What Strategy for Revolution?

Zh It seems to me that your assertion denys the history of your own movement. If there is any point where the present armed struggle can be said to have begun it is with the 'Battle of the Falls! in 1970 -- when the British army attempted the smashing of the defensive capacity of the Northern ghettoes, Our own experfence as a movement contradicts you. A member of our movement got six years in 1977 for possession of weapons and narrowly escaped a much longer sentence on an !intent! charge -- this despite the fact that he based his case on the right to self-defence and that the judge accepted many of his arguments, I will accept that our own concept of mass self-defence is under-developed and appears as theoretical and abstract, This is because we area small organisation and have enly begun the work of implementing it in practice, Also, as with many other aspects of our work, it requires an acceptance and an activity by other sections of the anti-imperialist movement to be fully implemented, For example, our "sickly legalism! in urging the filing of marchesis in Lists. our view part of the political defence could force the Brits to 'turn off! their of the right to demonstrate and forces Loyalist auxilliaries. the British to ban marches on political grounds rather than technical, As we have never accepted the right of the RUC to ban or re-route marches | don't see the basis of your criticism. We would extend this concept of political defence in the following way: the response to assassination cam= paigns should be a united campaign for the disbandment of the UDR and the immediate removal of the RUC from the ghettoes, coupled with a prepaganda campaign detalling British collaboration with the LoyalThis sort of mass pressure Republic. that is unable to deal with Loyalist assassination, Brit and RUC penetration of the ghettoes and increasing repression is unlikely to defeat the imperialist forces. — Five years ago the Republican strategy seemed to be based ona short-term defeat of the British forces, Now it seems to be a long war of attrition without specific short or medium-term aims.

Finally, 1 object both to your decrying of the value of propaganda and to your dismissal of our organisation as a propagandist one. _ Very large numbers of people today support the ideas of republicanism and socialism. These ideas did not drop from the sky. Where did your own positions come from? " Did their formation not involve the reading of propaganda and debate and discussion about Marxist . 4 theory? We in PD are proud of our work as propagandists, but our reputation rests not only on this -but first and foremost on the agitational work we have carried out over the past twelve years and our place In every major united front organisation of that period.

| regret that | am not able to change my view of the Republican movement. If | felt that your movement went beyond the programme of revolutionary democracy and based Itself on a programme of working class social revolution then | and the other members of PD would be members of It. If you feel you can demonstrate this feel free to use again fhe columns of the Socialist