FINSBURY A section of the demonstration on its way from Hyde Park to the Embankment Through one of the worst downpours of rain seen in London this year, over two thousand supporters marched across London on the Anti-Internment League's November 12th demonstration.
It wasn't the biggest demonstration which the AlL has pulled off, but it was the most important, because it represented a break from the "politics of the last atrocity", ie. that demonstrations take place in London only if and when British imperialism commits an atrocity of such dimension as to itself act as the mobiliser for the demonstration.
IMPRESSIVE The impressive march started from Speakers Corner in Hyde Park and wound its way. in foul weather, through London to the bottom of Fleet Street, where a rally was addressed by Bernadette Devlin, Michael Farrell, Eamonn McCann, Bob Purdie and Gery Lawless.
AlL branches from all over England, Scotland and Wales joined with contingents from the British revolutionary left, Provisional Sinn Fein, Clann na hEireann and Peoples Democracy.
The largest and most impressive British group on the march was the 600 strong contingent from the International Marxist Group. The International Socialists, who claim a membership of over a thousand in the London area alone, turned out about 270 in their contingent. At the rally, Eamonn McCann said, "It is now popular in most circles to condemn "terrorism", but the condemnation SCANDINAVIAN RALLY Over the weekend of 17th to 19th November, a rally and cadre school of the Scandinavian sections and sympathising groups of the Fourth International was held in Copenhagen. The rally marked the fortieth anniversary of Trotsky's last public speech, delivered in Copenhagen in November 1932. The speech, "In Defence of the Russian Revolution was both an important statement of the historic significance of the October revolution, and laid the. scientific basis for analysing the nature of the Soviet Union after OF THE of terrorism could be, and was, used as an excuse for not getting involved in the struggle. In British Left-wing circles, this condemnation was used as a vehicle to extricate the people involved from any possibility of commitment to the Irish struggle.
SECTARIAN MURDERS Loyalist extreme forces were responsible for more than 100 brutal sectarian murders during the past year, Michael Farrell of the People's Democracy claimed. The British Army is fighting in Ireland today its most serious military battle since Korea, but they are not winning that battle." He said that the Army was fighting a war of attrition against "the Irish people as a whole, not just the IRA" and described conditions in Anderstown as a "military occupation without parallel since the Nazi occupation of Poland". Despite over 20,000 British troops and 6,000 UDR members, the British Government "are now using the forces of Orange fascism, the UDA, the UVF and their like, to smash the anti-Unionist resistance". ARMY'S LOW MORALE "If printed verbiage could win the war in Ireland", said Gery Lawless, "Britain would have von it long ago. Day after day, all the B. tish papers and some Irish papers, report that the war is won, Whitelaw is winning, the IRA is on the run, ete., etc. Only one short year ago they were saying the same thing for Faulkner. "Meanwhile, back in the real world, a truer grasp of reality is shown in the initiation of the Christmas royal tour of hospitals, to boost the morale of the wounded and maimed from the British Army in Ireland. "Morale in the British Army in the North is at an all-time low and this is being reflected in the tremendous drop in the current recruiting and re-enlistment figures. "This demo is not an end in itself, but must be seen as part of a campaign to construct in Britain a movement in solidarity with the actual struggle in Ireland: a movement capable of explaining to the British labour and student movements the realities of the situation, and organising and directing the opposition in such a manner as to further contribute to the political isolation of the British army from the British working class and the destruction of its morale. Only such a calculated and deliberate strategy can give meaningful aid to the Irish insurgents"
A WEAKNESS The demonstration showed that the solidarity movement is again growing and the hysteria in the press has not caused complete confusion within its ranks. Nevertheless, a question mark still hangs over the position of the International Socialism group. One week before the demonstration, the IS branch in Liverpool left the AlL. In York, instead of trying to get maximum support tor a meeting to mobilise for the demo, the IS organised its own internal branch meeting at the same time in the same building. In Edinburgh the IS did nothing to organise for the demonstration, although they did have time during thag week to issue a lying attack on The Red Mole's coverage of Irish affairs.
Whether these actions were localised breaches of discipline or represent a turn away from the solidarity movement by the IS leadership is not yet clear.
NEXT STEP The next step planned for the AlL will be the mass distribution throughout Britain of a leaflet written by Bob Purdie, organiser of the AlL, explaining the present role of British troops in the West Belfast area. Supporting organisations of the AlL can obtain these leaflets at El per thousand. The first priority in the New Year will be to organise around the commemoration of Bloody Sunday on 28th January. The AlL sets itself two main tasks here. Firstly, to organise, probably in London, a mass rally: secondly, to take up the call, made by Bernadette Devlin, for a world-wide week-end of events focused on Ireland, and to use the good offices and resources of the AlL for this purpose. An ad hoe group inside the AlL, led by Pat Arrowsmith, is also organising a contingent from the British labour movement to travel to Derry for the unveiling of the memorial to the victims of Bloody Sunday.
By J.R. CLYNES Nothing of the fanfare that has greeted recent NUS conferences surrounds the one which opens in Margate this weekend. But this is no more than a lull before the storm. A big wave of educational rationalisation' is imminent. The effects of the rationalising' cut-backs have already been felt with the accomodation crisis and the appallingly low level of grants. As the malaise spreads to new areas over the coming months the scope and intensity of student struggles will also rise. The question is: will there be adequate leadership from the NUS? UNION AUTONOMY We cannot expect much from the NUS Executive. On all issues they continue to behave as though it was business as usual. Official policy as regards the right to full autonomy for students unions is, incredible though it may seem, that this is merely a long-term aim. The Margate Conference at least gives us a chance to ram home one vital truth: that the students' unions must demand here and now, before the fight gets underway on other issues full autonomy from the state and college bureaucracies.
REPRESENTATION On the question of strategy, this conference will be debating the dead end which official NUS policy has reached. The goal of student struggles, as presented by the NUS leadership, is to gain representation on governing and policy making bodies. This utopian notion tha the problems of higher education can be solver within each institution so long as rational debate is allowed to flourish has been largely discredited by the experience of the mass of students themselves. Out of the frustration is coming a confrontation with the real problem: the fight against capitalist reforms" and rationalisation. This fight can be waged only through a struggle against the integrationist trap of representation, for it forces students to take responsibility for a problem which is produced solely by the capitalist system. The alternative is to fight for a veto right on the basis of mass struggie THE CONTEXT After the events of the last year, it is impossible for students activists to ignore the relation ship between developments in higher education and the wider context of the class struggle. The problems of the working class are increasingly becoming the problems of students. But at the conference there are a number of resolutions which mark a disastrous capitulation to the Labour and trade union bureaucracies. It is absolutely not the case that the main effort of mass struggle should be around the election of a Labour government. The central question is how to carry the struggle of the mass of workers forward against all those forces which threaten it, whether they be the police, the courts, or the present government. The main arena for the advance of the working class struggle at this present moment is neither inside Parliament nor around elections, as the freeing of the five dockers' leaders showed. And the main path forward towards a socialist alternative lies through strengthening the fighting ability of the mass of workers at this present moment and not through placing reliance on some future government to resolve the problems of the working class. Thus, what must be hammered home at the NUS conference must not be academic lectures on the great educative value of having a Labour government in the future in order that it might expose itself (leave alone talk about getting a Labour government which will introduce a socialist programme!). It is that in the immediate period the NUS must work to mobilise the full strength of students behind workers in struggle against the pay freeze and all the other instruments of capital-
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