*Our sympathies are fully on the side of Irish, Russian, Polish or Indian terrorists in their struggle against national and political oppression".
(Leon Trotsky)
The bomb attack on the Aldershot barracks for which the Official wing of the IRA have claimed responsibility, is being seized upon with gusto by the British ruling class. Faced with the growing discontent and instability in Britain: the continuing unemployment, the failure of the economy to reflate and the most recent defeat the government suffered in the miners strike, they are already using this to launch a campaign of national hysteria. There will be appeals for national unity against this During the night of 29/30 January two commando groups of the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP People's Revolutionary Army) carried out the most audacious, important and spectacular operation yet seen in the Argentinian guerrilla movement. Having made themselves masters of the National Development Bank building. they proceeded to rob it of 402 million pesos, the equivalent of more than £160,000. The operation was far more than a typical military action, its main objective being fundamentally political. The National Development Bank has played a major role in assisting and facilitating the imperialist exploitation of Argentina in the last few years; and one of the most important results of the operation was the seizure of confidential documents revealing a series of frauds involving public money, which implicate not only the directors of the bank but also officials of the Lanusse regime. It is significant, also, that the whole operation was made possible by the action of two manual workers in the bank who had joined the ERP as a result of their political convictions.
The Argentinian police are constantly publishing reports that the ERP is about to collapse. Yet on the same day that the operation on the National Development Bank was carried out, another section of the ERP was able to carry out a successful arms raid on the Air Force base at Cordoba. And this despite the fact that the secretary-general of the PRT, Argentinian section of the Fourth International and the party which created the ERP, has now been in prison in Buenos Aires for several months!
Se-Sung and Se-Sungsik were arrested by the Park regime of South Korea in April, 1971 on the charge under the Anti-Communist Law. They had been active in the militant struggle against President Park and were sentenced to death in October 1971. A solidarity campaign has been developing in Japan, since they became revolutionaries in Japan when threat of anarchy; already the media and the government are busy whipping up chauvinism.
Our duties in this situation are clear. We unconditionally support any section of an oppressed nation in struggle with their oppressors. The main thrust of our agitation must be against British imperialism, pointing out that it is the policy of British imperialism that is ultimately responsible. There will be great pressure on the Irish solidarity movement in Britain in the coming period. We must be undaunted by this. There must be no let up in the tempo of public agitation on Ireland, though the need for all meetings to be properly stewarded is now of prime importance.
cronica CLINME JUNTO ALPURELO nie tod This photo of a strong box inscribed with the sign of the organisation was taken by ERP militants and sent to the press.
they were students in a Tokyo university. The campaign is an important part of the struggle to defend the right of self-deter. mination of the Koreans and Chinese living in Japan, in which the Japanese Section of the Fourth International has been taking a leading role. retreat behind the cover of arguments of the form "Marxism vs i leo-anarchist Terrottsm". This must be resisted. In our society we are constanly experiencing the violence of the bourgeoisie. This occurs in covert the violence of economic deprivation and social oppression -and overt- the open violence of the army and police forms. We deny them the right to use this violence. Every time they do as on Bloody Sunday in Derry, we will use it to show the rottenness of their For us violence is a response to their violence. The use of it is not a moral question. It is merely a tactic in our struggle -is a particular act of violence conducive to carrying the struggle forward or is it counterproductive?
No matter what criticism we might make of the tactics or carrying out of this The Ligue Revolutionnaire des Travailleurs, Belgian section of the Fourth International, scored a big victory over the State earlier this month when it defied a government ban and went ahead with a series of meetings in support of the Irish struggle.
The Minister of Justice, who imposed the ban, said that it was 'inadmissible in the present circumstances that foreigners should have the opportunity in Belgium to inflame the tensions which already exist in the North of Ireland". He added that the decision "should not be seen as indicating that we have taken any position on the problems which are Members of the GIM, German Section of the Fourth International, picketing in support of we unconditionally support the right of the IRA, or any other faction of the Republican population to carry on armed action aimed at destroying British rule in The pacifists and liberals may weep and wring their hands with grief but even in thier own moralising terms the just violence of the IRA is nothing compared to the centuries of British imperialist butchery in Ireland. In political terms as we have explained, the struggle of the IRA is in the direct interests of the British working class. The fact that a bad technical ertor or tactical mistake meant that unfortunately British army officers were not killed by the blast, does not in the slightest alter the political content of the struggle of the IRA.
It is in this light that we must look at the Aldershot incident.
VICTORY TO THE I.R.A.
posed in Northern Ireland"; but his actions show only too clearly his complete opposition to the popular resistance forces in Ireland, and his support for British colonial oppression there.
The government ban on the meetings was headline news in all the Belgian newspapers, and every meeting was packed out. Despite continuous attempts by the police to arrest them, Gery Lawless and Oscar Gregan of the Irish Solidarity Campaign were able to explain to mass audiences (over 1,500 in Brussels) the origins of the present situation in Ireland and the need to build campaigns in solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people and its armed vanguard, the IRA. As a result of these meetings the prospects of a significant Irish solidarity campaign in Belgium are now extremely good. the Irish struggle.
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STATE DEFIED AS BELGIANS SUPPORT IRA