INTERVIEW

The name of the scientific body
running it is nearly as long as the
facility itself — it’s called the Siber-
ian Terrestrial Magnetism, lono-
sphere and Radio Wave Spreading
Research Institute — but this solar
radio telescope at Buryatia in Siber-
ia’s Tunkinskaya Valley is of major
technological significance in study-
ing solar processes. The 256 dishes
are set up in intersecting rows to
form a huge cross 622 metres
across and allow extensive study of
various solar phenomena. But the
radio telescope is of particular
value in developing a mathematical
model of the sun which will ulti-
mately enable scientists to match
scientific hypotheses with actual
data. It will also make possible the
forecasting of solar processes
which is important not only for life
on earth but also for space explora-
tion.

Spanish Civil War veterans still
fighting on in Thatch

Within two years, if British Battalion
veteran Bill Alexander and the committee
which he heads are successful in their cam-
paign, there will be an historic monument
erected in London to honor the 2,100 Brit-
ish men. and women who went to fight in the
International Brigades during the Spanish
Civil War.

The memorial appeal has been launched,
sponsored by such people as scientist Ivor
Montagu, former Labour Party leader
Michael Foot and miners’ union leader
Arthur Scargill. The sculptor has created
the model that will eventually be cast. And
the Greater London Council has set aside
the site — across the Thames from the Par-
liament Buildings — where the monument
will stand.

But already the government of Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher is preparing
the legislation that would do away with the
progressive Greater London Council. “And
it’s a race against time to get the monument

-in place before Thatcher can abolish the

GLC,” says Alexander, who talked with the
Tribune last week.

Alexander, one of ten commanding
officers of the British Battalion which
fought with the International Brigades in

izing, now that reaction is appearing again,
that you must stand up and fight.

“There is also a realization that Thatcher
is an advanced bomb carrier for the U.S.,”
he says. “If there is going to be war, it won’t
be war the way it was in 1939 — there will
be no survival.”

Over the years, the ranks of the 1,500-odd
veterans who returned have thinned. Alex-
ander estimates that the veterans’ associa-
tion is in touch with about 130, a figure
which includes most of those still living.

But those 130 “‘are all active in a variety
of organizations,” he emphasizes. Several
trade union leaders, including the Trans-
port Workers’ Jack Jones and National
Union of Mineworkers’ Bill Paynter are
battalion veterans.

In the British old age pensioners’ organi-
zation, active in campaigns for better transit

er’s Britain

banner flies defiantly from the GLC
building — displaying the latest unem-
ployment figures to MPs across the
Thames.

And in the battle between the council,
headed by the colorful Ken Livingstone,
and Thatcher, is focused the struggle in Bri-
tain between, on the one side, working
people, pensioners and unemployed de-
manding housing, social services and a
greater say in running the country, and the
dictatorial, neo-conservative government of
Thatcher, Alexander says. The campaign to
save the GLC has involved thousands of
people, he adds.

It is not just London that is at stake.
Nearly all the major population centre have
local governments run by the Labour Party
and other representatives of working
people.

“Thatcher wants to get rid of them all,”
he says, pointing out that at issue in Britain
is not just a fight against Thatcher’s eco-
nomic and foreign policies “but a fight to
retain basic democracy.

“Thatcher is on an open course of
confrontation — a course to smash the
miners’ union, to abolish the GLC, to
accept cruise missiles,” he emphasizes.

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The appeal being sent out to raise funds
for the monumentto the British Battalion _
veterans.

“But now there is a growing recognition,

tripped off by the miners, that working
people must fight. The strike added a new
note of struggle.”

“It has also touched off a “tremendous
wave of solidarity,” he says, citing his own
experience in the miners’ support group in
his own village of Sydenham, outside

London.

“Every Saturday morning, we go to the _
shopping area and set up tables with —

And nowhere are the battle lines drawn

Spain and the author of a book on the
more acutely than in the 32-week-old strike

battalion, stopped off in Vancouver last

week following a seminar on the Spanish
Civil War in Regina. It was organized by the
University of Regina which had invited
Alexander as well as a number of veterans
of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.

It is more than just coincidence that
Thatcher should be moving to do away with
the GLC at a time when the council is
assisting the campaign to honor the Spanish:
war veterans. In recent months, the historic
anti-fascist war — 1986 will mark the 50th
anniversary of the outbreak of war in
Spain — has captured new interest. For
many people, there are echoes of the 1930s
in the unemployment that has affected 4
million people and devastated whole areas
of the country, and in the policies of Mar-
garet Thatcher who has:come to stand for
everything that is reactionary in Britain.

For Alexander, a veteran of both wars
against fascism, the renewed interest is tang-
ible. he cites a small example: the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford — long
identified with Britain’s cultural elite — will
soon be producing a play about the Spanish
Civil War and the British Battalion
members.

But more than that, he says, there are
“many lessons left from Spain. People are
now beginning to see that we stood up at a
critical time in history — and they are real-

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 24, 1984

BILL ALEXANDER

and housing, the veterans figure promi-
nently and are involved “in nearly all its
initiatives.” He himself is active in the peace
movement, in the movement in solidarity
with El Salvador and in the Communist
Party of Great Britain of which he was
assistant general secretary for many years.

Not surprisingly; the veterans are also
part of the Greater London Council — one
member is a veteran and the chairman,
Illtyd Harrington, is a battalion member's
son.

Of course, the campaign to get the mon-
ument erected before Thatcher’s axe falls is
only part of a larger campaign the GLC is
waging. But ina certain sense, it is symbolic
of that larger campaign.

The offices of the GLC are across from
the Parliament buildings and every day the

by the National Union of Mineworkers.

Explaining the background, Alexander
points out that Thatcher first carried out
sweeping layoffs and plant closures in the
steel industry, a plan administered by the
American Ian McGregor, the current
chairman of Britain’s National Coal Board.

“McGregor went through British Steel
and closed plant after plant. He cut the
work force in half over a period of two
years,” says Alexander.

The program was eased past the indus-
try’s work force by relatively generous
redundancy payments which enabled many
older workers to retire early with some
security, and by the acceptance among the
leadership of the Iron and Steel Confedera-
tion, headed by Bill Sirs, that little could be
done.

“Then Thatcher moved McGregor from
steel to coal with the same plan — to slash
the labor force and close pits,” he says.

“But this time the leadership and the
rank-and-file of the National Union of
Mineworkers said ‘no way’ ”’.

’ That decision by the NUM has had mas-
sive reverberations across the country, he
says.

“Before the strike, I think there was a
certain feeling among the working class that
little could be done about unemployment.

buckets for collection. Several of us will —
stand there, calling out ‘your food and —
money for the miners.’ And the housewives _
will bring their tins of food and donations.”
But particularly important, he adds, “the
amount we collect goes up every week.”
That scene is being repeated all over
London and all over Britain, he says, The —
miners’ strike has come to symbolize hope —
for the entire labor movement. —
““When they win — and I say when, not
if — the miners can open up a whole new
area of struggle for the labor movement
against the policies of the Thatcher
government,” Alexander emphasizes. *|
“On the other hand, if by any chance they —
should lose, there would not be any other —
group of workers who could defend jobs —
and wages and trade union rights as they —
have.” ql
Although, like the other veterans, Alex- —
ander is getting on in years, he displays a .
confidence and activism that echoes the —
passion and commitment that took him to _
Spain in 1937. And even if thé monumentis —
delayed by the Tory government, the vete-
rans may yet be part of another, equally —
fitting monument — the defeat of Thatcher —
and her reactionary Tory policies. |

— Sean Griffin |

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