nen Together movement earlier this year Provisionals. Most have been carried out by catholic sectarians who are not under the discipline of either the Provisional or Official IRA. There can be little doubt however, that units or volunteers of the Provisionals, in particular, have broken discipline. Such indiscipline in the ranks of the IRA. or in the broader catholic population, stems from the political weakness of their leadership and a failure to resolutely campaign against the communalist culture which exists amongst sections (although by no means a majority) of the catholic population. Only a much clearer political strategy which spells out the way in which the struggle of the ghettoes in the North is integrated with an all-Ireland, and international struggle against capitalism and imperialism, could break down this cultural and political backward ness. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST BACKWARDNESS This failure to tre ak down the backwardness within the ghettoes has been the source of the rifts within the oppressed minonty. The "peace movement this year represented real forces within the ghettoes, influenced by the church, and the lack of a perspective for breaking out of the long-drawn-out struggle with the Army. If the incidents which led to the ending of the Provo cease-fire and the brutality of the British Army since Operation Motorman have buried these tendencies for the present, it does not mean that they no longer exist. On the contrary they are liable to break out again, in a more intractable form. From this it can be seen how the inadequacy of the second strand of the Provisionals strategy (the regional parllaments), contributes to the problems involved in carrying out the struggle in the North. However the weakness is not theirs alone, if there were a more capable alternative leadership they would have been superceded.
It must be stressed that the development of such a strategy is extremely difficult. It has to solve the problems created by the vast differences which exist in the political conditions North and South, in a situation where both states are in crisis. The crisis in the South is developing in a different way from that in the North, and the political problems involved in a co-ordinated struggle North and South are exceedingly complex due to the fact that some of the tasks of the national revolution have been achieved in a distorted and incomplete way in the South. The Provisionals must be criticised, not for failing so far to solve this contradiction, but because their programme and politics do not give them the capacity to find a solution.
WHO WILL GO BEYOND THE PROVOS?
The Provisionals won their present position after the Catholic minority had gone through a whole series of different leaderships within an extremely short period. The ghettoe politicians of the Nationalist Party were pushed aside by those who were asking for civil rights. Then those who fought for civil rights came to the fore, followed by those who were determined to push the Civil Rights movement to the point of challenging the Northern state; and finally by those who
The SLL and Ceylon