WHAT DOES SOLIDARITY MEAN?
Dear Comrade:
In Lancaster, both in the University and the town, we have worked hard to develop the basis of a movement on Ireland, through the Irish Solidarity Campaign. Therefore we welcomed the activity of other left groupings which felt that the Derry massacre made it necessary for them to start work on the Irish question. Together with the International Socialists, the Communist Party, the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists, and the Independent Labour Party (one member) we formed an Irish Solidarity Alliance', based on three of the slogans of the ISC, together with the slogan "Solidairty with all those struggling against British Imperialism in Ireland", which was a compromise as the slogan, "Victory to the IRA', was not acceptable to the other groups. We began to discuss how to develop a campaign in Lancaster. Meetings on housing International Marxist Group British Section of the Fourth International If you would like to be put in touch with IMG militants in your area, please fill in the form below and send it to the IMG, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
Name.
Address. explained that we would try to argue why the slogan "Solidarity with all those struggling against British Imperialism in Ireland' involved support for the IRA, as the only organisations carrying out actual armed struggle aginst British Imperialism. This horrified the other organisations, for whom the "Solidarity' slogan is apparently a meaningless political platitude without any concrete content. Under pressure we agreed that we should say that our interpretation of the "Solidarity" slogan was not that of the other organisations, but even this was inadequate for them, and they voted to expel us from the 'alliance'. We repeatedly asked what the other comrades proposed to do when members of the public asked them about the IRA and where they stood about it. Their position would be, they said, not to answer the question directly. but to rephrase it, so as to indicate that the British Government was responsible for casualties. This is of course true, but it is also a sophistry and evasion, since the IRA is making the casualties. The fact is that the entire basis of the support which the British government can muster among the British population is the propaganda campaign it has waged against the IRA. Until we can break through that propaganda. no effective campaign can be built in this country it will always founder on the "terrorism' of the IRA. Thus socialists cannot evade an evaluation of the IRA, and an explanation of its real position and meaning in the Irish struggle. If they think they can, the comrades in Lancaster are living with their heads in the sand. They will solve none of the problems and build nothing by the unprincipled expulsion of FINE TUBE STRIKE - Benefit concert, Sunday March 12, 7.15pm at St Pancras Town Hall, Euston Road, London NW1 (opp. Kings Cross and St Pancras station). Bernadette Devlin, Alex Glasgow, Jake Thackeray, East of Eden. All proceeds to strike committee. Further details: Joyce Rosser, Fine Tubes Benefit Committee, 6 Cotton Gardens, London E.2.
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which support agreed slogans from explaining what they mean by them is a particularly vicious form of political backwardness. The actions of the Lancaster I.S., which took the lead in this witchhunt, indicate very clearly the conception of this organisation as to the left politics they want to develop in Britain. What is the attitude of the national organisation to the actions of its Lancaster Branch?
Lancaster IMG and ISC members. THE RADICAL SCHOLARS Following the successful Glasgow Conference of Radical Scholars of Eastern Europe and the USSR, held over the weekend of 22/23 January, plans have been made for a further conference to take place in London, probably in October, on the theme of Social Change and the Social Structure in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union since 1953". It is hoped that this next conference will provide a forum for all radical scholars from various disciplines to meet and discuss their ideas in a situation providing at least a minimum of agreement on method, terms and analytic tools. The organisers stress "the imperative need for such a conference which will transcend the arid empiricism of established orthodoxy and the often ragged theorizing of the left". There are also plans to establish a new journal, Critique, as a logical corollary of the Conference it is hoped that the papers from the Glasgow and proposed London conferences will provide at least a kernel of material for the first two issues.
Anyone interested in any way, or who would like copies of the papers presented at the Glasgow conference. should write to: H.H. Ticktin, 31 Cleveden Road, Glasgow, W.2.
NOW OUT!
Women Workers in Britain: A handbook by Leonora Lloyd-25p. Illustrated. A Socialist Woman Publication available from 182 Pentonville Road, N.1. and bookshops.
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CORRECTION Due to a misunderstanding on the telephone, there were two inaccuracies in the account of the occupation of the Army Recruitment Office in Oxford that appeared in The Red Mole 36. The break-out from the Office did in fact result in three arrests.
altnougn none of those who occupied were arrested.
Secondly, although the I.S. land the C.P.) did not support the occupation, and none of their comrades occupied, they did participate in the demonstration and in the successful break-out.
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