Irish Freedom: No. 7, April 1989

IRISH FREEDOM

TWENTY YEARS OF IRISH RESISTANCE

TROOPS OUT NOW!

WHICH WAY FOR IRISH SOLIDARITY? - SEE PAGES 9, 10 AND 11

CONTENTS

Irish Freedom Movement • (01) 375 1702 Anti-internm Build the Irish Freedom Movement Editorial The IFM in action Letters

BULLETIN OF THE IRISH FREEDOM MOVEMENT

Assemble kington town t Join the march.

TROOPS

Tish fredom Movement • (0I) 375 1702 • page 2 .. page 3 pages 4, 5 and 6 War diary NO.7 Assemble slington town ball (near), Upper Stree

TROOPS OUT NOT

Which way to get the troops out?

•Reviews • pages 7 and 8 Build the anti-internment march!

APRIL 1989

50P Assemble Islington town hall (rear), Upper Street, London K1 s to take in thie out of retar

TROOPS OUT NOW

Join the march pages 9, 10 and 11 • page 12 page 13 pages 14 and 15

JOIN THE STRUGGLE FOR IRISH FREEDOM

BUILD THE IRISH FREEDOM MOVEMENT

1989 marks the twentieth anniversary of the arrival of British troops in Ireland. We are determined to make it a year which the British establishment will remember as the year of solidarity with the Irish freedom struggle. Already this year, the IFM has organised a number of very successful events: in February we held a 300-strong conference When the war comes home-the Irish war in British politics (see page 4 for a full report and pictures). We picketed Downing Street on the eve of the first anniversary of the Gibraltar murders. And in addition we have held weekly street meetings and sales, video showings and public meetings throughout the country.

But this is merely a foretaste of what we have planned for the next few months.

In addition to responding to new developments in the war, the main target for our work is Saturday 5 August-the date of the annual anti-internment march in London (see pages 14 and 15 for a report on this. In the run-up to this event we will be holding public and street meetings, speaking at trade union and Labour Party branch meetings as well as student unions, women's groups, community groups and other organisations to get sponsorship and support for the demonstration. Last year's 3000-strong anti-internment demonstration was the biggest anti-internment commemoration yet. This year we aim to make it even bigger. If you want more information about our forthcoming activities or about the IFM's approach to building a solidarity movement in this country that can get British troops out of Ireland, then get in touch: we have branches in Glasgow * Newcastle * Durham * Manchester * Liverpool * Sheffield * Birmingham * Coventry * Nottingham * Leicester * Oxford * Leeds * Wakefield * Bristol * Cardiff * Brighton * West London * North London * South London.

If you are in a position to raise a motion of sponsorship for the march in a trade union, Labour Party ward, student union or other group, either write to us at: Irish Freedom Movement, BM IFM, London WCIN 3XX or phone (01) 375 1702.

JOIN THE IRISH

FREEDOM MOVEMENT NOW!

We fight around the demands: * Troops out now! * Self-determination for the Irish people!

* Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act!

To join us, and get involved in our activities, send £5.00 (€25.00 for organisations or trade union branches) to: Irish Freedom Movement, BM IFM, London WC1N 3XX. Phone (01) 375 1702.

I want to join the IFM want to find out more about the IFM want to buy an IFM enamel badge (£1.50 plus 30p p&p) Name Address Postcode Phone Make cheques/postal orders payable to IFM Association and send to IFM, BM IFM, London WC1N 3XX.

handbook better. (Irish Post)

VIDEOS

The Longest War Irish freedom.

T-SHIRTS

2

WIN THE PROPAGANDA WAR!

The Irish Freedom Movement

TRISH

WAR

The Irish War Irish Freedom Third edition- updated and extended Movement Handbook £4.95 (plus 85p p&p) 'Attractively produced and well-illustrated...provides a tidy synopsis of what the North of Ireland is all about... you won't get Send to Junius Publications Ltd, BCM JPLtd, London WC1N 3XX (cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd).

LIVING

MARXISM

New monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party The theme of May's Living Marxism is fascism-and how to fight it. Articles include: * The rise of racism in Europe * Fascism and Green politics in Germany * How the left paved the way for Le Pen * British nationalism * The rise and fall of the National Front Other articles include * Designer terrorism * PTA panic in Surrey * Bradford after Rushdie * The truth about cervical cancer * Interviews with Melvyn Bragg and Derek Jarman * and much more Living Marxism costs £1.50; so you can find it in most good newsagents. Better still, get a subscription-and save yourself money. A 12-month subscription to anywhere in Britain or Ireland costs £15. Make cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd and send to BCM JPLtd, London WC1N 3XX or phone (01) 375 1485.

This Irish Freedom Movement video uses dramatic footage of events and on-the-spot interviews to put the case for The Funeral of Larry Marley This video by the Sinn Fein Publicity Department reveals the concerted attempt by the RUC, under British orders, to terrorise republican funerals and intimidate the opponents of British rule.

To arrange a video showing phone Dawn on (01) 375 1702.

Red and black logo on whit

IRELAND

sizes M, XL and XXXL £6 plus 60p p&p. Make cheques payable to Irish Freedom Movement and send to IFM BM IFM. London WC1N 3XX

AGAINST BRITAIN!

EDITORIAL

Ineset ent tavo evom ent Twenty years of Irish resistance

TAKE SIDES

The twentieth anniversary of the reintroduction of British troops to Ireland is a time for us to reflect on the suffering which British imperialism has inflicted on the nationalist community. It is also a time to redouble our efforts in support of the Irish people in their struggle to free Ireland from British interference. For the nationalist community, the past 20 years have been a period of clarification. The experience of the civil rights movement convinced many nationalists that there was no peaceful way to achieve their democratic rights. While some Catholics initially welcomed the arrival of the British Army, it soon became clear that the troops had come, not to keep the peace', but to suppress the legitimate demands of the nationalist community for freedom, equality and justice. The IRA, which had hardly existed in 1968, re-emerged as it became clear that nationalists could only achieve justice by destroying the sectarian state itself, and ending British domination over Ireland. That lesson remains as relevant today as it was 20 years ago.

The resiliance of the nationalist community through the past 20 years should be a source of inspiration to us all. But the British labour movement has treated nationalists largely with chauvinist contempt. While the experience of the Irish people has made them more hostile to the British state over the years, the British left has become increasingly hostile to the Irish liberation struggle. The official labour movement has made common cause with the Tories by branding the liberation movement as the barrier to peace and looking instead to Britain itself as a force for progress in Ireland. This consensus at home has isolated the republican movement and allowed the British establishment to conduct its bloody war with little fear of domestic opposition.

Yet the demand for Irish self-determination is a basic democratic right which anyone with the slightest sense of political justice should support. There is another reason, too, why British socialists should support the cause of Irish freedom. The Irish liberation struggle strikes at the heart of the British state. It is the most forceful challenge to the ruling class today. A liberation struggle which is seeking to defeat the British state is a natural ally of workers in Britain.

