Math's promises as good coin. Having suffered nuch and fought so hard, they will not y be fooled again as they were in August *88.
It is significent that direct rule has been followed by a press campaign to try to create divis ions between the people and the IRA. This is the meaning of the stories about a "split" between the IRA in the North and the South. They are saying to the people : "That IRA man around the corner who protected you from the military is OK, but these ones in Dublin are a diff erent matter altogether".They will find it hard to gain credence for their propaganda. THE ORANGE TORIES It is almost certain that there will be a full in the situation. The Unionists, and the well-heeled leaders of the Ulster Vanguard realise that they have overplayed their hand; their defiance of the government was not designed to go as far as armed insurrection (there are no Carsons in latter-day "Ulster'), but to pressurise the British government to resist concessions to the Catholics and to let them hang on to their sectarian little province for a while longer. They have little stomach for taking their defiance much further, and will not be likely to plunge their legions into the immollation of a final confrontation with Britain.
It is not excluded however that the propaganda which they have so cynically used to create a mass movement of protestant workers could be taken seriously by those workers. In a situation where Britain is seen as threatening the basis of their beliefs, they could well turn round and vent their frustrations on the Catholic minority. persuaded that 'great" men were behind them. The responsibility for such bloodshed would be on the heads of the politicians of the Ulster Vanguard, and the Tory Government which has strung the Protestants along with the pretence that their traditional privileges would be maintained.
THE GREEN TORIES It is of course inevitable that sections of the leadership of the Catholic minority should give credence to the idea that the battle is over. Some of the SLP politicians have been itching for some kind of power for a very long time. They were unable to take office under Stormont and survive politically, but they could use the confusion in the minority to justify taking office under Westminster. Another political figure who has openly welcomed the change of British policy is 'Union Jack' Lynch; it is certain now that he will try to convince the people in the South that a victory has been won, to justify repression against those who will not rest satisSed while British imperialism holds any part of IN BRITAIN Just as the new situation multiplies the complexity of the situation it means that resistance to imperialism and its collaborators in Ireland will take place at a higher political level. In turn this means that the movement in Britain must be at a higher level, and that its demands should reflect the continuing problems of the Irish people. There is still plenty to fight for, and there must be no let up in the demands for the ending of internment, the release of political prisoners, the withdrawal of troops etc. But every demand must be placed firmly in the context of the principle of self-determination for Ireland. We must fight in such a way that we illuminate the principle that it is necessary to oppose not the way in which Britain rules Ireland, but the fact that Britain rules Ireland. Only by fighting in such a way can we cut through the mystifications which will abound amongst British and Irish exile workers. This means that a campaign on the basis of the two limited demands "End Internment', and "Withdraw British Troops' cannot tackle the job adequately. The only kind of movement which can do the job is one which is firmly based on Self-Determination, and which puts forward demands and slogans which correspond to the sharpest point of the struggle; thus while the military struggle of the IRA against the British Army is an essential aspect of the struggle it is necessary to be clearly in solidarity with the IRA. What is of primary importance is not the precise slogan or formulation used, but the method involved in building the movement.
Indeed in the light of some possible developments in the situation it is necessary to give a clearer formulation to slogans. In the previous period the slogan for the Victory of the IRA against the British Army was the key one. Now however, it is by no means excluded that this may assume a secondary role to fighting between Republican and Orange factions. This would undoubtedly produce new failures on the British left. Those who are just about, two years late, coming to accept the principle that in ireland the armed struggle has been decisive, and to support the attacks on the army, will doubtless be totally confused if it comes to the killing of one section of the working class by another. Those unable to distinguish between politics and sociology will throw up their hands in horror. It now becomes necessary to make clear that support of the IRA is not simply against the Army but also, if it comes to it, against anyone, including Orange workers, who defends the maintenance of British state rule in Ireland For the above reasons the forthcoming conference of the Irish Solidarity Campaign is important. Exactly what slogans reflect the need for further political clarification will be thrashed out there. At this conference there will be full and free discussion, not only on the new situation in Ireland, but also on the problems confronting the movement in Britain.
-Bob Purdie -Gery Lawless The second conference of the IS.C. will be held over the weekend 29/30 April in the Buxton Hall, Ruskin College, Walton Street, Oxford. It is open to all those who support the struggle of the Irish people and their armed vanguard, the IRA, and stand uncompromisingly for the defeat of British imperialism in Ireland.
For details of the conference, please contact: Gus Fagan, 116 Summertown House, Banbury Road, Oxford. Tel. 0865-57883. Or Bob Purdie, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1. Tel. 01-278-2616.
Lord Pearce retums to London after his 'test' of opinion in Rhodesia the Pearce Commission is expected to report no means accepted this outcome as a foregone conclusion.
THE COLONIAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY However, we must ask how it was that the Tories and Smith completely misjudged the mood of the African masses. Above all it was Smith's responsibility to know the political climate in the African peasants and workers. It was no accident that he didn't. The Smith regime is not the simple custodian of imperial interests. The white classes in Rhodesia have roots and interests which go back to the settler conquest of the 1890s and which are independent of their imperialist backers. These interests are not finance capital, but the land, and the fantastically privileged standard of living enjoyed by the white working class and petty bourgeoisie. This is the reason why the Rhodesian whites have travelled the long road to apartheid in the footsteps of South Africa. To stifle all economic competition from the Africans who outnumber them 21-1 a strict segregation of all economic and social conditions is essential, including land, wages, jobs, education, investment, and civil liberties. Consequently, the whites know nothing of the social and political life of the Africans. The white's racist arrogance leads him to regard the Africans as at best a subspecies. Few whites-even the goverrment African District Commissioners-have any grasp of the native tongue Shona. The last three months have thrown this contradiction of an imperialist alliance in its most reactionary phase, into sharp relief. It has exposed a fundamental weakness in the settler regime which the Africans were able to exploit.
THE AFRICAN WORKERS AND PEASANTS The tremendous display of unity between the African workers and peasants completely surprised British imperialism and the white regime. The African working class which emerged after 1945 is an insignificant number in the African population -less than 200,000 in a total of over 5 millions-but has a disprotime nothing was done about the conditions of the Africans. Nor was it for the preceding decades of colonial rule. British imperialism has on the contrary nurtured the settler regime it spawned when the adventurer Rhodes secured Rhodesia as the first step in an unfulfilled dream to build a white empire from the Cape to Cairo.
THE REALITY OF SANCTIONS Further liberal myths surround the sanctions question. When UDI was declared in November 1965, Prime Minister Harold Wilson claimed that the 'rebellion' would be ended in a matter of weeks rather than months. So determined was Wilson to crush the racist regime that it took over two years before he would permit the UN to apply general mandatory sanctions. The hypocritical phrase mongering of Wilson was above all designed to give a cover to the deliberate policy of allowing the Rhodesian whites to prepare for the more widespread sanctions that were likely to follow eventually under pressure from the colonial countries. By piecemeal action and by leaving plenty of loop holes open Wilson paved the way for the present deal. We must add that Wilson also tried hard to get a settlement. According to the independent analysis of Wilson's Tiger' proposals made by Dr. Claire Palley of Belfast University the date envisaged for majority African rule would have been 2004 AD! Today Wilson and the Labour Party are making leftish' noises about the interests of the Africans. As Trotsky once said, for the Labour Party leaders questions of foreign policy were the line of least resistance (only, we should add, when they're out of office).
Sanctions were, of course, not designed to bring the Smith regime to its knees economically; still less were they imposed in the interests of the African majority. They were specifically designed to return the Rhodesian government to legality in its dealings with Britain and the rest of the imperialist world.