New attack launched on FORMER regional organiser for the Labour Party Black Section Paul Sharma has launched an attack on Black Section through the Tribune.
Writing in the pages of the 16 October issue, Sharma calls for Black Section to 'come in from the cold' and apply for affiliate status to the Labour rally.
He attacks in advance those who he believes won't agree with him as the 'Mojahaden faction' who are involved in a nory war agallist luc leadership and any talk of compromise Is heresy'. The inflamatory language in which the article is couched makes clear. that this is no comradely dialogue.
In fact, as Sharma ASTMS delegates to Labour Party conference took two major, contradictory, decisions.
Firstly, having decided not to support the EETPU nominations for the NEC, a delegate meeting arranged on the Monday of conference was pressured into reversing this decision. It was argued that EETPU support would probably get ASTMS president Doug Hoyle elected to himself must perfectly well know. tar from denouncing it as 'a sellout of which he claims some Black Section members as calen already been put forward at the Labour national executive -and firmly voted down. It is not the Black Section but the party leadership which has already ruled this tactical 'compromise VUL Not surprisingly, the article has already been labour movement, anti-black national press. The Guardian published a story based on it perore me oncud article hit the streets.
The political issues raised are important ones for the Black Section and for the Labour Party as a whole. Socialist Action will be returning to this question in the pages of its future issues.
the NEC.
The result of this reversal of the decision cost Margaret Beckett her NEC seat. Hoyle failed to get elected.
Secondly, following the appeal against expulsion of Felicity Dowling of Liverpool, the ASTMS delegation voted 14:12 in favour of Dowling remaining a member of the party.
Being the only union to support her, this vote accounts for the majority of the 400,000 votes she received. BOBBY Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone in April 1981. A year later, the British amended the Representation of the People Act to disgovernment and any future Assembly in the north of Ireland. It is a further and serious attack of democratic rights there declaration would result in offending councillors being disqualified from West Belfast in the June general election showed that this strategy had So now the Northern Ireland office is moving to simply deny electors which the British labour movement would tolerate at its own peril. It certainly involves the north of Ireland but sets wider precedents. If Sinn Fein can be disqualified from public office for supporting a 'proscribed broken Tory laws? The issue is yet another illustration of the fact that have the right to elect whoever they want to represent them. It is the people who decide who will be the government — not the government that decides who can be elected. The people of the north of Ireland have period in republican The criminal' dealt with criminal courts, the British This the electorate.
hand, brought by Well the British person's give a Sixused by evel come: also their jaSL of defence.
nato establis!
in to court voicing opicompletely Sinn loyalist who cillors. the British bring situation.
proposals was, on the favourable. spokesperson for the Association of OUP coun cillors 'welcomed' some At form of legislation last!' exclaimed the Paisley predictably muttered that the whole thing was DUP whitewash, The on Sinn The declaration incidently, does not make it unlawful to support the UDA's attacks of nationalist homes and its random assassination Cal valu Attitude The SDLP's attitude was an example of unprincipled hypocrisy. It did not object to the proposals in principle, but because would make which would be difficult to enforce A more principled objection came from British Labour spokesperson Kevir McNamara. Identifying the proposals McNamara 'sop unionists, ed the British government: 'Why don't they prosecute if they have evidence?' Indeed the arsenal of laws already in esistence to prosecute people for expressing opinions already includes the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Public Order Act The new proposals, furthermore would constitute a breach of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act of 1973 which makes unlawful 'for an authority or body to require people to HiKe oath, make an undertaking or as declaration' as a 'condition of their being ppointed clause had been introduce to allow hitherto debarred nationalists from taking of fice years later, the British definition of democracy has seeming! been amended on 'If such a declaration abjuring the use of force for WaNe stipulation of membership of parliament, the House of Commons would be empty and there would have been no Falklands war.' The battle is now on to defend the civil rights of Northern nationalists, and in particular their right te who take up arms to defend or free our country. It will battle against hypocrisy. As Gerry Adams:
"We will not allow the British government disenfranchise the large section of the nationalist community which votes for Sinni Fein.
Labour Committee on Irelan ind the Labour Party Irish Sectic PUBLIC MEETING Chair: Clare Short MP Speakers Ken Livingstone MP Michael Farrell (author 'Northern Ireland: the Orange State?) Speakers from the Birmingham 6 and Gulldford 4 relatives' campaigns Siobahn Crozier (Labour Party Irish Section)
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ASTMS delegation to Labour conference
proposals designed to exclude Sinn Fein from local office and possibly fined or jailed. six counties who vote for Sinn Fein. News, the paper supported by Sinn Fein.
King's proposal is that in future candidates will be required to sign an oath not to 'support nor assist the activities of any organisation proscribed by law in Northern Ireland'. It proposes that breach of the
The government's intention is straightforward: to disenfranchise the substantial minority, 30-35 per cent, of the nationalist community in the The Thatcher government has spent the two years since the signing of the Anglo-Irish agreement trying to politically defeat Sinn Fein and build up the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP). Gerry Adams' victory in
in the north of Ireland the right to elect candidates of their choice to This is an attack on democratic rights of the most blatant kind — one
organisation', then why not exclude Dennis Skinner or other MPs for supporting the miners, or the hundreds of Labour councillors who have
where the Tories are unable to win the vote they try to abolish the King's proposal strikes at the very core of democracy — that electors
the absolute right to elect whomsoever they wish to represent them. That is why every trade union and Labour Party organisation should be united in demanding that Tom King's loyalty oath is abandoned. For Sinn Fein's response we reproduce here an edited version of the front page article from the 15 October An Phoblacht - Republican
CIVIL RIGHTS EXTRADITION