“DO YOU CARE ABOUT POLITICAL PRISONERS? Apparently not many…”
The headline could not be read by machine (it read “Women Internees Write”); the title shown is the article’s opening words. Read the scan for the printed headline.
The Plough1973Prisoners and the hunger strikesThe Fourth InternationalPrisoners and the hunger strikesThe Fourth International
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Scan page 6
DO YOU CARE ABOUT POLITICAL PRISONERS?
Apparently not many do, so we, the women political prisoners of Armagh, would like to make it known to the public about the cramped conditions in which we have to survive. In the wing there ate'25 women and there are inadequate facilities to accommodate them all. The bathroom consists of two baths, two toilets (one does not work) and four small wash-hand basins. The only sink available for: . washing clothes in is the one that has existed since the prison was built. The railing round the cat walk serves as a substitute for a clothes line thus making the wing more cramped. Also with so many women in the wing it is necessary to have a sick bay, because in the case of an illness peace and quiet are needed. In the recreation yard there is a hut which is sup. posed to be a TV room but is used for crafts, games, discussions and a rest room. Time and time again we have been promised games equipment but as yet we have received none of these. We must point out that this is a women’s prison, but yet we occupy only one small wing of the. building. There is a gym and a huge recreation yard over in B wing but these facilities are close to us as they are used by borstal offenders. We know our needs.are small in comparison with our comrades in Long Kesh, but there must be — room for improvement when we have women serving sentences from five to twelve years. Liberty and Strength, The Women Political Prisoners of Armagh Gaol.
The Plough June 1973 Page 6 . ‘On Bureaucracy, by Ernest Mandel (IMG .Publication, 15p)/Peter Hampton .This pamphlet by Ernest Mandel attempts to analyse that extremely complex phenomenon, ‘the bureaucracy.’ It identifies very clearly in -Marxist terms what motivates and determines the behaviour of trade union officials, whether they be at the bottom of the apparatus, dealing with the day-to-day factory problems, or members of the General Council attempting to doa deal at 10 Downing St. The dialectic of partial conquests (i.e. don’t gamble with what you have already won) is explained in terms which allow us to understand the type of demands the CP raise when a struggle is about to break out.
Mandel explains in the introduction that the purpose.of the pamphlet is to distinguish two -main aspects of the problem — the theoretical and the historical — and to answer the following.questions: . — Whafis working class bureaucracy? How d does it emerge and develop? How can it wither away? + What concrete forms does the phenomenon of bureaucracy take in the history of the working class? — What: attitudes have the various tendencies inside the working class movement taken to- © wards the problem of bureaucracy?