Pressure of our work stops me from replying in full to the editorial in your July issue But there is at least one point which must be answered.
Martin Shaw in his article to list point 6 of the demands of the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign, the right of self-determination for the Irish people. This may be the reason why your editorial allowed itself to get side-tracked into discussing the merits or otherwise of the demands for jobs and housing. I say side-tracked because the first task of British socialists is to campaign for that right, armed for an end to westminsters complacency in the dental or cive Kigns in reland, or which the denial of the right to self-determination is the greatest, from which the others flow.
All other demands, FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF THE BRITISH LEFT, can only be P.S.'s to the main one. In this regard let me say that British comrades who insist upon the demand for workers' republic in can nave ser determinine provoine its a sociust senderernaton. level. They are limiting that demand. To say we will campaign only if the demand is for a workers' republic, is to tell the Irish This is to place limits to the right to self-determination to add to it.
One more point. While being in favour of the greatest political discussion. I believe Martin Shaw is right. The order must be First, and only then, if you must, criticise." To do otherwise is to risk thee spurse of the British left, a heck of a dERRY LAWLESS PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY THE DEMAND FOR JOBS AND HOUSES. Dear Dwarf In July's editorial the Black Dwarf asked whether or not PD's demands for iobs and houses were revolutionary. Recent rots in Derry and Belfast indicate that PD is seen as irrelevant by the most militant sector of the population: civil rights is no longer what is happening on This article tries to isolate some of the inadequacies in People's Democracy's approach, and suggests an explanation for its failure to combat sectarianism.
About Easter of this year, Eamonn McCann justified the demands 'One man, one job' and 'One family, one house' as follows:
the transformation of Irish society - retorms is a We are detinitely in a pre-revolutionar situation in the nortn ... The Unonist Party must give something to the man hang the Doins Fart he or the streby supre tire the pope-heads of Derry demands in a militant manner, we are supporting class demands and we are striking hard against the ruling political party What McCann says about the position of the Unionist party is doubtul. the rarty s problems are now more diverse and may even unite them, at least temporarily. But if he were right mean that PD's demands revolutionary?
WOIC itself, is not a force at all, it is its expression OF a struggle which lends it social force, which integrates it INTO the struggle. And a struggle can only be revolutionary if it 'understands' the activity and life-process of -ine runng class (and nence now une runng class exerts us surangienord over society) AND actively negates it But CAN this be the case in Northern Ireland when the basis of all the determine the nature of Irish society are ignored by the key demands and the consciousness of the Civil Rights struggle?
pitalism STEAL from the proletariat its life activity: the Oletariat works FOR the bourgeoisie, so that its labour becomes r proletariat has sold its labours, for life activity, to provide itself with the a MEANS for means surVIVal. -A BEING On V independent when he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on his feet when he owes his EXISTENCE to himself. A man who lives • the grace of another regards himself as a dependent being. But I live completely by grace of another if I owe him sustenance of my life, , but if he has, moreove i he is the SOURCE of my life.' (Marx, 1844 manuscripts). Even th means or pnysical survival bougnt by one's labour is ine consumption of the prod the or theorie the em othe has not only had its essential BEING stolen. but even the means of its survival are in short supply, so that there are neither jobs nor houses enough to go round. The bourgeoisie, formed and produced by capitalism as much torming and producing it, cannot or course grant nouses and JoD enough owing to the peculiar nature of Northern Irish capitalism (see RSSF paper on Ireland). But this does NOT mean that the demand is reland are not raisine me cemano for sellcerermanon to a mune a more efficient administration and the centralisation of capital. The struggle for this demand does not constitute to a revolt against "the very production of life. The demand could be met by a revolution but not by the Northern Irish capitalists, yet the demand itself accepts the maintenance of capitalism, albeit in another orm. tsuke askme a tner to stea coually arom evervonel But how much is this demand, pure and simple, really what the struggle is about? Its inadequacies are certainly clear to the protestant end that many in PD ate really fighting for. So to reiterate the demand ana camnone succe ganes. Ivor is une orovision ornomes ane loos to as the limit of the struggle, as PD do, is to be afraid of one's own consciousness, to be afraid of one's relation to the movement as a whole, to deny the potential of its own free dialectical movement and This cannot help that large sector of the movement whose militancy, whose sell-creating violent struggle actualv CONSTITUTES a reappropriation of their life-activity and environment, yet who cannot articulate their struggle except as sectarian, or as a demand for more and capuansm. And nence aiso the real Farrell anc Programe, "y y Programme. PD Voice? posits the struggle firmlv within the targets of the Civil Rights movement: "People's Democracy the basic Civil Rights are the rights to a job and a house the lack of political distinction between the 'socialists' in PD and the "liberals of NICRA (of which McCann complains in NLR 55) is perpetuated: the difference is posed, but only in terms of militancy, for example: "The Civil Rights movement mustn't let them (the Unionists) get off the hook. The People's Democracy certainly won't.' The recent riots illustrate PD's dilemma well. What has filtered through to us via the press indicates that PD were unable to relate to the Derry riot and able only to apologise for it. In Belfast there was no Pon even it unal. TD nave orten been in une position or apologising fo he protestants to the catholics, now they are also apologising TOO Their failure to posit them in the same struggle in any terms exeept those of jobs and houses has meant that Catholic endorsement of PD's struggle is based on these issues, it is not better living conditions should be seen by Catholics as the enemy so much in their capacity as the ruling class, much more as OF THI PRIVILEGED AND OPPRESSING SECT.
