamberlain was beaten up in April, allegedly by young "Asian" boys claiming their streets were a "no-go area for whites'. Glodwick is where, after weeks of tension and with a high National Front and BNP presence in both the city centre and the white estates that adjoin the area, Pakistani youths rioted in late May. In a pattern now familiar from the other mill towns of Burnley and Bradford, a relatively small incident, well-watered with rumour, fertilised by fear, mobilised young Muslim men either to "defend their territory" or to "get the NF" or both. This action then turned, very rapidly, into attacks on the two most available, most visibly white institutions: the police and the public house. Once they had started, these young men discovered, as young British-born black men discovered in 1981, or young French-born Algerians discovered a few summers ago, the raw thrill to be derived from loosing a righteously aimed brick.

At the Live and Let Live pub, winner of the least-aptly named hostelry in England competition by a mile, the landlord Paul Barrow tells me what happened that Saturday night. "There were about 40 people in, middle aged, including four Asians. The act, a duo, Double Vision, had just come on when 15 Asian lads burst in and started attacking everyone, including the four Asians.' Later, a larger crowd came back, petrol-bombed the pub and trashed the cars. As we spoke, the glaziers were in, busily replacing Mr Barrow's windows. A man crossing the car park says good-humouredly: "Bit of a waste of time, that".

Mr Barrow has no time for the BNP and not much for "the Asian youth" either, given their predilection for monopolising his pool table while not buying any drinks. He thinks the Muslim elders should provide more facilities for their kids. He says he would not cross the street and walk around the centre of Glodwick. "The older ones are fine. I worked with them in the mills. The youth can be intimidating." I agree. Usually, "no-go" areas are an anticlimax, existing mostly in the minds and headlines of local newspaper sub editors. Glodwick, however, is a tense, hostile place. Within a few minutes of my arrival on Waterloo Street, a young man, about 18, had told me I was going to "get busted up". Then a shiny red Vauxhall Frontera accelerated unnecessarily close as I crossed the road. This car continued to patrol up and down Waterloo Street. When a car costs more than the houses it is cruising by, that usually means there is a flourishing local drug trade. Informed sources in Oldham say that there is. As in east London, some young Muslims in Oldham have become particularly vulnerable to heroin. One local politician, with impeccably anti-racist credentials, told me that the riot had, in part, been orchestrated "by local drug dealers, to get the police [there to guard against the NF] out of Glodwick".

Next, another young man, so strung out, on pure anger or impure something else, or both, that he was actually foaming at the mouth, began a rant in my face. The gist of it was: all white people, certainly all police officers, members of the Australian cricket team and me, were racists; he had been racially abused when he worked in a shop; white people couldn't hold their drink, "not like us, we drink like men, raw shots!"; David Beckham is ugly. This young man and his friends had shaved heads, earrings, gold chains, leather jackets, sportswear. Their accents were a hybrid of Lancastrian and Cockney gangsta, every other sentence ending with the ubiquitous "Nahworramin?" They struck me as socially very tight, moving around as a group, greeting each other with ritualised handshakes and smiles. Their white counterparts, whom I met later, were no less angry and wore similar gear, but seemed less organised, less bonded.

Much has been written recently in the wake of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford about the new generation of "Asian" youth. (Although this word Asian really isn't much use: those of Bangladeshi origin seem, on the whole, less alienated and less aggressive than those of Pakistani origin, and no young men from Indian or Sikh backgrounds have rioted at all as far as I know.) 

There is a paradox here. On the one hand, these young men are British not just on their passport, but in their bones. They ought to get on better with whites than their fathers and grandfathers did. But they get on worse. Why? Why are they so angry? Why did youths in Bradford not only chase skinheads through the streets, but also hurl bricks at a busload of women and children? The pernicious influence of the BNP is the easiest explanation for many: the outraged MP, the anxious councillor, the community leader, the race relations adviser, the visiting journalist. But the BNP is a small organisation. It goes where the ground is already fertile. It has neither the talent nor the resources to stir up fear and resentment where none already exists.

