The Fight Against Repression Must Be Taken Into The Unions

POLLUTION AND HEALTH Not only do the workers in those industries have their health slowly or quickly undermined, but the pollution thrown cut into the air, the rivers, and the lakes, by those industries, puts the whole population at risk, Lough Sheelin in Westmeath is threatened with biological extinction, We thought that only happened far away in places like the Great Lakes in North America and the Caspian Sea in the Soviet Union, But here jn Ireland, "fishkills!

is a new word that has entered the language. Children suffer brain damage because they inhale lead from car exhausts, Pollution related diseases, such as cancer and heart and lung ailments, are the principal causes of death in Ireland, accounting for up to 90 per cent of all deaths.

lg ° These too are an inescapable part of the price that Irish workers and small! farmers are paying for the industrialization brought to you courtesy of the IDA. And there is no indication that this price is likely to decrease in the future, Every indication is that the opposite is true, POLITICAL EFFECTS So what political and economic effects can we expect in the years ahead as silicon chip technology comes to be more widely applied?

What will be the impact of automation and what policy should workers follow in relation to it? And what are the facts about pollution and risk on the job? These questions and other such issues related to capitalist industrialization in Ireland and the socialist alternative will be examined in later issues of Socialist Republic. have themselves been fashioned by jmperialist domination, What is needed in the Northisa real action programme which can organise the workers throughout Ireland in a fight to claw back from imperialism some of the plunder reaped by its exploitation of Ireland's workers andresources, We need a programme which can unite workers North and South in opposition to soaring unemployment, Such a campaign would be centred around demands for a 35-hour week and a useful programme of public works. It would demand the opening of the books of the multinationals who declare redundancies or attempt to fold their operations. To make such a campaign effective a real fight for workers! unity would have to be organised simultaneously. Crucially this is a fight to reunite the nationalist workers of the North with workers jin the South and .to put an end to the isolation which they have endured since partition. The basis of this fight would be the demand for affirmative action programmes to redress the grievances of the catholic workers which have multiplied during the 60 years of structural discrimination in the 6 Counties.

The success of such a campaign, indeed the success of any fight by the working class today demands the full and unconditional independence of the trade unions from both the partitionist states. That means replacing the present misleaders with a real anti-imperialst |eadership.

JOHN MacGEO WN Although Irish trade unions have stated their opposition to repression over the past five years very little has actually been done besides passing resolutions. Furthermore controversial issues such as H-Block tended to be avoided on the grounds that there should be no support given to ''those who advocate violence!!", Except when the small forces of the far left were able to exert some pressure the union leadership on a national level have been, more or less let off the hook, Members and supporters of the Labour Party have, in the best (worst) traditions of Irish social democracy, dodged away from opposing the repression of anti-Imperialists, During the dark days of the late unlamented Cosgrave coalition these people just buried their heads in the sand and kowtowed to the pro-Brit propag— anda of the Cruiser, Very few identified with efforts of the anti-Imperialist left to resist legislation such as the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Act or the Declaration of a State of Emergency and the introduction of seven day detention. The 'two nations! pro-Imperialist current had a field day, Probably around this time their main apologists in Sinn Fein - the Workers! Party (SF-WP) consolidated their union buse amony disenchanted social democrats and others hostile to the National Struggle.

Anti-Imperialists in the 26 Countics, and specifically the Provos, failed to mobjlize their forces in the unions, These two factors have proved a major obstacle in vetting the unions to fight repression, THE TIDE 1S TURNING But times are chanyiny. It is no longer "illegitimate" to raise the National Question, The nationalist sentiment of southern workers js coming to the fore again. The days of Crujser-style apologies to the Brits for daring to want therm to leave our country are yone. As the colonial regime in the 6 Counties resorts to naked brutality with little or no political cover in order to im-— ridiculous, for political status, spoke from the platform, THE ROLE OF THE ICTU sequent events, "

pose its rule, apologists for its alleged aim of "keeping both sides apart'! become more grotesque and The central focus of this renewed desire to put an end to the occup— ation and domination of Ireland has become the plight of the political prisoners in the Northern concentration camps, This has been spurred on by the formation of the National Smash H-Block Committee which does not bar Opponents of the use of violence against the British invader from joining itsranks, The idea that you don't need to support the IRA to back the prisoners is gaining ground. As part of this general trend the unions are contributing, although unevenly, to the struggle REAL ACTION BEGINNING Several southern trades councils have taken motions, The Cork Trades Council passed a motion in support of the H-Block Committee and sent a speaker to the inaugural metting of the Committee in Cork, The Limerick Trades Council gave support to the December 1979 conference in the Mansion House but failed to send a delegate. The Navan Trades Council sends a delegate to the local Prisoners! Action Committee. The Dublin Trades Council at its November meeting expressed support for bers. the demands of the prisoners but refused to attend the December conference because of its "poss— ible association with organizations executives, that condoned violence". The most successful lobbying appears to have been done in Waterford, There the trades council has set up a sub-committce to investigate the H-Block situation and supported a recent 80 strony public meeting. Michacl O'Brien, a local trade union official and an ex-internee, Forthcoming annual union conferences will be a target for H-Block lobbyists. Already resolutions have bequn to appear on their agendas, For cxample at Portrush in April, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) will be asked to "seek aceess to the prisoners and investigate the conditions", The Irish Transport and General Workers! Union (1 TGWU) conference held every year at the start of June, will be an essential focal point for the Campaign and this year the professed "national unity" view of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) will be put to the test when the conference moves to Belfast in July, In practice partition has been accepted by the trade union deader ship. In 1944 it established the "Northern Jreland Committee", As pointed out in an jissue of the Belfast Workers! Research Bulletin: "In perpetrating their historical compromise of rec ° ognizing the Northern state, the official trade Union movement effectively became the prisoners of the sectarian bias implicit within the state and contributed to their Own Impotence in the face of subpe ee es oe