What next for Prior's Assembly? | Socialist Action 1983

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 6-7 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 4 of the scan

A PECE OF THE ACTION The tories have ho Wandave.

strains on the Labour Parthe sonal pro potic movement are becoming necessary to give a detailed We will defeat But Thatcher cannot be de. caved in

Argument

called for by Scargill) is the for and sembly for he tories outside movement in Scotland or it will come from nowhere. The slump in the SNP's vote does not indicate the lack of support for this project but rather the realistic feeling that only the labour movement in Scotland Cal deliver.

Forces outside the the trade unions in Scotland (like the Scottish Socialist Society) can enter important debates; but first must decide where it must concentrate its efforts.

Drew It is the right wing of the Scottish labour movement that will use any 'honest brokerage' on offer between the parties in Scotland.

They will use it to break the back of the independent mass action campaign which must be fought for and launched the Party and trade unions.

Today the issue is to organise the forces at the base of the labour movement who want to launch that fight. It is the relationship ot forces which will determine how tar ine Assemoly Is usea a the watchword of the batte against natcher: and far its powers will ultimately extend should it be wrung from the hands of the ruling class.

We must start Thatcher has no mandate in Scotland. of electoral reform and proportional representation counties.

youth to starve to death.

government persisted.

The 1982 ment that fell in 1973.

United Kingdom, slipped in the ratings the troops went in Assembly The failure of the Assembly of the Westminster elections up.

cordingly. scraped home in elections.

would put is still there.

mind a massive strengthening impose a powerful loyalist Assembly. Sen Fein Sinn nationalism.

Hurthe 'softening spearheaded by the year mandered six-county state in the North. THE FUTURE of the Northern Ireland Assembly, James Prior's brainchild, has not been aided by the election results in the six The Assembly was first thought of at the closing stages of the H-block hunger strike. It was the 'Irish dimension' that Prior could use to sell the idea he was doing something more for the future of Ireland than allowing its With the decline of the H-block movement, it started to resemble an attempt to give unimpeded Loyalist rule in the North a democratic facade. The Council of Ireland mooted in the original plans dropped from sight and only the Dublin elections to the Assembly gave a massive spur to the Democratic Unionist Party oi lan Paisley who demanded the Assembly be given full powers to administer the attairs of the pro. vince and bring back the hated Stormont parliaThe Official Unionist Party, tied more closely to the old Tory traditions of integration into the In the same elections the success of sinn rein. joining the electoral arena for the first time since contributed to the continuing decline of the Social Democratic and Labour Party who had lost any direction but collaboration successful was Sinn Fein, they managed to hold the the sham even to hold together the Loyalist camp is seen from the results where parties most COA DOTION with Ine British declined, and those wanting a fight went This was the secret of Paisley's rise and he will not be slow to reassume his bombastic mantle acEnoch Powell, Official Unionist candidate, It was expected that the failure of the Assembly Prior's head on the chopping block when Thatcher was demonstrating the art of butchery as applied to the Cabinet. But the 'super wet' This can only mean one thing. Thatcher has in of the state apparatus in Britain to push ahead with attacks on the unions and Labour Party, on the welfare state and on blacks. She is going to prepare the ground for that by more repression in Ireland which will tempt to boost the SDLP vote in the elections by "al reland Horum' that excluded shows that the Southern government cannot easily halt the rise of militant revolutionar!

up' of the minority military in an attempt to reunify the loyalists is the prospect for the coming British Labour must say clearly it gives no credibility to the fake Assembly set up in the gerry-NOT REALLY A SISTER! HARDLY EVEN FEMALE~ Socialist Action 24 June 1983

page 5 of the scan

----- pull-quotes -----

CORMAG discuss he sullect