Esperanto the answer ?

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Over recent months Socialist Organiser has carried a wide-ranging debate on nationalism and socialism in Ireland. This week we carry a commentary on some of the recent contributions by Rayner Lysaght, a prominent Dublin member of the Irish left organisaTHE European Economic Community was created for the benefit of. French and German farmers and not for the benefit of British housewives; or the housewives of any country. As a result we have the butter mountains, wine lakes, and beef dumps. Food is going to waste when people are starving.

It is right therefore for the Labour Party to call for our withdrawal from the Common Market.

However the nation state is one of the greatest curses in the world and so we require a properly constituted international community of nations, based upon socialist principles, and which makes provision for social justice within its whole area. . It would be highly desirable for such a body to have Esperanto taught in many of its schools, so that its language problems would be made much tion, People's Democracy.

THE DEBATE opened by John O'Mahony has ranged quite widely. During this time, the discussion's original begetter has closed his apparent strategic openings to two-nationism, at least for the time being (SO138). easier.

At the present time the European Commission has to translate over one million pages of documents into most of the seven languages of the Common Market. In fact over 40% of the expenses of the Commission are taken up in translation alone. The position will become even more difficult when Spain and Portugal join the Market.

British withdrawal from the Market does not mean that we will withdraw from our international commitments. Quite the contrary. The British Labour Party ought to seek other ways of collaborating with our European friends.

I would like to suggest just one strand of this policy. That is for the Labour Party and the trade unions to give the widest possible publicity to Esperanto, the simplified international language, created by the Warsaw doctor, * Ludovic Zamenhof, and when it is returned to office again to launch a programme to have it taught in as many teacher training colleges and schools as possible.

Yours sincerely, ALAN TREVIS, Union and Cooperative Esperanto Group DO I detect the emergence of an infiltrationist Barry Manilow faction in Socialist Organiser? If not, how do you explain the totally irrelevant appearance of a picture of Manilow accompanying an article on The Who? (SO 145). Be warned - if this seditious tendency is not exposed and quashed immediately who knows where it may lead? A picture of Manilow accompanying a piece on Send letters to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8. No longer than 400 words please: longer letters are liable to be cut.

disarmament with the caption "Not quite a nuclear warhead but an equal threat to civilisation" or on unemployment -"He's not unemployed - worse luck!"

I urge all comrades to act now before it is too late and the masthead of the Manilow Organiser" bears the slogan "Break links with music - join the Barry Manilow Fan Club"!

WENDY FRANKLAND Leeds ern Irish Labour Party, whose rise began only as an after-effect of the decline in the industrial working class base).

On the other hand, and more directly connected with the relationship of Protestant working class militancy to the national question, a study of such militancy and reaction to it reveals a different pattern to the simple, 'militant struggle aborted by nationalism' scenario.

In each case, there was a I WAS most interested in the Industrial Special in your 8 September edition, by John Mellroy, entitled 'The birth of the shop stewards' movement I am enclosing a copy of a pamphlet, which I wrote together with Edmund and Ruth Frow, and I am sure your readers will find this of interest. Copies can be obtained from me, Ernie Roberts MP, House of Commons, London : SW1, price 50p each.

Yours sincerely, ERNIE ROBERTS wrote little on Ireland and that his largest work, an article on the 1916 Rising, was full of valuable insights but fundamentally incorrect in its prediction for the future.

He had little, if anything to say on partitioned Ireland, a country with, in the last twenty years at least, an urban working class comparable in size to its rural dwellers, but in which a major sector of what should be the proletarian vanguard has been effectively politically declassed originally as a result