The border town of Newty, County Down is still in the dark nearly three weeks since maintenance workers at the town's electricity plants downed tools in protest against British Army control of street lightingThis has long been a major provocation for the people who live in the nationalist ghettoes. British Army vehicles roar through these narrow streets at all hours of the night and road accidents are a com mon occurrence sometimes resulting in fatal injuries.
Recently a young girl playing on a makeshift swing hooked to a lamp-post lost her life when hit by a Saracen travelling without lights. Things came to a head in Newry an 2 August when 24 years old Michael Hollywood died when his cat crashed into an unlit British Army barricade.
The Army, concerned at the success of IRA snipers, order cars travelling through these areas to put their lights but. Refusal can be met with a bullet. For the same reason the Army have taken control of all street lighting in Newty where Provisional IRA Active Service Units have been particularly successful against the British foot patrols PROTESTS There were widespread protests at Mr. Holly wood's deathIse was the third person to die in Newry in similar circumstances, over the last few months. The Provisional IRA responded to his death with a statement saying they would regard ell electricity installations as "military installations' while the British Army held control of street lighting. The Provisionals pointed out that in effect the British were imposing martial law on the people of Newry, and they demanded that control of street lighting be handed back into civilian hands.
The nationalist people of this border town are fully behind this demand of the Provisionals. Attempts by the British Army Lie Machine to depict the Provisionals as using Malia-style tactics by threatening to shoot the maintenance workers have been revealed as inventions of the British Army Press office at Army HQ in Lisburn. Even the local SDLP member of the now defunct Assembly, who initially tried to grie credence to these sianders, has now been forced to place full responsibility on the shoulders of the British Army. The SDIP have had tojoin in support of the demand that tic British relinquish control of the electricity system.
This has come about because the people of Newry have gone back on to the streets in support of their demand. During the last three weeks the town's two main thoroughfares have been repeatedly blocked by demonstrators carrying placards calling on the British to take their hands ff the electricity, and last Friday over 1,000 demonstrators marched through the town in support of this The march was led by a large contingent of members of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. The demonstration made it clear that anything less than full civilian control was unacceptable. That they will go without electricity while the Army remains in control a beyond doubt. This overwhelmingly Catholle town C TOM has made an accommodalas shared the brunt of British repression over the last live years. and of successive Unionist goverments since the foundation of the Orange State, ters are in internment camps and on the dole queue for it to do otherwise people of Newry to wrest control out of the hands of the British Army once and for all, coming so shortly after the successes of the Political Hostages Release Campaign in mobilising large united demonstrations ment shows that the spark of resistance still flares in the North of Ire hollowness of the recent claim in troops serving in Ireland that the IRA's war of liberation had been defeated and the IRA isolated. The people of the nationalist areas of the North live no desure to give to the British Army any faculties whien might help their repressive military operations here. hospital in London entirely for private patients — the Wellington Hospitat in St John's Wood is the area where the BPC depends Too many of its sons and daughtNOT PRIVATE PRACTICE
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FEREN NATIONAL Over 100 doctors, nurses, and trade unionists marched from Speakers Corner last Saturday to protest against the opening of a new