attention on the area in which the Tories gave the capitalist class the greatest leeway - the necessities of life, especially food. It would have to impose, as an initial measure, a total freeze on all essential items: food, clothing. fuel, rent on property helow a certain value interest rates on loans and mortgages below a certain amount, public transport etc. Such a step would obviously impose crushing burdens on some capitalist firms, especially in a peniod when world market prices are shooting up. Any firs unable to carry out its economic functions because of imminent hankruptcy or refusal to accept low profits should immediately be nationalised. This step would not be some syllic way of introducing socialism, but simply a means of forcing the capitalist class as a whole to underwrite their which Connolly's Citizen Army had sprung Its imperialist masters would probably then have set it loose on the British working class movement. Certain English Peers were openly Justing for Civil War in England. Even a pro-imperialist rat like the Railwaymen's Union bureaucrat Jimmy Thomas was forced to say that if Carson was allowed to arm the UVF, why shouldn't the rallwaymen do the same to win their claim.
Lenin followed these developments closely. He wrote: *Smillie, the Chairman of the Miners' Union, stated that the Dublin metbods the question given the rule of the market, or the creation of a vast bureaucracy with a range of powers so great that the capitalist class would vigorously resist it. If this is true of a basically pro-capitalist planning scheme, how much more true it would be of a pro-working class plan, To impose this on the capitalists would require the organisation of the entire working class for the purpose of compelling capitalists to divulge their secrets and information, gather information not collected, and at the same time ensure that capitalists did not violate the policy measures laid down by a This would require the establishment of a 'price commission" of a different sort - one based on the working class organisations rather than the civil service. In cach factory, a commission of rank and file workers wouk! have to be created, a commission having all the necessary authority and resources to gather would compel all British workers to resort to revolution and that they would be able to learn the use of armns." The capitalists who armed "Carson's Black-Hundred gangs,' as Lenis called them, would never have tolerated that.
A DIFFERENT ROLE As it was, the LVF played a different role in the history of British imperialism. With the outbreak of the war, the EVF was converted into the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British army. It fought on the Somme in 1916, and, despite enormous losses, managed to keep toBut precisely because of its revolutionary implications, no Labour government is likely to support such a scheme for controlling prices in the interests of the working class Nevertheless, what is put forward here is not somc abstract wish for the working class to take power, but a concrete example of how the working class movement would inevitably be propelled along the road to state power in order to do something as simple as control prices in its own interests, There is no orber road, Such a scheme presupposes a high level of organisation and political determination by the working class. At the present time, the trade union movement is discussing how to respond to Phase Ill and drive forward the wage offensive, In our next issue we will look in more detait at the type of struggle against prices which the mass of workers are more likely to be engaging in at the present time gether, continuing its mussion the defence of British imperialist interests - througbout the wat.
After the War it continued this work, now reorganised into the part-time sectarian polico force, the 'B-Specials.
Today the inheritors of the traditions of the UVF - the Uister Defence Association, the Loyalist Association of Workers, and similar groups - remain an important political factor in northern Ireland, Jr is important that we study the experiences of these past struggles and leato the lessons for those to come.
Red Weekly 27 July 1973 Page 5
The film: Lady Sings the Blues, directed