We Reply

Uaf the I.C.T.U.'s accounts are so readily available why bother to send them to the Government at all? Unless, of course, they are to be sent before they are presented to the Annual Conference, or unless they are to be used as the basis for discussion of future spend ing of the grant. Perhaps Mr. Blease could enlighten us about this?

The accounts are not the important issue, the Stormont Government's £10,00 per annum subsidy to the Northern Committee of the I.C.T.U. is. The Unionist Party have no love for Trade Unions and less for the working class. For years they refused to recognise the I.C.T.U. and for 50 years they have condemned the working people to live in slums, earn low wages an” go constantly haunted by the fear of unemployands of pounds for nothing. Mr. Blease is concerned about P.D. for the Government?

would never accept it if there under an obligation to Stormont. And it makes them dependent on the Unionists. The I.C.T.U. is of the money, nearly a third of blackmail them by threatening to is far too closely tied up with Stormont. There is hardly a union official who is not on some gangsters don't give away thousmembers whose pay (because they are employed as, say, nurses or teachers) comes from Government funds. Nurses and teachers are paid for doing a job of work. We want to know what job of work is the ILC. T.U. being paid for doing There may be no overt strings to the grant - the union members were - but it places the I.C.T.U.

employing new staff on the strength their income; Stormont can easily withdraw it. And already 1.C.T.UW Government Board and six of them iation to attack the one-day strike on December 8th in protest against the Industrial Relations Bill. And the Northern Committee are still at it. They are now trying to persuade Northern workers to come to an agreement on strikes with the Unionist government to keep them from introducing the Bilt here. For that reason the 1.C.T.U. urged workers not to take industrial action during the protests of January 12th. Is this the first result of the £10,000 grant?

For years the I.C.T.U. has failed to lead the workers of the North in a militant struggle against the low wages, unemployment and bad housing here. Now that the unions are facing a determined attack from the employers' mouthpiece at Westminster, the I.C.T.U. still refuses to fight. It's a wonder the Government wasted £10,000 on buying them at all But the fight will go on - and we will support it.

LETTER Dear Sir, The one and only time I desperately needed the help of an M.P. was some six years ago. It was when I bought a house in a particular district and met with the animosity of my local neighbours. As I had more than my share of broken windows and threatening notes I, in desperation, sought the help of any M.P. (regardless of party) I could get in contact with.

That in itself is a difficult enough job, but the excuses I got ranged from, "I'm seeing the Minister of Home Affairs" (from a Labour Party M.P.) to, "What the hell do you want me to do, stand gaurd over your house?" (from a Senator of the Unionist Party). A certain Republican Labour M.P., now in the S.D.L.P., told me, "I'm ina hurry to get to London - if anything else happens contact me when I return". This turned out to be quite unneces‘sary, for by the time he had returned my house had been set on fire. Six years ago there was no such thing as financial help for people who had been burnt-out so my family and I had to manage without the help of anyone, including M.P.'s.

Now, I see the same thing nappening again, only this time the need for help is much greater than mine.

It is a petition for the release of a young expectant mother, who has been unjustly sentenced to two years in prison. This is a petition which anybody with a sense of compassion would gladly hand in, in the hope of returning her to her children, instead of her having to return to prison after giving birth. But oh no, the M.P., whose duty is was to hand this petition in, gave the old excuse of "not now, later".

The petition is now, at last, in the hands of an M.P. who seems to have the good of his constituents at heart. An M.P. who does not begrudge help when asked, even by those who are not in his constituency.

But when are we, the voters of all sections of the community, going to wise up to the "Jam tomorrow, but never Jam today" attitude of most of these so-called representatives of the people’.

After all, we are the ones who put them into, as I see it, a cushy job by Northern Ireland standards.

Yours sincerely, Mary Duffin, 49 Leeson Street, Belfast 12.

The whole Craigavon project is sagging alarmingly. The growthrate of the 'New City' is now limping further and further behind schedule as the money drains out of Northern Ireland's slowly collapsing economy. This is painfully clear from a comparsion between the- expertly planned timetable for the new city's growth, detailed in its official publication "Second Report 1967", with the bombastic statement by Craigavon Commission General Manager Ned Cage, just issued. His review of the past year's activity amounts to nothing more than smoothie public-relations waffle to cover up for Craigavon's failure to attract industry, services, people and interest.

The truth is less reassuring than Cage's smug ‘1970 was our most successful year to date".

Examine his own figures for the Brownlow Sector, the only area of Craigavon visible to the naked eye. "In the Brownlow Sector there are 2,500 houses completed or (and note this well) in various stages of completion". In plain language Cage means that he has not been able to complete all the 2,500 houses. But in fact there should have been no less than 3,650 houses fully completed and ready for occupation within the next ten weeks (see ''Second Report", page 59). So now the New City housing is actually 30% behind schedule. Some successful year!

On the most important issue -population - Cage produces smokescreen statistics. The ''Second Report" requires an intake population of 15,000 in the period 1966-71. And how is the intake population coming along? "It is expected", says Cage, "that some 3,000 new people will be housed in 1971". So this means that if Craigavon is to make up the planned total of 15,000 by 1971, there must be 12,000 people in Brownlow Sector already! Just how many now actually live in Brownlow Sector? Cage wisely chooses not to say. And that's because the numbers are nearer 2,000 than 12,000, In the same period 1966-71 the "Second Report" (see page 54) timetables the creation of 6,500 new jobs to give work to the intake population. How, then, is what New City planners call "anticipated job requirement" measuring up to cold reality? Cage churns out no cheerFREE CITIZEN 15th JANUARY 1971 Schools scheduled for completion in 1968, only two have opened. And both of these - one State, one Roman Catholic (the old divisions are perpetuated in the city dedicated to that great divisive influence - Lord Craigavon) - opened only in 1970, two years late. Cows still graze on the sites of all the planned secondary schools (scheduled to open in 1969) and the grandiose Regional Technical College (scheduled to open in 1970) exists only in the mind of the planners.

Nor is the organisation of major engineering services, as ''Second Report" calls them, much more than a shambles. According to "Second Report" (see page 58) the "completion of the major sewage works at Ballynacor by 1969 is a critical operation in this field". Alas, it's too bad about this operation. Here we are in 1971 and at Ballynacor there is a muddle of half-completed and incomplete structures in the centre of a chaos of builders’ huts, piles of muck and huge puddles of water. All two years behind schedule. And there's chaos, too, where there should be roads, as any car driver in the area will tell you.

The "Second Report" (see page 57) optimistically proposes a start on the city regional centre near the end of the 1966-71 period. We're in the last year of the period and so far not a brick has been laid.

From all this one plain fact emerges. Craigavon cannot grow while the rest of Northern Ireland declines economically, socially and politically. The new city project is not miraculously insulated against the relunctance of industry to risk capital and plant in an area of seething discontent. Nor against the London Tory Government's economic disdain for its most expensive colony. Nor against the swindlers and the fly-by-night industrialists. Nor against social injustice that deters immigrants. With rising unemployment and increasing factory closures the question now is not whether the New City will grow to sustain the rest of Northern Ireland, but ‘whether it can only continue to grow at the EXPENSE of the rest of Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile as Ulster totters, Craigavon - Faulkner's folly -totters with it.