person the main criterion, and not the act as such, are nothing but positive sanctions of lawlessness."
• KARL MARX The question of Ireland has once again given the bourgeois press in England an exceptional opportunity to fulfil its traditional role of mystification. A role that it plays during every popular uprising: that of concealing the true issues, of trivialising the achievments, motives and above all the desperation of the insurgents. The bourgeois press has, true to form, done its bit to preserve the interests of its capitalist masters by a persistent demand for the re-establishment of law, order and reason' while reform' is introduced and the workers can Catholics want to join Ireland. Thus the o back quietly to their exploited situation lowever, for many of the events in the Six Counties, the bourgeois press remains one of our few sources of information. It is important therefore to be able to translate their gnomic language into simple English. We give here a tew simple ground rules:
MAINTAINING LAW AND ORDER/ KEEPING THE PEACE/for these and other variants read:
The English have occupied Ireland for centuries. They were largely driven out by a revolution which has since been corrupted and bourgeoisined, but tney clung on to six economically useful counties which they continued to hold with an occupying army under the direction of a landlordist and industrialist ruling class. The army (now heavily re-inforced), the RUC and the Unionist irregulars aim to maintain the status-quo.
Recently sanctions of lawlessness' have included orders to the military to shoot those defending their freedom, laws increasing the penalties on those excersizing their civil liberties and threats to withdraw the minor concessions won in the early phase of the struggle last year.
PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC The press in staunch support of the Irish gentry and capitalists have done their utmost to compel their readers to think of the struggle as one between religious sects. Bear in mind the following- many workers thus labelled have only the most notional allegiance to their respective churches. Those actually fighting are all working class and a bulk of them are living in acute poverty and conditions of heavy unemployment. Much as poor whites in the USA see poor blacks as at once more depressed and as a threat so do poor "Protestants' regard poor "Catholics. Working class 'Catholics' have come to see 'Protestants' as embodying the world of privilege, force and appression which has dominated them for centuries. Landlords and bosses have been careful to take over the principal Protestant groupings which provide a release for Protestant issue. Paisley is npo not right wing in the obvious, simple sense. He represents a populist opposition to landlordism and also reflects the false consciousness of a section of. the working class. His twin enemies are the "Paddies or Catholics, for complex religio-historical reasons and landlordism for pollica: reasons. In one sense he is the perverted result of a popular opposition that has decided to accept the terms of the conflict imposed by the bosses. By describing him as the extremist of the other side the press have tried to make the bosses and landlords into the rcasonabie men or tne centre BRITAIN OR IRELAND:
Protestants want to remain with Britain.
bourgeois Press in England. In the distant past the counties of Ulster were the strongest centres of opposition to British colonial rule. The British 'pacified' the area by a mixture of genocide and forced evacuation. The large estates were granted to British landlords or Irish puppets and the population was largely replaced by poor Protestants drivem from their homelands by similar forces in Scotland. It is their descendants, almost equally brutalised by their masters who are the modern Protestants' in the conflict. At the time of Independence, Ulster itself was divided: three poor and still Catholic counties were freed and six rich and largely Protestant counties were enslaved under the pigs of Stormont. Freedom in the twenty-six counties was sold back to the British as the republic became a neo-colony, while the gerry mandered six counties were partially integrated into the exploiting Capital of Britain. TYh There is no solution to this dilemma apart from increased repression. Ine press recognoise this and talk slavishly of the need for sweet reason to triumph-- what they mean is for things to settle and for the republic to continue as a client state of England and the six counties as a colony. In this wish they are joined by the bourgeois of the wenty-Six Counties who tind the British interest profitable FACTIONS/IRISHISM/CROSS CHILDREN ETC./:
These are the expressions the press use to hide the determination of the Catholic working class to fight for its freedom. Ridicule is the weapon of the impotent editors of the press and they use it in order lo defend the crimes being perpetrated by British Imperialism in Ireland. Revolution in Ireland is too close for the comfort of the Bosses and their newspapers.
Remember "If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle. unless you set about the organisation of the Corialict ronnhlia vour offorto woull boin