_____ 2 N075 January 1986 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League British troops out now! o o 's relan eal! ~ Not Orange against Green " but class against class! ;, ~o sooner had a beaming Margaret Thatcher and Garrett FitzGerald emerged from signing their vaunted 'Anglo-Irish accord' than American president Ronald Reagan signalled his congratulations. Reagan instantly called the British and Irjsh ambassadors into the White I~ouse to wax rhetorical about tbis ! promise of pe2ce and a new dawn for the troubled communi­ ties of Northern Ireland' ((;/iarcJj an. 26 ~T,'!\.. "Cl:1b<-·r ~q85). Within weeks of the 'new dawIl', Orange l'e­ actionaries were leading 100.000 outraged Loyalist marchers through the streets of Belfast, prominent Sinn Fein activists were beine hunted down and arrested in a major I crackdown ~nd several hundred more British troops from the crack Spearhead Battalion were being shipped in to carry out the imperial­ l~ ists' bloody 'promise of peace'. One minute into the New Year ehe IRA signalled its opinion on the Hillsborough agreement by ~ blowing away two RUC cops. In the meantime Republican prisoners launched an abortive hunger strike in protest at yet another of the Labour Herald Margaret Thatcher and Irish prime minister Garrett FitzGerald's celebrated Hillsborough accord means more British government's massive frame-up 'super­ imperialist terror and communalist fratricide for Northern Ireland. frass' trials. The British imperialists and their Green NATO's anti-Soviet arsenal. But short of a struggle for an Irish workers republic within Tory lackeys hope that this 'Made for NATO' genocidal bloodbath, no amount of capitalist a socialist federation of the British Isles! deal will serve to pacify the oppressed scheming can do away with the communalist No to the Thatcher/FitzGerald accord! Imperi­ Catholic minority in the North while recon­ Frankenstein created in the North by centuries list hands off Sinn Fein/IRA! British troops ciling the Protestant majority to some form of of British imperialism's 'divide and rule' out now! Not Orange against Gre'en, but class power-sharing, and pave the way to turning butchery. There can be only one equitable and against class! Ireland into a floating aircraft carrier for just solution to the troubles of Ireland: the continued on page 2 Mark Peters/Newsweek '~"r' BIUn South Africa: Black union federation launched are well aware that this 'super-federation' with 34 member unions covering the mines, harbours, For a Bolshevik Party! transport, metal industries and retail trade has ~~A~ 'P_~ the power to bring the South African economy to Singing freedom songs and wearing red T-shirts a standstill. Coming after almost 18 months of with the slogan, 'One country, one federation', continuous nationwide revolt, COSATU's birth ex­ 10,000 black South African workers rallied at pressed above all the desire of the black toilers King's Stadium in the port city of Durban on 1 to utterly smash apartheid. December to launch the Congress of South African But trade unionism, however militant, is not Trade Unions. In founding COSATU, with its ha1f­ enough to liberate the non-white masses of South million members, South Africa's overwhelmingly Africa or even to significantly ameliorate the black proletariat has created its strongest or­ hellish conditions in which they work and 'live'. ganisation in a century of struggle against hid­ Any serious class struggle against the white su­ Durban: COSATU president Elijah Barayi. eous superexploitation by apartheid capitalism. premacist bosses and their police state poses the delegates cheer formation of fargest" black From the Witwatersrand mining houses to the question of power. For the oppressed to emerge labour federation in South African history. City of London and Wall Street, the capitalists continued on page 10 smacks of the beginning of the end of the of th"e worRing class! "BUt theoII"ish people' 'ar~' Ireland ... Union, the undoing of partition. not a whole; they are bitterly divided into two (Continued from page 1) The backdrop to the Hillsborough agreement communi ties. The parti tion cannot simply be is the concern by American imperialism in wished away. As we r,oted in 'Theses on Ireland' , The Hillsborough agreement, unveiled in particular that Ireland's nominal neutrality 'Prior to the partition revolutionaries mid-November, involves significant shifts in and the continuing instability in the North is would have opposed partition,striving to posture (though not substance) by both the an obstacle to securing, particularly, the cement revolutionary unity in the struggle British and Irish governments. Dublin has harbours and facilities of the west coast of for independence from British imperialism. formally agreed that the reunification of Ireland for NATO's war plans against the however, with the partition, the accompany­ Ireland requires 'the consent of the majority' ing communal violence and demographic in the North, ie the Protestants, and thus re­ shifts, and the establishment of a bour­ cognised the 1921 partition. Thatcher