PD Election Campaign Shows the Way

IN THE recent southern General Election, Peoples Democracy organised campaigns in two constituencies. In Dublin North Central PD sponsored Bernadette McAliskey and in Limerick East the Limerick branch of PD stood Joe Harrington. PD also issued a call for electoral unity between the major anti-imperialist organisations.

The programme put forward by our organisation called for: *Complete British Withdrawal — For a United Independent Ireland *Defence of Workers’ Living Standards — Against Austerity *Defence of Democratic and Civil Rights *Complete Opposition to Imerialist Alliances — Out of the EEC; No to NATO.

When the election was called we approached Bernadette and asked her to stand in Dublin North Central where Vincent Doherty of PD polled 1,500 votes in the last General Election and where there was the basis for a large campaign.

Bernadette met with the National Committee and agreed the basis of her standing as a PD sponsored candidate. Joe Harrington was put forward as our candidate in Limerick East. We also agreed to approach the IRSP and Sinn Fein with a view to getting unity among the anti-imperialist and socialist forces in the election.

Unfortunately neither Sinn Fein nor the IRSP were interested in any form of unity. Sinn Fein were prepared only to agree to an informalal non-aggression pact. The IRSP claimed that the programme we suggested ‘pre-empted’ the IRSP’s own campaign. Both of these positions effectively neutralised the unity of purpose that had been built up by the anti-imperialist movement in the H Block/Armagh campaign. They represented a severe setback when the southern government was persuing a campaign of naked coilabdoration with Britain and marginali sation of the anti-imperialist movement.

Effectively the IRSP and Sinn Fein were saying to all the H Block/ Armagh militants “support the separate campaigns of our small organisations’”’ when the achievement of unity on a principled basis was our most important task and could have attracted numbers bigger than the aggregate size of PD, the IRSP and Sinn Fein. There was a ludicrous situation in Clare where there was one Sinn Fein and one IRSP candidate and in Limerick East where the IRSP stood John Gilligan alongside PD’s Joe Harrington. Although PD and the IRSP in Limerick called for 2nd preferences to be given to each other’s candidates Sinn Fein refused to call for votes for other anti-imperialist candidates on the basis that they do not support non-abstentionist candidates.

This sort of posturing demoralises the many thousands of activists — in the anti-imperialist movement who do not belong to any party. It also prevents a united and ongoing fightback from developing after the election is over.

A welcome development during the campaign was the approach made by-Matt Merrigan and Des Bonass, national cfiairperson and treasurer respectively of the Socialist Labour Party, to PD to give their support to Bernadette in North Central. The SLP did not contest the elections because of lack of resources and the memory of the SLP’s bad results in the previous General Election which resulted in a crisis of direction for the party. The SLP is essentially divided into an anti-Republican wing and those like Matt Merrigan and Des Bonass who want to bring the lessons of the anti-imperialist struggle into the life of the workers’ movement. The need to take up the economic struggle of Irish workers in the context of imperialism in a concrete way is now obvious. PD hopes to develop the discussion with militants involved in the election campaign with a view to planning future joint work.

The unity generated by the campaign in North Central attracted over 200 supporters as well as contingents from the Socialist Workers Movement and the League for a Workers Republic. Weekly meetings for campaign workers were held during the campaign and discussed progress on the ground and the political issues being thrown up on the doorsteps and in the media. The point was continually made by PD and Bernadette that this campaign was only the start and that we had to lay the basis for an ongoing stuggle against the capitalist parties and their “socialist” hangers-on. Elections are a vital part of any socialist strategy but they are finally to be judged as an indicator of the state of the mass struggle. They show the degree of politicisation of the working class and the distance that has to be bridged between their consciousness and that of activists.

So the results in North Central and Limerick East have to be seen in that light. Bernadette got 2,085 first preference votes. While the vote of the Sinn Fein candidates was generally half that achieved by the H Block candidates the vote for Bernadette was an increase of 500 on that achieved by Vincent Doherty in the previous election. However most of the activists hdped that Bernadette would be in contention for a seat. It was hoped that she would pick up the votes of Noel Browne TD, who was not standing. It turned out that most of these votes went to Fine Gael! Another thought put forward was that the smear campaign carried out by the virulently rightwing anti-abortionists, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) who handed out 40,000 anti-Bernadette leaflets, lost over 1,000 votes. This does not seem tenable since the same campaign was carried out against Labour’s Michael D Higgins TD in Galway without any appreciable effect. It does show however that SPUC are a dangerous anti-woman organisation which has successfully mobilised the prejudices of a large section of the middle class and the three main parties including the disgraceful Labour Party. The proposed libel case against SPUC being taken by Bernadette will be a good way to begin to combat them. We should not be under any illustions however, that this will be an easy task.

In Limerick the combined anti-imperialist vote fell somewhat with Joe Harrington of PD receiving 215 votes. The large vote which Kemmy received is a salutary lesson to the anti-imperialist movement on the teed for unity against our opponents. In Dublin North Central a constituency committee hasbeen set up which will lay the basis for an ongoing fightback and will maintain the forces assembled during the campaign. H Block/Armagh campaign and the two recent southern General Elections, members of Peoples Democracy have come into contact and worked with other socialist militants who expressed a desire to know more about PD. What is the basis of our organisation, our history, tradition and future plansWhat are the differences and similarities between PD and other socialist and republican organisations?

PD was founded nearly fourteen years ago in Queens University, Belfast, by students from mainly catholic working class backgrounds who were among the first catholics to take advantage of the British welfare state education provision. Those who founded PD, like Michael Farrell and Bernadette McAliskey, were acutely aware from personal experience of the sectarian disadvantages imposed on the catholic population by the northern state. PD was born and gained its initial experience through the civil rights movement and the catholic population’s clashes with the tottering, corrupt Stormont regime and its armed wing, the RUC and the B Specials. Those who made up the ranks of PD were aware of and considered themselves part of a worldwide youth radicalisation, the struggle against US imperialism in Vietnam and the opposition to the Soviet invasion of Chekeslovakia in 1968.

PD is best known for its organising of the famous Burntollet march in January 1969 which was attacked by hordes of Paisleyites, and ‘offduty’ RUC men and B Specials, unhindered by the ‘on duty’ RUC’ The blatent sectarianism of the Six County police was exposed before the whole world and hardened the catholic population for the struggles that were to come. In August 1969 PD organised Radio Free Belfast and the journals ‘Barricades Bulletin’ and ‘Free Citizen’. When internment came in August 1971, members of PD were lifted in the imperialists. PD suffered a split when position as a neo-colonial society in the imperialist epoch, and a strategic agreement on the basic tasks faced by Irish revolutionaries in putting forward a united and coherent opposition to Britain’s strategy for Ireland. The first task of the new PD was to create a united movement in defence of the blanket prisoners in H Block Southern politicians with Thatcher’s by breaking down the opposition to