But the fear which the Irish War instils in the British establishment has gripped even the left, making it wary of siding with the liberation movement. The defensiveness of the left is one of the biggest weapons in the armoury of the ruling class. The Tories know that they only have to accuse the official opposition of being 'soft on IRA terrorism' to bring the leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions running into line behind the British state.

The labour movement's support for Britain's war in Ireland not only hampers the Irish liberation struggle-it also makes it impossible to pursue our own struggles in Britain. We cannot fight the Tories in defence of our interests as a class if we are holding hands with them against the democratic demands of the Irish people. The British state which oppresses the Irish nationalists is the same state that has cracked down over here in recent years, using paramilitary force against striking miners, printworkers and seafarers, black youth and others. The Irish liberation movement, not the British state, is our natural ally. This is the lesson we should learn from the past 20 years of the Irish War.

The need to win working class support for the Irish struggle informs all the activities of the IFM-and in particular our anti-internment march on 5 August. Unlike the Labour Party-sponsored "Time to go' march and festival a week later (see pages 9, 10 and 11 for a more detailed explanation of why we will not be supporting this initiative), the IFM march will call for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland and self-determination for the Irish people. Unlike *Time to go' which characterises the past 20 years as wasted years', the IFM aims to make this year's anti-internment demonstration a celebration of 20 years of Irish resistance to British imperialism. Far from advising the British state on its Irish policy, we aim to stand up and take sides with the Irish people against the British state.

Last year, the anti-internment demonstration mobilised more than 3000 people on to the streets of London in the face of media and government hostility. This year we aim to mobilise even more. We want to make August 1989 the month that Britain's rulers will remember as the start of real solidarity with the Irish freedom struggle. Join us!

If you want to know more about our forthcoming events, or more about the approach of the Irish Freedom Movement, write to IFM, BM IFM, London WCIN 3XX or phone Charles Longford on (01) 375 1702.

3

FARSC

Holloway Road 30 Defence Campaign

STILL FIGHTING!

The Holloway •Road 30 were arrested and charged under the Public Order Act when right-wing thugs attacked the IFM's antiinternment demonstration in north London on Saturday 6 August 1988. The police, who had harassed marchers throughout with riot vans, waded in to arrest stewards and others as they moved up to defend the demonstration from these attacks. The IFM launched the defence fund to fight these frame-ups in the courts. We have received

TRISH FREEDOM

MOVEMENT IN

ACTION

widespread support from trade union branches, Labour Party wards, student unions and solidarity organisations. Over £3500 has been collected. But as good as this has been, it remains inadequate: we are still fighting the cases, two of which still have not been heard after seven months! The defence campaign has paid off with many of the cases having been dismissed and our defendants found not guilty. However, in a number of cases magistrates have imposed very The Irish Freedom Movement has been on the move over the recent period. Here we report on some of the major initiatives we have organised. If you want more information about our future activities, look on page 2 for details of an IFM branch in your area, or contact us by phoning (01) 375 1702 or writing to IFM, BM IFM, London WC1N 3XX 0 heavy fines and even suspended custodial sentences. We appealed against two of the convictions: one conviction was upheld while the other appeal went our way.

Defending our right to march for Irish freedom and to defend ourselves from attack has been very expensive. Legal costs are mounting, the fines have been heavy and with two cases still pending we anticipate even more expenses. We need more funds to carry on the fight. Show your support by rushing donations to the defence fund (make cheques or postal orders payable to the Holloway Road 30 Defence Fund). Send donations to: Holloway Road 30 Defence Campaign, BMIFM, London WCIN 3XX. If you want further information, or would like to raise a motion in support of the campaign, write to us or ring Charles Longford on (01) 375 1702.

WHEN THE WAR COMES HOME:

THE IRISH WAR IN BRITISH POLITICS

IFM IN ACTION

Irish Freedom Movement conference

TROOPS OUT

No British solutur MICHEAL MaDONNACHA 'The political climate | believe is now more receptive than ever to the message of Irish freedom. That's the reason why the British government has introduced all these repressive measures, in particular the media ban

OPSL

ERROL SMALLEY

'There were no eye-witnesses, no ID, no forensic evidence: just the forced confessions. The case couldn't have been brought in Scotland, it couldn't have been brought in America, it couldn't have been brought in Russia; but it was brought here!' More than 300 people came along to our conference in London on Saturday 18 February to discuss the impact and significance of the Trish War in British politics. The theme of this event was the importance of uniting resistance to state repression in Britain with a movement demanding an immediate withdrawal of British forces from Ireland. Speakers at the opening plenary included Micheal MacDonnacha from Sinn Fein; Errol Smalley of the Guildford Four Campaign; Denis Ryan from the Holloway Road 30 Campaign; Janet Clarke from the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign; Tim Gopsill, editor of the Journalist; Anthony Jennings, barrister and editor of Justice Under Fire: The Abuse of Civil Liberties in Northern Ireland; and Julius Alexander, under threat of deportation from Britain's racist immigration laws.

The plenary was followed by two sets of four lively workshops which discussed different aspects of the Irish War and repression in Britain.

ANTHONY JENNINGS

'The administration of justice in Northern Ireland is like a space invaders machine Once one fearsome method of repression rears its ugly head and is knocked down, another one comes to take its place.' PS.

JULIUS ALEXANDER

I want to express my support for the Irish people to govern their own affairs... I've been victimised not because I'm an illegal immigrant but because I'm black, and all black people have been singled out as troublemakers 5 In his closing speech to the conference, Mick Hume, editor of Living Marxism and author of the IFM's handbook, The Irish War, stressed the need to link the demand for selfdetermination in Ireland with the growing concern over the government's attacks on civil liberties in Britain: *Democracy is not divisible; we cannot oppose the Thatcher government's dictatorial methods over here if we ignore the continuation of military occupation and oppression in Ireland. The demand for Irish freedom must be the cutting edge of any campaign for civil liberties in Britain.' At the end of the conference we signed up many new IFM members who came from across the country. The evening social was a time to relax and to discuss how the IFM could take its work forward in the year of the twentieth anniversary of the troops being sent back on to the streets of Ireland.

Bernadette Walshe

JANET CLARKE

We all know what the police stand for in this country: they're here to oppress black and working class people. If you fight for basic human rights they will use the full weight of the law as their weapon.'

TIM GOPSILL

PHOTOS: Pandora Anderson 'The Irish have a role to play in the liberation of Britain because the struggle of the Irish people is the strongest resistance there is to Thatcherism and we should look to them as our strongest ally:

A WASTED OPPORTUNITY

IFM IN ACTION

Bloody Sunday commemoration An opportunity to get the twentieth anniversary year of Irish resistance to British rule off to a good start was wasted by the appalling organisation of this year's Bloody Sunday demonstration. The annual Bloody Sunday demonstration is an occasion to commemorate the killing of 14 Irish nationalists by British troops in Derry in 1972, and to rally resistance to the murderous activities of the British occupation forces 17 Gibraltar anniversary Over 100 people joined the FM's early evening torchlit picket of Downing Street on Monday 6 March to mark the first anniversary of the murder of three IRA volunteers by the SAS in Gibraltar.

