Pose the Ver Up!

union on such matters as multinational industry, unofficial strikes and discrimination against catholic: workers in the North of Ireland.

SFWP hope to quietly insinuate themselves into a position of dominance over the other factions and groups in the bureaucracy. They have been known to make unprincipled agreements with members of the trade union bureaucracy,in order to further their own political careers. In the undemocratic system of elections in the unions they wheel and deal with the worst of them, trading votes with people whose views are neither socialWILLIAM McGRATH KINCORA: EX UNIONIST CO community. Since the original lrish Independent story revealing that the RUC had sat on evidence regarding Orange Order and Loyalist paramilitary leader, William McGrath’s abuse of his position as a houseparent at Kincora Children’s Home, the almost daily revelations have touched almost every section of the Unionist The central parties in this corruption scandal are the British administration and Military Intelligence, Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party and the RUC. British Secretary, Jim Prior, from the outset refused to allow a full judicial inquiry for fear of it detailing the involvement of administration officials both in the events for which McGrath was convicted and in the 20 year cover-up. Only with the collapse of the private McGonagle inquiry did Prior agree to establish STICK a limited public inquiry which will only sit after RUC investigations and any resulting court cases have been concluded. That could mean that the report of the inquiry may not be In the meantime instructions have been given to the four Health and Social Services’ Boards to get rid of all staff members where there is the slightest suspicion of a homosexual orientation. This, despite the fact that homosexual acts between consenting adults have now been legalised following the Geoff Dudgeon case to the European Court of Human Rights. The number of suspensions that have already taken place are a Clear indication that the fears of a witchhunt are well founded. For the British and Unionist establishment alike sensationalist scares about children at risk of homosexual @buse Is a welcome diversion of public attention away from official corruption.

The trades union movement, while condemning any case involving the exploitation of children, must come out into the open in defence of their gay members and thus make sure that those behind the corruption cover-up are justly indicted.

Fifth Column MILITANT “DEMOCRACY”

During the pre-election period, Tony Benn paid a visit to Dublin. At the meeting PD issued a leaflet which stated why it would be natural for Tony Benn to support Bernadette McAliskey’s candidature since they were agreed on the central issues of getting the Brits out of treland, of nationalising major industries and of non-participation in government with capitalist parties. Joe Higgins of the Militant tendency denounced the leaflet from the platform as “scurrilous” and a ‘cheap vote getting gimmick”. But the fun really began when Niall Meehan of Peoples Democracy tried to speak in the ‘open discussion” section of the meeting.

He was systematically ignored and John Throne (Militant) directed the chair from the back of the hall as to who to allow to speak and who to ignore. Despite attempts by Michael D Higgins to show where Meehan was indicating he was repeatedly ignored, while Militant speakers were given the freedom of the meeting. Really, comrades is this any way to conduct debate in the workers movement.

SHERLOCK STUCK BY BLUESHIRT Avid Today Tonight watchers will have been interested by the unusually hard time given to J oe Sherlock by (ex B Special)

Barry Cowan on the night of March 9th.

Two factors influenced the heavy line of questioning (which poor Joe was totally unable for, suggesting he hadn’t been warned?). Firstly SFWP fellow travellers in the Today Tonight team were opposed to the decision to back Haughey rather than FitzGerald as Taoiseach. Secondly, sounds have been made to high bodies in RTE about the repeated and obvious bias of Today Tonight towards SFWP. The team waited till the votes were counted after the election before attempting to ‘balance’ things.

OBVIOUSLY A good number of the protestant community in the 6 counties are having their illusions in the ‘morality’ of their political and religious leaders shattered. In the recent South Belfast by-election hundreds of spoilt Ballot papers had !‘Kincora’ scrawled across them. Both | Rev. Martin Smyth, the successful Official Unionist candidate and lan Paisley, leader of the Free Presbyterian Church and the Democratic Unionist Party are implicated in the Kincora scandal.