Scarman right to

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ON April 10th-12th, the state lost control in Brixton. Its response has been twofold - on the one hand it has made hundreds of arrests and continues with dawn raids and arrests connected with the April battle. On the other hand it has set up the Scarman enquiry with the intention of arriving at improved policing methods and also to show the black community and unemployed of Brixton that the state really does case for them in their plight.

Now Barry Finnegan (SO 44) argues for participation in this inquiry.

'his is a purely tactica uestion: will the sell organisation and confiaence of black, unemployed and working people be best served by taking part in the legalistic farce at Lambeth Town Hall, or by building on the break with the traditional subservience to bourgeois law of the British working class?

few in Brixton have any illusions in Scarman, fewer still are prepared to risk police persecution by testifying to the reality of law and order in Brixton.

Not only would we be fighting on ground not of our choosing, but we would be undermining a boycol tactic-which has a high chance of success.

Meanwhile the Inquiry draws attention away from the continuing harassment of the community. Only resocia st

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Solidarity is As Labour Committee on Ireland members marched through Mansfield, support for Concannon was shown habour must back political statesi ...fascist thugs Robinson AS A FIFTH hunger striker, Joe McDonnell, nears his death, the Maze prison has again seen comings and going aimed to end the hunger strike via a compromise.

This time the "Irish to the outgoing Southern Prime Minister Haughey, that he would make no concessions on the prisoners' demands and would only be prepared to introduce general improvements in prison conditions áfter the hunger strike had ended.

Islington Gutter Press presently face death on hunger strike. Our people on the outside have died and more may die.

Talks

"That is why we seek immediate talks with the Meanwhile Joe McDonnell is not expected to live out this week. He has great difficulty in seeing, and when his wife first saw him last Sunday, she thought he was already dead.

There are also another seven hunger strikers nearing death, and they H-Block campaigner Vincent Doherty told Callum McRae about the international effort tr support the hunger strikers WE SEE the fight for political status as central to getting rid of the British presence and fighting the criminalisation policy. So does the British government. Why else would they have allowed four hunger strikers to die?

Fight

They recognise that if they are defeated on the five demands then that would give a new boost of confidence to the fight for independence.

I think there's been a wrong direction adopted on Irish solidarity work in Britain over the past decade. While there has been lip-service paid to an orientation to the labour movement, the solidarity movement in Britain has not begun to get near to the size of solidarity movements that have built up in other countries.

A labour movement orientation is vital. otherwise the left is just talking to itself. I mean a live campaign that brings the labour movement out onto the streets, that doesn't rely on the Parliamentary Labour Party, but bases itself on active members of the Labour Party and trade union branches.

That's the medium-term objective.

There should be a campaign to dump Concannon as the Labour Party's spokesman on Northern Ireland. These people should be forced to take account of what the Labour Party branches and constituencies are saying.

There have been substantial demonstrations in all the major European capitals in support of the prisoners' five demands. The one in Paris when Joe McDonnell: doomed?

Bobby Sands died was 90,000 strong, led by the Communist and Socialist Parties to the British Embassy. The International Longshoremen's Association in the USA blacked British goods for 24 hours after Bobby Sands' death.

There was a particuiarly heart-warming gesture from the French CGT during the first hunger strike. A number of comFrance to address a series of meetings. They • were held by the French equivalent of the Special Branch, who had obviously been tipped off by the Special Branch in Ireland, where they had been held for 19 hours before getting to France.

The CGT at Orly airport was magnificent. They threatened to close down all air traffic if the comrades were not immediately released -and they were released within 20 minutes.

More people throughout the worid than ever before are aware that the Patsy O'Hara: dead British Army does not play the role that the British government has portrayed it as playing. People can see that they are instituting terror and repression through the Army, the RUC and the UDR.

The notion that Britain has no real opponents in the North of Ireland other than cranks and criminals has gone out the window with the election of Bobby Sands in the North and Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew in the Southern General Election.

The international solidarity could well be the straw that breaks the camel's back for Thatcher.

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rades, including a former blanket man, arrived in