I think that the truth is many people are anxious about the consequences of the lack of integration, after three generations, of some Muslim communities into the communities around them. At the poor, uneducated sharp end, this anxiety has turned in some places to resentment, or hatred. It is the young Muslim men - visible, uncowed - who feel the brunt of this resentment and are, increasingly, returning it with interest. Much of the resentment is based on myth. Some is based on concerns which, to me, seem reasonable and ought to be addressed by mainstream politicians.

Should the Government give more money to Asian areas than white ones? It does not - and the money it does give is because the area is poor, not because it is Asian. Should third-generation Pakistani girls be taught in Urdu, at the expense of their white classmates? I'm not sure they should actually. But they are, which is partly why they increasingly don't have any white classmates. Should an individual be able to report any altercation as a racist crime -  be it Muslim boys abusing white girls in short skirts, or white boys bullying elderly shopkeepers -  thus fuelling the sort of statistics that proved so inflammatory in Oldham? Should a policeman be able to say a crime is racist, even if that crime's victim does not think it was? Should members of ethnic minorities, however wealthy, be considered to be more disadvantaged than members of ethnic majorities, however poor? Obviously not - but if you read Oldham Council's Unitary Development Plan, 1996-2001, it sure looks that way.

In their two-bedroomed terraces, the Muslims are very overcrowded, often sleeping four or five to a room. This means that the young men spend their evenings on the streets. If, as a teenage boy, you can't mope in your bedroom, and you're not supposed to drink, and you're not supposed to go out with Muslim girls, and you stand a good chance of getting your head kicked in if you go out with a white girl, you're left either having to play an awful lot of football to burn off all that testosterone or else you're probably going to get into trouble. A report as long ago as 1976 warned that "the free operations of the housing market in Glodwick are already tending towards a process of ghettoisation and hence segregation". When that was written, Glodwick was still predominantly white and the schools were integrated. Now, Glodwick is almost entirely Muslim and parental choice means that even schools which should be mixed are becoming segregated. The expanding "ghetto" is now lapping at the edges of the white council estates, peopled by those with nothing to sell and nowhere to go.

Mick Treacy is the organiser of the Oldham branch of the British National Party. Treacy voted Labour all his life until this June. In 1997, Treacy voted for Phil Woollas, the man he stood against in 2001, polling 5,091 votes. Treacy's father, an Irishman from Galway -  the irony is lost on him -  voted Labour too, which is principally why Treacy always had. He joined the BNP "because the Asians are taking over". 

Treacy drove me around in his taxi. He said: "Fifty years ago everyone in Oldham spoke English as their mother tongue."

Judging by the names and dates on the headstones in Greenacres cemetery, the rows of Poles and Ukrainians who came to work in the mills after the war, Treacy is wrong. What he means is: 50 years ago everyone in Oldham was white. These days, the new-look, racist-lite BNP under chairman Nick Griffin doesn't talk about colour, but "culture".

Understandably, Treacy is a little nervous around Glodwick. "I have very little contact with these people," he says. He hasn't been up here for years - and I realise the same must apply to many of his voters, even though many live less than half a mile away. They read about government grants, they see the occasional BMW or a cocky boy with a fake gold chain. But they do not actually visit. So, mythology flourishes, just as it does among the Pakistani boys who see every pub as an NF drinking den. When I suggest to Treacy that, judging by the houses and the kids' clothing, the people of Glodwick do not look as if they are being showered with largesse, he admits: "No, they don't, do they?" Then he insists that they are. But they are not. Glodwick has received £6 million in grants over the past few years -  money used mostly to repair roofs and windows in these 100-year-old houses. A lot of the windows didn't need repairing, but nobody asked the residents what the money should be spent on. The exclusively white area of Fitton Hill, half a mile to the south, has just received £54 million in government grants. "When you tell [white] people that,' says Angela Eagle, the Home Office minister who visited Oldham after the election, "they look at you like they don't believe you."

