seeks to defend the right to free bargaining rather than to overthrow the system in which bargaining takes place.
In other, less troubled, times this would not have mattered too much: the system could afford concessions. But today, with the empire almost gone and Britian fighting to keep its place as even a second rate power, this is no longer the câse. The, ruling class simply cannot afford to allow things to go on in the same old way. Unless it can break the power of the workers, particularly their power within the factories, it will not be able to solve the crisis, and the entire system will be threatened. In this situation there is no middle way. Either Britain goes right or it goes left. It cannot stay still, and any defensive struggle based upon the premise that it can is doomed to failure.
The implications of this are clear. The Left must take up the offensive. Never was the old saying attack the best form of defence' more appropriate.
Unfortunately this is easier said than done. For the Left to attack means that it must have some kind of unity, upon both a practical and a theoretical level. It must be able to present itself as some kind of credible alternative. It must have at least a minimal programme which would provide a socialist solution to Britain's crisis, in so far as this is possible within the confines of the nation state, and it must have the self-confidence to fight for this programme by all means at its disposal.
The question is where do we go from here? How do we create this kind of unity and self-confidence?
Clearly it is utopian to expect all or even most existing left groups and parties to submerge their differences and join together to form a new party for their bitterness: a mutual distrust and political differences are too deep to be wished away so easily. Yet equally it is Tutile to expect any one of them to be strong enough to lead the struggle and give it political form unaided. We must begin, therefore, by recognising that any affective political action by the Left must be based upon some kind of alliance of existing groups and parties, and, equally importantly, of those who have remained unattached. Anyone who refuses to recognise this or demands unified struggle.
• • • •STRIKE ISSUE criminal sectarianism which could, one day, land both them and us in jail, and destroy any chance of socialism in Britain in the foreseeable future It is with this in mind that we must approach the National Convention of the them do not intend doing anything very much to help create a genuine unity on the Left, preferring to devote their energies entirely to their own parochial ends Many see such events primarily as disaster. For Convention will bring together militants from the Communist Party, the Labour Left, International Socialism, the International Marxist Groups, the Institute for Workers Control, other radical and socialist groups, and, most important of all, a number of working class militants whose energies have been devoted more to industrial than political ends in recent years. If these cannot between them forge a measure of working unity and a minimal programme which could provide a credible platform on which to fight and upon which to politicise the working class, then nothing ever will.
One objection of course is that this spectrum is too wide and that there is no basis for unity. This however does not stand up to examination. If one excludes certain minor single issue campaigns and troublesome individuals, which would be swamped in any real movement, the spectrum is no larger than in the workers control movement which seems to have worked fairly successfully. The National Convention of the Left could, in fact, be seen as some kind of political or society-wide equivalent to the workers' conference. Just as the conference was able to formulate an agreed programme for control within the factories the convention might be able to formulate an agreed programme for the It is one thing to put our names to a programme. It is another to fight a Bab Rowthorn • • Days lost through sickness. 7th June 1965 - 4th June 1966.
Mulions Males Psychoneuroses and psychosis 18.17 Influenza 13.11 Bronchitis 33.30 Arthritis and rheumatism Accidents, poisonings and violence 21.36 other causes 132.99 Total (Male) 235.14 Females All Causes. 76.33 Grand total (male and female) 311.47 Source: Ministry of Social Security Annual Report There are armed fascist pigs in the North, smashing one of the most repressed working-classes in Europe. Under the Public Order Amendment Bill, together with the existing Special Powers Act, sit-ins and strikes will be illegal (punishable by six months imprisonment) whilst the Royal Ulster Constabulary retains absolute rights of search and arrest without warrant, and detention Her Majesty's Pleasure'. They can murder prisoners and not be forced to hold any post-mortem examination. Parallel laws are on the way in the South in the Criminal Justice unions and make it impossible for groups of workers to fight the employers outside existing structures for negotiation. De Valera's Fiana Fail lovelies shed Eastertime tears over the memory of 1916, having crushed Connolly's historic fight for a Workers' and Farmers' Socialist Ireland. "God the Father Almighty supports Fiana Fail.", a man told us in Swords, Southern Ireland.
People's Democracy has begun to expose the state to the people of Ulster, concentrating or Civil Rights Issues, like housing and unemployment. Supported by about 40 English comrades, they took their action into the South on an Easter March from Belfast to Dublin.
All leave for the 3000 strong Royal Ulster Constabulary was cancelled as the marchers gathered in Belfast on Thursday night. The Minister of Home Affairs, Robert Porter, sent his Gestapo to wake up the organisers of PD at 4.30 am Friday. The five - Eamon McCann Mike Farrell, Sean Murphy, Cyril Toman and John Murphy - were served notices banning out of bed.
The forces of Paisleyism appeared at the pre-march meeting outside City Hall, Belfast There was some debate between the extreme Protestants and the marchers. was surprisingly amicable and non-violent. The people were told that People's Democracy is -BOI Catholic reaction to Protestant Paisleyism. We are for the unity of all the working people of the country It was fairly cool on all sides in Belfast. In Lurgan, the Protestants and the RUC shared bestiality and fanaticism in equal proportions with hysteria and murderous violence.
About 500 Paisleyites gathered with about 200 RUC to prevent the marchers holding their promised meeting in the centre of Lurgan. So, avoiding a fight, PD went to a small hall, Clan na Gaels, in the RC ghetto. At 5.30, about 150 people left the hall and started to walk up Francis Street towards the town. Three fuzz Jeeps and tenders stopped the walkers who immediately sat down! The fuzz leapt into the street. They blasted and smashed the sitting tearing into them with swinging terocity Kicking. punching, and kneeing, beating heads and backs with blackthorn sticks, aiming for women with particular relish.