The editorial in July's Dwarf also said: "As a result of their (PD's) nilitancy the Civil Rights movement has no olarised i support the and may mutant wing and ro. but al the well sput. It it doe WE must De DreDacu and mu encourage PD not to walk out of the unified Civil Rights movement but to attempt to seize its leadership. But if PD does remain with the Civil Road tastes the heel of Anglo-Irish Unionist Rule.
people: You decrepit region of press and the RUC moved in.
rot, necessary to implement the would that A demand, purely in face down in the stream.
above history and no force of "law' that is above class struggle. But the brutality ConSIders nun sell United Kingdom.
Ulster has a history working-class violence. The not only the year's actions by the Paisleyites and the Civil Righters. This CREATED my LIFE year opened with a bang when on January Ist the students in no simple description or existential tale of a civil rights march; but a systematic indictment of the entire apparatus of state power in the Six Counties. and in itself cannot lead activitiesic a Specals, either of the reseed inice force, are named as taking part in the Burntollet ambush. The Orange Order, the backbone of the ruling Unionist party, is shown to be inseparable from the organisation of the ambushers with its halls being used as headquarters by the armed dupes of the Anglo-frish squirearchy. Robert Porter, the then and still the present, Minister for Home Affairs is shown up as a dithering if not a deliberately dissimulating liberal doing the work of reaction.
Derry after the ambush, smashing their way into shops, and terrorising Catholics in their homes (no doubt they were frustrated at having to leave the active part of the ambush to the Minister, James Chichester-Clark arrangements of a smaller ambush which took place between Toome and Maghara.
aneo0s.
researches (they took seven months over it) indicates that believes that And therefore three hundred and twenty people took part in the attack or the marchers at Burntollet. Of these we have identified tw hundred and fifty-seven. service with the constabulary. And these people uniformly appear to have had direction and control of the attack."
the Orange Order and the Special Constabulary, collaboration with some members, at least, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary ... The police force on duty, as a whole, knew of the place and the attack. Specifically, or by clear indication, the members of Northern CAMDEN/KILBURN Mary Dunleavy same time we should 14 Leverton Street N.W.5 ISLINGTON: and hit him on the head. "Oh Fuck" said Major Bunting. The wretched economy of Northern Ireland, the rundown and Ulster, holds no golden promises of affluence for any of the working class, either Catholic or Protestant for the first time ever stoned their religious leaders and got down to some reappropriation. "Looting" cried the that they will fight back In Derry the current bitter fighting and unprecedented use of tear gas comes from a deeper hatred. Throughout Derry's history, the Catholics have been beaten and oppressed. The decade of quiet since the end of the last IRA campaign has given a new generation time to look around. They see their communications. town being systematically deprived of investments and left to while their contemporaries in England swing to a life A group of Civil Rights marchers being forced into the Burntollet stream whilst more of the attackers race into the foreground to cut them off. One girl was left half-conscious the special police force.
Police are always partisan. There is no 'order' that is arrest attackers. and partiality of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the R.U.C., is something extra special within the of self-defeating, internecine, present bout started with last urge readers to buy it.
People's Democracy set out to march to Derry and four days later were ambushed at Burntollet. The clashes have escalated Burntollet is now the name of a short and exhaustively documented book by two Irish comrades in the People's Democracy. It gives an account of January's long march and of the ambush on Burntollet bridge at the outskirts of Derry. It is are charged with being "engaged in criminal The police are condemned for rampaging round "specials' and their friends). Finally, the present Prime is implicated in the These are the book's conclusions: "The sum of our Nearly a hundred have records of "The attack was organised locally by representatives of in close approximate magnitude IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN BRANCHES WEST LONDON: RICHMOND:
Vincent Lyons Frank Roach 15 Jocelyn Road Ine New VICtor:
Becklow Road W.12. Richmong. surrey WIMBLEDON: GLASGOW:
Mrs Olive Corrigan Murray Smith 61 Ferous Drive endlessly celebrated by the media. In January following the police riots in October the RUC rampaged through Derry terrorising the inhabitants. Since then in January, in April, and now in August the new men of Bogside are teaching the RUC The first reports from Bogside on August 13 seem to show that the local police are refusing to obey their Headquarters Rumour has it that HQ were overheard, ordering their men no to enter the Bogside and the Radio officer replied "we have enough men here to end this once and for all". He then cut the Whether the radio officer said this or not - it will not be the RUC who will have the final word.
Twenty of the attackers in this photograph have been identified. Twelve turned out to be members or ex-members of the force learned that they were not expected to resist or Cool and lucid, the book gives a rare insight into the bloody workings of Ulster; it is a model of militant research. Inevitably the authors have to publish it themselves to their own personal cost. It is called BURNTOLLET; it costs 10/- or £4 for 10 copies, from 48 Notting Hill Gate, London W.11. We Prime Minister, Major James Chichester-Clark, approves the diversion which led, two miles up the road, into a police cordon and a well organised ambush.
Birmingham Trish Civil Rights Group (independent but working with ICRSC) c/o 67 Birchwood Crescent, Sparkhill, Birmingham 11.
MEETINGS
Greece is in the hands of the most savage military workers required more sophisticated policing and the more intelligent Trabuki were trained by the C.I.A. to become an efficient secret police.
In 1963 Karamanlis was forced by the High Court to resign, and in June the popular communist deputy Grigori Lambrakis was murdered to prevent him giving leadership to But the revolutionary students took him posthumous leader, forming the *Lambrakis Youth' to is responsible for the economy and ideology of the country, as
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ituation reth and Mean have tressed the need for rea education as to the class nahave or or the reland. But pooicel