The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.17           April 28, 1997 
 
 
Ireland Is A Key Issue In UK Election

Communist League candidate says: `Include Sinn Fein in talks now'  

BY MARCELLA FITZGERALD
LONDON - For several days here newspaper headlines have been dominated by the calling off of the Grand National horse race on April 5 because of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb warning.

The Grand National warning had been preceded by IRA activity in Britain and in Northern Ireland. A combination of bombs and bomb hoaxes caused the closing of several main train stations in London on April 4, the disruption of the road transport network in the Midlands on April 3, and the shutting down of the east coast and west coast railways for several hours the previous week.

Leaders of the main capitalist parties rushed to condemn fighters for Irish freedom for what resulted in the postponement of the horse race for 48 hours. Robin Cook, the Labour Party's shadow foreign secretary, who was at the Aintree race course at the time of the hoax, told BBC television that "this shows how low the terrorists will stoop."

Leading trainer Jennie Pitman was prominently featured on the television in tears after the authorities told her she had to leave her horses at the track.

"The media hype has failed to achieve its aim of drawing working people into a chorus of anti-Irish fever," said Ian Grant, Communist League candidate for parliament in the London constituency of North Southwark and Bermondsey, in an interview. "There were calm discussions where I work at Ford, Dagenham. A number of my workmates commented that they thought that Pitman had gone too far - a sentiment reinforced when the same trainer killed one of her horses following an injury during the race."

Grant commented that the major media attention to the Grand National "contrasts with the stand that the press had been taking in the first two weeks of the election campaign, when they'd kept the Irish issue off the front pages." For example, new revelations about the British massacre at a civil rights protest in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972 were squashed by all the British media.

In a March 16 interview with the Irish weekly Sunday Business Post, a former paratrooper said the troops had been briefed that they were going to Derry "to get some kills." The soldier said that a cease-fire order given after the first victims were killed was ignored and that some of those shot were standing with their hands in the air. Soldiers used hollow- tip "dumdum" bullets, which are banned under the Geneva convention, he said. At the time, his evidence to the British government's inquiry, the Widgery Tribunal, was destroyed and another version prepared for him.

Crisis of British rule in Ireland
"New revelations about Bloody Sunday are appearing regularly," Grant commented, "reflecting the crisis of British rule in Ireland. This crisis is forcing the Irish issue to the center of the election despite the desires of the capitalist rulers and their parties."

Grant's campaign prominently features the demand for immediate British troop withdrawal from Ireland. "We've just seen another example of the fact that the heart of the problem in Ireland is the British army presence," Grant explained. "On 26 March, members of the British SAS (Special Air Services) shot and seriously wounded 19-year-old Gareth Doris on his way back from church, and also fired on the car of a local priest. The army claimed they were responding to a bomb attack that damaged the perimeter fence of the fortified RUC station in Coalisland County Tyrone. But their real target was revealed as they abused the crowd that gathered in response and then fired plastic bullets to disperse them."

Grant blasted the burning down of five Catholic churches in Northern Ireland within the space of a week. In addition to sectarian arson attacks, pro-British loyalists have been picketing a Catholic church in Harryville, Ballymena, itself the target of an arson attack some months ago. The weekly Saturday night pickets are the rightists' response to the objections by the local community to loyalist Orange Order parades through Catholic areas in the neighboring village of Dunloy. "Most papers have not touched the issue of the church burning" Grant said. He added that the press and capitalist politicians had also been silent over the gunning down of John Slane, an Irish Catholic living on Belfast's Ormeau road. Gary McMichael and David Ervine, leaders of the political parties linked to the Loyalist paramilitary forces, were asked to comment on the murder as they left for Washington, D.C., to participate in the St. Patrick's day parade, at the invitation of the Clinton administration. They denied that their Combined Loyalist Military Command carried out the killing.

"The fact that Loyalist murders and other violence go unclaimed means that the myth that there is a Loyalist cease- fire is maintained," Grant explained. "Ervine and McMichael keep their seats at the talks being held by the British government, and they are invited to the United States. Meanwhile, the nationalist party Sinn Fein is excluded from the talks and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has been denied a U.S. visa on the basis that the IRA is not on cease-fire. So far the Loyalist `cease-fire' has not been challenged by the British government or mainstream political parties despite the Orange rebellion at Drumcree, the murder of Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick, nor even by the planting of a bomb outside the Sinn Fein office on the Catholic housing estate in New Lodge on Easter Sunday." The bomb would have killed many local residents had it not been defused. As it was homes were damaged in the surrounding area by the controlled explosion of the bomb.

Call to include Sinn Fein in talks
Grant called for the immediate inclusion of Sinn Fein in all- party talks on Northern Ireland. "The Tory and Labour leaderships maintain a bipartisan stand on the question of Ireland, and they have done so ever since the Labour government sent in the troops in 1969. Today, they make Sinn Fein's inclusion in talks conditional upon an IRA cease-fire. But when the IRA's cease-fire was on, the government, supported by the Labour leadership, came up with other conditions."

