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cipants were over 21, if they lived in England or Wales, and were neither in the Armed Forces nor the Merchant Navy.

It also tightened the law with regard to 'minors' and male importuning.

The definition of 'in private' was absurdly restricted: 'in public' meaning anywhere where a third person was likely to be present. Homosexuality as such was not legalised.

Even these 1967 reforms did not react Scotland until last year and have not reachec Northern Ireland yet.

In the late '60s anc early '70s the gay move ment emerged and deve loped into somethin qualitatively differen from the earlier reforn homosexuals are discriminated against is in employment. It is now, since the John Saunders case, possible for a gay person to lose her/his job simply on the grounds of being homosexual.

The document supports the National Council for Civil Liberties' amendment to the Employment Protection Act.

Other areas mapped out for legal reform are discrimination in housing, services and immigration.

The contribution of the media and the education system to reinforcing the stereotypes of gays is singled out as a block to any rational view of homosexuality. And the role and attitude of the policel in both verbal and physical attacks on gays, as well as covert operations using the various legal changes that could be made. Too often, token acceptance of the so-called civil liberties questions goes by on the nod.

If the labour movement is really to combat the oppression of gay women and men and support them actively in their fight. then gay liberation must become an integral part of the fight for socialism.

* SO supporters should make sure that their Labour Party and trade union branches send for copies of the document, get it discussed, and submit views of the NEC. Copies available from the Labour Party Publication Department, 150 Walworth Rd. SE17: 40p per copy, cheaper in bulk. Ireland six years.

Joe McDonnell is on the point of dying of starvation at Long Kesh, the first of a new squad prepared to die to gain the five demands of the Republican prisoners of war.

Still Thatcher and Atkins dig their heels in: nothing, they say, that 'amounts to' political status can be conceded to the hunger strikers. The installation of the Fine Gael coalition government in Dublin, with Garrett Fitzgerald as prime minister, probably strengthens the resolve of the British government.

Insult

Defeated Fianna Fail prime minister Charles Haughey gave the most loyal support to Thatcher and Atkins: but it was conceivable that he might have made trouble for them. Fitzgerald certainly won't.

Fitzgerald has demanded that the secret two-way discussions of the 26County (Southern) and British governments should be broadened to include representatives from the Northern Six Counties. In this way 26 Counties.

With the help ot the counter-polarisation of the Protestants against the Catholic rallying to the hunger strikers, Paisley and his Democratic Unionist Party have gained a massive growth of support.

Six County politicians may well be right. when they explain Atkins' new 'initiative' as an attempt to find a third corner. The proposal is to set up advisory council consisting of Six County politicians.

Potentially the most important movement is taking place in Britain. Bipartisanship is breaking down, or its political foundations are, though it survives on the level of attitudes and a common agreement against the hunger strikers. Mr Concannon could go to Northern Ireland to insult the dying prisoner-of-war MP Bobby Sands, and tell him emphatically that 'Labour' would never support his demands, but the ground back home has begun to shift under his teet. Whatever the Parliamentary Labour Party thinks, Concannon no longer speaks for The Labour Party study group has called for a long-term commitment to a united Ireland. Which is a very late acknowledgement that no other solution is possible and that the partition of Ireland has been a crime against the Irish people, North and South, Protestant and Catholic, Green and Orange alike.

BuiltEven Michael Foot has said publicly that the solution is a united Ireland. Labour's commitment to the guarantee given to the Orange majority in the artificial Six County this guarantee is the beginning of the abandonment of the lie that there is democratic validity in this artificial state, that the majority within it is a political majority to be accorded the democratic rights of such …a majority. It is the beginning of a recognition that it is a communal majority within an area selected to give the Protestants a built-in majority.

In fact, both Labour and Tory governments have for nine years rejected the Orange appeal for the 'democratic right of the majority' to rule Northern Ireland. Imposing direct rule, in practice therefore they have repudiated the notion of the democratic validity of the Protestant majority. They have, of course, continued to maintain the sub-state which was set up to allow that Protestant majority to exercise control over their own affairs and those of the one-third Catholic minority in their artificially walled-off area of North East Ulster.

Now Labour is moving towards an explicit abandonment of the guarantee and the lie it rested on.

The notion of the demNorthern last der begins to ideologic crumble collapse.

Jim ( for an i Counties ferment, ant syn reflect 1 sections machine.

Withir how wol taken? I - the 0 ists! Aft the Cath The tuent reprodu division: gonisms would 1 there v Catholic empted Protesta that might large sc fears would t move I Six Cou:

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