The 'Officials' break cover

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FOLLOWING a series of bizarre incidents in Dublin the "Official IRA", which officially went out existence in the mid-70s, has come out of the shadows and into the light of And the three deputies of the Workers Party which evolved from the old political wing of the Official IRA have been given special guards to protect them against possible assassination attempts by the INLA, the military wing associated with the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

The three Workers Party deputies hold the balance in the Dublin parliament and the Haughey government is dependent on their support.

The sequence of events which led to these developments was as follows.

The May issue of the monthly magazine: Magill published an article which proved that the Official IRA had never really ceased to exist but had gone underground. Nor had its links with the Workers Party leaders been severed. The "military wing" was still a weighty and perhaps decisive voice in a the leadership of the Workers Party which presents itself as having broken completely from the typical republican type of organisation in which the more or less conspiratorial "military wing" is the real power and the political groups and parties linked to it so many glove puppets.

Two weeks ago at 2 pm on a Friday afternoon a certain James Flynn was shot three times as he left a public house in Dublin by a man who then escaped on JOHN O'MAHONY reports on some strange developments in the Irish republican movement.

the pillion seat of a motor cycle.

A native of Crossmaglen, Co. Armagh, Flynn had served two years on arms charges in Britain in the early "70s, and then been deported under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The INLA issued a statement claiming responsibility for the shooting. They had shot him, they said, because he was the man who murdered Seamus Costello, founder of the IRSP/INLA. Costello had led it to a break with the Official Republican movement at the end of 1974. He was shot dead in his car in October 1977 near the spot where Flynn was shot.

The INLA have threatened that if there is retaliation for the shooting of Flynn they will shoot leaders of the Workers Party, thes the extra security for the three important, government-sustaining Workers Party deputies.

At this point the Official IRA came back into public life. It issued a statement to the state broadcasting system, RTE, on the shooting of James Flynn. Flynn, the statement said, had been 'Director of Operations' of the Official IRA and had been "on active service" when killed.

Vincent Brown, editor of Magill says he has received threatening phone calls in the name of the Official IRA. So has one of his informants in preparing the article, the former editor of the old Official Republican paper, the "United Irishman" and now editor of the Communist Party of Ireland's paper 'Irish Socialist' In fact, though what the Magill article said could hardly have been 'information' to the INLA, the article may have led indirectly to the shooting of Daily! 00. Flynn. The INLA claim that they shot Flynn at this time because they thought that after the expose of the Official IRA in Magill, it would now be "acceptable to the public"

INLA is sensitive to such things. It shot the Orange bigot and para-military John McKeague some months ago just as he was about to be implicated in the Kincora child abuse and prostitution scandal.

The political conse•quences were such that the automatic assumption was that his killers were concerned to keep the political aspects of the scandal from boiling over. Then the INLA admitted responsibility for it.

The Workers Party leaders deny that they continue to have links with the now again 'public' Official IRA. But still some of them marched in the traditional Republican funeral for Flynn (who was not a party member).

The oration at his funeral was given by Seamus Collins, chairperson of Clann Na H'eireann, the Workers Party support group in Britain. Gerry Doherty, himself deported from Britain under the PTA in 1975, described him as a friend of the party and a great help to it financially.

The Workers Party leaders may not be sufficiently in control of the militarists to prevent retaliation against INLA.

What impact the reemergence of the Official IRA will have on the development of the Workers Party remains to be seen. It could stymie it - and no doubt the expose was intended to stymie it. The demonstration/ in solidarity with WilsonRowntree strikers in South Africa jointly called by AAM and York Trades Council is on Saturday July 3 in York.

Assemble 1.30pm, Heworth Green, Monkgate Roundabout, York.

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July 3 aemo