In line with Militant?

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Get 10p per copy plus postage from 13 Buxton Rd, N19. JOHN O'Mahony's review of the Panorama feature on Northern Ireland (Monday March 14) in Socialist Organiser no.124 raises some important questions.

The explicit and implicit view throughout the review tallies by, and large with the political formulation put forward by the Militant group on this question. Essentially this view states that the Protestant working class will see that their conditions are not fundamentally different to their Catholic counterparts, that the Protestant workers and unemployed will see that they are being exploited/are suffering from the same conditions as their Catholic brothers and sisters, and out of this realisation will come the unity of the divided working class in the North East of Ireland.

Permeated

The review article is permeated with this type of view. For example: "Protestant unemployment is now as high as Catholic... Much of the economic differentiation is being eradicated between Catholic and Protestant ... The same basic conditions certainly exist -Protestant and Catholic workers in roughly the same situation"

Now I am not necessarily opposed to Militant's views per se — if they are correct - but on many questions, particularly Ireland, they are fundamentally incorrect politically. It is very worrying therefore to see a political line virtually indistinguishable from a major plank of the Militant line being put forward in the pages of Socialist Organiser..

Complicated

Unfortunately for the Militant type of political view the reality of the situation is slightly more complicated in the North East of Ireland. Of course all revolutionary communists and socialists would want unity between the divided sections of the working class. But in the specific situation, i.e. within the confines of a sectarian statelet, the possibilities are to say the least limited.

It is arguable that the whole nature of the Northern statelet depends for its very existence on the suppression of the nationalist population which constitutes one third of the population. That, in my understanding. was the political line of Socialist Organiser on the question.

If that view is correct, then follows that unity will ultimately only be possible within a united socialist Ireland and when the artificial statelet of northern Ireland no longer exists.

Implicit in the Militant type argument of working class unity within the present context is the view that there is some kind of automatic transfer/connection between economic conditions and social consciousness. What we have in the review is some kind of immiseration thesis!

Unfortunately matters are seldom as simple as this in the real world. Over four million unemployed in Britain has not led to massive radicalisation or to an erosion of racism. (In fact many of the NF supporters are unemployed and live in similar conditions to those they physically and verbally abuse).

The philosophical idealism implicit in the review article does not accord with what I understood to be the general line of Socialist Organiser on Ireland. Maybe the article is an aberration when the author was in a sentimental mood and involved in wishful thinking. Let us at least dare to hope that this is the case.

MIKE FOLEY, Newham Roach Family Rd, London N16

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SOU ROCK Aprit. 25 11 26 Monday 13 20 28 12 27. Wednesday 7 14 21 29 15 22 30 Thursday 16 23 Friday 10 17 24 Saturday Sunday no.128 NORTH WEST London conference against the missiles -called jointly by Brent Trades Council and Willesden and Wembley CND. Saturday-Sunday, April 23-24, Brent Town Hall, Forty Lane, Wembley: starts 10.30 each day. 50p, free for unwaged. HULL Trades Council May Day march - Saturday April 30. Assemble 10,30am Wilberforce Monument, march through city centre led by Humberside contingent of People's March for Jobs 83. Speaker from Greenham Common.

HULL Trades Council 'Roc!