Treacy gets a call from a BNP member: trouble is brewing on the Abbeyhills Road, the long frontier that leads down from Glodwick to the Holts estate. A group of about 20 young Asian men, angry, have gathered on the road. Two police officers are talking to them. Further down the hill, on the corner of Waltham Street, three or four white men stand, grim-faced, looking up the road. In Waltham Street itself, a crowd of people stands outside a house, remonstrating with a policeman. Half an hour earlier, members of the crowd explain, a "carload of Asians" came into the street making threatening gestures. One of the young white men present, thinking his family was about to be attacked, smashed one of the car windows. Other residents called the police who, they say, took half an hour to arrive, long after the car had driven off. The crowd say they know one of the Asian boys in the car, because he is friendly with another Asian boy who had, until recently, lived on Waltham Street.

Until the riot in May, during which people here barricaded their road to stop, they say, Asian rioters attacking them, four Muslim families lived on this street. The last non-white family moved out just a few weeks earlier, protected by a group of 30 or 40 men. Since the riots, many of the young white men of Waltham Street have spent their nights awake, on the lookout for potential petrol bombers. To call them vigilantes, as the Oldham Chronicle does, is to imply a degree of organisation they do not possess. To a man and woman, everyone I met here voted BNP. To a man and woman, everyone had previously been a Labour voter - or, more accurately, a Labour affiliate, since many had given up voting some years previously, and others helped put the Liberal Democrats in charge of Oldham council a year ago.

One woman tells me: "They [the Labour Party] have used us for years. Maybe the BNP is using us, too. Doesn't everybody dupe everybody at the end of the day? But if the BNP can put some of our points across, then yeah." This woman, whose partner is black, and whose daughter has a Pakistani boyfriend, can reasonably claim, I think, not to be a racist. Or rather, not to have been a racist until very recently - because now she will in all likelihood become a BNP activist. Ashid Ali had told me: "I don't believe there are 12,000 racists in Oldham." Neither do I, but I do think there are 12,000 - or more - people in Oldham (and Burnley and Bradford) who are vulnerable to a racist interpretation of their grievances, and unless someone presents them with a plausible alternative interpretation soon, the BNP are going to win a council seat or two next May.

As I am interviewing this woman, and other members of the crowd, two vanloads of riot police arrive. Amid crying girls, hysterical mothers and barking dogs, they arrest several of the boys and young men present. This is why I cannot name any of the white people in the preceding few paragraphs. The boys will discover later this summer whether they are to be charged and, if so, with what. I did not witness the incident, only its aftermath. Yet, it seems to me unlikely that guilty people would stand around after their crime, berating policemen and chatting to passing journalists while having their picture taken.

Mick Treacy, who has been loitering around, is all sympathy. The next day - the very next day - the BNP issue a leaflet about the arrests, and Nick Griffin has driven two hours from his home in mid-Wales to offer support to the families of the arrested boys. Some people make the mistake of thinking the BNP vote in the election was a one-off protest and they will fade away. That is not what I witnessed. What I saw was the BNP digging in, pursuing the sort of dogged, we'll-phone-the-council-for-you pavement politics that worked so well for Sinn Féin in Ulster in the Eighties and Nineties, and indeed for the Nazi Party in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties.

What has happened?

The capitalist system has begun to sink deeper into all-round crisis. The sharp alienation of everyone and all relationships (potentially) has grown much sharper. The fuse on the temper of people's deepest fears about their own future and standing is growing daily more fragile. Bad blood of all kinds will be increasingly evident.

To call the Bradford riots merely "a spontaneous reaction to a provocation" may or may not be an accurate description of the symptoms, but it says absolutely nothing about what is happening to all class relations (including race relations) under the latest developments of the world imperialist crisis. On the other hand, the notions of "the conscious rising of the oppressed" and of "solutions in spontaneous outbursts of violence", - both loftily dismissed by the CPGB Trots, do in fact raise questions much closer to important truths.

