The Central Task Of Socialist And Republicans Is .... To Involve The Broadest Mass Of People In Revolutionary Practice. Only By Doing SO Can They Consolidate
The Plough1974Republicanism and the IRA Read the scan at the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line (PDF, page 5) →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.
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Stormont or face political oblivion. Although there was considerable resistance from within (especially from “leader” Gerry ‘itt) the SDLP finally announced its abandonrn nt of Stormont (July 11th 71). With that announcement the Struggle was for a whole period channelled descively onto the streets and out of the hands of the Catholic middle-class (under popular control).
It was this development which lent the mass movement leading up to and following internment its vigourous character. In the eyes of the Catholic workers, the Defence C: »mmittees, the Civil Rights and Resistance Move ment Committees, the no-go areas and the street co nmittees, became the only possible organs >f power and be done. their failure to transcend traditional elitist ze. concepts of armed struggle. This has aggrevated the problems arising out of the social instability of the Catholic Community. Although the Provos. had mass support for their campaign and even mass participation in it, they have not at any Stage managed to integrate the mass struggle and the armed struggle.
Initially the founders of the Provos, during the preperation for the slip from the original IRA and immediately following it, played an important role in such mass democratic organisations as the Derry Citizens Defence Association, At this stage they were taking a big step forward by organising defence from below and giving the general public a say in how and why it could