walliuss.
freedom in Ireland, oppose sanctions in determination in Latin the Middle East. Their influence, their military hardware and their vast wealth is usea to suppress needom unrougnou the world and they can depend on their wno are only too willing to accept the Thatcher Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, with the support of John Hume and the Catholic in the UVF and the UDA nationalist families across the six counhighlighted loyalist attacks on RUC bomes, many more nationalis: families This summer the carnival of reaction ment will advance the struggle for what vuls.
London-Dublin Treaty
because they attempt to ignore the principle of self-determination. This is a right not subject to negotiation, a right ana a once again on the cards, both North and this time Hume and Mallon and Currie will not be organisexplaining and helping to defend its have watched the SDLP's, leadership drop all its demands. No longer do we hear calls for the disbandment of the Hume praised the RUC for their actions in Portadown against loyalists. In Mr Hume's warped thinking the death La protestant. oy a plastic bullet suddenly balanced things has come scrutiny because of the potential scan„penne une carrying out his inquiries into the Ar magh killings. His findings eventually pointed to a conspiracy to prevent the course of justice within the most senior murder, and RUC surveillance operations in the 26 counties which make a laughing stock of Dublin government claims that they enjoy sovereignty.
tempting to rehabilitate the RUC is as embarrassed by the Stalker report as tie brish government and blat is wol) Peter Barry did not press for the immediate publication of the findings ing and the entire Free State establishment have tied themselves inextricab v Evelvr which the Free State has become, to all intents and purposes, an extention of dependent upon US dollars that they cannot find it in themselves to condemn its Senate's financial aid to Ireland Should they SUCCCCU ABSU establishment will fully support the ice way extracion or kepublicans -Just as increasingly attempts undermine Irish neutrality shift Ireland towards NATO.
In the past week we have witnessed the zo counts administration in the ridiculous position of having to exert diplomatic pressure on Libya at the British government's behest. The bold Peter Barry is now a mouth piece both in ireland and abroad for British in terests It is a truism that the freedom struggle in Ireland has always been betrayed native collaborators whose economic and political interests coin cided with those of the British. British rule depends upon repression and col laboration and the Irish people should recognise that who collaborate with Britain in exchange for a slice of the cake, will implement British policy and remain silent when Irish people are murdered and oppressed.
It is they who are responsible for care about the cost of repression. While the island of ireland boasts an unen viable figure of unemployed men and wolell OLIONS upon millions pounds have been, and are being, spent on propping up the border - and increasing the already frightening array oI lethal weaponry technology available to the forces of injustice and Occupalon But the Republican movement has not been destroyed. All the resources, weaponry and technology available to the British government have not been sufficient to defeat our struggle. The men and women volunteer soldiers of the Irish Republican Army have, , with courage and determination, , continued the fight against numerically superior forces. And I apologise to no-one for saving that we support and admire the freedom fighters of the IRA In the North, attacks on the British army, the RUC and the UDR continue. The IRA has shown continued resourcefulness capability strike, where and when it wants. Its has caused considerable
damage not only to crown personnel fortifications but carefully planned Ulsterisation policy.
Furthermore, the IRA's decision to a get collablois ana Illanagemenl executives who continue to make massive sums of money by building and mainraining the apparatus of repression in ine six countles, nas posea serious pro blems for the British government. delines that sustain brush forces In Ireland include those people — even so called Irish from within the nationalist population — who build the interrogaHon wno British army camps and barracks.
These lifelines depend on protecion and security. The IRA has now shattered that sense of protection and will, in the future, have erious consequences for Britain's conrinuing ability to control the six counJes But sadly, the war of liberation is rought at price. Since the Bodenstown commemoralion, Vo unteers Raymond McLaughlin and slip McFadden nave died olunteers Charles English and Tony Gough were killed in action on the streets of Derry, and a few short weeks ego a young Monaghan Volunteer, Seamus Mcllwaine was killed by British troops in a Fermanagh field.
We are here to honour Tone. In his rime Tone was undoubtedly special. Seamus Mcllwaine, a Long waver. coul ascous intelligent volunteer, was just as special and in many ways more important than Tone in that he was of our time, of our strugtle. The British and their native collaborators in the 26 counties know that he IRA is out to win. Republicans will hot be satisfied with another glorious failure. Resistance has deepened and ur absolute committment to victory provoked a similar commitment on the part of the British to destroy us.
Despite the multi-million pype of the Agreement, despite disinFormation, despite the rewriting Irish history by west Britons and British propaganda. more and more peonle are beginning to realise that internal tinkerg wi te six county statelet solves nothing, and only the achievement of a soclanst Kepubnc as Sinn Fein, can end decades of war, injustice and poverty in Ireland.
