An international demonstration of Belgian, French and German glassworkers also occupied the Paris headquarters of BS and confronted the bosses on the spot. A few days later a settlement was reached. A new enterprise is being established, and meanwhile the company has been forced to agree to a system of work-sharing with no loss of pay. The workers also set up a control committee to oversee investment, subsidies and so on, to prevent any behind-the-scenes rationalisation.
The lessons of the struggles in France and and in a different way in Britain - point to the same conclusion. It is not enough to solidarise with existing struggles. The most effective form of solidarity is their political generalisation and extension to the whole working class.
This will take place both through the strengthening of existing combine committees, establishment of support committees around particular struggles, and centrally through Right to Work Committees representative of the labour movement in every area. Whatever their name, these bodies must have a single aim: to support any struggle against sackings, and to open the books of the local authorities, the nationalised industries and the private bosses to expose the effects of the Healey cuts in public spending on jobs and services and the bosses' plans for redundancies, thus preparing the way for a co-ordinated fight back around common demands which defend the right to work.
8 Ireland/Puerto Rico The attention of the anti-Unionist working class over the past few weeks has quite understandably been almost exclusively concentrated on the feud between the Official Provisional IRA. Understandably, because the feud must surely be one of the most shameful and tragic episodes in the history of Irish Republicanism.
The feud has reinforced all those tendencies in the nationalist community who favour collaboration with the Loyalists. Even the best militants have not escaped the deep feeling of frustration at the political blindness being displayed by the major anti-imperialist organisaLIOnS.
Yet it is not hard to see why the present dispute has taken such a fratricidal form. Irish Republicanism is a force committed to the democratic national struggle for self-determination. a very undemocratic internal regime. example of this - and also a prime factor leading to it — is the rigid division between political and military action which is endemic to Republicanism.
Military objectives have always taken precedence over political ones, quite naturally leading to a situation where the handing down of commands from the Army Councils has eclipsed democratic discussion of strategy. There is no room within the Republican groups for dissidence, and certainly none for political tendencies opposed to the line of 'the Leadership' i.e. the Army Council. As Eamonn McCann pointed out in the Irish Times (18 November), it is almost invitable that disputes between Republican groups will be solved JOHN MAGEE reports from Belfast Yet it is itself characterised by The most striking by military might.
The result of the feud has been a weakening of support inside the nationalist community for the anti-imperalist struggle. Fewer people are willing to resist the infiltration of the Royal Ulster Constabulary back into Republican distriets or to protest against the harassing searches and arrests made by the British Army. There is also increasing sceptieism about the ability and willingness of the IRA to defend the Catholic ghettoes from the "security forces' and the sinister activities of the Loyalist para-militaries.
The re-building of the confidence of the anti-Unionist working class will depend on the willingness of all anti-imperialist groups to participate in united action. In the recent past both the Revolutionary Marxist Group (Trish section of the Fourth International) and Peoples Democracy have proposed that such united action be based on mass mobilisations demanding the immediate withdrawal of the British Army, no return of the RUC to the Catholic ghettoes, and an end to interment and all repressive legislation.
IMMEDIATE STEPS
These are the immediate steps necessary to defend the resistance, and all Republican militants who recognise the need for anti-imperialist unity must fight for their own organisations to participate in these mobilisations. Furthermore, where their organisations refuse to take their heads out of the sand, such militants must be prepared to take the initiative themselves. ****************************** Red Weekly 27 November 1975 British political celebrities have been dashing in and out of the North over the past few weeks. Their itinerary is always the same: shake hands with Merlyn Rees on the steps of Stormont; pat the backs of a few soldiers on the streets of Belfast (wear flak-jacket if possible); quick helicopter trip to view the outback of South Armagh; and to round it all off, a press conference to ooze sympathy for 'the long-suffering people in this part of the United Kingdom.
Two of the most recent visitors have been Tory leader Margaret Thatcher and Labour's Under Secretary of State for the Army. Thatcher takes the conflict in the North so seriously that she didn't even bother to read the United Ulster Unionist Concil's Convention Report before she came — a fact that didn't exactly gain her the admiration of the Ulster Loyalists.
As for the Under Secretary of State, he was totally lost for any serious comment on what he had seen. Ulster TV all he could do was repeatedly mutter how *no other army in the world could do the job being done by the British Army with such good humour Next day the Coldstream Guards gave a demonstration of just what the Under-Secretary meant. A 32-year-old spastic, Joe Hughes, went to Fort Pegasus in the White Rock district of Belfast to inquire after his younger brother, Gerard, who had been picked up by troops after a raid on their home that morning. en up. No doubt the brave men of the Coldstream Guards will write home to say how they dealt with another IRA 'terrorist'. After all, these gun-toting thugs have a great sense of humour!
On Joe was beat-