The By-elections

Line January /4rd by-elections in the North can hardky be said to have: advanced Loyalist plans to derail the Anglo-Irish deal. The Orange vote was was not substantially different from that of the last general election and fell 80,000 short of the 500.000 target - and the loss of the Newry/ Armagh seat did not bring any smiles to Unionist faces. However the fall in the Sinn Fein vote was a clear set-back for the anti-imperialist movement. We can’t ignore this. We need a balance-sheet if we are to advance and overthrow the the Anglo-lrish betrayal.

What are the facts? The total Sinn Fein share of the Nationalist vote fell from 46% in 1983 to 35% in January - a decline of 11%. In the same period the SDLP vote rose 11% from 34% to 65%. This picture is seen in each of the four constituencies contested .- a fall in the Republican vote and a corresponding rise in the SDLP vote. This is vey far from a collapse of the Republican vote and indicates the willingness of a major segment of the Northern nationalists toa fight on but it is a significant erosion and a boost for the SDLP at a time when they were involved in their greatest ever betrayal. Since then Fitzgerald and Thatcher have not been slow to use the result to justify the Anglo-lrish deal and the increasing THE EXPLANATION Sinn Fein have advanced a number of explanations for the result. It was due to: “the lack of a |Sinn Fein / SDLP] pact...tactical voting... Nationalist abstention,..Alliance Party supporters voting SDLP". These sorts, of comments in An Phoblacht Republican News don't even address the problem. Rather they show the dangers of electoralism within the Republican Movement itself.

Elections by themselves won't change the nature of the state. For revolutionaries there has to be a plan that uses the elections to draw the mass f the population into action. Recent Sinn Fein elections haven't had this, ind the tasks of organising elections, fotes and constituency work can vecome things in themselves, divorced rom the struggle, and encouraging the ort of routine and mechanical “planations given for this election ‘esull.

Vhat elections arc is an opportunity 0 explain to the masses the issues acing workers and an opportunity to weanise around the mapor issues of the lass struggle. There's no doubt about Wildl IMG ISSUe Was In Inese elections -the Anglo-Irish deal.

### FACING FACTS

Sinn Fein didn’t face up to this. Firstly they opposed the deal while claiming that concessions won came from Republican strugele there aren't any concessions and this simply caused confusion. Secondly they said that this wasn't the issue in the elections - antiunionist unity was. Thirdly they built their campaign around unity with the SDLP - a unity which the SDLP rejected in the first days of the campaign.

All of this was wrong. There are no concessions and unity is only relevent in terms of opposition to the deal. The “SUEP having taken the decisive step of actively supporting partition and the British presence, were not likely to unite against it. and suggesting unity blurred the issues for SDLP and republican voters.

### H_ BLOCK CAMPAIGN

In order to- develop a new strategy for Socialists and Republicans we need to examine the lessons of the H-Block campaign. Demands were put on the SDLP t support the prisoners. ‘Pressure generated by this offensive, wilh a Mass Movement growing in all 32 counties, forced the SDLP to abstain in the Bobby Sands election campaign. In areas where bourgois politicians openly opposed the prisoners, they were thrown out of office - for example Gerry Fitt in Belfast.

This was a major step forward for Republicans. In the 1970's they were content to denounce the SDLP and the capitalist parties as traitors, ignore the need to break the SDLP’s base, and insist that armed struggle alone would win, THE MASS MOVEMENT This step forward was consolidated by Sinn =Fein’s subsequent electoral offensive. It was described as the ‘ballot-box and armalite*. Infortunately another clement was left out -mobilising the masses. The longer the mass movement was demobilised, the more Sinn Fein were going to face problems. The high tide of the electoral advance was in June 1983. In the two subsequent polls - the EEC elections in 1984 and the local elections in 1985 -Sinn Fein's electoral advance was frozen. Now the by-clections show a decline, We have in fact seen the end of the electoral momentum generated by the H-Block/ Armagh campaign. There is no way forward outside of rebuilding Ine Mass MOVEMENT and facing head-on the SDLP collaborators and their allies. in Leinster House.

Sinn Fein's decision to stand in these elections was a correct one. lt would have been wrong to boycott the elections in the face of a challenge by Hume. That would have been a retreat to the apolitical Me Fein position of the 1970's. Also they were correct to try and put the SDLP on the spot. However to do this successfully we must put forward transitional proposals which will win the support of SDLP supporters and bring forward the struggle. Here the republicans fell down. There unity proposals put no conditions at all on the SDLP leadership.

### ACTION NOW

Before the election PD argued for a united electoral program that linked opposition to repression with opposition to the Anglo-Irish deal. This would have ‘had the advantage of mobilising independent support beyond the Republican movement itself, dividing SDLP support and clearly separating the SDLP leadership from the resistance This proposal wasn't taken up. Yet these issues and the need for a balance-sheet can’t be left to the next elections. We need to organise now ~- and that means that Socialists and Republicans have to put forward a clear and unambigious message, to fight the SDLP and the Dublin collaborators tooth and nail build a broader unity on which an all-Ireland movement, involving the majority of the Irish working class. ean be constructed. In the medium term the Anglo -lrish deal will be put ‘to a real electoral test in the next, 26-county general election. We need to be united and organised in action and | to have developed a common program which lays out the broad details of the re real alternative -a United Ireland!