Britain

At the May Day rally organised by the ICTU (Northern Committee) in Belfast last month, there was a lot of back-slapping among the trade union leadership over the “success” of the “Better Life For All’ campaign, which was launched last January. Only a few days earlier the worst unemployment figures for 36 years were published.

What was the response of the trade union leadership? No programme of working class action was put forward. Faced with lengthening dole queues, spiralling food prices, wholesale cuts in social services, the only proposal put by these workers’ ‘leaders’ was to invite the British Prime Minister, Callaghan, to come over to the North to discuss the situation!

Inemployment in the North is nothing new. ‘hroughout the history of this statelet nemployment has been a way of life for housands of workers, particularly Catholic vorkers. While during the so-called “boom’ eriod after the war unemployment in iritain was around 1.5%, in the North it was ever below 6%; and in the nationalist hettoes the figures were around the 25% nark. In the large catholic housing estate of tallymurphy, the situation has long been hat 50% of male workers have been on he bureau, iritish government policy of edundancies and cutbacks jut even against such a background, the resent situation can only be described as lesperate. The official figure of 9.7% inemploymed masks the terrible reality. Thousands of unemployed workers are not ncluded in the official statistics, such as narried women who haven't got the full juota of insurance stamps, can't collect yenefit and therefore see no point in joining ‘he humiliating queves outside the labour xchanges.

Each week brings more depressing news of factory closures, redundancies and short-time working. The British Labour Government, despite its promises of “fair” rule and its fighting delcarations against unemployment, is itself directly adding to the misery of Northern workers. British povernment action has been directly responsible for the closure of International Engineering Ltd. with a loss of 2,200 jobs; Standard Telephones and Cables, with a projected loss of 2,300 jobs; Rolls Royce, Dundonald (800 jobs), Regna International. in addition the £45 million cutback in public expenditure in the North already threatens 2,000 jobs in the British defence establishments as well as placing 10,000 jobs in the Belfast shipyards in jeopardy, It also means the widespread slashing of the social services.

Major hospitals such as the Royal Victoria in Belfast have declared that there will be no vacancies for student nurses for at least another two years. According to a spokesman for the Confederation of Health Service Employ cess (COHSE} the situation is nothing short of chornic in some hospitals, He spoke of “patients falling out of bed because there are not enough nurses in the wards."

Health, Social Services, Housing, Education: All Hit At the Laganvalley Hospital in Lisburn there are only three nurses in the geriatric ward to look after 46 patients, Albert Smyth, COHSE Branch Secretary at the hospital, has warned that “The way things are going, there will be no staff for the new geriatric unit which is to open in April 1977, And in addition there is talk of closing casualty af night because of lack of staff."

lt is not just in the hospitals, though, that jobs are being lost and services getting worse, Throughout the health service-in the North the cutbacks are wrecking havoc, The Area Health and Social Services are talking in terms of a large reduction in the number of doctors in general practice, the phasing out of house-calls to patients and the complete disappearance of many rural practices, The Home-Help service, an essential life-line for many old and handicapped people, is being severely pruned, the number of houses having already been chopped by a third are facing a further similar cut. The building of new health centres, necessary to end the anarchic provision of health care, has been halted; and despite the acute shortage of social workers there isa ban on appointing permanent staff to fill vacancies. Particularly hard hit by these cutbacks will be women and children, There are no state-run nurseries in the North and now no plans to open any, And in those areas which need playgroups the most, there are waiting-lists up to three years old.

The aime picture emerges in the housing and education sectors, The number of houses built last year was down by more than 1,(0 compared with 1974, Hundreds of qualified of ajob. And a 17% cut in the number of teacher-training places in the 6 Counties along with a 50% cut in the number of grants for Northern students wishing to take their training in Britain means the dole queue for hundreds of students, and overcrowded, understaffed schools.

Results of dependence While the economic crisis hits the nationalist working dass particularly hard, adding to the misery of 50 years of organised discrimination, lovalist workers have hardly been spared. The dosure of the defence establishments, the run-down of the shipyards and the loss of plants primarily means that loyalists have for the first time suffered the full force of the economic instability which has gone along with the existence of this artificial statelet, dependent and therefore subservient to British Imperialism. The scale of these attacks is such that loyalist workers are unable to resolve their problems amply by offloading them onto the nationalist minority, And that means they have looked for other explanations!

from the 6 Counties, This nonsense is peddled by such diverse characters as Sandy Scott and and Gerry Fitt. But nonsense it is! Par from the closures and redundancies resulting from deliberate British scheming, they are the which afflicts the entire capitalist system. Northern Ireland is marginal to and utterly expenditure in the North amounts to some £1,300 million a year, representing at least 60% of the total domestic product, 85% of industry in the North is under foreign control, mainly British and American, Only one-seventh of the manufacturing sector is locally owned, In of this dJemma, But their anewer is to call for the strengthening of the British link, for more former British Minister of State, in the North, most of these so-called ‘leaders’ are not shy at pointing out how desperate Northern workers are for jobs and thus how “reliable” they are as a workforce, how they are quite prepared to accept lower wages. In other words, the trade union leadership just heaps added burdens on to the backs of the working dass For “NONE”! teachers are already unemployed, with no prospect British link. unemployed. thousands of jobs at Rolls Royce, STC and other The most popular is that the economic ills are a result of a devious British plan to withdraw the B & [CO right across the board to Ian Paisley inevitable outcome of the present economic crisis dependent upon the Imperialist economy, Public united Ireland.

this situation the North has virtually no capacty to resist these development, E Most of the trade union leaders are fully aware foreign investment, And just like Stan Orme, the Ireland. “Better Life for All’... or ‘Some’....

