Editorial section

An Reabhioid - for a Workers Republic - Page 2

FOR A WORKERS

REPUBLIC!

In many ways the outlook for socialists doesn’t look bright. No matter how many times we reflect that Stalinism is not socialism the collapse of the stalinist states has fuelled a rightwing offensive which has already in the 80's scored a number of significant victories. Noone can doubt thatacross the world the working class has been in retreat. In the richest countries we are seeing the growing squalor of cardboard cities while in Africa the “trmumph of capitalism” and the “end of history” is horrifically celebrated by the starvation of literally millionsof human beings. In Ireland the language of George Orwell's 1984 has for along time been cynically employed to turn victims into villains and exploitation into freedom. In the North loyalist terrorism isonly “reactive”, while the British army who defend the sectarian state by turning whole areas into occupied zones have become “peacekeepers”. Apparently the only problem with that idyllic paradise known to some as the six counties isa few “psychopaths” known as the IRA.

In the South the only state in western Europe to suffer from declining population for over most of its history apparently suffers record unemployment and emigration because it has too many people! No wonder working peopleareso cynical and that inthe North they continue to vote in large numbers for Sinn Fein despite the alliance against them which stretches from the British and Loyalists to the Catholic church. No wonder that in the South a recent opinion poll recorded 76% recognising the recent financial scandals as “ part and parcel of the economic system". This cynicism can and has already tumed to anger.

A mass strike threatened the governments refusal to stick to its already rotten PESP deal. Thousands rocked the hypocritical Catholic crusade of the southern establishment with demands for abortion rights.

Old men in funny clothes and wearing white wigs have been wheeled out to try and dampenthe anger.

Other attempts will follow. The leadership of the trades unions succeeded in holding back workers anger. The anger of the young and of women will face similar obstacles.

ORGANISATION

Only organisation and leadership will overcome these obstacles and this is the challenge facing the left. Unfortunately the present left-wing parties are nowhere near facing up to it. The Labour party is gearing up for another coalition with a right wing party Gitdoesn’t care which). The Workers party has split. The old guard clings to a discredited stalinism while the mohair suits head for the “Democratic left”.

Both groups remain totally pro-imperialist and reformist. In the North the Republican movement leads the struggle against impenalism with an increasingly sterile military campaign accompanied by an increasingly reformist politics which now seeks to call the EEC and the UN to the aid of the Irish people. The same UN that through carpet bombing helped the Iraqi people back to the stone age! The leaderships and politics required to defend the Irish working class North and South will not come from left reformism or republicanism. Only Marxism offers a programme which can both explain and provide an- SWEeTS.

CLARIFICATION

This task of explanation and programme is one which faces Peoples Democracy and calls for a total transformation of ourjournal. You willsee major changesin the appearance and content of the journal and we have tried to signal the new direction by amending the name to “An Reabhioid - Fora Workers Republic”.

In our new journal we will be concentrating on the programmatic clarification of basic political questions which face Irish socialists and in this issue we will show what this will mean. To help in this task we will be opening the pages to others on the left to take up the arguments we present. We look forward to a lively debate! Such programmatic clarification is sorely needed, for without it the small organisations of the Marxist Icft even if they become large will not give the necessary leadership. Already organisations claiming Marxism suchas “Militant” continually reruse to confront impetialism and actually oppose the demand for the withdrawal of British troops from the North. Sectarianism is blamed on “Orange and Green bigots”, but the real source - imperialism- is let off scot free. This so-called Marxism has nothing to offer.

Fighting for a genuine Marxism in Ireland will be no easy task but already steps can be taken along the path.

The main obstacle facing our Journal has not been an unresponsiveness to our ideas but our limited channels for distribution and the tendency in the Irish left to avoid debate outside their own organisation, You can help by helping to sell the journal and by contributing your ideas to the pages.

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WHAT WE STAND FOR

‘We Only Want The Earth” Peoples Democracy is a group of socialists who recognise the need for working people to organise for a future free of exploitation and oppression. We Fight For; * A 32 - Countries Worker's Republic * Worker's Control and Full Employment * A Woman’s Right To Choose and Independent Organisation of Women * Immediate Withdrawal of British Troops from the Six Countries and and End to the Loyalist Veto We stand for International Socialism and the strengthening of the World Party of Socialist Revolution, the Fourth International. Working class people throughout the world were right to rejoice at the death of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Stalinism represented a betrayal of the working class, not a programme for the future and freedom. He was a cancer within the international working class which the real followers of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky have consistently fought to expel from the world movement of the working class. Peoples Democracy and the Fourth International continue the fight for socialism, the complete emancipation of humanity. We reject those who would compromise with the brutality and poverty of capitalism.

We affirm that the triumph of the working class is the future of humanity. “For our demands most modest are, we only want the .*tth" James Connolly. It you would like to join this fight orsimply want to know more contact:

JOIN P.D. NOW!

PEOPLES DEMOCRACY CONWAY MILL, FALLS ROAD BELFAST

38 CLANAWLEY ROAD KILESTER DUBLIN

109 O'MALLEY PARK, LMERICK CITY

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EDITORIAL

A WOMEN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE!