The element of anti-establishment nationalist revolt in these race disturbances is not necessarily at all far removed from "a conscious rising of the oppressed" as far as minorities reacting against existing-system hatefulness is concerned. And spontaneous outbursts of violence have frequently in history formed very crucial bridging links to conscious revolutionary struggle.

By all means declare that "the solution is in collective class-based action" as a scarcely controversial 'principle' in workers socialist circles, - but when will it be declared to what end, and with what perspective in view???

Is this a revolution the Weekly Worker has in mind??? Or a long reformist campaign of trade-union action??? Or building up a massive parliamentary election organisation to campaign non-stop for CPGB councillors and MPs????

None of these, apparently: 

"We must begin with propaganda for defence corps to defend our communities against the fascists and police."

On the retreat straightaway, it would seem, - and prepared for a very long and surely extraordinarily demoralising campaign of playing permanently second fiddle to fascists and police taking all the aggressive initiatives. What an encouraging prospect!!! – for congenital anti-communist defeatists, that is.

The above bourgeois press admissions are describing how the inadequacies of the capitalist rat-race system (for modern mankind & for potentially economically-integrated world society) are driving anti-Marxist mis-educated masses towards crude racist 'explanations' for their discontent and outlets for their anger, a confusion made all the worse by these fake-'lefts' and 'anti-racist' institutions refusing to even mention the existence of the one obvious conclusion from all of this, let alone loudly and publicly embrace that conclusion, - namely that decades of PC 'race-awareness' reformism and 'anti-racist' legislation have got nowhere morally lecturing people; that as soon as capitalist crisis starts to turn the whole population sour, then racist disturbances will come back worse than ever; that black nationalist multiculturalism's segregation effects are only likely to inflame things even more in such crisis circumstances; and that racism will remain endemic for as long as the capitalist system's divide-and-rule rat-race survives; meaning that until communist revolution is able to unite the majority of the whole proletariat with the glittering future of overthrowing the entire ruling-class establishment society and economy in Britain and planning the complete redeployment of the whole of the nation's wealth for the long-term publicly owned economic, social and political benefit of all the population, - then the reformist posturers of all types (fake-'lefts', Blairites, Lib-Dems, one-nation Tories, black-nationalist petty-bourgeoisie, etc, etc) will just carry on with their utterly degenerate 'parliamentary' careerism, and their utterly useless 'politically-correct' moralising and humbug, leaving racist and fascist confusion to carry on festering endlessly.

After all this evidence of the total hypocrisy of slimy Labour manoeuvring back and forth between integrationist assimilationism and multicultural segregationism, depending on which way the wind of political opportunism is blowing, and of all this mindless anti-Marxist posturing by these 'Alliance' stooges for perpetual retreat in the face of imperialist aggression; the fact that the SLP can only come across as an even sicker sadder joke on such matters is testimony to the utter bankruptcy of Scargillism ('his' party).

Named as covering all five months from May to September, the ludicrous 'Socialist News' of totally daft mild trade-unionist sloganising has managed just two publications in this period of enormously significant racist turmoil.

One 'covers' the riotous developments, dismissing their clear racist content as "misleading" because the Bradford disturbances were apparently mostly about drug-trade turf wars and organised fascist provocations (which the police could easily have stopped, allegedly), plus all the underlying poverty and unemployment:

"Violence between Asian and Afro-Caribbean gangs in this context has less to do with race than with the profit motive".

Part of this description is almost true, and capitalism is solely to blame. But expressing it this way, for some weird reason known only to the SLP, loses the whole urgency of what race rioting and BNP electoral advances are now telling about how rancid is the imperialist system crisis.

And the paper concludes on exactly this utterly tired and decadent note of reformist hypocritical uselessness:

Racism and the drugs trade have this in common: they create barriers that capitalism uses quite skilfully to keep exploited people separate from each other. Like the drugs-trade, racism thrives on ignorance and on ghettoisation. Socialists of whatever religion, creed or race have to play our part in bringing those barriers down.