The picket, demanding 'No more Gibraltars! Troops out now!', was a reminder to the British authorities that we have not forgotten the murder of Mairead Farrell, Daniel McCann and Sean Savage last year. Our message

TEKKUN

BRITAIN'S

IRISH POLICY

SHOOT

TO KILL

THATCHERS

FINAL

SOLUTION

years on. Committee for British Withdrawal from Ireland.

its disorganisation. We turned up

NO MORE GIBRALTARS!

was that the three volunteers were soldiers in a war between an oppressed people fighting for their freedom and an occupying military power. The picket was loud and lively and ended with a number of speeches which not only remembered the Gibraltar Three but pledged to redouble our efforts to end the Irish War. Donacha Clarke

VICTOR

TO THE

IRISH

DECRIE

SAS

CLAND

ERROT

SHO

BRITAIN'S

IRISH

POLICY

THATCH OT

SOLU

The march was called by the which excluded the Irish Freedom Movement from the organising committee, and squandered an opportunity to make an impact through with many others to the advertised assembly point, Grange Park in Kilburn, and at the required time. All of us were then forced to wait in the pouring rain for streets. Shambles

BRITAIN

IRISH PO

Pandora Andersol nearly two hours before the march moved off.

The march was then led on a route which was twice as long as it should have been through largely deserted streets. Since there was no attempt to steward the march it quickly degenerated into an untidy straggle, leading to frequent stops and starts which allowed the police to take over the stewarding. Our contingent, which was the largest on the march, was the only one which kept up a barrage of slogans. The rest of the march resembled a funeral procession, trudging through empty All this reduced the march to a shambles, which could not possibly make an impact on anybody seeing it pass, and which could only demoralise those who were part of it. By the time the demonstration reached its destination it was clear that people with a manifest inability to carry out the simple technical task of organising a demonstration cannot be expected to advance the cause of Irish freedom.

Sometimes it would be better if a demonstration never happened if its only effect is to put people off and discourage them from attending such an event again. Irish nationalists who have been resisting the armed might of the British state for 20 years deserve better than this. In the months ahead all those who support the cause of Irish freedom should redouble their efforts to make the most of every opportunity to strengthen the forces of resistance to the British occupation. lain FitzGerald International Women's Day

FREE IRISH

POLITICAL

PRISONERS!

IF supporters joined a delegation to Belfast over the weekend of 3-6 March to mark International Women's Day and the first anniversary of the Gibraltar shootings. The highlight of the weekend was a large picket outside Maghaberry prison outside Belfast.

LETTERS

Write to Irish Freedom, BM IFM, London WC1N 3XX.

LABOUR

CONNSPIRACIES

AND IRELAND

I RECENTLY went to a meeting organised by the East London Irish Year of Action Committee. Among the speakers were Dodie McGuinness of Sinn Fein and Ken Livingstone, Labour MP for Brent East. I must admit after hearing Ken Livingstone speak I have serious reservations about Labour left-wing politics on Ireland. In his speech, Livingstone avoided the question of how to build an effective solidarity movement in Britain-the main question I, and I imagine many other people who attended the meeting, were hoping would be addressed. Instead he outlined his own theories about the central role MI5 played in determining British policy in Ireland. Rather ridiculously, Livingstone argued that the principal reason why Britain remains in Ireland is because of MI5's conspiring against Harold Wilson's Labour government of the seventies. He went on to say that if MI5 had not brought down Wilson's government then events would have turned out differently and the troops would have been withdrawn from Ireland by now. This seems bizarre. Presumably MI5 had some compromising pictures of Wilson or something which forced the Wilson government to send in the troops in 1969. Perhaps these were also used to force the Labour government to rush through the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 or to withdraw political status from republican prisoners of war in 1976.

It would seem from Livingstone's conspiracy theories that MI5 not only dictated the actions of Wilson's government but still calls the shots today. Why else would the Labour Party have sided with Thatcher when she murdered 10 hungerstrikers in 1981, or joined in the cheering in the house of commons after the SAS gunned down three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar?

The more I thought about Livingstone's conspiracy theory the more angry 1 became. Apart from insulting my intelligence, Livingstone disingenuously whitewashed Labour's complicity in suppressing the Irish people. There was never a need for MI5 to conspire against any Labour government when it came to Ireland: Labour's commitment to the British state has ensured that it has acted like the Tories when faced with the resistance of the Irish people. In fact the entire British establishment (including Labour politicians) are united in their pursuit of Britain's war effort in Ireland. Livingstone is misleading the public when he talks of conspiracies keeping Britain in Ireland. The only conspiracy that exists in this context is the one Livingstone is engaged in—a cynical attempt to jump on the Irish bandwagon to get votes for a party which has consistently revealed itself to be as much an enemy of the Irish people as the Tories or MI5.

Ivy Hardcastle Stoke Newington thing. 7

TORIES PLAYING WITH FIRE?

THE recent scare stories about an IRA unit operating in Britain are almost impossible to take seriously.

While I can see how effectively the Tories (with a great deal of help from their house-trained media backers) have been able to use this, particularly in whipping up anti- Irish prejudices and diverting attention from some political difficulties they are experiencing, I'm slightly puzzled by the whole I (and many of the people with whom I work) have found it increasingly difficult to take the socalled 'discoveries' of explosives or hit-lists seriously. A chance discovery of an arms and explosives cache by a man gathering leafmould for his garden was paraded as proof that an IRA cell was about to plant a bomb at a Conservative conference which nobody knew about in nearby Scarborough. The same incredulity with respect to the hit-list: the police only saw fit to divulge this information (note that once again this was 'discovered by some building workers, presumably looking for dry rot) after the Scarborough affair-even though the police had raided the flat and torn it apart last December. All this would appear to add up to one big Reading lie on the part of the government.

David Rourke Yet if it was just hype and hysteria, was it not a potentially embarrassing and dangerous ploy?

Hype or truth, these revelations are an embarrassment to the government. The fact that chance discoveries have supposedly kept us safe in our beds at night does not throw a particularly positive light on Her Majesty's armed forces. Indeed, the presence of the so-called IRA unit (I'm not sure how many are now operating in Britain) is again a major embarrassment for the Iron Lady who has staked her kingdom on wiping out the IRA Surely this embarrassment is also dangerous for Thatcher as it highlights the government's incompetence and vulnerability.

Initially, I thought their response to the Scarborough discovery was verging on the hysterical side. For a government which has staked its reputation on dealing a death blow to Irish 'terrorists', admitting that one or four IRA units are running around the mainland with apparent impunity surely highlights how they have failed to deliver. Does it not lead people to question even more about what they claim they are doing in Ireland itself? Mary Whyte

LETTERS

UGLAS

AYATOLLAH

HOGG?

WHEN Ayatollah Khomeini offered a reward to Muslims to dispose of Salman Rushdie, the British government and media were quick to condemn this behaviour as contrary to the principles of Western civilisation. If the establishment were honest, their criticism of Khomeini should have been that offering financial incentives was not the correct way to go about it. Unlike Khomeini, the British government are masters at successfully fingering their opponents and having them wiped out as a result. The case of Irish solicitor Patrick Finucane who was murdered by a Loyalist death squad in February this year is a good case in point.

