During the last week of December a party of 183 American Indians, Mexican Aztecs and Eskimos seized and occupied the former island prison of Alcatraz.
The operation was led by Richard Oakes, 27, a Mohawk from San Francisco State College. On behalf of the occupiers Oakes offered to buy Alcatraz from the US Government which owns it. The price: "24 dollars in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man's purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago." similar island about 300 years ago."
Since it ceased to be a prison in 1963 the island has been inhabited by US Government caretakers and their families. The Indians, who propose to turn the island into a cultural centre for their people, have announced: "We will give to the inhabitants of this island a portion of the that land for their own, to be held in trust by the American Indian Government-for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea-to be administered by the Bureau for Caucasian Affairs. We will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our education, our lifeways, in order to help them to achieve our level of civilisation and thus raise them and all their white brothers up from their savage and unhappy state." It is rumoured that the US Government is prepared to offer the Indians a piece of land at Fort Miley near the Presidio. The Indians are prepared to discuss this: "But te want Alcatraz. We'd accept all America Indian children play in liberated Alcatraz IMPERIAL VISITORS An unidentified helicopter circled overhead as 30 Lancashire demonstrators marched, on Sunday 21st December, from Burtonwoods Catholic Club onto the local US Base. They attemp ted to deliver an anti-War petition which had been signed by over 1,300 American servicemen. A British police officer refused to take the petition to the US Officer in Command on the grounds that ... any Americans here are only visitors. " The Stars and Stripes and the entrance sign which read: "US ARMY BASE" showed that the visitors had settled in. They were also no doubt flying overhead, gas cannisters at hand, ensuring that the police and the RAF did their jobs as the servants of US imperialism.
The ruling class won't dare jail Bernadette Devlin. For each petrol bomb she helped on its way towards the RUC, there is an outbreak of Unionist skullduggery waiting to be unearthed. The Irish in the North, as they say, have got up off their knees, and they won't keep silent if the British try to put Bernadette behind bars.
Should they run true to form, instead of risking dragging the case all the way through to the House of Lords, the British will dole out a suspended sentence. This will appear to be "lenient" and at the same time will establish their right to jail the MP for Mid-Ulster if they want to.
If they do carry on with their attempt and actually put her inside, the Civil Rights movement and Peoples Democracy will be faced with a difficult job of concentrating their political demands around Bernadette. For one of the most lethal effects of Bouraeois iustice. whethnounced that it was inconceivable that even each union should negotiate its own wage deals, whilst the men have raised the question of the way the company, which is State-owned, controls the mines.
What is remarkable is not the intensity or seriousness of the strike, but the fragility of a long-established system. The Financial Times reports that Swedish government circles are worried about a complete breakdown of their national wage negotiations, and this as a result of a strike which by British standards would be considered quite a normal occurrence. Under certain conditions it may be possible to paper over the struggle between Labour and Capital, but there is no piece of paper in the world which can keep them at peace.
The UN voted 67 to 1 (with 17 abstentions) that its members should take all "effective judicial measures necessary" against hijacking. The one country that voted against was Cuba. Their ambassador, Dr. Fernando Alvarez Tabio, ted out the measures that were stil inforce against his country and said "It is naive to request unilateral judicial assistance from Cuba with regard to certain types of piracy while implicitly accepting the right of imperialists to be pirates against Cuba Cuba, he said, would reain the right to grant asylum to revolutionaries if it so wanted Havana remains an escape route from US oppression, provided you can get onto an airliner.
A wage-claim at Lucas's Birmingham plant has thrown up a new tactic for industrial struggles. The DATA men have been applying a technique called "silent concentration" : draughtsmen just sit and think (and sometimes, thinks the management, they just sits) considering where to draw the next line, or what to do next on any given problem. A DATA official remarked: "When you've got creative men it is hard to tell when they are not thinking about work." Silent concentration also involves a refusai to answer telephones or to maintain communication at any level other than inter-office memoranda to fellow-draughtsmen. The Financial Times reported that the management was "quite peeved". The wages of 25 DATA members who had spent the week concentrating silently were winnera. As me management smugly re marked: "They just didn't do any work so we just didn't pay them." So the workers just went on strike!
THERE'S NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE Having benefited from the military protection of private property, Gallahers, who have a large factory in the outskirts of Belfast, have given 160,000 cigarettes POSTERS BURNEDAL DON CUBE