EDITORIAL cont'd. from pg.2 And the culpability of the capitalist system does not stop there. For while there is a tragic food deficit in the poorest countries, a deficit that could have been mode up, there has also been an orgy of speculation, fraud, and stockpiling of food reserves that would otherwise be useable. This orgy multiplies the number of victims and their misery tenfold. The agricultural Malthusianism of the rich countries, which has made stock of food reserves melt away; the recession, which is immobilizing one quarter of the capacity of world production of automobiles instead of producing in their place tractors that could increase food production in the poor countries; the hoarding of the disposable food of the hungry countries by the owning classes who want to transform the food into superprofits withBRITAIN cont'd. from pg. 32 general strike in the region. The National Front has been allowed a new place on the political stage- and this after the big antifascist campaign during the summer had created a real base of hostility against it within the working class. The press is playing up these reactions for all they are worth. The Daily Mirror, the paper most widely read among the working class, reported that a new type of bomb had been used, one containing phosphorous, designed to burn people more effectively, despite the fact that army experts totally discount this allegation. Most revealing has been the newspapers total lack of any mention of the statements by the IRA. During the recent spate of bombings evidence was accumulated by the press suggesting that the bombings had not been the work of the IRA. But by making use of a number of crank phone calls the press tried to give the impression that the bombs were the work of a leftist British revolutionary organization. This orientation reflected the need to frighten the "left" Labour MPs away from unity with such forces in the leadership of the Troops Out movement. Today, none of the newspapers is expressing any doubt that the Birmingham bombs were the work of the IRA. The scale of the blasts was large enough to allow for waging a chauvinist campaign stressing the alleged Irish origin of the bombings and still frighten the Labour "lefts." But the Paris daily Le Monde of October 23 reported that Brendan McGill, national organizer out regard to those who die of hunger - all these features of hunger in the world today have a common characteristic. That common characteristic has a name: production for capitalist profit, subordination of the most elementary interests of the human race to the implacable logic of exchange value as on end in itself, to the implacable logic of the realization of capital.
In the world today the necessity of world socialist revolution, of the socialist united states of the world, and the necessity for a world regimeof workers and poor peasants derive not simply from considerations of rationality and the relative humaneness of different systems of social and economic organization. Rather, they correspond to the necessity of resolving the most burning problem of the human race: allowing three and a half thousand million people to eat when they are hungry.E of the Sinn Fein in Britain, has issued a statement describing the bombings as "shameful. " There hos not yet been any comment from other Provisional sources. If a denial of responsibility for the bombings should come, it would probably not be printed. Whoever placed the bombs-and it is impossible to rule out either Republican sympathizers or rightist provocateurs— the blasts can have the same political consequences. The British workers will begin to pay the price for the blind eye their mass organizations have turned to the Irish issue for so long. The new government measures, yet to be announced in full, will play an important role in the state's fight to isolate the left in the general class battles to come. Once again, the political weakness of the British working class is being used to turn the relationship of forces against them. Each step that Jenkins proposes to strengthen the state makes more imperative the need for the workers vanguard to understand and fight for the right of self-determination for the Irish people. The right of the Irish of the North, held in a state of siege by British troops, to extend their war to Britain must also be defended, however much we may disagree with the tactics of bombing in Britain. The first steps have been taken by the IMG to establish a united front of the revolutionary left against the Jenkins proposals. It is urgently necessary to extend this united front to as many working-class organizations as possible.D November 23
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THE BIRMINGHAM
32 Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 - Bruxelles Imprimerie spéciale de l'editeur.
BRITAIN by BRIAN HERON As information on the number of dead and wounded in the