Remember the sequence of events.

Three weeks before Finucane was killed, Tory home office minister

HOGC

Douglas Hogg signed Finucane's death warrant when he said that some Northern Ireland lawyers were 'unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA. Finucane, who had already been targeted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary as a troublemaker was duly assassinated by Crownbacked Loyalist paramilitary killers.

Patrick Finucane became an embarrassment to the British government because he threatened to expose the legal system for what it is—in the words of British counter-insurgency expert General Frank Kitson: 'A propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public.' Because he threatened to blow the cover on this system of injustice (his latest success was in winning a fresh inquest into the Armagh shoot-tokill cases and was set to represent Sinn Fein in its current bid to win a judicial review of the British broadcasting ban on interviews with republicans), Finucane became another unwanted member of the public. And those whom the law does not dispose of can always be got out of the way by Loyalist assassins acting on the word of British warlords like Douglas Hogg.

Patrick McGreggor Glasgow THE outcome of the Carl coming up soon. Pandora Andersor 8

GUILDFORD 4

Bridgewater appeal which ended with the original sentences being upheld has made me pessimistic about the chances of the Guildford Four whose judicial review is The Carl Bridgewater case is so obviously a frame-up. But the inability or unwillingness of the establishment to admit that the wrong men are in prison for killing paper boy Carl Bridgewater does not bode well for the Guildford Four. The Carl Bridgewater case is non-political—a million miles removed from Northern Ireland. It seems that even in this case, the government will never concede that rulers. their law courts could possibly incarcerate innocent people. When it comes to Ireland, this is even more the case; any concession on this or, for example, on the Birmingham Six, would immediately raise more embarrassing facts about British law and order in Ireland and perhaps in Britain itself.

Cases like the Guildford Four were perhaps seen years ago as being peculiar, that is, specific to the Irish question. Many people went along with the conviction of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. The government clearly got away with appeals to anti-Irish prejudice and was able to gain support for convictions which branded innocent Irish people as criminals. But in the recent years this same tactic has been used in areas other than Ireland; the Broadwater Farm convictions are the best example. The fact that the Carl Bridgewater appeal failed indicates to me that the establishment will go to any lengths now to uphold the so-called legitimacy of the judicial system. At a time when repression in Britain is becoming more open and civil liberties are being eroded, maintaining the myth of the infallibility of the judiciary has become a major concern for our The implications of the Bridgewater case are far-reaching It would indicate that appealing to the state, even gaining the support of some maverick sections of the state machine (like the house of lords) will not make the slightest bit of difference to the eventual outcome. The lords or the church are all part of the same system —the system which has criminalised Irish people and incarcerated hundreds of innocent men and women. The point we should keep in mind is that the Irish struggle represents a threat not just to some sections of the British establishment, but every part of it and that is why they will close ranks and refuse to budge.

lain Collins North London

YEARS OF RESISTANCE

TWENTY

WHICH WAY

FOR IRISH

SOLIDARITY?

ДОЛУ

RISH

"FREEDOM

MOVEMENT

NO P

YORE BLO

August 1989 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Labour government's decision to send British troops into Ireland. Two events have been called during August to commemorate this anniversary: the annual anti-internment demonstration on 5 August organised by the Irish Freedom Movement and the Labour Party-sponsored Time to go' festival a week later. Charles Longford argues that the two events symbolise two different approaches to the question of Irish liberation To many people involved in, or sympathetic to, the building of an Irish solidarity movement in this country, the fact that the twentieth anniversary of the Irish War seems set to be commemorated with division is a cause for legitimate concern and anger. However, the real problem is not that two marches are being organised, nor that these events are taking place on different Saturdays, but that the two demonstrations are marching in opposite political directions. The Irish Freedom Movement march is being organised behind the basic demands of Irish solidarity work: Troops out now' and 'Self-determination for the Irish people; the "Time to go' festival is not.

The 'Time to go' campaign was initiated last year by a small group of Labour left wingers to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Labour government's decision to send the troops into Ireland. Launching the charter in June, former Labour frontbencher Clare Short explained its aims: *Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of British troops being sent to Northern Ireland to suppress the brutal local response to the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. It is important that we should mark this anniversary and reflect on what, if anything, has been achieved in that time.' (Tribune, 24 June 1988) It is important to begin any discussion on the past 20 years of the Irish War, and how we should commemorate this anniversary, by clarifying why the British government sent in

TWENTY YEARS OF RESISTANCE

the troops in the first place. Labour premier Harold Wilson ordered the invasion not, as Short believes, to crush Loyalist reaction against the civil rights movement, but to contain nationalist resistance. Loyalists had launched pogroms against the nationalist ghettos in the Six Counties on several occasions since the partition of Ireland in 1921, without British troops being sent in to protect the Catholic population. But by 1969 the revolt of the nationalist people against the sectarian state had reached such proportions that it threatened British rule itself. From the first, Labour ministers admitted that their aim was to defend the status quo, not the Catholic community. James Callaghan, the then home secretary, put it straight during a trip to Belfast at the end of August 1969: *The Border will remain... That is as flat and and any as unequivocal as 1 can make it, policies that are pursued derive from that beginning' Not surprisingly, Labour's decision to send in the troops won unequivocal support from the Tory opposition: any policy which began from protecting the Border, and thus defending the sectarian state of Ulster which Britain had built behind it, could only operate at the nationalists' expense. Every British initiative in Ireland during the past two decades has had the same starting point. What has been achieved by 20 years of British occupation? 'Time to go' describes them as *20 wasted years", as if British governments could have been doing something more constructive with their time. From the point of view of the imperialist British state, however, quite a lot has been achieved in Ireland since 1969. It has succeeded in preventing the nationalist revolt from ousting the occupation forces and ending British domination over Ireland. The British establishment has thus staved off the break-up of the United Kingdom' and the consequent catastrophic loss of authority of the British state itself.

The Labour Party has made a substantial contribution to this project. Not only did Labour send in the troops in 1969, it has loyally supported every aspect of British military strategy ever since. It backed the introduction of internment without trial in 1971, and itself introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974. A Labour government withdrew political status from republican prisoners of war in 1976, and the Labour opposition stood by while Thatcher forced 10 hunger-strikers to death in 1981 in the struggle to regain it. Labour introduced SAS shoot-to-kill squads to Ireland in the seventies, and has since supported their deployment from South Armagh to Gibraltar.

*Time to go' supporters wish to ignore the reality of the Irish War and the odious role played in it by the party of which they remain a part. It is not simply the chauvinist contempt go displays by characterising Time to as 'wasted' the heroic resistance of the Irish people to British imperialism, which warrants criticism. What is even more serious is their 10 belief that the British state could have acted differently over the past 20 years. Short, and her supporters on the Labour left, aim to appeal to the war weariness of the British middle class public establishment and to opinion to try and change British policy. Not only is this a futile project—it also disarms any real opposition at home to the war.