Too true, but to conclude an analysis of such enormous class-war-significant developments and imperialist-crisis indicators, 150 years after the dawn of Marxist science, with mild moral reformist urgings which Ian Duncan Smith could even improve upon, is testimony to the ludicrousness of Scargillism, supposedly now leading Britain to the 'socialist revolution' via Little-Englander chauvinism and a revived Plan for Coal, plus other TUC-type reformist demands.

This SLP joke goes stratospheric with Scargill's bizarre conclusions on this party's election debacle. This boasts about getting 'more votes' in 2001 than in 1997 and a bigger percentage of the poll, 0.22% of the total votes cast in Britain in 2001 as opposed to only 0.16% of the total votes cast in the 1997 election.

Now why would anyone in their right mind be wanting to boast ecstatically about an electoral stunt "which contested 114 seats, more than any other single party in the history of elections in the United Kingdom" which produced such derisory results???? To cover a monstrous, out-of-control ego is why.

The SLP got "more votes" this time round because it paid for them. In 1997, Scargill put up £37,000 to rake in 52,516 votes from paper candidates in 64 constituencies. This time, he paid out £57,000 to gather in 57,497 votes from 114 paper candidates (with apologies to the genuine campaigning put in by workers in many areas but all in aid of Scargill's basically 114-candidate paper electoral challenge to get a national television broadcast and to conduct an expensive 'real poll' opinion poll and 'his' party's standing).

The votes each 'candidate' got FELL, unsurprisingly, from 833 average per constituency in 1997 to 504 average per constituency in 2001. And the percentage of the vote dropped too, despite the much lower turnout in 2001, down from 1.62% average per constituency in 1997 to 1.23% average per constituency in 2001.

All that Scargill has 'proved' with this bizarre nonsense is that by spending an extra £20,000 on lost deposits, he has been able to boast about an extra 5,000 votes for the SLP nationally.  

At about £4 a vote, another £50 million or so could see the SLP into office, Scargill would presumably conclude from all this.

Others might start to wonder if just more desultory 'left reformist' politics in Britain is really going to light the way forward to the socialist revolution, even if paper candidates are put up in all 641 constituencies next time.

All these fake-'lefts' are just on auto-pilot, mouthing presumed 'socialist principles' such as "end all racist immigration controls" on the insane basis that the entirety of politics is just the steady progress of 'enlightened reforms'.

But in the overall long-term Marxist scientific view of what sustained contributions to every aspect of civilisation capitalism can make, such a notion of 'steady enlightened reforms' is not merely occasionally incorrect but is wholly basically misleading on many important questions for society, racist disturbances being one of them.

All capitalist laws are barbaric nonsense by definition, including its racist immigration controls. But the 'principled' campaign to at least reduce the barbarism on that point by ending all immigration controls, merely pointlessly sows illusions in capitalism's longterm economic stability and the sick anti-revolutionary notion of the Third World remaining permanently impoverished and exploitedly dominated, - while at the same time barking for 'reforms' which no capitalist state could conceivably concede and which will only provide the BNP with more priceless propaganda weapons against 'socialism' in general.

Stopping racist prejudice by moral reformist persuasion is a complete pipe-dream under capitalism.

But here is the other 'manifesto' edition of 'Socialist News' in this past 5-month period declaring that precisely all such 'socialist policies' as "oppose all racist immigration laws" is the way that "racism can be finally eradicated in Britain".

All such 'democracy' fantasies and other counter-revolutionary diversionary PC garbage spew up in full disgusting view around the Archer scandal.

This is a silly retarded jerk that 'democracy' has contentedly turned into a 'celebrity' who has chaired modern British history's major political party, been made a 'Lord' to sit for life ruling over us in Parliament's Upper House, and stood a good chance of being 'elected' Mayor of London.

