Ballots and bullets

Scan page 12

THE caption under the picture accompanying my article on the Northern Ireland elections (SO 106] got a number of things wrong.

The Republican movement has not 'abstained from elections' for 60 years: they have in fact contested elections at various times in both the Six and Twenty-Six Counties. 'Republican abstentionism' is a refual to sit in the 'partitionist parliaments' north and south of the Border when they won elections.

The supporters of the Republican side origitally seceded from Dail Eireann over the Treaty. Three years after the Republican defeat in the civil war, most of the TDs MPs] followed De Valera into the Dail when he founded Fianna Fail.

Since then, to take seats won or not to, together with the concomitant commitment to physical force, has divided Republicans from those (like -Fianna Fail) who share their nationalist to make it.

Secondly, for the same reason, there is no adverse effect to E. coli if a mutattion happens in the insulin gene (rendering it useless or dangerous to humans). Such a mutation might make a human less fit for need insulin anyway.

The insulin market is big business - with a value of $400 million per year (expected to double by 1986). In contrast, little money is going towards prevention of what seems to be a disease caused by unhealthy high sugar diets.

It even seems that the wider availability of human insulin does not represent much of a step forward in reducing some of the terrible side-effects of diabetes - namely, blindness and deterioration of blood vessels necessitating amputation. This probably requires more research into how to mimic the pattern of secretion of insulin by the human body.

All in all, synthetic human insulin represents a small step for humankind, but a large step for the drug industry. aims.

In the '50s, during the IRA military campaign on the Border, the Republicans ran candidates, and even won elections on the abstentiqnist ticket. As a matter of fact, their proportional vote then was not very difierent from what it was in the recent election.

What has happened now is that for the first time since the Catholic revolt got under way, the Republicans are combining election campaigns with their military activities.

The change has not entirely depended on the Republicans. For example, in the 1973 elections to the Assembly, Sinn Fein would not have been allowed to participate by the British government, even if wanted to. Both British government policy and Republican abstention allowed the SDLP, which then embodied and expressed the common policy of the Dublin and London governments for the Six Counties, to have a clear field as the 'political representative of the Catholic community.

In & certain sense reaped the political benefits of the military campaign which forced the British government to scrap the Protestant Ascendancy parliament at Stormont and to seek new structures.

The SDLP vote has been in decline since the mid '70s, probably as a result of a growth of abstentionist attitudes among Catholics. Most of the Republican votes seem to have come from previous abstainers rather than from the SDLP vote at the previous JOHN O'MAHONY, London.

7 Advertisement_ Socialist FALKLANDSWHOSE WARE Workers' • Socialist Review no. 2 includes: debate on the Falklands/ Malvinas; Bob Sutcliffe on Argentina in the world economy; articles on Lebanon, Central America, Poland, South Africa, France. 80p with supplement, plus 20p p&p, from WSL, PO Box 135, London N1 ODD.

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survival, but wouldn't worry E. coli, which doesn't