Peoples Demo for Unity and Mass
Socialist Republic1982Prisoners and the hunger strikesLabour, the left and left unityWomen's liberationRepublicanism and the IRAInternment, repression and the courtsNiall MeehanPrisoners and the hunger strikesLabour, the left and left unityWomen's liberationRepublicanism and the IRAInternment, repression and the courts
No public scan is online for this item; the text below was read from a privately held copy.
Machine-read text, not corrected. Cut from the scan by machine, by the size of the headline type. Where columns were set close together, lines of a neighbouring article can run in, and a headline can be missed so that two articles share a page. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 5
THROUGH THE course of the 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?
time. was born and gained its initial experience paign.
Limerick.
population for the struggles that were ‘Barricades Bulletin’ and ‘Free Citizen’. When internment came in August 1971, appear in the ghettoes after internment. a group within PD left to form the (now defunct) Red Republican Party. Noel Little, brutally assassinated with Ronnie Bunting in 1980 by the UDA, was one of those who left PD at that Those who stayed with PD contended that military action should be subservient to the needs of mobilising the masses politically to defeat imperialism. Armed groups, whatever their bravery or audacity, cannot substitute for involving the masses to defeat their oppressors. Military action is not ruled out, far from it, but is seen as a tactic of the struggle, not as an eternal principle. This position is still valid today and was vindicated by the H Block/Armagh camPD was not alone in suffering a split during this period. All the major left and republican forces suffered from splits at this period. The CPI, Official Republicans, IRSP and the Labour Party all suffered one or more splits or engaged in undemocratic expulsions in this period of questioning and retreat for the struggle. PD was unique in one major respect in that in 1977 it fused with the Movement for a Socialist Republic which had branches in Dublin, Belfast and The MSR emerged in 1971 froma struggle within the Young Socialists on the importance of the national question, and of belonging to the Fourth International in order to pursue socialist internationalism in a real and concrete way. On both these issues they differed from the League for a Workers Republic. Between 1971 and 1978 the MSR built branches in Dublin, Limerick and Belfast, and were involved in the south around issues such as police brutality, opposition to National Wage Agreements and all austerity measures in the trade union movement, in building a strong opposition to the SFWP in USI, the National Students organisation, and in building a mass womens movement (Irish Women United) anda mass campaign for free legal contraception. In all of these issues they adopted the method of involving the broadest number of people and organisations in support of the demands of the oppressed. Both North and South this united work brought together in joint activity the comrades of MSR and PD and in the early days of the H Block campaign we had a common perspective of broadening the campaign, basing it on mass mobilisation, and exposing the collaboration of