Despite the tremendous, and mounting, costs of prosecuting the war, the British establishment has never seriously contemplated withdrawal. Enforcing the oppression of the nationalist people of the Six Counties has cost over 400 soldiers' lives, billions of pounds and the loss of international prestige that has resulted from the repeated exposure of the injustice, discrimination, torture and terror inflicted by the British authorities. The British establishment has been willing to suffer this because it has no choice about it. The unwavering commitment of the British government to the continuing occupation of Ireland reflects its fundamental understanding of the mortal threat that the Irish national struggle represents to the British state itself.

For 20 years the left has been quoting opinion polls which supposedly show the strength of popular sentiment for withdrawal.

There is no doubt that most British people are sick of seeing television reports of bombings and shootings, and sympathetic towards any attempt to achieve a peaceful solution.

But throughout the Irish War such general aspirations for peace have had little consequence when, on every day-to-day issue in the conflict, the establishment has succeeded in rallying British opinion against IRA terrorists' and in support of the British 'security forces'.

TWENTY YEARS OF RESISTANCE

British politicians and the media have consistently succeeded in polarising opinion over here between the vast majority who support the British forces and a small minority who back the struggle for national liberation.

The "Time to go' initiative is the latest in a long line of British left campaigns on Ireland which have attempted to get around the polarisation of public opinion on the war by appealing to some supposed middle ground.

The problem with this approach is that there is no such middle ground. The Irish War involves two irreconcilable positions-either Ireland is free, or it remains under British rule.

The Time to go' organisers hope that a combination of celebrity sponsors, a concert featuring big-name rock bands, an amble through north London and an anticipated sudden upsurge in popular war weariness will transform two decades of public hostility and indifference and rally the masses to the cause of withdrawal. If attending a pop concert is going to result in peace in Ireland then somebody would have organised one a long time ago.

After 20 years, 'Time to go' still cannot grasp that, because the stakes are so high for the British state in Ireland, the Irish liberation struggle can never attract the sort of casual liberal sympathy that allows the Anti- Apartheid Movement to mobilise tens of thousands without great effort.

A mass movement can be won to the cause of Irish freedom only though a campaign that sets out to appeal to working class solidarity with the threat posed by the Irish republican movement to the British state. But instead of popularising the resistance of the Irish people and showing the common interest working class people have in siding with them against their common enemy, the British state, Time to go places its faith in the British state itself, looking towards a time when it can act as a progressive force in Ireland and reverse the past '20 wasted years'. This approach has not worked in the past 20 years; why should it work now? The Irish Freedom Movement, on the other hand, stands with the Irish people against the British state. For us, the British state is the problem and has no progressive role to play in Ireland. Thus, unlike 'Time to go', our banners will declare our support for Irish selfdetermination and for the immediate withdrawal of British troops. The two events in August represent the difference between building a working class campaign in solidarity with the Irish struggle and creating a pressure group to appeal to the better nature of the British state. There is also a darker, sectarian edge to the 'Time to go' campaign. In an interview at the time of the launch, Short indicated that one of the concerns of the Labour campaign was to 'draw new supporters for Britain's withdrawal, to avoid leaving it to the far left with everyone feeling paralysed' (Independent, 25 June 1988).

Short's acknowledgement of the paralysis of the Labour left on the Irish issue was a welcome, if brief, moment of honesty. The simple fact that has increasingly alarmed the Labour Party over the past few years is that the only organisation that has mobilised 'new supporters, particularly young people, to the cause of British withdrawal has been the Irish Freedom Movement. Since 1985 the IFM has organised the annual August commemoration of the introduction of internment and turned it into one of the major

ME TO CO!

randora Andersor Clare Short 11 events in the Irish solidarity calendar. For the past five years, this march has been the only summer demonstration on Ireland and has achieved widespread sponsorship from trade union branches, Labour Party wards, Labour councillors and solidarity organisations.

Imagine our surprise, therefore, when, at the launch of "Time to go', Labour Party supporters unilaterally declared their intention of taking over the August demonstration this year. The IFM has always taken the view that the cause of Irish solidarity cannot be the property of any organisation. We have readily cooperated with other groups in organising pickets, demonstrations and other events. In recognising the importance of this anniversary year, we wrote to the Troops Out Movement, the Labour Committee on Ireland and the Irish in Britain Representation Group as early as May of last year seeking a meeting to discuss the basis for a joint August demonstration. We received no reply. Instead, a meeting to discuss the August events was finally convened on 9 March this year. IF supporters at this meeting suggested that a minimum basis for a joint event would be that it was called on the basis of a 'British withdrawal' with everyone having the right to produce their own independent publicity material. This was rejected by a faction of the Labour Committe on Ireland and the Socialist Workers Party. They insisted on 'Time to go' as the slogan and even rejected inclusion of the right of the Irish people to self-determination.

So closed were the organisers to any discussion of a genuine broad-based march that they distributed, at this the first open' mobilising committee, draft motions at the beginning of the meeting calling for sponsorship for the demonstration called by "Time to go"!

It is unfortunate and unforgivable that Labour left wingers are squandering the potential of the twentieth anniversary through their sectarian manoeuvrings. Their whole project has been torn by internal factional squabbling and personality clashes which have long dogged Irish solidarity work in Britain. It is particularly ironic that a faction of the party which sent in the troops in 1969 should have the gall to try to monopolise the struggle to get them out 20 years later. What has become clear is that the "Time to go' initiative is not an event which aims to mobilise and activate a new layer of antiimperialists. Instead, it has become a cynical manoeuvre to sabotage any real solidarity work. We should give it short shrift.

For the Irish Freedom Movement, August 1989 represents an opportunity to salute the resistance of the Irish people, not to advise the British imperialist state on how to conduct itself in Ireland. It is also a time to renew our commitment to building the kind of movement that has been far too small over the past 20 years: a solidarity movement which sides unequivocally with the Irish people against the common enemy-the British state and its apologists.

REVIEWS

Michael Farrell (ed), Twenty Years On, Brandon, £4.95 On 5 October 1968 a 400-strong civil rights march in Derry was brutally attacked by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. If it is possible to choose one date to mark the beginning of the struggle for Irish liberation, then this is as good as any and better than most.

Twenty Years On is a collection of nine articles by people who were involved in the events of that time.

Many are familiar names: Gerry Adams, Geoffrey Bell, Michael Farrell, Bernadette (Devlin) McAliskey. The essays are strongest at the level of anecdote. They help give today's generation of activists a good feel for the energy, enthusiasm, courage and commitment which motivated the challenge to the Unionist regime.

Just read Bernadette McAliskey's account of how, as an MP, she listened as Tory home secretary Reginald Maudling lied through his teeth' about the murders of Bloody Sunday in 1972; then she crossed the floor of the house of commons and thumped him between those same lying teeth. The collection also gives a good idea of the political confusion which afflicted the civil rights struggle in the sixties. The demands were moderate and modest. No one called The law and the Irish War

INHERENT INJUSTICE

Anthony Jennings (ed), Justice Under Fire: The Abuse of Civil Liberties in Northern Ireland, Pluto Press, £22.50 Barrister Anthony Jennings has done a valuable service in assembling, in Justice Under Fire, a detailed picture of the erosion of civil liberties in Northern Ireland.

