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THE abortion referendum in the 26 Counties led some before the poll to talk of a 'new partition of Ireland'. The result showed they were right.

In a very low turn-out (54%), there was a two-to-one majority to insert into the constitution a ban on abortion (which is already illegal).

For the sponsors of the referendum it was, however, a very qualified victory. Only one third of the electorate voted yes.

There was a sharp division between Dublin - where two thirds voted no - and the rest of the country. And the senior partner in the coalition government, Fine Gael, was heavily divided.

The youth of Fine Gael openly campaigned for a no vote. At the end prime minister Garret Fitzgerald came out, timidly, for "no' The Labour Party, junior partner in the coalition, was divided too: half the deputies for yes, half for no.

The supporters of the amendment pulled out all the stops in their campaign, and they had a lot in their favour. The South of Ireland has long been a Catholic, conservative, society, where the priests are a tremendous social power. It has been in the grip of a savagely repressive sexual puritanism since the mid-19th century Famine.

Though the society has changed massively in the last 25 years, with industrialisation and urbanis. ation, the forces of Catholicism and conservatism are still strong. Over 80% of the people still go to Mass regularly.

Those at the top of the Catholic hierarchy mäde pseudo-liberal statements that people should vote according to their conscienc. es. The lower clergy made every pulpit a political platiorm for the •Pro-Life campaign.

The mass-circulation press and the provincial press said vote yes Behind them they had the Cathol ic teaching that an embryo has a soul from the beginning, and abortion is therefore infanticide.

Most of the opponents of the amendment are against abortion Some - like Fitzgerald - arguer against the amendment on . the grounds that, because of ambigu ous wording, it could lead to leg alised abortion.

Behind the argument about wording, there was also a more important argument about the role of the Catholic Church ir Irish society.

• The amendment was tailored to fit Catholic social teaching The Protestant churehes in the Labour Committee on Ireland, BM Box 5355, London WC1N 3XX South opposed the amendment: they are against abortion, but not as unconditionally or obsessively as the Catholics. Victor Griffin, Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin, put it like this:

"There can be no true Republicanism without equality of recognition, and this implies the toleration of different views and practices in relation to certain moral issues within the framework of an agreed public morality. Such moral issues should be the affair, not of a Republican state, but of the particular Churches, each having the right to exercise its own particular moral discipline and none having the right to enforce theirs on others.

"At present we must admit, nowever reluctantly, there is no strong commitment in this state to any kind of united Ireland wich would involve accommodating the Protestant minority point of view".

A massive blow has been dealt to the pretence that the Southern political parties really want a united Ireland.

The Irish people is divided. Whatever the historical and economic roots, and political/economic underpinnings, this expresses itself in the consciousness of the Catholic and Protestant people as a matter of religion - to which are attached ideas about liberty of conscience, and of the relationship of the individual and his/her conscience to Church and State.

On every count the referendum has been an attempt at a Catholic triumphalist assertion of the dominance of one șide over the other. On September 7 the Irish constitution was explicitly identified with the Catholic church. The nationalist cause was identified with the Catholic cause.

Fianna Fail identified completely with the amendment campaign. After a 20-minute (!) meeting of its parliamentary deputies, FF decided to vote yes, and the party's discipline did the rest. Yet Fianna Fail is the Republican Party - and the party which the 'left Republican' IRSP, for example, supported in the last election.

In the North, the SDLP majority was for a yes vote.

Symbolically, even Sean McBride, founder of Amnesty, son of the 1916 martyr, former (late '30s) chief of staff of the IRA, and a possible candidate in the next election for president, voted yes. It was a repeat of his stance in 1951, when the Fine Gael/Labour Party/Clann na Poblachta government buckled under the pressure of the Catholic hierarchy's opposition to a health scheme for 'Mother and Child'. . McBride was then the leader of Clann na Poblachta, and forced the Clann na Poblachta Minister of Health, Noel Browne, to resign.

All this is very relevant to the recent dispute in Socialist Organiser about 'federalism' in a united Ireland. The fact is that the forces that dominate Southern Irish politics ignored the protests of the Protestants (and Jews). The two-thirds who voted no or refused to rally to the priests are a basis of hope for the future, but the yes vote won on September 7.

A fight to ensure the rights of the Protestant minority must be part of the fight for a united Ireland.

PRO-LIFE CAMPAIGN ANZEdI MEN PROBABLY the most sigBy LETS HOPE HERE'S REINCARNATON. into account the opinion of individual members of the