Puzzled by interview

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Northern Ireland has been one of the main centres of the THE NOTTINGHAM Socialist Organiser group would like to dissociate itself from the article entitled 'NHS dispute opens way to unity which appeared in SO 109.

We were rather puzzled by the article and would like an answer to the following questions:

• Why was it printed?

• Why was there no criticism of the content of the article?

• Why was it unsigned by the interviewer? As signed articles are the view of the writer, then unsignNHS struggle ed articles are the policy of the SOA.

• Who interviewed Micky Duffy and why? • Why do we give over sections of our paper to hostile political organisations? This was not a genuine legitimate debate with a section of the Labour Left (a tactic we support), but a propaganda piece for the national chauvinist politics of the Militant.

As these. were the unanimous views of our last Socialist Organiser Nottingham group meeting, we would like this letter publ ished and replied to in next issue of the paper.

Nottingham SOA. • THE headline on the interview was a mistake - caused a headline implying a more sceptical attitude to the interview.

For all that, we don't think that any regular reader would get the idea that the opinions of th- interviewee were those of SO.

The interview was done by some SO comrades in the NHS at the Sheffield NHS stewards' meeting. Northern Ireland has been one of the most militant areas of the NHS struggle, and you don': have to believe in the schemas of Militant to see the unity of Catholic and Protestant workers in this struggle as important.

That's why we thought it was worth asking the Northern Ireland stewards their views on the political importance of the struggle. And the fact is, though maybe not many would accept the theordrift of Micky D it's intea!

drit ot vicku vuis iniel view is not untypical.

That Militant's line on Ireland is a chauvinist one for British socialists to take, we would agree. To describe these Irish workers as chauvinist seems absurd. (The Royal Victoria Hospital, where Micky Duffy works, has a majority of Catholic workers, and has struck to expel the British Army from the hospital).

That the views are those of an important section of class-conscious workers does not, of course, make them necessarily correct. Micky Duffy's favoured solution -a Labour Party in Northern Ireland — has attracted sizeable numbers of workers in the past, but always failed to create the sort of working class unity that could successfully tackle the issues of the Border, the British presence, and the Protestant/ Catholic antagonism... or to make those issues sink into insignificance.

For a forthcoming issue of SO we've commissioned an article on the history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party which, we hope, will explain this point and take the discussion further. I MUST apologise for not understanding that the 'working classes' are exclusively male. Thank you Eddie Moonman (Writeback, SO110] for pointing out my female error. Have you thought, though, that all these men have sisters, mothers, aunts, nieces, etc? All in a different social strata!

Sisterly, Jane Hore, Hanworth.

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AMBULANCE says:

by doing things in a rush. Clearly we should have had

Thanks Eddie!