Must Fight Back!

In Socialist Republic: Vol. 2 no. 1, 1980 · scan pages 4–5 · about 272 words

Internment, repression and the courts Republicanism and the IRA Prisoners and the hunger strikes

No public scan is online for this item; the text below was read from a privately held copy.

Machine-read text, not corrected. Cut from the scan by machine, by the size of the headline type. Where columns were set close together, lines of a neighbouring article can run in, and a headline can be missed so that two articles share a page. For anything you quote, read the scan.

Scan page 4

The utter contempt in which the right wing of the Socialist labour Party holds the party's nembership was vividly demonstrat - . ed at the first meeting of the new National Executive Committee, held in Dublin on 19-IIth February.

Not only did the NEC refuse to censure Browne for his attack on the H-block prisoners but it went on to overturn the conference decisions to mount an action campaign on the H-blocks.

Under cover of high-sounding criticsm of the “narrow nationalist aims and methods of the Provisional I.R.A.", the Socialist , Lgbour Party NEG turned its back eon the growing anti-repression struggle both in the 26 counties as well as in the North.

Any doubt on this score is ruled out by Party Chairman(sic!, David Neligan who has stated that the &.L.P.'s priorities in the coming months will be the Southerp local governzent elections and campaigns against a new National Wage Agreement and opposition to _Haughey's Family Planning Bill. recall conference.

To oppose such campaigns to the urgent need of combatting repression is a sorry state for any ‘Socialist’ Party to find itself in. Opposition to the NEC decisions must be buiit immediately.

Belfast NEC member Joan Kelly walked out of the NEC meeting in opposition to its undemocratic overturning of conference decis- ! ions. She and other members of the NEC opposed to the disgraceful} flouting of- conference decisions : should tour the SLP branches and build support for an immediate recall conference of the 5.L.P. Such a conference should censure ' the NEC and demand the implementation of conference resolutions opposing repression.

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