But "the court system of independent democratic justice got him in the end"??? Did it heck. He was grassed up for money by a fellow conspirator in the anti-tabloid libel rip-off, and the courts finally had no choice but to send the crook down.

But when does the entire British Establishment which has embraced Archer (and thousands more corrupt hypocrites like him) as a 'lovable rogue' for decades go into the dock itself as Archer's accomplice in endlessly passing off turds such as this as 'worthy'???

Never. The truth is that they are ALL crooks, - every last one of them throughout the entire British Establishment (all parties). They all have their hand in the till, symbolically speaking, while they spout endless repeated crap and bullshit about 'reforming' this and 'reforming' that to make life in Britain 'better for everybody'. The fake-'lefts' are ludicrously caught up in the same gobshite.

Don't be fooled. Archer has gone down as a bit of ritual mild scapegoating. But the augean stables are not about to be cleared. Not one bit of it. The whole world capitalist system is plunging ever deeper into steeper and steeper crisis.

'Democracy' will be the death of us all if communist revolution's slow and steady comeback fails to reach Britain. Build Leninism.  EPSR. 

	World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

RUC complicity in killing of Pat Finucane

RUC SPECIAL BRANCH were informed of killings about to take place, FRU leader Gordon Kerr is to reveal to the Stevens' probe into the killing of Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane.

The British Brigadier and current military attaché to Beijing is to be questioned next month and it is rumoured that he intends to point the finger of blame at the RUC Special Branch.

The Stevens team believe they have sufficient evidence to establish that Kerr previously lied to detectives investigating crown forces' collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

Kerr appeared as Colonel 'J' at the trial of Brian Nelson in 1992. Nelson was an agent for the FRU, one of the most covert units in the British Army. As their agent Nelson updated, reorganised and provided information on nationalists and republicans being targeted by loyalist death squads.

Now facing charges of perjury, Kerr is set to spill the beans on the role of the RUC in connection with the Finucane shooting. Pat Finucane was shot dead in front of his wife and children by loyalist gunmen who burst into his North Belfast home in 1989.

It has already been established that the weapons used for the killing were supplied and later disposed of by an RUC Special Branch informer William Stobie.

The RUC Special Branch have admitted that they were informed by Stobie that a murder was about to take place and the names of the loyalist gang to carry out the hit.

Even though a simple roadblock would have prevented the killing the RUC did nothing and later claimed this was because Stobie was unable to identify the intended target.

FRU agent Brian Nelson supplied a photograph and Pat Finucane's personal details to the UDA gang planning the killing. What has yet to be established is whether the RUC were also privy to information available to the FRU.

Kerr is set to dispute the RUC claim that they were not told about several of 15 killings in which that FRU have been implicated so far.

Last week witnessed an upsurge in loyalist violence, both across the North and particularly in Belfast. ft didn't come out of the blue. For over a year there has been a steady increase in violent activity by loyalist paramilitaries testing the parameters of their so-called ceasefire.

Loyalist targets have been overwhelmingly sectarian, stretching from petty sectarian abuse and harassment of Catholic families living in vulnerable areas and vandalism of Catholic owned property, businesses, chapels and schools to fife threatening petrol, pipe and blast bombings and gun attacks.

Writing in Ireland on Sunday, Robin Livingstone suggests sectarianism is 'largely a Protestant phenomenon' and this is 'the reality that dare not speak its name in the North'. Of course, this suppression has not happened accidentally.

Historically, it has suited Britain's agenda to portray conflict in the North of Ireland as a problem between 'two tribes'. Within the media this translates into a notion of 'balance'. In practice, this means that reports of violence against Catholics must be reported only in conjunction with evidence of violence against Protestants.

Of course sectarian violence against Protestants does occur and it is equally despicable and can only be utterly condemned but it does not occur so frequently or with such persistent ferocity. So in order to maintain 'balance', the media must constantly minimise anti-Catholic violence and ignore its political role in maintaining a sectarian state.

