Progress on Ireland

Scan page 13

ding Black Holes if a of galaxy NGC 415 124. millinn licht vears fr SOCIALIST Organiser no. 149 provided a welcome, clear antidote to the empty rhetoric of Labour's new 'Haddock' leadership. From Healey to Hattersley, Foot to Kinnock, the old Callaghan gang ruled the Conference roost through stitchedup block votes and a Stalinist chair. 'Unity' speeches received ovations while five socialists wre physically booted out: in short business as usual and the fight goes on.

As usual, SO contained ultra-violent rays fre ultra-violent rays from just such gas clouds. These gas clouds. These vast hot gas clouds are rushing ir clouds are rushing into the heart of galaxy NGC 4151, some 50 million light years from us.

Calculations from the speed and temperature of the gas suggest that there is an object more than 50 million times heavier than our sun, squeezed into a region only one-thirtieth of light year across. Such a mass can only be a black hole.

Theories abound about black holes and what they can do. For example, large ones at the centre of galaxies are thought to account for the massive energy output of NGC4151 and quasars.

Galaxy

Smaller ones probably exist in our galaxy, masquerading as the 'X-ray bursters'. Miniature black holes may have been formed during the Big Bang, and one imaginative suggestion is that we could trap one of these and use it as waste-disposal unit and power station.

Rubbish could be thrown in and the radiation used to generate electricity. If it escaped, though, it could be nasty.

Some people have suggested that matter collapsing into black hole in our universe could be emerging into another universe, from a 'white hole'. We cannot test this theory, but the Big Bang might be an example -of just such a White Hole. - great deal to aid and lead that fight, but I found parts of Frank Higgins' review of the 'Cause of Ireland' highly questionable in the light of other recent SO articles on Ireland.

He asserts that the failure of the left' to mobilise the labour movement in support of a just settlement with Ireland results importantly from poor propaganda ana simplistic explanations. This is no doubt true, but where is this left that talks as if one million Protestants don't exist? Furthermore, I recall that Workers Fight explained the Northern Ireland state as a 'garrison' of imperialism, and I think rightly so, as British interests have shifted from economicexploitative to strategic ones for overall control of Ireland's 'defences' Unique If "it is the complexities of the Irish situation (unique features, real problems) and the difficulties of seeing a way out of the impasse that has defeated the left' why they is British involvement in Ireland condemned by the entirety of world opinion, presumably through the same type of simplification, poor propaganda, ignored complexities, jargon, etc. by people "in tow to the republicans"? That is, the entirety of world opinion except in Britain.

May I suggest that whatever these problems, The principal obstacle in Britain remains deep-seated chauvinist respect for Unionism, with its concurrent deafness to the repressive and discriminatory nature of the six county state, aided by the deliberate falsification of the Republican 'struggle in al classes of society and its media, including the labour movement. For example, the conference remit of Composite 15 for the organisation of the Labour Party in the six counties is testimony to the poison of economism and de-facto Unionism of the Morning Star and the Militant. The central argument must be that the struggie for the unification of Ireland rests not on the division of the Irish working class, but provides the only likely precondition for its unity. Partition was and is a device to unity.

tentionally preparing the way for a bloody repartition of Ireland" - which I fail to distinguish from a rehashed "blood-bath' theory. Earlier, he states 'What the Provisionals stand for in fact is incorporation of the Protestants into Catholic Ireland" This is a serious slander against the explicitly secular programme of Sinn Fein, and I challenge the author to substantiate his view.

While a federated united Ireland might be conceded as a reform in response to republican pressure, it would be unlikely to solve the twin 'garrison' and discrimination problems. Therefore for British Marxists to advance federation as a prior demand seems to me concessionary to the 'two nations' theory, which seems to creep into the article.

Whatever the serious reaction of the Constitutional: Anti-Abortion Referendum, 300,000 Protestants in the 26 counties do not appear to suffer discrimination in the terms of the Catholics of the North. Protestant opposition to a united Ireland is entrenched, but not absolute in the longer term, and has tended to whither under the impact of economic crises. • The Conference meeting of the Labour Committee Ireland was the largest fringe meeting event of the week and as a steward, I was pleased to exchange messages of mutual solidarity between Gerry Adams MP and the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights meeting next door. Tony Benn's speech to the Conference Ireland debate was his most advanced statement to date, without his previous fudging.

the difficult but real progress being made, I found the article dismissive and sour. Improvements in propaganda, political scope and vocabulary should be part of building LCI branches in every region, that take LCI policies into the trade unions. Critical support is type of support.

Yours comradely, TIM SUMMERS Richmond, Surrey

Scan page 14

no.151 October Page WALES

----- pull-quotes -----

precrank Higgins suggests that the Provisionals may be "unin-