When the right wing parties agreed to support the ‘prolife ‘amendment to the constitution inthe 1983 they did as a way to reinforce capitalist rule in a society wreaked by instability and a perceived threat from the left. In their reactionary way they recognisedthe axiom that a society can be judged by the position of women inside it by ensuring that women were repressed. In order to ensure this repression pregnancy advisory clinics in Dublin were closed ;magazines such as ‘Cosmopolitan’ and ‘Company’ have been censored and basic women’s health books such as ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ have been removed from public libraries.

SPUC has been quite open about it “we are against the previous new thinking that asserts that our bodies are our own” The cost of this has been horrific as afew of the worst publicised cases show. One women in Wexford pregnant outside marriage was hounded from their job while another in Co Longford died giving birth in a grotto after having concealed her pregnancy. Finally, the state decided that interment was to be introduced for a 14 year old rape victim. But finally, women and young people decided that this was enough. The massive pressure of public anger expressed in militant protests forced the release of the girl and the belated suggestions from some establishment politicians that perhaps abortion was permissible in some circumstances. After all if it was possible to allow women to go to England to have abortions why should they not be available here ? And if itis alright in cases of rape then why is it not possible for allwomen who decide to terminate their pregnancy 7

WOMEN SHOULD DECIDE THEIR FATE

The case is clear. The only person who should decide is the women herself. Itis a women's right to choose.

Women can't have equality with men while they are denied the most basic freedom to control their own bodies. For if they do not have control, who does? The state has, even in the middle of the crisis tried to recover from the defeat inflicted on it and reassert control. It has tried to defuse the crisis by getting five old men, collectively known as the Supreme Court, to release the girl while not guaranteeing that womenwill not be stopped again. Their judgment in based on the argument that there must be a substantial risk to the women’s life. But who will decide this?- doctors, committees and the courts of course! Anyone but the women.

FIGHTBACK

This is all part of the establishment's hope that those who have come onto the streets willbe placated by lats of noise about committees, talks, amendments to protocols and legislation. The movement supporting womens right must not be dragged into this process whereby it proposes its own formulas for extending abortion rights which in effect will only set on record our agreement to new restrictions on womens rights.

We want to break the chains not fashion looser ones.

14 . Atthe momentthetaskis clear. Allthe attacks overthe last decade have resulted from the eighth amendment. That was the reason tor the interment of the girl and the object of protest by the thousands of women and young people. Opinion polls show large majorities for its amendment or scrapping. This is now the moment to demand its removal.

The demand for removing the amendment is not an . alternative to seeking complete freedom for women expressed in the demand for a women's right to choose. It is the concrete way forward to achieving it at this moment. The campaign to remove the amendment must be lead by women who suffer its effect. Socialists must explain not just how the amendment is part of a world wide attack on womens rights, but why we face such powerful reactionary forces in Ireland.

The ‘carnival of reaction’ whichis partition has strengthened forces such as the Catholic Church. The fight for women to take control of their own bodies must become part of the struggle of the working class to take control of their lives. The complete freedom for both willonly be possible when the present state is smashed and the partition settlement it rests on is replaced by asocialist society free of all discrimination and oppression.

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EDITORIAL

Time for a change? There's no doubt that the results of the British general election represent a significant setback for the working class. The size of the Tory vote indicates a real demoralisation of a section of the British workforce - a point hammered home a few days after the election when car workers voted to accept the imposition of Japanese work practices in the assembly plants.

The elements of this demoralisation aren't hard to find. A history of capitalist victories against the unions. A long and deep recession at a time when much of the safety net of the welfare state has been removed. Frightened people aren't ready to take chances or to experiment - especially when the glitz of the Labour campaign doesn't add up to a real political and economic alternative.

There remain many problems for the capitalists and many opportunities for a fightback. Major must now drink his own poisoned chalice of a bankrupt economy. This election marks a finis to the reformist strategy of waiting for a labour government to be elected. The very large forces willing to defend themselves must take the road of self-organisation and direct mass action if they are to succeed. In Scotland especially workers are already drawing a line inthe sand and indicating their unwillingness to accept the diktat of a government that they did not elect and raising the national question as. a major issue in British politics.

Inthe North the loss of the Sinn Fein seat in West Belfast is a disappointment.

There are however still almost 17000 republican voters in West Belfast and overall, with the exception of mid-Ulster and Fermanagh/South Tyrone, the republican vote held. This bedrock of republican resistance remains an important constraint on the British and their allies.

It's true that tactical voting by loyalists gave Hendron the seat. That isn't the major issue. The fact is that if Sinn Fein merely hold their vote that means that new voters are passing them by and the SDLP/Dublin government/Catholic church offensive is slowly but surely succeeding. That's no surprise when we consider that in the nine years in which Gerry Adams held the seat Sinn Fein consistently pursued a strategy of urging unity with bourgeois nationalism. This strategy has failed utterly and left them with lunatic proposals of UN and EEC intervention, The danger now is of a reliance on military action to substitute for the political failures of Sinn Fein. Inthe absence of mass political action or any stralegy for building it we would see more and more reckless adventurism of the character of the London bombings and an even greater isolation of the struggle.

Socialist republicans have one clear task - to join inthe political struggles to build independent class action. Without this bedrock we will have no counter to the further offensives planned by the imperialists and their allies.