This approach is present throughout the ‘Better Life for Al” campaign. The goodwill of the British Government is offered as a panacea for all the ills which confront the working class, loyalist and republican alike, So the trade union leadership has even refused to withdraw its representatives from the Economic Council, Housing Executive and other state bodies in protest at the British Government's anti-working class policies, The stance taken by the ICTU can only guarantee the 100,000 unemployment level which is being predicted by 1980, It is an absolute betrayal of the workers interests, and places responsibility for the economic crisis not on the capitalist system but on those who oppose the Thus the practical consequences of the LCTU's ‘Better Life For All’ campaign, far from countering sectarianism, actually legitimises the loyalist view that ‘disloyal’ workers have no right to jobs while loyalists are Of course, the trade unions try to avoid this reality by talking of the unity of the working dasa, Now everyone in the North is in favour of uniting the working class — with the exception of imperialism, its local capitalist allies, and the loyalist section of the working class! That the latter stand in the camp of reaction is a hard fact that the trade unions, the Communist Party of Ireland and increasingly the Official Republicans, all brush under the carpet. Yet until the left asa whole recognises that since partition the majority of the Protestant workers have played an active role in maintaining this undemoctatic and sectarian state then the trade unions will remain ineffective, will remain incapable of organising independent working class action, Revolutionary Perspective Every time the Communist Party and the Official Republicans present Britain as a force that can end sectarianism in the North they put back the day when working class unity in the North will be a reality, There is only one situation in which the possibility of the Protestant workers putting class before sectarian interests can be realised and that is when British Imperialism is | kicked out of Ireland, Then the Protestant workers will be free to choose another road: the road of building the workers republic in a None of this means that revolutionaries abstain on the economic struggles that are taking place in the North at the present time. But while putting forward a programme of independent working class action against unemployment, in opposition to the cutbacks in the social service, we situgte these demands within the context of fighting for the right of the Irish people as a whole to self-determination, The demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British Army, the defence of political prisoners, and the struggle to prevent any loyalist restoration, far from being ‘diversions from the ‘class’ issues of jobs and houses, are the meat of the fight for working class unity, the fight for socialism in JOHN MAGEE

The results of the Dublin South-West and Donegal North-East by-elections are important not just because they show that Fianna Fail has been unable to present itself as a credible alternative to a Fine-Gael-Labour Coalition which is becoming more and more urrable to deal with the crisis racking the Free State, but also because they show that many people are so disillusioned that they do not consider that any party offers a solution to their problems. An Irish Press (June 12) editorial was almost alone among bourgeois commentators in making this point: “ too many people... consider politics to be a vacuum insofar as being a means of redressing their difficulties is concerned. Nature abhors a vacuum as we have seen in the North, The bell did not just toll for one party here, it tolled for all of them — and for us".

A comparison of the campaigns run by the Significance of votes This win will certainty strengthen the Haughay wing of Fianna Fail and if Jack Lynch does not get the message Blaney will probably carry out his threat of running candidates in other border areas in the next General Election, He may get more support along these lines if Kevin Boland goes ahead with his apparent intention of winding up Aontacht Eireann. This build up of the Haughey ites is extremely dangerous because although they call themselves ‘republicans’ their policy of ‘a British intent to withdraw’ could provide an ideal cover for a Loyalist takeover, especially the “independent Ulster’ variety favoured by Paddy Deviin of the SDLP. The same criticism applies to the Provisionals, who of course boycotted the elections.

Labour Party Decline Brendan Halligan, the general secretary of the Labour Party, scraped to a win in Dublin S3.W. on the sixth and final count, more because of the weakness of Fianna Fail than his oven strength, In the process the Labour vote dropped from 35.7% in 1973 to 27.5% this time, Relations between John O Connell {after the result was announced he suggested that Halligan ought to move to another In many cases the [RSP put forward the same abstract damands as Official Sinn Fain (e.g. Nationalise the mines) thus making the same basic error — putting forward governmental demands when the forces to implement such demands do not yet exist, At this level the only difference between the |R'SP and Official Sinn Fein was that the IR-'SP declared itself against British imperialism — an equally abstract slogan which, since it was the main theme of the Maois candidate, created more confusion, Given mich confused policies coming from the republican/lest candidates it is not surprising thar there was alow poll because of abstention by Labour supporters, and that these candidates obtained insignificant support, The task for the future iz not fo ignore elections, but, particularly im the IRSP's case, to apply the correct tactis. when participating in them, Jt remains to be seen whether this will be done.

DUBLIN MSR

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the meaning of the hy— election results