London Bombings Turn Anger Against Tories

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SATURDAY 14 NOVEMBER Main Hall, University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology minutes from Piccadilly Station, central Manchester)

Starts 10am. Credentials (four delegates per Joint Shop Stewards Committee, two per other labour movement body), £2 per delegate from W.J Partlan, 15 Lines Road, Droylsden, Manchester. Donations to the Laurence Scott strike fund: to G.Fryer, 20 Roundcroft, MOST British people will be alarmed and angered by the bombs in Oxford St on Monday 26th.

Warnings were given the bombs.

But the planning of the attacks has been such that any mistake - or any lapse of goodwill or competence by the police! - could lead to a terrible massacre of civilians. The Chelsea bombing, predictably and presumably consciously, did kill civilians.

The Republicans, exasperated at British calloustowards Ireland, apparently do not care too ness much about this.

Socialists committed to changing society through the action of the working class, British and Irish, share the general borror felt by British workers at the danger of a massacre of ordinary people on British streets.

Yer the reason why Fort.

=E dess rowits from Belfest 2ac Dent plars borabs I Lazora streess is be Britist free bare planted regain IT seethes specia IDE I DER ITE FER - so secuse de Breast atoned this to happen. - Expressing their exasperation, the Provisional IRA statement on the bombing said, "Let the British people take note that Irish children, the victims of plastic bullets fired by their soldiers, do not have the luxury of receiving warnings. In future when we give warnings, respect them" • So far this year seven people have been killed by plastic bullets in Northern Ireland, and others seriously injured. These were not 'terrorists' - several were children.

A new wave of Protestant sectarian murders has recently started in Northern Ireland. The main Protestant paramilitary gang, the UDA, is legal.

But the daily violence meted out by or condoned by British soldiers and the RUC seldom reaches the beadlines of the popular press in Bribein. Nearly all political leaders - Labour dad Tort aike - maintain repressic de can be 00 ibt mini!

Ere yise is caretail!

Elegic is escre ite se moon as inte as possibie of be tacts ou ise tist socaTo reber demeiopoets of Inse:

Datace Micer, bermees British morkers and class brothers in Ireland.

And the British labour movement has been terribly slow to act on what we do know.:

The 35% Catholic minority has endured decades of repression in the reactionary, sectarian Orange statelet of Northern Ireland.

Their struggles for democratic rights in the late 1960s were met by Protestant sectarian violence and then the dispatch of British troops, who have occupied Northern Ireland for the last twelve years, trying to beat down the rebellion.

After peaceful civil rights marches - demonstrations - the blanket protest and then the hunger strike in H-Block - even parliamentary elections, giving majorities to Bobby Sands and Owen Carron - the leaders of the British labour movement still maintain a united front with the hardfaced Thatcher government. And the rank and file in the labour morement has aux mobilised sufficiently to shift or replace those leaders All estors by Lish Repabbas to corvince and peacetly persuade British pinie inie me: mustly series site ease-s of Refusuca: ain's tactics against the Catholic minority back on Britain. Thatcher aims to bludgeon the Catholics into submission by persistent military force - so the Republicans now set out to bomb Britain sufficiently to numb it into letting go its grip on Ireland.

As socialists we look to the leading role of the working class in the struggle to liberate Ireland from partition and British rule.

We believe that the building of a socialist leadership based on the Irish working class - North and South - is vital to achieve this objective. And we believe it is essential to fight in the British working class for active solidarity with the Irish struggle.

The Oxford St bombings underline the fact that the Republican movement has a very different view of the struggle: its leadership sees the war in purely nationalistic terms and not as a class issue.

But the only way out is to show an alternative path in practice for the justified struggle for Irish freedom - by making international working class solidarity not just words. but actly: That means campaigning 10 ger British troops out of treland. Romilly, Cheshire.

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Socialist Organiser no.59 October 29, 1981 Pag Orga