Grant noted that there are signs that bipartisanship is coming under strains from the Tory right.

British Home Secretary Michael Howard used the occasion of an IRA bomb at Wilmslow railway station near Manchester to attack the Labour Party. Howard said that Labour could not be trusted to uphold the interests of the British state like the Tory party does. Labour leader Anthony Blair countered by underlining his commitment to a bipartisan, agreed on approach to events on Ireland. The Morning Star, the newspaper associated with the Communist Party of Britain, backed the Labour Party, labeling Howard's comments a "slur." The paper called for a "thumping majority for Labour" in the British general election and joined the chorus demanding a new IRA cease-fire. The Workers Party, a Stalinist organization in Northern Ireland, was more explicit in attacking Sinn Fein and praising the "new spirit of awakening on the brethren of the Orange Order."

Howard's attack on the Labour Party was repeated later in the week when Labour Party spokesperson on Ireland Marjorie Mowlam stated that should the IRA call a "genuine cease-fire" before the election, Sinn Fein should be allowed into the British government-hosted talks when they resume on June 3.

Mowlam's comments were denounced as naive by Andrew Hunter, chairman of the Tory back bench committee on Northern Ireland. "It is a fundamental error and a matter of great concern," he said. "There will be no bipartisan policy on Northern Ireland in the future if Labour pursues this line. They are determined to get Sinn Fein round the table at any cost."

The Financial Times speculated that Michael Howard and Lord Cranbourne, the leader of the House of Lords, will head up moves to break with the bipartisan policy should the Tories lose the election. "This may well be the case" Grant said. "An intransigent stance on the Irish question will be a key pole around which to regroup forces on a more overtly nationalist and rightist program.

"But divisions on Ireland also reflect a lack of confidence among ruling class circles that they can carry through changes in their relationship with Ireland in the face of the unbroken struggle of working people in the Six Counties and the growing support for Sinn Fein," the communist candidate said.

Sinn Fein is using the occasion of the British General election to stand 15 candidates, including party leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Speaking to a crowd of 5,000 people at the commemoration of the Easter 1916 rising in Milltown Cemetery, Adams said, "For us there is no going back to Unionist domination. There will be no going back to second class rule.... We want to make peace with Unionists: to work with you to accommodate and celebrate our diversity as equals. That is our message to [loyalist leaders] David Trimble and Ian Paisley."

Rifts among loyalist forces
At the same time, the long-term crisis of the organizations of Protestant supremacy is once again resurfacing. "This was already clear in the special Northern Ireland elections called by UK prime minister John Major last year, when no fewer than 17 pro-union parties contested the election. The fierce competition between the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party has reemerged."

DUP leader Ian Paisley has charged David Trimble of the UUP with selling out the Union. Paisley is heading further into street politics. At an April 4 rally in Portadown, Paisley said, "We will not surrender, not an inch, to Dublin and not to popery... [Catholics] will not breed us out, you will not burn us out, and you will not bring us down."

Splits have also emerged within the Orange Order. Calls for the resignation of its "Grand Master," Robert Saulters, have come from the "Spirit of Drumcree" faction. The differences focus on how to approach this year's "marching season" - the practice of organizing often violent, supremacist parades through Catholic neighborhoods. Throughout last year's marching season community groups organized to resist these marches and demand that there be no parades without the consent of the local people. The success of this defensive stance led to the desperate stand at Drumcree in July when the rightist organizations laid siege to and rioted against the Catholic community there. This year the mainstream Unionists are anxious not to repeat the political fiasco they suffered from the publicity over Drumcree.

Despite being in the minority, the "Spirit of Drumcree" group was able to physically prevent a meeting of the Orange Order in Ballymena that was scheduled to discuss a proposed agreement calling off the protests that have been going on for six months outside the Catholic church in Harryville.

However, on Easter Monday the Unionist "Apprentice Boys" agreed to turn back from marching down Ormeau Road. This was the opening of the marching season. Last year, the Apprentice Boys march opened the way for a police siege of the area, which in turn sparked the organized resistance by local residents in many areas to the rightist parades.

In Dromore, an agreement has been reached to allow local Orangemen to march on July 12 and to reroute away from the village a larger march from all over Tyrone.

"Such developments are the occasion for celebration," Ian Grant said. "They come out of what working people have won in the streets. Thousands of people were drawn into political activity in Northern Ireland last year in the resistance to the supremacist marches. They are reaping their reward with the compromises made by the loyalists."

The Morning Star newspaper saw things differently. An editorial in the April 1 issue of the paper hailed what it described as the "ideological leap" made by the loyalist paramilitaries "in facing up to the reality that fundamental changes are necessary if the prospects for peace are to be realized."

Grant described this as "the hailing of rightist thugs. Rather than celebrating the advances made in struggle by working people the Morning Star is tipping its hat to sectarian bigots."  
 
 
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