50 motions on Ireland

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by Bruce Robinson [vice-chair, Labour Committee on Ireland] WHEN Labour Party conference bothers to discuss Ireland, it usually gets an hour's debate on the last morning of conference.

This year will be different. Over 50 CLPs have sent in resolutions on Ireland, the overwhelming majority favouring an end to bipartisanship, a United Ireland, and British withdrawal.

Nine of them support the demands of the prisoners. Only a few have taken up Benn's call for UN troops to replace the Army.

A separate section of the agenda has been given over to Labour Party organisation in Northern Ireland. Nine CLPs, largely inspired by Militant, have sent in resolutions calling for the British Labour Party to put resources into setting up a 'non-sectarian Labour Party based on the trade unions' in Ireland.

But history shows that a labour party which tries to ignore the question of Partition will fail to overcome the divisions between Unionists and nationalists. At the moment there is the shell of a pro-Unionist Labour Party, and a 'Social Democratic & labour Party', without trade union links, which is based almost entirely among Catholics.

The project would widely be seen as another example Few CLPs back Benn's call for UN troops of British medaling in Irish politics.

As these resolutions will presumably be voted on separately from the main policy resolutions, there is a danger that they will be passed with the support of the block votes, even if they are in direct contradiction to the policy passed in the other debate.

CLPs should therefore move amendments to suitable resolutions in the sec tion rejec Labo on policy on Ireland ting this project of a ur Party in N. Ireland.

Status It is also important to get amendments supporting political status onto the agenda. That way we can guarantee that it will be debated, and show to the Republicans that their cause does find support in the ranks of British Labour.

CRA his deputy Patrick Kavanagh.

Hambleton now insists that a statement he signed in 1979 denying obstruction was a lie, and that he only signed it because he thought that if he didn't Countryman would be closed down completely.

QUEEN Victoria is not well known as an advocate of women's liberation, nor would you have thought she had much to feel oppressed about.

But sometimes the barbs of male chauvinism pierce even the softest cushion of privilege. Commenting on the marriage of her eldest daughter to the heir to the German throne, she wrote: "After all, it is like taking a lamb to be sacrificed"

Elsewhere she wrote, "Oh! if those selfish men - who are the cause of all one's misery - only knew what their poor slaves have to go through"

ACCORDING TO the Vatican, the Catholic Church is facing bankruptcy: it might be sitting on billions worth of treasure, but the day-to-day financial flow is running dry, they say.

One of the reasons seems have been huge losses as result of their heavy