To shout out in protest/amazement was to be arrested - like Regan Scott; to be arrested was to be systematically beaten. There were 18 arrests, 7 English. The marchers hurried back to Clan na Gaels hall.
The pigs had been nakedly anti-RC in containing the PD in the ghetto. In the centre of town, while laughingly shielding the Paisley mob, the ranks of RUC crowd of PD sympathisers, striking out again with their sticks and boots, notably restrained when a BBC cameraman found a good angle on their brutality. The RUC gave the lie to that pseudo-liberal. that outrageous reactionary O'Neill and his platitudinous sadness at the "tragic sectarianism of the past' and nobody was fooling the people of Lurgan, least of all the woman who shouted, What about the police coming down here to our end of town? Why can't they stay in their own territory?' We've never seen anything like that evening meeting in Clan na Gaels. The oppression of the people is so immediate to them, the fascist conditions of life in Ulster are so essentially and bloodily larded into their lives that they are now capable of and eager for political action. But the action and contextual, analytic theory offered to these courageous people by PD is inadequate to their desperate need to fully understand their political condition. The people are ignorant; until recently they regarded any responsibility talk to the like revolutionary adults instead of paternalistically concentrating the "essential civil rights issues. Only Eamonn McCann is consistently speaking about the capitalist stranglehold on Ulster and unemployment as the product of a total system which must be totally smashed. The marching proper began Saturday from Newry to Drogheda via Dundalk went to Swords on Sunday, and ended with a short march into Dublin on Easter Monday. It was a strolling delegation, an amble from one sunny Guiness town to another. The march's rationale was that PD would explode into the political vacuums of such towns as Dundalk, bringing a fresh awareness of Irish capitalism to an alienated and pacific people It happened that the people of the South were mostly confused as to why the march was in their territory a confusion increased by a border fracas over the issue of censorship in Eire). PD concentrated again on civil rights issues, comparing North and South, as with Michael Farrell's soceen In Dundalk which referred to the 60,000 unemployed in the North and 40,000 in the Republic. But many people, spectators and marchers, suspected that PD's presence in the South was a tactical gesture to the Ulster Paisleyites. 'Look, PD might be saying, 'we're not anit-Protestant; here we are lighting the Catholic state of Fiana Fail and Finna Gail." PD failed to dispose of this suspicion, even at the big meeting in Dublin on Monday, even when John McGovern spoke of the 85% of Eire's wealth in the hands of 3% of the people, even when marchers from Galway in the west, described the appalling high rate of emigration forced upon Galway people by De Valera's corrupted Again, in Dublin, it was Eamon McCann who drew most support, in scorning the notion that to demand a house and a job was revolutionary. Michael Farrell spoke of the Dublin slums as being equal to any in Belfast Or Derry but he avoided making public his private view that these slums contain the power for an explosive revolution to create Connolly's socialist state.
Why, we kept wondering, where the details of the Criminal Justice Bill not spelled out? The people patently did not know these details Why weren't they told exactly what the TU Bill means to working life? Most of them had never heard of the Bill. Why can't PD throw away its multi-coloured cap of reform, stop appealing te Stormont quit worrying about Westminster (a PD candidate is standing for Westminster next week) and get up from its sit-downs to smash Irish politics in its diseased scrotum.
Old IRA men believe that PD has done more for change in Ulster than the IRA achieved in all its history. Well, it's true that PD has brought hope to hopeless people but what must worry every socialist is the divisiveness of mould. The unfortunate parallel extends from the passivity of the sit-down to the essentially anti-revolutionary dilution theory and information which the PD speakers propagating. They feel that the unity of PD, its are progress to a sorialist plank and its ability to contain moderates are essential in the Irish political context of stagnation and presumed apathy.
Maybe we, the English in Ireland at Easter, were arrogant thinking that the conservatism of this policy must inevitably split charged direct into a PD. It seemed, however, that as a revolutionary tactic becomes more pressingly necessary, PD, in its present amorphous state, will fail to win the full-blooded support of Ireland's oppressed working peoples.
And finally, in Dublin, the scepticism of the English for PD's claim to a united front was sadly validated, disunity flaring up at demonstration outside the Department of Justice. The march had gone to the building to burn copies of the Criminal Justice Bill. Dublin the SDA and Young Socialists attacked PD for playing up to the Paisleyites in coming South; PD deplored the stone-throwing groups of Dubliners trying to break windows. Michael Farrell also derided an attempt by demonstrators to storm the British embassy. Comrade Farrell is demanding a rising of catholics and protestants all over Ireland whilst being unwilling to engage in unconstitutional action. By refusing demonstrate against British Ireland, and insisting on the need to placate
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REMEMBER THIS? The Black Dwarf TELL US.
Left to be held at the end of April. Many of the self-styled half-lefts' have sneered at this as a time-wasting jamboree, not to be taken seriously. Even where they have agreed to attend it is clear that many of
recruiting grounds for their own sects. This attitude if widespread could be a all its shortcomings the
wider society and economy. So far so good. But this does not answer the question what form of unity
Bill and the Trade Union Bill, which will outlaw unofficial strikes, further institutionalise the
most of the march and the meetings proposed for Lurgan and Newry. About 30 strong, PD went round to Porter's pad and hauled him
Poverty, injustice and exploitation know no borders in Ireland -Michael Farrell
PD and the clear marks which the movement bears of English reformist groups in the CND