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   Vol. 69/No. 49           December 19, 2005  
 
 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
December 19, 1980
The hunger strike of seven political prisoners in Northern Ireland’s Long Kesh concentration camp that began October 27 has touched off a massive solidarity movement throughout Ireland.

In Dublin on November 22, more than 20,000 persons marched in support of the prisoners and in protest against the treatment that forced them to begin to starve themselves to death rather than endure it any longer.

On December 6 some 60,000 people marched on the British embassy in Dublin chanting “Brits out” and “Don’t let the hunger strikers die.”

These demonstrations are the largest protests against British repression in Northern Ireland held in Dublin since the mass upsurge that followed the slaughter of thirteen Irish civil-rights demonstrators by British paratroopers in Derry on January 30, 1972.

On November 16, ten thousand persons marched in support of the hunger strikers in Coalisland, a small town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.  
 
December 19, 1955
One of the bloodiest and most barbaric massacres in history is taking place in Kenya—and, contrary to the picture painted by the U.S. press, the savagery is being committed by the “civilized” British imperialists and not by the Kikuyu people, who, rather, are the victims.

The whole campaign was aimed at smashing Kikuyu people, the largest and most advanced tribe in Kenya. Even the name Mau Mau, which the Kikuyu people had never heard of, was invented by the white newspapers of Kenya who also started the fake cry that there was a plot to kill all whites. The political organization of the Kikuyu, the Kenya Africa Union, was outlawed and its leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, jailed. Then a campaign of extermination was begun by the settlers. Villages were burned; men, women and children murdered; the remainder fled to the forests, formed guerrilla bands and began to fight back. Then, of course, the settlers could point to “proof” of the existence of the Mau Mau.  
 
December 1, 1930
Those who hold the position that reformism must develop in the United States are wrong. Trotsky pointed out that America does not have to pass through a period of reformism but this does not mean America will not. When conditions cause a Leftward movement in America today both reform and revolution gain but the ratio depends to a large extent upon the tactics and strategy of the Communists.

Developing capitalism in the past could offer reforms through pressure of the workers and the reformist parties but in this period even American capitalism and its reformist parties have little of material value to offer the workers.

We cannot skip necessary evolutionary steps toward revolution but we can, as Marxists, shorten their duration and even alter their quality. Since the objective conditions favor us, the battle between reform and revolution now primarily rest upon a Marxian party of dialectical revolutionists, not only to explain correctly the conditions but to present the program.  
 
 
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