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From Socialist Worker, No. 104, 11 January 1969, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
SOME READERS may have thought that Socialist Worker’s definition of Northern Ireland as a police state was rather extreme.
They have surely changed their minds following the events of the last few days. Citizens who protest against the lack of democracy in Northern Ireland are openly subjected to beatings and intimidation from the Royal Ulster Constabulary which has the complete support of O’Neill’s government.
Even the millionaire press in Britain is disturbed by this. Their solution, of course, is to tell the organisers of the Civil Rights movement to stop demonstrating and thus ‘provoking’ the police.
They don’t object to the quiet and systematic brutality of the police as long as they don’t do it when press cameramen are around.
The demonstrations must go on, The demands of one man, one vote, and an end to religious discrimination in housing and unemployment must be won.
What it is vital for British socialists and trade unionists to realise is that the Northern Ireland regime is part of the ‘United Kingdom’ and is financed and supported by British capitalism.
The British Left must act in solidarity with their Irish comrades by fighting to end British capitalism’s role in Ulster.
Our job is to fight the enemy at home, not to tell Irish socialists what to do. The geographical nearness of Ireland tends to confuse British socialists about their role.
The attitude of most British socialists to the struggles for national liberation in Africa and Asia follows the basic marxist approach of fighting to expose the complicity of British imperialism in those parts of the world.
But where Ireland is concerned, too many British socialists unconsciously accept its ‘colonial’ status by ignoring the grip of British capital over the country and instead insist on instructing the Irish Left to call for a ‘united workers’ republic of North and South’.
The National Committee of the International Socialists, meeting in London last weekend. discussed the Irish situation at great length and repudiated any suggestion that in expressing our solidarity with our Irish comrades we should include demands concerning the socialist reorganisation of the 32 counties.
That is for the Irish working class to decide. Our duty in Britain is to fight British capitalism and its hold over Ireland.
The IS National Committee called for a campaign on Ireland based on public meetings throughout the country to explain the situation, backed by pamphlets, leaflets and articles in Socialist Worker and International Socialism. The campaign will be based on the following demands: