Right - but wrong too
Socialist Organiser1984 1984-01-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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long, too dull ation. CND, for its part, has I AGREE with the politics of John O'Mahony's analysis of Sinn Fein, and in general I agree with what Socialist Organiser says about Ireland.
Agree with you or not, I also think that Socialist Organiser provides the most comprehensive coverage of Irish affairs to be found in the British left press. It is especially useful that Socialist Organiser allows political tendencies like Sinn Fein and the IRSP, and individuals like Dominic McGlinchey, to speak for themselves in its columns.
Nevertheless, I think it is wrong for Socialist Organiser to publish the criticisms of Sinn Fein and the IRSP that it does. That is not the job of a British publication. It is the job of Irish Marxists.
Sinn Fein and the IRA are leading the fight in ireland. Even if we would like it done differently, our main job is to back them up.
British socialists do not have the right, living as we do in the oppressor state, to tell Irish revolutionaries what to do. That's an old principle, and a basic one.
The criticism lends entirely the wrong tenor to the paper. Its main message to the labour movement and to the left should in the first place be that of solidarity with the Catholic community, and in the second place solidarity with those (whatever their faults, inadequacies and limitations) who are leading the struggle that is going on right now.
The proper approach on the issue of federalism, for example, would have been to hold fire despite the possible sectarian implications of Sinn Fein's change of policy.
Yours for socialism, CARL GRIMSHAW, Manchester.
lent and informative science column. I believe the proposal floated earlier in the year for a supplementary theoretical bulletin to carry the longer articles should be seriously considered.
Whatever the outcome of such discussion I believe the editors could start the ball rolling by giving encouragement and proper priority to the sort of input Socialist Organiser really needs.
Organiser
O badges 25p it ten. Yours fraternally, ALEX SIMPSON Cambridge CLP