Socialist Labour Party

In Socialist Republic: Vol. 2 no. 1, 1980 · scan page 4 · about 345 words

Labour, the left and left unity Prisoners and the hunger strikes Partition and the national question

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held over the weekend of January 27 & 28 showed that there the same time having some idea of how to put it into practice. by conference decisions and feels.free to oppose them publicly, The Conference of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP)

is not much point in having a correct programme taking the right side in the fight against British Imperialism without at When the party was founded there were grounds for hoping that the membership would learn from its experience. Whilethere is no doubt that this has happened to some degree, complete awareness of this lesson does not yet exist, More than that it became clear at the conference that there is a small right-wing minority which has no interest in supporting the fight for a united Ireland, never mind struggling against atrocities like H Block, which doesn't.consider itself bound This grouping though not yet formally organised, and lacking agreement on all issues (largely due to personal petty rivalries ) does have one thing in common -a reactionary 'labourist' position on the National Question. The most prominent member of this clique, Noel Browne TD, demonstrated his contempt for the party he is supposed to represent in the Dail by writing a letter to 'The Irish Times' on January 9th in which he made the scandalous allegation that the campaign for the restoration of Political Status is "elitist". This flew in the face of SLP policy and caused a number of delegates to put forward a resolution re-iterating support HE LE for the prisoners in the H-Blocks and calling for a public statement to be issued disassociat~ ing the party from Browne's comments on this issue.

The motion was ‘referred back' to the party's National Executive Committee (NEC) by 73 votes to 47, though to this writer and other independent observers it appeared a lot closer. In any case it was clear that many delegates in favour of the "reference' back" privately agreed with the motion and were trying to presefve party unity. .

Their mistaken belief that a fight could be avoided on this