The academic and practising lawyers who contribute to this volume document the emergency powers of arrest and interrogation, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the supergrass system, the Diplock nojury courts and the judicial sanction of shoot-to-kill and plastic bullets.

Events overtook the book. In the Ireland 20 years on for a united Ireland. Most laughed when a tricolour was produced on an early march. The old IRA of Cathal Goulding and Thomas MacGiolla, which helped set up the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1967, opposed raising the national question as a diversion from its aim of democratising the Six-County state. week following publication the government announced the ban on broadcasting interviews with Sinn Fein, and then the abolition of the right to silence. All the evidence collected here exposes the true character of British justice in Ireland as legalised repression. The contributors recount how Army and police executions have been excused and even praised in the Diplock courts, how trials have been calculated acts of political victimisation, how uniformed brutality has been sanctioned by law at every turn. The cumulative impression is of a systematic application of terror rather than any arbitrary series of legal abuses. As lecturer Paddy Hillyard puts it, 'no sooner has one

WHEN THE LAUGHING STOPPED

implement the most basic baulk at that suggestion.

12 Despite the conservative influence of NICRA and the innocence of the youthful marchers, the violent official reaction to the 5 October march brought the constitutional question to the fore. The British state made it clear that it could not democratic rights for the oppressed Catholic community. It was not long abuse been stopped than another springs up in its place. The facts suggest that the state itself, rather than the corruption of its individual agents, is the problem. Having made out a case which points in this direction, however, the authors Jennings says in the introduction that it is 'naive to greet abuses of personal freedom with cant calls for the abolition of an illegal state'. But it is surely naive in the extreme to believe that anything short of the abolition of the sectarian state will protect the personal freedom of nationalists in Northern Ireland. Of course it is necessary to protest against any attack on civil liberties; but to be effective, each protest must be linked to the struggle against the colonial state itself.

Unfortunately the contributors lack a clear understanding of what the 'rule of law' to which they often refer is all about. Jennings sees British practice as 'an insult to the very concept of the rule of law. Even in an advanced capitalist society like Britain, legal rights only disguise before nationalists drew the obvious conclusions, elevating an end to partition into a permanent demand, and the Provisional IRA into a popular guerrilla army. Some of the contributors look back now with more nostalgia than determination, and appear to have forgotten the lessons that were learnt at such cost over the past 20 years. This will no doubt make them popular among those contemporary British commentators who wish the liberation war could turn back into a non-violent protest movement. In Britain, we would do better to heed the advice given to English communists in the early twenties, with which Geoffrey Bell ends his piece here. They were complaining that British workers would regard support for anti-British revolts in Ireland as 'treason'. The leaders of the Communist International in Petrograd replied: 'It must be said that the faster English workers learn to commit such treason, the better it will be for the revolutionary movement: Phil Murphy social inequalities. But a colonial power such as Britain cannot uphold the most formal legal neutrality in a police state like Northern Ireland.

Professionals who are deeply involved in the legal system may have trouble seeing the wood for the trees (or the war for the law). But we should be clear that the law in the Six Counties is only another expression of the oppressive relationship between the British state and the nationalist community.

At the very start of the book, Jennings quotes General Frank Kitson's infamous remark that British law in Ireland is little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public'. That is not the ranting of a criminal psychopath; it is the truth.

In policing Irish nationalists who do not consent to its rule, British law can only mean Gibraltars and bans.

We should use the many priceless examples of legalised repression included in this book to expose the facts about the British state's role in Ireland, not to demand that the authorities play by the rules they pretend to uphold. Pat Ford

THREE MONTHS IN THE IRISH WAR

* Sunday 1 January: Rosie Waterhouse, a former journalist with the Sunday Times Insight team, criticises the Sunday Times editorial staff for deliberately distorting interviews she conducted with witnesses to the Gibraltar assassinations.

* Friday 6 January: Plans are announced to introduce satellite technology to harmonise extradition procedures after the Father Patrick Ryan affair. * Thursday 12 January: James McGovern is awarded £3000 for wrongful arrest after being arrested by the RUC in 1982 on the day he was to give evidence against a police officer in the Irish Republic. * Sunday 15 January: A former RUC reservist, Harry Keyes, is shot dead by the IRA at Ballintra, Co Donegal. Police in the Irish Republic uncover an arms and ammunition cache near Kilkenny, 70 miles south of Dublin, which includes 12 Kalashnikov rifles, 47 magazines and 1400 rounds of ammunition. * Tuesday 17 January: Home secretary Douglas Hurd refers back to the appeal court the case of the Guildford Four, convicted of the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings in 1974.

* Thursday 19 January: Ian Catney, cousin of Kevin McQuillen, who is the spokesman for the Irish Republican Socialist Party, dies when two youths walk into his mother's shop in the Smithfield market and shoot him twice in the head.

* Friday 20 January: The inquiry into the TV documentary Death on the Rock by Lord Windlesham and Richard Rampton QC concludes that the programme did not offend against the due impartiality requirements of the IBA and the Broadcasting Act. * Tuesday 24 January: Senior IRA sources announce in Belfast that an active service unit in West Fermanagh is to be disbanded and disarmed.

* Wednesday 25 January: A Protestant building worker is shot dead in Lisburn as he works on a mechanical digger. David Dornan is believed to have been the victim of a Loyalist grudge killing.

* Thursday 26 January: The government voices its profound disagreement with Lord Windlesham's report on Death on the Rock. It continues to insist that the programme contained damaging inaccuracies prejudicial to last September's inquest. * Friday 27 January: Two RUC officers are badly injured in an explosion at Sion Mills, Co Tyrone. * Sunday 29 January: At the annual Ard Fheis, Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness call upon the IRA to avoid civilian casualties. At the same time they affirm their support for the armed struggle against British Crown forces and Loyalist paramilitaries and announce Sinn Fein's desire to establish a broad political front against British imperialism.

* Wednesday 1 February: One soldier is seriously injured when a joint Army and RUC foot patrol is caught in a bomb explosion as it passes a Belfast pub shortly before midnight.

* Tuesday 7 February: The IRA arnounces that James Connolly, who died on Sunday 5 February when a bomb he was attempting to place under a police reservist's van exploded, was one of its members. * Wednesday 8 February: 20 members of one family are forced to leave the Six Counties amid threats that they would be punished for anti-social behaviour. The Valliday family had been asked to leave by local residents and this was supported by * Thursday 9 February: The UVF claims * Sunday 12 February: Patrick Finucane, a office minister Douglas Hogg fingered him by 'unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA.

* Monday 13 February: Kevin McNamara, Labour spokesman on Northern Ireland, says but goes on to state that there was no direct connection between Hogg's statement and shot dead by Loyalist assassins as he enters the driveway outside his home.

* Thursday 16 February: The Irish People's * Monday 20 February: The IRA bombs the the Parachute regiment. The two IRA men are surprised by a sentry who alerts 50 sleeping soldiers, thus averting casualties.

