A lobby of the annual conference of trades councils in Swansea on 22 May will be the next step in leader of the West German Baader-Minhof urban guerilla group allegedly hanged herseir m ner cel on unday. but acrenc lawyers and family are claiming she was murdered by the West German authoritIt would not be the first time that revolutionaries have suffered such a fate under a government headed by social Kar ceokneent ana Kos:
Luxemburg were similarly disposed of after the failure of the Spartacist uprisAnd in Germany today the image of ca taust prosperts maintamca ov the incorporation of the trade union bureaucracy into the state and a series of draconian limitations on political liberties. The five million people employed 20 percent of the - are all subjected to tests concernme men lovanty to me consulution', - which involves 'historical research into their packarounes polnt pack as rar as ten years. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) completely supports the As for the trade union bureaucracy, the leadership of IG Metall (the metal workers union) has introduced its owr Members can be CADCUCE SImDIY DY a aCCISIOn Or TEE leadership and without any investiganon, mus losing tneir rignts to any un ion protection and hence their jobs. Some unions go so far as to use the advantages offered them by the political police (Verfassungsschutz) in the struggle against oppositionists.
The emergence of urban guerilla groups in response to the Vietnam wai and the passivity of the German working class was the pomacs or desparr, but the Baader-Meinhof defendants were tried and convicted by a hysterical campaign in the Springer press before they ever came to court. Ironically, Meinhof died -i neatre at the very moment when that press wa being silenced through the strike action of printworkers against the Government's When the trial got underway in the specially erected fortress court at StammULRIKE MEINHOF heim, defence lawyers were systematically excluded, state prosecutors refused to release to the defence 90 per cent of the evidence. and defendants were ruled unfit to appear in court. Meinhof her sell had been kept in almost permanent isolation for four years.
In 1974 another member of the group, Holger Meins, starved to death in prison because the authorities failed to give him enough liquid food after a long hunger strike. Ulrike Meinhof, too, is now dead The trial continues Speaking tour on SOUTHERN AFRICA organised by IMG Student Commission MONDAY 17 MAY Lunchtime: Birmingham Poly (speaker Mark hoberts Evening: Birmingham Univ. (speaker Mark Roberts)
Evening (8pm): Chetwynd Room, Kings College, Cambridge. (speaker Clive Baldwin) TUESDAY 18 MAY Lunchtime: Canley College of Ed. (speaker Mark Roberts)
Evening: Warwick University (speaker Mark Roberts)
THURSDAY 20 MAY Lunchtime: Oxford Poly, Main Lecture Evening (8pm): Lecture Room 23, Balliol College, Oxtord Univ If you want to organise a meeting on southern Africa in your college, contact IMG Student Commission, 97 Caledonian Road, London N1 (tel. 01-278 9526).