It is only the sectarianism of the RCP or the SWP which has prevented them from commenting on the recent armed actions of APLA, armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, which claimed four white 'civilian' lives in December. Communists recognise that the right to self-determination necessarily includes the right of an oppressed people to choose the means by which they conduct their liberation struggle. This position has nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism. As Marxists, therefore, we are not dealing with the question of violence in general, but of the legitimate violence of the working class against its oppressor, whether that take the form of the organised armed struggle waged by the National Liberation Army of Vietnam against French, Japanese and US imperialism, the rocks and stones of the intifada, or a campaign of bombs on the streets of London. The taking up of arms has proved to be a necessary and indeed inevitable response by the working class to the constant, organised brutality and oppression that is imperialism.
Imperialism knows no other mode.
Since the Second World War, there has been only one year in which British armed forces have not been involved in wars and counter-revolution somewhere in the world. Movements of the oppressed have travelled a long way down the road of peaceful resistance before resorting to violence remember the civil rights movements of Ireland and of the black people of the USA, the anti-pass campaigns of South Africa, the petitions of the Chartists. The context of the IRA bombs on the bombs on the streets ot London is the presence of British troops on the streets of Belfast and Derry. The arguments peddled by the British left to undermine armed struggle deny this reality, and are a naive and dangerous distraction. As communists, we want to see the working class take power.