The trial opens in Belfast of Michael Stone, charged with killing three mourners at Milltown cemetery during an attack on the funeral of the three IRA volunteers assassinated in Gibraltar.

* Wednesday 22 February: A British soldier driving an empty school bus is shot dead by the * Thursday 23 February: It is announced that 13

WAR DIARY

January-March 1989 responsibility for shooting a Catholic man in the leading Belfast solicitor, is assassinated by Loyalist gunmen. This comes three weeks after Tory home of Semtex. declaring that some Northern Ireland lawyers were Co Tyrone. Douglas Hogg's words were dangerous and foolish, * Tuesday 14 February: John Joe Davey, Sinn Fein councillor on Magherafelt district council, is Liberation Organisation claims responsibility for a gun attack on a Loyalist bar on the Shankill Road Shropshire headquarters of the second battalion of Hugh Annesley is to succeed John Hermon as head Colm O'Hanion * Sunday 26 February: The IRA shoots an Joseph Fenton in West Belfast whom it describ a British agent. 20lbs of Semtex explosive are discovered in a sewage treatment plant in Stoke Newington, north London, during a routine maintenance check.

In East Belfast, Gabriel Mulally, a former RUC inspector, is killed by an IRA bomb.

* Friday 3 March: Michael Stone receives six concurrent life sentences at Belfast crown court.

* Monday 6 March: The families of the Gibraltar Three announce they are to sue the British government for unlawful killing in a civil action North Yorkshire police announce the discovery of Semtex explosives, guns and ammunition in scrubland near Scarborough. Police speculate that the explosives were to be used in another attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher who was to address a Tory local government conference in Scarborough on 17 March. * Tuesday 7 March: The IRA kills three men during an attack on a garage in Coagh, Co Tyrone.

Their statement says that the garage is a UVF stronghold and has been used to plan sectarian killings which have increased in the area.

* Wednesday 8 March: Two British soldiers are killed and six others seriously injured when an IRA landmine explodes beside two army landrovers on Home secretary Douglas Hurd, speaking on BBC radio, states that a political solution is unsuitable for coping with the IRA. He asserts that the IRA will have to be 'extirpated".

* Thursday 9 March: Jim McCartney, a security guard at the Orient Bar in Springfield Road, West Belfast, is shot dead by a Loyalist gunman.

* Sunday 12 March: Scotland Yard announces the discovery in a Clapham flat of a hit-list featuring over 100 prominent politicians, military personnel and judges, three months after the police first raided the flat and discovered a consignment * Tuesday 14 March: A part-time member of the UDR is shot dead by the IRA in Dungannon, The Spanish government honours 22 policemen involved in the surveillance that preceded the shooting of three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar * Wednesday 15 March: 18 RUC officers are reprimanded for their part in the shooting of six unarmed men in County Armagh in 1982 after disciplinary hearings lasting two days.

* Thursday 16 March: The high court in Dublin rejects appeals by Owen Carron, the former MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone who is facing firearms charges, and Paul Kane, a Maze prison escapee, against their threatened extradition.

The IRA claims responsibility for the killing of Jackie Irvine, a prominent member of the UVF.

* Sunday 19 March: David Braniff, a Catholic aged 63, is shot dead by Loyalists at his home in * Monday 20 March: Two senior RUC officers are shot dead by the IRA on the border of Co Armagh as they return from a meeting with their Southern counterparts in Dundalk.

* Friday 24 March: The Thames Television documentary Death on the Rock receives its second award within a week. The Broadcasting Guild rates it the best single documentary. This followed an award at the Bafta ceremony earlier in the week.

THE ANNIVERSARY OF INTERNMENT

WHY WE MARCH IN AUGUST

The London march organised by the Irish Freedom Movement always takes place on the nearest Saturday to 9 August. That was the day in 1971 when the British authorities introduced internment without trial in Northern Ireland. It is still remembered as a turning point in the Irish War. Internment without trial marked a new high-point in the repressive campaign which Britain had been running since the troops went back on to Irish streets in 1969. Over the previous two years, Irish nationalists had turned increasingly against the British security forces. A catalogue of harassment, beatings and shootings had taught many Irish people that the troops were not friendly peace-keepers, but part of an army of occupation.

April 1970 brought the first significant clash between nationalists and British troops, in Belfast's Ballymurphy estate. It was a signal that from then on Molotov cocktails, rather than tea, would be the only refreshment the Irish handed out to the occupying British forces. Britain's General Freeland caused a stir by threatening to shoot petrol bombers on But Labour home secretary James sight. Callaghan backed him, recognising at once that the Army's 'honeymoon period' was over.

As the resistance on the streets and support for the IRA grew, the British authorities and their allies at Stormont Castle decided that more drastic measures were needed to keep Northern Ireland under control. They turned to internment without trial as the answer.

Internment involved rounding up anybody suspected of republican sympathies and throwing them into concentration camps, without the niceties of charge or trial. The Unionist regime had used it against nationalists at least once in every decade since Britain created the sectarian state of Ulster by partitioning Ireland in 1921. Fifty years later, on 9 August 1971, the orders went out again for the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary to intern the enemies of the Crown.

That first day, 342 people were dragged from their beds or off the streets and interned in cages or on a floating prison hulk. Over the next four years, around 2500 Irish people were to follow them into the unheated huts of Long Kesh concentration camp, surrounded by barbed wire. Internees were subjected to brutal physical and psychological torture. Fourteen of the first victims were singled out for 'experiments' into the effectiveness of the five techniques of sensory deprivation thought up by sadistic British boffins. They were hooded, made to stand spreadeagled against walls for hours, denied sleep, given little food or water irregularly and subjected to constant white noise. Most were never the same men again afterwards. Others were hooded and thrown out of helicopters flying a few feet off the ground, having been told they were flying high over Belfast. Those nationalists left outside the camps in 1971 suffered too. As a British declaration of war against the nationalist community, internment was an official invitation for the Loyalist murder gangs to get out their guns and bombs and go hunting for 'Fenians". Within a day of its announcement 12 people had been killed.

Many Catholic families were driven from their homes by threats and fire.

The introduction of internment, a device British people usually associate with struggles in Africa or Asia, amounted to an admission that Britain was fighting a colonial war in Ireland. But it did nothing to help Whitehall win the war. It failed to capture most active republicans. The poor information provided by the RUC meant that most of those interned had nothing to do with the IRA.

Even more importantly, internment created many more active republicans. The fierce indignation of the nationalist community was reflected in determined resistance to the British.

Nationalist women organised a mass rent strike, while recruits queued to join the IRA.

The introduction of internment without trial brought the war over Ireland's destiny out into 14 the open. It nailed the lie that Britain was a force for progress in Ireland, and unleashed the popular struggle for Irish unity, and independence which has been raging ever since.

When internment caused an eruption of violence across Northern Ireland, the British opted for still harsher measures. The result was Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972, when paratroopers shot dead 14 unarmed Irishmen on an anti-internment demonstration in Derry.

It was a short step from Bloody Sunday to the abolition of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule from Westminster, further confirmation that Ireland was still a British colony which could only be ruled by imperial force.

