To answer this you must look at the divide between workers and the rulers both in the country where you live, and on a world scale.

To call for the prosecution of the killers of Matthew Shepherd is a way of forging unity in action among all those opposed to this rightist killing. The protests draw the line, in practice, against those who support and promote homophobia and other prejudices sown by the bosses to divide us. It is true that the class-biased system of capitalist cops and courts isn't one where workers will find justice. But the deep-seated view held by millions of workers is that in a bourgeois democracy justice should be the right of all. In a struggle, such views can become a powerful impetus for revolutionary change.

That would not be the case if we were to call for the British - or Spanish, French, or Swiss ruling class - to try the Chilean butcher Pinochet. It would aid the British rulers, who argue they have the right to put "international criminals against humanity" on trial. It serves to obscure the international criminal role played by the imperialist governments on a daily basis, as part and parcel of their system of economic exploitation of the world and its resources. It sets workers here against the workers, farmers, and youth in Chile who must successfully oppose imperialist intervention in their country if they are ever to bring Pinochet and his ilk to justice.

For 100 years now the world has been divided into imperialist oppressor and colonial or semicolonial oppressed nations. For workers and peasants in those countries dominated by the minority of wealthy industrialized nations there is a double enemy. Every time the toilers organize to take on the local rulers, they find the imperial masters standing right behind. This was the case in Pinochet's 1973 coup in Chile. The coup was organized with the direct military and political intervention of the imperial classes in the United States, with the backing of the other capitalist powers.

The watchword of working-class fighters in Britain - the only way to promote international unity and solidarity between workers in the imperialist countries and those in the oppressed countries - is by fighting always against the rulers in your own country. We demand they get their grasping hands off those countries. That's what guides the stand taken by the Communist League and the Militant.

The campaign by the left and liberals to extradite Pinochet promotes the lie that the imperialists are the great civilizers of the world, rather than it's most ruthless exploiters. It assists the rulers' assertion that they have the right to intervene and to go to war in Bosnia, Iraq, or Sudan, and helps to tie workers in Britain to the idea that the "we" in the world is "we the British nation" rather than "we the workers and toilers of the world."

Former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher took advantage of Pinochet's arrest to beat the drum of British nationalism, opposing the arrest and hailing Pinochet for his collaboration in the war against Argentina over the Malvinas Islands in 1992. This rallying cry gave a boost to the chauvinist press coverage of Argentine President Carlos Menem's state visit to the UK. No voice was raised from the liberals or left that challenged Thatcher and opposed the colonial war against Argentina.

The pickets outside the hospital in London are organized by many of the same forces who led the Chilean workers into a bloody defeat in 1973 by preaching reliance on the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie instead of arming the workers. It was the Communist Party-led Left Unity and a section of liberals within the Spanish bourgeoisie who called for the arrest of Pinochet. In Chile the rightist forces have felt the wind in their sails, organizing militant street demonstrations of up to 45,000 in well off neighborhoods. It has in no way advanced the interests of the workers and peasants of Chile.

IAN GRANT  
 
 
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