In obscuring the nature of loyalist violence and the violence of a sectarian state, 'balance' is far from neutral. And it's a notion that loyalists often use to their own advantage. Loyalist violence is described as 'retaliatory' rather than proactive. And when there is nothing to retaliate against, loyalists are very adept at creating it themselves.

Sectarianism is largely a Protestant phenomenon, the reality that dare not speak its name in the North

Last year, the UDA were caught out after their members attacked a number of Protestant families' homes in a clumsy attempt to provide a spurious context for the UDA's campaign of sectarian violence.

Last week's petrol-bomb attack on two Protestant pensioners living near the nationalist Short Strand has been vehemently denied by nationalists and republicans. A few days later a row of pensioners' bungalows on the edge of the nationalist estate were petrol bombed by the UDA..

Throughout all this, RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan has insisted that the loyalist ceasefires have remained intact and his evaluation has been presented as a matter of fact. Despite the reality of the RUC as a discredited pro-unionist force with its own particular sectarian baggage and specific current political agenda, the media has often allowed the status of 'neutral observer' to be usurped by the RUC.

In the wake of last Thursday's clash between the RUC riot squad and nationalist residents in Ardoyne, the RUC Chief Constable "embarked on an early morning round of the radio and television studios to condemn what he described as a pre-planned attack on his officers by republicans". It had been a "co-ordinated attempt to injure and even murder" RUC officers, said Flanagan.

The RUC Chief Constable, reported the British Sunday Times, "like many of his senior officers, believes that republicans deliberately contrived the battle of Ardoyne in a bid to discredit the RUC on the eve of the Weston talks". As if after 50 years of unionist misrule and 30 years of conflict, the RUC had somehow avoided being discredited until last week's confrontation tipped the balance.

	World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Blair's wretched imperialist-stooge government has one more chance to complete its colonial retreat from the Occupied Zone of Ireland according to the Agreement it signed with the leaders of the national-liberation struggle, Sinn Féin.

The present crisis in the Peace Process has been created by the failure of the British Government to live up to its responsibilities under the Agreement. On policing, demilitarisation, the institutions, human rights, criminal justice and equality they have failed to deliver what was promised.

This failure, on the part of the British Government, has provided unionists with a cover to renege on their commitments and further frustrate the process of implementing change. Essentially, they have acted as a roadblock on the way to a society centred on the principle of equality - a society which the Agreement was meant to deliver.

The amazing thing about all this it that unionist politicians, supported by a compliant media and an election bruised SDLP, continue to insist that Sinn Féin is in default of its commitments to the Agreement. The reality is that this is simply not true. Sinn Féin's commitment to the Agreement is beyond doubt. The party has honoured every promise it made since the signing of the Agreement in 1998. In the face of British intransigence, and consistent unionist attempts to subvert the Peace Process, Sinn Féin has consistently argued for negotiations, inclusion and progress.

For its part, the IRA has gone further than anyone could have expected to demonstrate its commitment to the conflict resolution process. A cessation that began seven years ago, engagement with the De Chastelain Commission and inspection of arms dumps are all significant moves forward in this regard. Moves, indeed, that were not made by any other armed groups in the history of this country.

Sinn Féin has, more than any other party, argued for the full implementation of all aspects of the Good Friday Agreement. This includes the issue of arms, but as Adams has pointed out on several occasions, this issue must be solved by all the parties to the agreement in unison, and must be seen as an objective to the conflict resolutions process, rather than as a precondition.

The IRA is not the only armed group in this country, though to read the papers one might be forgiven for thinking so. The weapons of the RUC, the British Army, the loyalist death squads as well as the 140,000 licensed weapons in the Six-County state must also be dealt with in the context of the Agreement.

The manipulation of comments made by US President George Bush on Wednesday was yet another example of the fixation of many media commentators on the issue of IRA arms. Bush stated his wish to see a resolution of the arms issue, a wish that is shared by Sinn Féin. Reports in the immediate aftermath of his comments, were used, however, as a stick with which to beat Sinn Féin and call again for immediate IRA decommissioning.

