Lynch seeks mandate to smash Resistance

"The incoming Government, in its appr:isal of the British White Paper will need the unequivocal support of the people to deal firmly with the new situation as it developes", With those words Jack Lynch announced the Free State's General Hlection. The reason for it is clear - Fianna Fail want a fresh election victory, a recent indication of popular support so that they can’ launch a new, unparalleled waive of represcion against Repubiynch knows that the White Paper will contain nothin; for the anti-unirnist population of the North. The British, their political “initiative” having fsiled to break the spirit of Resistance will then fall back on their usual answer - military force. in this, 2s always, they will be supported by their trusty lap dog, the Irish Government. licans and Socialists, and do it in the name iynch want® to be returned with a hefty majority, for while Fine Gael supports the same basic policy of repression they have tended to slow up the passing of legislation in their anxiety to appear as an opposition, It took two bombs to hurry Fine Gael into the voting lobbies to support the amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, but lynch cannot try that trick again without serious questions being asked by the people in the South about whether “honest Jack" is quite the innocent he makes out to be, Therefore he called the election.

But it has become clear that Lynch miscalculated his support and when a Fine Gaellabour Party alliance victory looked possible he promised improved welfare benefits. it was obviously a panic election gesture. It was remrkable that after 16 years ol eontinucus ofiice, Mianns Pail a ovld tesome interested in working class welfare just a week before the elections.

It will make litile difference to the wotking class which group forms the next Government, Lynch is not the "m:n of the people" his election propaganda sugyests, but neither are Cosgrave or Corish. They are all servants of the capitaliete and imperialists. Tuey have striven hard to of the people. break the resistance to imperialism in the North, they have been selling Ireland's mineral wenlth te the Americans, enceuraring the collapse of the Irish language by nezlectiny the Gaeltacht, and encouraging capitalists, both Irish and foreign, to exploit the Irish worker.

What then should Socialists and Republicans dovin such 2 situation? Elections set clear tusks for revolutionary groups, They focus the attention of the working class on political issues. Therefore, under normal conditions, it is the duty of revolutionaries to take advantage of this situation and put their policies before the people and, if practical, to participate in the election, In a revolutionary situation, on the other hand, it ia the clear duty of revolutionaries to mount a boycott. Yormlin: clase otiontion should then be turned away fram the bourgeois mockery of democracy and towards the building of the workers’ own orgine of power, peoples! assemblies, sovietsa.

Obviously the Free State ia not ina revolutionary situation, What then has been the reaction of the Republican Movement to the elections? /ontined Seuss : 7 Ld