(1) The interest of the SIL and IS in Bangla Desh can be explained largely in terms of the numbers of Hengali workers in Britain, Thus Bangla Desh hecomes a useful field of work if a few workers can be pieked up on the cheap. This raises interesting political problems as well. It is a well-known fact that 4 bulk of the Bengali workers in Britain are backward when compared to Bengalis inside Uengal. Thus while the Awami Teague is being bypassed in Eangia Desh itself and the left is gaining ground, in britain the Awami league st 434 dominstes the political life of the bulk of Bengalis in “pitain. Zoth the I8 and the SLL thus capitulate politically and ignore ths develorment of the real struggle in Bangla Desh itself. The RED WOLE expose of a vicious anti=<com unist T.U. leader from Bangla Desh whom I8 and SLL projected as a workers leader is a case in point. For both organisations economism is in command and Eangla Desh is relegated to elther the fight against the IRB or a struggle to kick the Tories out ahd replace them withe.s..+.Wilson and co( well-known friends of the colonial revolution). (7) Without any doubt if we had so wished we cuuld also have picked up a few low-level Bengali workers by an avolitical campaign. We chose not to do so, but instead we developed an extremely erfective propacsndistic intervention to influence the vanguard layers both in Britain and in Bangla Desh (cdes should realise that the Mole is read regularly by leading elements engaged in the struggle). The strong influence of “noism on the Bengali vanguard required this sort of ;; intervention and while it doss not yield immediate results, its long= term effects could be phenomenal for the FI in Bengal, where we alrea= dy have some comradese Thus in ote sense the fact that we belong to a living International guides our activities in Fritain. Our aim woulc be to win some Féngali cdes and send them back to Sengal to ald in the strugele. (3) Having said thie) 2teremains a fact that toth the IMG/SL could have made a striking impact on the politicised layers if Cde Ali's suggestion (before he went to Bengal) regarding us calling a United front demo outside Sandhurst in solidarity with Bangla Desh had been accepted. We would have got at lenst 5000 Bengali militants to participate. For reasons of its own the SL NC rejected this suggestion. At the present moment we should do a limited amount of work in this field: (a) SL edes should try and eatablish contact with the Bangla Desh Studentsa Action Committee. “his contains the best elements in Britain (b) Our propaganda must continue: we mist openly project ihe FI and explain the failures of Manism, A new pamphlet in Bengali by a Bengali ede on “Leon Trotsky: World Revolutionary" is available from IMG publications. (c) Bengali leftists in London are planning to form an NLF Sulidsarity Committee. We must help them by publicity andby our political intervention. Project an ARMS POR BENGAL campaign if possible (da) We help in the production of an Urdu paper (for West Pakistanis) It sells very well and cdes in tough with W. Pak workers should order copies from the Centre. We are the only tendency with literature in both Urdu and Bengali (4) At some stage we might have to raise funds for our cdes in We Bengal, who are extremely poor. They are developing extremely well. TA'a visit enabled cdes to project FI/Trotskyism in India nationally, for the first time, There was a big row in Parliament over the visit and Stalinist M.P.e's attacked govt. for inefficiency in sllowing Trote ing In a future issue we will explain in detail the problems of cdes i
BANGLA DESH AND THE INTERVENT