"There has been much media spin this morning surrounding the President's remarks on the arms issue. In fact President Bush shares the Sinn Féin position on this matter," noted Sinn Féin Assembly member for North Belfast, Gerry Kelly. He said that a resolution of the arms issue was something Sinn Féin hopes to achieve and is actively working towards.

Indeed, the only weapons being used in recent times in the Six Counties are those of the RUC and loyalist death squads. Loyalists, it emerged this week, have carried out 76 pipe-bomb attacks since the beginning of January this year, a meteoric rise from just five in the same period last year.

	PLASTIC BULLET ROW

The RUC have also been criticised for harassing nationalist and republican communities. Professor Brice Dickson of the Human Rights Commission took the opportunity to urge RUC Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan to follow the lead of English police by declaring he would no longer use plastic bullets as a method of 'crowd control'. This followed a week where upwards of 50 of the RUC's new, even more lethal, version of the plastic bullet were fired at republicans and nationalists in the Ardoyne area of Belfast. Not unusually, the bullets were used almost entirely against the nationalist community, despite loyalist rioting in North and East Belfast and in Portadown. In Oldham and Bradford in England, unprecedented rioting by anti-racism protestors, much larger and more vicious rioting than that in Ardoyne, was not met with any plastic bullet fire by English police. Neither does footage of an RUC Land Rover driving up onto a footpath and straight for a group of Ardoyne children do anything for nationalist and republican confidence.

Resolving the current crisis requires the two governments to return to the Agreement and produce a clear, strategic plan for its full implementation. A new beginning to policing is an essential ingredient in that plan.

The Patten Commission's findings are not being implemented. The requirements of the Agreement in respect of accountability, community representation and freedom from partisan political control are not being met. There is no mechanism to remove human rights abusers. Plastic bullets, as we have seen, are being used in a racist and sectarian way.

The 'justice' system in the Six Counties remains the same. Three years and three months after the Agreement, the British Government has not produced the draft legislation and implementation plan to give affect to a fair and impartial system of justice.

The Human Rights Commission has been denied the powers and resources to be effective. Community representation is imbalanced. There is still no bill of rights.

The crucial issue of demilitarisation has been sidelined by the British Government. A policy of rationalisation, as opposed to the conflict resolution process of demilitarisation, has supplanted the Agreement's requirement for a demilitarisation process. Hundreds of thousands of licensed weapons remain in the hands of unionists. The RUC and RIR are heavily-armed and drawn exclusively from the unionist community. The British Army is now patrolling areas such as South Armagh, where for 20 years they refused to move about, other than by helicopter.

While they fixate on the silent arms held by the IRA, unionists are silent when it comes to the hundreds of pipe and petrol-bomb attacks that have been carried out by loyalists so far this year, and the substantial, outstanding issues outlined above. It's clear that their strategy is not about resolving the conflict, but about attempting to force a triumph over the IRA.

"Republicans have to rise above this and while Sinn Féin will defend our position we will not be drawn into a distracting sideshow," Gerry Adams said this week. "The challenge for all the parties is to reach an understanding of each other's views and to collectively shoulder our responsibilities in order to resolve the outstanding difficulties."

REPUBLICANS will look forward to receiving the package of proposals announced by the British and Dublin Governments last week, according to the Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams. However, he warned, the proposals must not, as recent signs have suggested, deviate from the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Adams was speaking after a week of gridlock at the Weston Park summit in the English countryside. As was seen at the summit, attacking republicans as a smokescreen for their deviation from the Good Friday Agreement is the main strategy now being employed by unionists and the British Government.

"While some progress had been made in the party's discussions with the British and Irish Governments, the British Government was still resisting the need to fully deliver on its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement" Adams continued. 'The positions outlined fall short of public commitments already given.'