Sinn Fein has become an increasingly politicised and coherent force but as a movement we have our flaws, and as people who preach should begin with examining ourselves. James Connolv once remarked tha the real danger to Republicanism was that might become memorative organisation that mourned its martyrs, that lamented defeats.
There is an element of romanticism within our ranks that sciouly defeatist, continues to look at the past for legitimacy. In 14 years time we will be in the 21st century and the struggle of our past, no matter how heroic, no matter how tragic, will have limited direct relevance. Of course we should remember Irish Republicans we possess a continuity of vision and of action that stretches back to 1798 and beyond.
But the Ireland Wolfe Tone lived in; bears only a historical relationship to the Ireland of today or of tomorrow. Everytime we refuse to consider new options, to engage in revolutionary self-criticism, to examine the politics and the aspirations of the Irish people, we betray reality. all people, should never be afraid to face the real world.
We know at first hand what the calv ot British Any nationalist child in the six counties could stand up here today and give a harrowing allul The British murder, barbarism and repres sion. Anv child in the 26 counties who has suffered poverty, experienced the tragedy of unemployment and witnessed the corruption, the greed and the all-pervading mediocrity service that passes for politics under the Irish establishment, could stand up here and make an eloquent and convincing plea for justice and socialism. People who claim to be Republicans must seek to create and establish a Republicanism that is alive, vibrant, relevant.
Since the hunger-strike Republican movement has sought to last sponsor discussion, to evaluate where we have been, and where we are going to, and to establish genuinely constructive structures in which every single perKesh as we do...
son within the movement can express views and opinions. However. one of our political failings and one that still must be comdalea, is our readiness to dismiss evaluations of the movement that conflict with our own views.
Not every person who argues new dollar positions is a trendy lefty, everyone who advocates of Republicanism is a right-wing tradiadvocated by Lulla its heroic wille not con history. As And Republicans, of tionalist.
blurred our objectives and the means whereby we can achieve them and there must be an end to such nonsense. occupation means.
dy lefties who would peripheralise and trivialise the movement, but we must accoulll equally be wary of those who hamstring us with narrow reactionary con servatism. We are a socialist republican move, d movement lal supports the use of armed struggle in the six cynicism, the counties, Socialist Republic in the 32 counties of In the Europe there is not a revolutionary nor a socialist organisation that enjoys as much popular support as we do and we must be conscious of that fact and attempt to build on it.
the Irish contused many Irish people and James Connolly's teachings and misrepresented by many Should we therefore reject what they taught? towards today is victory and that also scares many people. Certainly in any inapparent surrectionary situation, radical movement can only offer a leap in the dark to the people struggle continues, it must be our oband not jective to narrow the extent of that leap orthodox by developing policies that take into account the interests and aspirations of the people of this develop our socialism. reactionary.
US LUN categorically statements HOLICSL We have hope and profiteering aligned, bloc politics.
The use of these terms has Certainly we must beware the trenand the establishment of a ting whole of western Wolfe Tone's theories scared many Fintan Lalor's writings actions were Irish people.
What our movement is advancing pre-revolutionary there is a time when the While our island. We must comprehensive, economic cultural policies that enable people to see and understand the nature of our struggle, and the ways in which we will eventually change the social order Of course there has always been an element in Irish politics that has derided and condemned and mis-represented Our attitude to armed struggle is clear and unambiguous and people can either accept it or reject it but they cannot deny it. However, our socialism has left itself open to various interpretations. Republicans have been described variously as left-wing Marxists or right-wing conservatives. There are those who consider armed struggle radical and others who believe it to be we are variously called narrow-minded nationalists and part of an internationalist conspiracy.
Our position is perfectly simple. The Irish are a subject people who have the right to be free and have the absolute right to oppose in arms the occupying forces of Britain in the six counties. Many people would claim that the IRA is intent on violent confrontation in the 26 counties. That is a deliberate misrepresentation of the IRA's stated and to lime and again it has statec that does not contemplate and would not countenance such action and even those most opposwill accept that its aiways factual esta Disa society in which no one is oppressed nor exploited, where the young people where freedom, justice and power rests with the people of country Next Thursday the divorce referendum will take place in the 26 counties and all republicans should support the provision of this basic human right. We want a society free from multi-national foreign influence.
