In spite of recent claims about a government offensive, the Pathet Lao are in a very strong position. Either the US will step up its presence there and create for itself another Vietnamese defeat, or else it will realise the futility of this and abandon its puppets. PL has both given relentless aid to the Vietnamese revolution and built up a powerful revolutionary position for itself; with the liberation of Laos the regime in Thailand will also quickly topple and the Laotian minority in the north-east of Thailand are already waging a guerrilla war.
The old leaders of the right are all in exile, or dead, and Kong Le has retired to Indonesia. What remains are the US-backed armed forces, led bv Souvanna Phouma. whom the Russians and Americans jointly tried to impose in 1962.
strategic Plain of Jars (so called because it 1s marked by massive jars in which the peasants put the ashes of their dead). The old Issara front has now become the Neo Lao Hak Xat, or Laotian Patriotic Front, within which there is a small Marxist-Leninist cadre, the Laotian Labour Party. Poised for victory against imperialism and its puppets in Laos, the revolutionam fores have defeated all the plots.
Ireland IS classic example of the impossibility of a liberation struggle being fought to a successful To win this COnCUSOn. suruggle Inds. movement is necessary, which must be led by the proletariat and not the bourgeoisie. There will alwavs come a point where the interests of the national bourgeoisie and of the parent bourgeoisie coalesce - the suppression of the power of the workers in the colony. By 1922 in Ireland many of the workers were armed. The bourgeoisie was split. The big bourgeoisie in the north had to keep open its access to the imperial markets, on which their shipbuilding and textile industries depended. Unfortunately for the future of the Irish working class, the Protestant workers were welded into the Orange bloc. As far as their immediate interests were concerned thev chose correctiv. heir position as proletarians was dependent on the continued existence of the imperial link. No strong revolutionary party existed, which could give the lie to this economist perspective. The workers had already suffered a defeat in 1913, when the employers broke the General strike (see Black Dwarf No. 22), aided by the imperialist attitude of the British Unions. The small bourgeoisie in the South needed a sheltered market, where they could build up their capital without facing competition from more efficient British industry. The small farmers had no interest in the continuation of British rule. Their choice for over a hundred years had been extreme poverty or emigration. There was no industry to speak of in Ireland to absorb the surplus agricultural population in the South. The workers in the Catholic south had no political organiszation which could give them the leadership they needed to practise independent politics. Syndicalist ideas were strong but bourgeois republicans were in the van of the national struggle. When the Irish treaty came into force in 1922, dividing Ireland into two. the republican movement led by De Valera still had an army or at least half the army on their side. In June 1922 the Free State Government were loaned artillery by the British to shell the headquarters of the "irregular" army in DUDHIn so much for national independence.
Once the treaty government of Griffith and later Cosgrave was firmly established and the have been considerably ruised by the years of relative prosperity. Somehow the economic gains made by the workers in seven years of boom must be pushed back. All the usual weapons in the arsenal of modern capitalism are to hand. Naively the Trade Union bureaucrats sign away the workers rights by productivity agreements. which undermine the solidarity of the working class and even the right to strike in some cases. The rise of the urban vote of the Labour Party in the last election reflects the increase of class consciousness on the part of the workers. A vicious anti-strike bill is passing through the Irish Dail giving the Government widespread powers to ban strikes and imprison strikers. From the present economic situation it looks like they need the bill.
It is to be expected that more empty phrases will be uttered by the Southern Government about the border. The economic rationale for it no longer exists tor the Southern irish bourgeoisie - at least the division from the British economy no longer has any justification in its eyes. The Northern economy s traditiona. industries - shipbuilding and textiles - are stagnating and it's heavily dependent on British aid. Social services in the North are better than those in the South (The south's unemployment pay is ony two-tiras tat or Ene noru) The Southern capitalists will struggle for the disappearance of partition mn a capitalist Common Market of Western Europe. The Irish working class THUSE StruggIe for genuine independence, for the final expulsion of Britain from Ireland, whose history has so long been distorted by the greed of British capital. As far as Ireland's problems can be solved in isolation from the general struggle, they will be solved by a people's struggle against imperialism, by fighting for a Workers' republic, which will impose a state monopoly of foreign trade and ex-propriate the foreign investors, When threats begin to be posed to the safety of British (and other) investments in Ireland, then the role of the British troops will be revealed for what it is, the protection of capital, and they will line up with the forces of the big bourgeoisie in the South to attempt to put down the Irish people North and South. The Irish can only free themselves once and for all from the power of foreign capital by building a revolutionar party led by the proletariat to continue the Irish revolution, from where it was left off in 1923. The immediate demand is for arms against the North, the ultimate demand is to turn the arms against the bourgeoisie. Dave Kendall Honrees N, London Wiew No. S5, New Left Review, 7 Carlisl International (Sentember issue). 8 Tovnbee Street condon t James Larkin, a biography by Emmet Larkin, 3s. 6d. from Housman's Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, NI Northern Treland, and for the work of the I.C.R.S.C.. quite apart from its value in scaring the shits out of the establishment parties. The candidate is a 26 year-old housepainter. Brian McCabe. born in Dublin and a member of the Painters and Decorators Union.
Brian is standing as an Irish Civil Rights candidate. appealing to Irish and British workers to vote for a basic programme of demands for Northern Ireland, but also on demands which underline the lack of civil rights in Islington. Brian's demands are:To end Westminster complicity with the Unionists:
Stop using British embassies abroad as propaganda agencies for the Unionist regime. Stop training and arming "B' Specials, R.U.C. and all Orange terrorist organizations. Disarm and disband 'B' Specials.
Disarm R.U.C.
One person one vote at 18. one ramily one nouse One person one job.
Abolition of Stormont.
The setting up of a constitutional conference between Westminster, Dublin and all tendencies within the civil rights movement, the trade unions and all Northern Irish political parties; leading to self-determination for Ireland. Brian's demands for Islington are:An end to all discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, colour or class.
An end to the prices and incomes policy and all repressive anti-trade union legislation. Equal rights and pay for women now.
end to an immigration policy based on colour.
Basic civil rights for Islington; one person one job, one family one house.
Brian is contemptuous of his Conservative opponent, and speaks bitterly of the role of the Labour Government.
"We did not expect anything from the Tory/Unionist candidate, " he says, after all he is tied to Chichester-Clarke. But it makes us sad to know that the guns that were used to kill 10 of our countrymen, including a 66 year-old man and a nine year-old boy, to wound over 200 others and to terrorise the population were supplied by a Labour Government. Either they knew what the guns would be used for, which is just as irresponsible."
*One of the most forceful accusations against the Conservative/Unionist Labour Parties is the fact that this situation in Northern Ireland has not just arisen in the last Tew months, oppression has been going on there for. fifty years, but it is only the marches and the civil rights struggles which have forced any aftention on the problem. For fifty years the workers of Northern Ireland have been suffering under the most crippling oppression, during that time we have had Labour Governments, Tory/Unionist Governments and permutations of the two, and still nothing has been done for the people of Northern Ireland The Black Dwarf 26th October - 15th November 1969 Page Cuban OSPAAL Posters 12½" x 21". Printed several colours (4.5)
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