in turn, geois republic in the south it was nec­ with bi-partisan support, has agreed to set up essary to oppose the forcible reunification an Anelo-Irish 'intergovernmental conference' of the six counties with the rest of in which Dublin will be given some say over Ireland. At the same time the present Northern Irish affairs, notably how best to statelet guarantees the political and suppress the IRA! For years now, British economic privileges of the Protestants.' governments have vacillated between a policy (Spartacist no 24, Autumn 1977) of military repression to crush the IRA and Northern Ireland is an instance of inter­ attempts at 'power-sharing' to try and under­ penetrated peoples: two communities with con­ mine Republican support in the Catholic com­ flicting national rights occupying the same munity and boost the 'moderate' (ie pro­ territory. The Orange statelet (or the call for imperialist) SDLP. One such attempt was the an independent Ulster) is necessarily oppres­ Sunningdale agreement of 1973, where a 'power­ sive to the Catholic minority, an extension of shariLg' assembly was set up, consisting of the Irish Catholic nation. On the other hand, the SDLP and some pliable Unionist politicians Marxists are not for reversing the terms of around Brian Faulkner. This scheme was oppression. We oppose every manifestation of smashed by the reactionary Orange general Workers Hammer the all-sided oppreSSion of the Irish Catholic strike of 1974. Dublin Trades Council banner at miners support rally: minority -- the discrimation in jobs and This time around British imperialism is united class struggle for workers revolution is the only social services, the army/police/paramilitary taking a more subtle approach. But the subtlety way forward. terror, the denial of its national rights. But is lost on the embittered Loyalist masses and the only consistently democratic solution in their reactionary leaders. Ulster MPs have Soviet Union. Moreover Britain, the US' this circumstance is a proletarian­ resigned en masse to force a sort of plebi­ staunchest anti-Soviet ally, has long been too revolutionary one. The key to breaking the sci te on the issue. At the monster Orange march decrepit to be able to afford the endless cycle of imperialist terror and communalist in December, Ian Paisley's Democratic Union­ infusions of money needed to maintain 'social fratricide in Northern Ireland is united class ist Party and the more 'respectable' Cfficial peace' in the North. So the current deal was struggle of the Catholic and Protestant Unionist Party of James Molyneaux, often brokered in Washington, including with pro­ workers against all their exploiters and op­ deeply divided in the past, stood shoulder to nises of financial aid. Indeed, one form of pressors -- British imperialism as well as shoulder. Amid a sea of placards demanding 'financial aid' is the money which Reagan's the Orange and Green bourgeoisies. The miners 'No surrender', Paisley ranted with Hitler­ so-called National Endowment for Democracy, a strike gave a taste of that desperately needed like ferocity a[ainst the 'Jezebel' Thatcher. CIA cond~it, has been pouring into the SDLP. class unity, as Catholic and Protestant In the eyes of the Loyalists, Hillsborough For what it's worth, Ireland's 'neutrality' workers alike rallied in class solidarity is pretty phoney. In 1949 the Irish Republic behind the British miners. refused to join NATO only because of the Ireland today provides potentially fertile question of partition. But it has pursued a ground for revolutionary class struggle. The Quote of the month deeply anti-Communist and pro-Western policy, North is increasingly immiserated in poverty; including membership in NATO's Common Market the South is a land of death and misery, where and military contingents in numerous United the average worker can scarcely afford to buy Stalinism and Nations 'peacekeeping' missions. a pint any longer. On top of that is perni­ Predictably Neil Kinnock's Labour Party has cious Paisleyite bigotry in the North and anti-Stalinism given enthusiastic backing to the Thatcher/ benighted anti-woman clericalism in the South. FitzGerald accord. Imperialist repression of A revolutionary Trotskyist party, forged in the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland has struggle against all variants of nationalism been bi-partisan policy from the start. Indeed and prO-imperialist economism and in intran­ it was a Labour government which sent British sigent QPposition to British imperialist dom­ troops in in the first place. Yet when thir­ ination, could galvanise the oppressed masses teen Campaign Group MPs voted against the across communal lines and on both sides of the Trotsky and Lenin accord, the Labour-cretinist fake left went Irish Sea. What is needed is a programme which into paroxysms of praise, exemplified by seeks to combat the oppression of the Irish The following statement was wri·;:ten JJy Socialist Action's salute to 'Labour's inter­ Catholic minority in the North as part of the American Trotskyist leader James P Cannon at nationalist 13'.