Internment was phased out by the last Labour government in the seventies, and it may yet be that the eighties will be the first decade when it does not appear in Northern Ireland. If so, it is only because the British authorities have found a more useful method of caging Irish republicans. Under Labour, they developed a 'conveyor belt' system of justice involving torture, forced 'confessions' and showtrials in no-jury courts. This was supplemented in the early eighties by the widespread use of supergrasses or paid perjurers, whose word (usually put into their mouths by the police) was enough to jail dozens of Irish people at a time. The withdrawal of the right to silence is only the latest device by which more nationalists will be convicted and sent to prison.

Today, Britain may brand those held for supporting Irish freedom as criminals rather than internees, and send them to HM Prison the Maze rather than Long Kesh, where most of the cages have been replaced by the infamous H-Blocks. But the reality remains much the same. They are prisoners of war, whose only crime was to fight for the freedom of their nation from British imperialism. There are still over 500 such Irish men and women held in inhuman conditions in these islands. We want them out. The 5 August march organised by the Irish Freedom Movement has been called to remember the injustices of internment without trial, but also to declare our support, especially on the twentieth anniversary of British troops being sent to Ireland, for all those struggling to end Britain's concentration camp law in Ireland.

The demands for Troops out of Ireland!

Prisoners out of jail!' are ones which anybody who believes in real freedom must support.

And the place to show that support is on the internment commemoration march in north London on Saturday 5 August.

Mick Flynn

JOIN THE BIG DEMONSTRATION!

IRISH FREEDOM:

REE

The annual anti-internment August demonstration is now widely recognised as the most important event in Britain marking the anniversaries of the British invasion in August 1969 and the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971. It is organised by the IFM and attracts support from other Irish, labour movement and left-wing organisations. Over the four years we have organised this event, the size and backing for the commemoration has steadily increased. Last year's demonstration was the biggest.

Well over 3000 people marched on the streets of London, led by the rousing sound of the Crossmaglen Patriots flute band from Glasgow.

It served to remind the British authorities that

SPONSOR THE

ANTI-INTERNMENT MARCH

This union notes: 1 That 1989 marks the twentieth anniversary of the redeployment of British troops on to the streets of Northern Ireland; 2 The continued military occupation of Northern Ireland by a force of nearly 30 000—including British soldiers, paramilitary police, SAS and auxiliaries; 3 The deaths of more than 2600 people during these 20 years of colonial war; 4 The armoury of British occupation which includes emergency legislation, no-jury courts, media censorship, mass surveillance and shoot-to-kill squads.

speak out for freedom over there.

to make it even bigger and better.

This union believes: 1 That the war in Ireland is a result of Britain's denial of political independence to Ireland as a whole; 2 That Britain can play no progressive role in Ireland; 3 That the only way to bring peace to Ireland is to support the right of the Irish people to national self-determination and to campaign for the immediate withdrawal of British troops. This union resolves: 1 To campaign for "Troops out now' and *Self-determination for the Irish people; 2 To support the anti-imperialist events called during this twentieth anniversary year: 15 there are those over here who will stand up and Last year's success was even more of a victory than in previous years. The march took place a week after the bombing of the Mill Hill barracks. Despite an orchestrated attack by the gutter press, Tory politicians who called for the march to be banned, right-wing thugs and the police, the march went ahead and was the biggest and liveliest ever. This year we aim We ask all supporting organisations to bring their banners on the march and to pass the motion below sponsoring this event. If you are a member of a trade union or the Labour Party or are a student, raise this motion and sponsor Birmingham Pandora Anderson the demonstration. Invite an IFM speaker to address your next meeting. Copies of the motion and speakers can be easily arranged.

Phone Charles Longford on (01) 375 1702 or write to IFM, BM IFM, London WCIN 3XX.

MARCH

Saturday 5 August Assemble Islington Town Hall (rear), 1pm 6 May Birmingham Hunger Strike Committee commemoration march, 7 May Wolfe Tone Society, James Connolly/ Bobby Sands commemoration, Conway Hall, London 4 June Michael Gaughan memorial picket, Parkhurst prison, Isle of Wight, called by the Irish Republican POW Campaign 5 August Anti-internment anniversary demonstration, north London, called by the Irish Freedom Movement 8 October Noel Jenkins/Sean O'Connell memorial picket, Leicester prison, called by the Irish Republican POW campaign 3 To forward this resolution to its regional and national bodies and conferences.

Do you want to know more about Ireland?

Do you want to know more about the impact of Ireland on British politics?

Then you should attend Preparing for Power, the summer school of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Every year the Irish Freedom Movement has run a specialist course on Ireland at this annual week-long Friday 21-Friday 28 July 1989, University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1 event. This year will be different. For the first time, as a result of the large attendance at the Irish course in previous years, the IFM will be convening two courses: An REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY SUMMER SCHOOL introduction to the Irish War and The Irish War for non-beginners. PREPORNG FOR POWER An introduction to the Irish War aims to cut through the lies and distortions of the British propaganda machine and will provide a clear understanding of why the Irish struggle for self-determination remains the biggest challenge to the power of the British establishment and the integrity of the state. The sessions will cover: The meaning of partition Loyalism: myth and reality The strange case of Southern Ireland The IRA British workers and Irish freedom The Irish War for non-beginners is designed for those people who attended the introductory sessions last year and for those who have already studied the subject. The sessions will cover: Marx on Ireland The Irish crisis in Britain last time Ireland's civil war Church and state in Ireland Ireland and the British revolution Both courses run over five days; the course for nonbeginners in the morning, the introductory sessions in the afternoon. These two Irish courses are just two of 16 five-day specialist courses which will cover a wide range of subjects from An introduction to Marxism to The French Revolution and its legacy; from Marxism and the environment to Women's oppression and liberation; from Marxism and culture to The Soviet Union in the glasnost era. In addition to the Irish specialist courses there will many other Irish workshops covering subjects like James Joyce and Irish literature, Women in Ireland, Kitson and counter-insurgency, James Connolly and 1916, Charles Haughey, Stalinism in Ireland and many more. Many of these workshops will be introduced by speakers from Ireland. Creche facilities are available as well as a number of evening entertainment events.

SIGN UP NOW!

If you want to come to the Irish courses at Preparing for Power fill in the cut-off form below and send to IFM, BM IFM, London WC1N 3XX. Make cheques payable to RCP Association. Your Preparing for Power ticket will be sent to you upon registration.

If you want any further information concerning these and other courses, write to IFM, BM IFM, London WCIN 3XX or phone (01) 375 1702.

(Tick the appropriate box) • I want more information about Preparing for Power I want to register for: Introduction to the Irish War • I want to register for: Ireland for non-beginners (Attendance costs £10 per course) I would like to register for the whole of Preparing for Power Price paid for full week: £28 waged (£25 before 1 June) £18 unwaged (£16 before 1 June) • I enclose a cheque for £ (Make cheques payable to RCP Association) Name Address Postcode Telephone Organisation/trade union Number of children coming Ages.

Send this cut-off slip to IFM(B), BM IFM, London WC1N 3XX