We want a society that is truly nonthat is not a pawn in power Many English politicans have warned of the dangers of an Irish Cuba off Britain's coast. A socialist Ireland is a threat to England only in so far as our success may spur English radicals to press more actively for political and social changes in their own country Despite our relative lack of a comprehensive social and economic policy where-by we can convince the uncommica lilal a umica socianst Irelana Is in their own interests, we are attempdefine articulate a Republican socialism that is relevant to for them:
Connolly admitted that even he had failed to define Irish socialism. We are still following in his foot-steps and each BEEFLOT APARTHE I FREE ZONE WE AIM TO BE FREE Batty Socialist Action 4 July 1986 day of struggle that passes brings closer the day when the Irish define clearly their socialist vision. The revolutionary potential of our native language and culture has been acknowledged within the Hillsborough Accord and the so called concessions in this field, which are meant to undermine that potential, have already been made redundant by the achievements of Sinn Fein cultural activists.
While we honour Wolfe Tone today we nonour too all the unsung peonl who lived and fought and died in the struggle for a free Ireland. We honou all those whose teachings and actions helped advance our struggle and we ac cept that with each generation new ideas appropriate the times developed and it is only through that process that relevance can be maintain. ed. Honouring Wolfe Tone by harking back to distant days does not further our revolution.Eighty seven years ago James Connolly wrote: 'We are told to imitate Wolfe Tone, but the greatness of Wolfe Tone lay in the fact that he imitated nobody. The needs of his time called for a man able to shake from his unite in his own person hopes of the new revolutionary faith and the ancient aspirations of an oppressed people.
Our aim is not to provide poets and song-writers with more ballads deteat but to build a real revolutionary organisation that will change society for the betterment of the opthe deprived the unemployed men and women of this Revolutionary Ireland throughout the generations has seen many great Irishmen and women. Wolfe Tone was indeed a remarkable person, an Irish revolutionary who believed, as we here believe, in the strength and ability of an oppressed and freedom hungry people to free ourselves of our chains.
Tragically for Ireland, Britains continuing interference here means that freedom can only be gained at the point of an IRA rifle. Pearse put it in a nutsheil: Ireland unarmed will attain just as much freedom as it is convenient for England to give her. Ireland armed will attain ultimately just as much freedom as she wants.' Finally, we have learned over the years that the British government takes a keen interest on occasions ike inis Tomorrow morning their political and experts the Ministry of Defence in London will study the contents of this speech. I'll make it simple No freedom, no peace. We do no fear you. The struggle continues. . We are going to win.
TELL THE FREEDOM IS AT HAND
Socialist Action 4 July 1986 SOUTH AFRICA'S apartheid regime is in its deepest ever crisis. The present movement against the regime started in 1984 with the fight against the new constitution, and with the creation of the United Democratic Front (UDF). A new peak was reached on 1 December last year when the Congress of South African Unions (COSATU) was formed.
On 5-6 March this year COSATU held formal meellg with African National Congress (ANC). The immediate outcome of the collaboration between the ANC and COSATU were the general strikes of 1 May and 16 June - the greatest mass strikes in South African history.
The attempt of the apartheid regime stem. this movement, through the reimposition of a State of Emergency, nas lea to the greatest repression in South African history. But despite this. and despite the press censorship, , it is clear that the repression has failed to stem the tide of revolt South Africa. 'workerısm'. apartheid will turn against the working class after the regime's overrthrow this way of posing things is not adequate. Because the decisive probiem today is not what will follow the aparbut how to overthrow the apartheid regime. A formulation problem which has to be solved today.
class has to lead the present struggle to overthrow apartheid. This will give against apartheid. It will also leave the working class in the strongest position to deal witn anvone who turns againsi it either before or after the overthrow contained elements of what Lenin That is they seemed to suggest that the working class would get on with the trade union struggle while other bourgeois forces waged theid — exactly the type of combination the 'economists' had argued for in Russia. Foster's correct stress on leading role of the working class in the essence of the matter Naidoo is ențirely correct - the necessity of the inof the working class, and at the same time the necessity for the working class to enter into alliances to gaip the poses a still more important question.
tionalist organisation. It does not, nor should it, attempt to convert inself into a revolutionary working class pardedicated to the revolutionary overthrow of the apartheid regime programme, the Freedom Charter, is al dllallic working class party in South Africa. A party which would not democratic programme of the ANC but which would enter into united ac. tion with the ANC precisely in order to realise this programme — while at the same time seeking to go beyond this to a socialist revolution in South
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'Internment as a political option is once again on the cards?
In the whole of Western Europe there is not a revolutionary nor a socialist organisation that enjoys as much popular support
"The Irish are a subject people who have the right to be free and have the absolute right to oppose in arms the occupying forces of