The Anti Internment League has been engaged in a series of lightning pickets and demonstrations designed to highlight important political aspects of the struggle in Ireland. These have been directed against both the British Government and the "Free' State regime of Jack Lynch. They have attacked the violence and duplicity of Whitelaw and his Tory/Unionist mentors, and the complicity of "Stab in the back' Lynch, with his Curragh concentration camp and repressive laws.
One effective action was carried out inside the Aer Lingus Air Terminal in West London, (to the fury of the Metropolitan Police who arrived too late to stop the pickets gaining admission).
On Thursday, July 27th simultaneous pickets were carried out on Whitelaw's office and on the Hanover Grand Hotel where the Free State Embassy had organised a junket for its pals of the British press.
As the journalists trickled out, wiping the last crumbs from lips still moist with the hospitality of an ingratiating Fianna Fail government, they were met with chants of "Whitelaw Out - Lynch Out" and with placards demanding the closure of the Curragh and the freeing of Republican Prisoners. Noteable amonst the guests was T.E. Utley of the Daily Telegraph' the most reactionary and pro-Orange journalist in Britain. Part of the frivolities was the showing of a film designed to boost the Irish tourst industry - amping badly from a campaign of pressure directed against Lynch, by Heath through these very journalists.
At Whitela w's office demands were raised for the withdrawal of British troogs, and w-determination for Ireland. Other placards read: "Ireland unfree will never be at peace". These pickets are part of a campaign which will intensify during the late summer and autumn with a major public meeting in August.
Union Call Circular No. 893 - dated 26th July 1972 Dear Colleague, TUC Call for One-day National Strike The National Council this afternoon decided to instruct all NGA members to withdraw their labour on Monday, 3Ist July, * in response to the TUC call for a national strike on that day in protest against thé imprisonment of five trade unionists under the Industrial Relations Act.
The Council, fully conscious of the responsiowry tnat rests on une trade union movement to secure the release of these five men, also took cognisance of the fact Khat the operation of the Industrial Relations Act is responsible for their imprisonment. The instruction to members will therefore remain valid even in the event of the five men being released before Monday and the strike, so far as the NGA is concerned, will in that event be used to emphasise our continued opposition to the Act.
The other printing unions are being informed of the Council's decision and it is hoped that they too will support the one-day strike as a protest against the Act in general as well as against the imprisonment of trade unionists in particular.
Yours faithfully, General Secretary *This has been defined as the start of any shift on that date, except in the case of norning newspaper workers, whose shift is cruce as tuar sarms on ounday. SuJury Eye-witness evidence of systematic bombing by the U.S. of the dykes of North Vietnam was revealed by Jane Fonda at a press conference on Tuesday (25 July) after her return from North Vietnam. She spoke of seeing dykes which had been destroyed by very accurate bombing of the kind impossible unless done intentionally.
This report is confirmed by many other onthe-scene correspondents. In early June a group of foreign journalists were inspecting dyke damage near Hanoi when a dozen U.S. fighterbombers appeared on the horizon, dropped their their bombs on the dykes, and then returned to spray the startled party with machine-gun fire.
Over three-quarters of the population of North Vietnam 15 million people living 800 per square kilometre and most of the crops and industry of the North are concentrated into the Red River basin, the Plain of Tonkin including both Hanoi and Haiphong. The Red River, flowing 5 to 6 metres above the land, is used to irrigate the paddy fields which provide the food and livelihood of the Vietnamese people. Surrounded by the mountains from which descends the River, the Plain would be periodically submerged were it not for the fact that since the Middle Ages, the Vietnamese peasants have built up an intricate system of dykes. One system is built up along the Red River; a second system, more or less perpendicular to the first, is built up along the Plain to block flooding if one section of the primary system breaks. Finally, there are coastal dykes to prevent coastland flooding during typhoons. Altogether, there are 4,000 kilometres of dykes, reinforced every year since 1954 by 2 to 3 million cubic metres of earth. The danger of flooding is particularly great during the rainy season, from July to October yearly. Breaks in the dykes during these months could easily submerge wide areas, indeed whole cities, destroying not only the livelihood of millions of people but costing hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.
In a speech (April 30th) before Texas oilmen, Nixon warned the North Vietnamese of what was in store for them. First he defined the dykes as "a strategic target and indirectly a military target". Then, to make his intentions crystal clear, he threatened: "As far as the targets in North Vietnam are concerned, we are prepared to use our military and naval strength against military targets throughout North Vietnam, and we believe that the North Vietnamese are taking a very great risk if they continue ner orensive.
Thanks to the acquiescence of the bureaucracies in Peking and the Kremlin, Nixon was given the green light to do what he wanted. April 16: the first B52 raids of the war on Hanoi, mass bombing of civilian targets in the North. May 9: mining of the harbours of Haiphong, and the coast and waterways of the North, a step never before taken because of the fear of Soviet and/or Chinese reaction. Since that time, hardly a day has gone by without new reports of dykes being bombed, in particular dykes in the three most populated provinces around Hanoi.
Throughout May and June, all attacks on the dykes were denied by U.S. Defence Department spokesmen. By the end of June, when the New York Times was stating that "without a doubt, there is now systematic bombing of the dykes in Nosh Vietnam", Nixon's only comment was that ail such reports were inaccurate. On 5 July, the State Department coolly changed tack in order to prepare the U.S. public for the "unfortunate tragedy" it had itself done everything to make inevitable. While admitting that "accidental bombing of the dykes could not be ruled out", it predicted a "higher than normal Jane Fonda viirs scene of U,S. bombing in North Vietnam probability" that floods similar to those of last year would strike the North in August. The next day, Secretary of Defence Laird admitted damage though denying ever targetting a dam or a dyke-and then repeated the warning about August flooding! He could hardly have established U.S. responsibility more clearly, and may even have been hinting at the use of artificial rain makers" as well (see The Red Mole 46).
Nixon's politics are the politics of genocide. Th the words of Yves Lacoste: "If in his speeches President Nixon has excluded the Itse of nuclear arms (because it would certainly be difficult for him, alone to assume the responsibility for this step), the risk of genocide by drowning is much greater and more immediate, because U.S. planes can cause it without Nixon ever giving explicit orders. which would permit him to deny all responsibility. (Nevertheless) ... if the dykes break this summer in the North, the responsibility for this genocide must weigh on President Nixon." Will bombing the dykes destroy the will and fighting capacity of the North Vietnamese?
RED PAMPHLETS SOCIAL SECURITY A pamphlet on the Social Security system, incorporating the latest experiences of the working class in the Manchester sit-ins. This is a useful handbook for all militants needing practical advice on how to claim. PRICE 2p.
AFTER THE MINERS* STRIKE -WHAT NEXT?
This is much more than just a description of events. It places the strike firmly within the context of the heightened class tension of the last few years, and puts forward a programme around which militants in the pits can organise. PRICE 10p IRELAND UNFREE by Bob Purdie CAPITAL: A READABLE INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF WORKERS CONTROL by R. Davis All the above available from:
IMG Publications, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1. (please add for postage) Or, like all previous escalations, is this one doomed to failure? In an interview in The Guardian (July 13), Nguyen Minh Vy of the Paris delegation gives the following reply: "Already there is danger of the dykes breaking. It will increase if the bombing continues... (Some people believe) that after several million people have been killed by the dykes breaking, Vietnam will give in. But they should remember that in 1945 there were floods and Tamine and two million people died -and this was followed by the August Revolution."
Designed for systematic terrorisation of the population. the bombing of the dykes has only reinforced the determination of the Vietnamese. After the August flooding of last year (and probably in anticipation of the present attacks). what the Vietnamese describe as an "enormous budget" was consecrated to the consolidation of the dykes. From September "71 to March "72, 3 million cubic metres of earth were transported. And today. in the midst of the most murderous bombing in human history, the peasants and workers of North Vietnam race against time. But they will win!
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Tha Rad Mole 29 Julv 1972 Pace 7