List Candidate for South Down

In an interview on the R.T.E. | programme “This Week” last Sunday, Enoch Powell, ex-brigidier, ex-professor of the classics, ex-British Conservative and the most recent political immigrant to Ireland, nailed | his colours firmly to the mast by saying that.there must be total victory for the majority in the North and if the anti-Unionist minority do not like it, then they can lump it or get out!

Powell who made his name in British politics by making no bones about his attitude to coloured immigrants in Britain and endeared himself to racists and fascist organisations like the National Front with speeches such as the ‘‘Rivers of blood’’ one he made a couple of year back. Now seeing himself as a latter day Randolph Churchill or Edward Carson come to play the Orange Card and save Ireland for the Union, he has endeared himself to the fascist right-wing in the North with his latest ‘‘non-nonsense”’ revelation about total victory to the Loyalists. (In fact it has already endeared him to the greatest political acrobat bar non, Roy Bradford; who came out at the last minute to back William Craig in East Belfast — quite a. somersault for the bould Roy whose gymnastics on the question of Power-Sharing and a United Ireland would have earned him an Olympic Gold Medal any day of the week).

Nothing new from Powell Powell’s speech told us nothing new. about himself — He is a racialist, anti-trade union, anti-working class and the foremost spokesman for the reactionary right-wing in Britain. His sole function in coming over here is to use the Loyalist vote as the base for his come-back in Westminster either outside or inside a more right-wing Conservative Party. What he has done for the Loyalists is to give the lead and to make respectable the political objectives of the fascist murdeér-gangs and the Loyalist right-wing. As potential leader (for the moment at least) of the united forces of the Loyalists, he obviously sees as his job to provide the intellectual artillery and the ‘‘statemanship” to justify a loyalist total victory in the North. By saying as much and in such blunt terms, he has crystallised the situation where it is now possible for a supposed “liberal’’ Unionist and power-sharing: “stalwart’’ such as Bradford now _ finds himself able to come out behind Bill Craig, the man Whose proud boast is to “shot to kill’. = © All this highlights the role of the 26 Co. government To the anti-Unionist working class this comes as no surprise — to .southern workers it highlights even more just what the collaborationist role of the Dublin Government really signifies for the Catholic minority in the North. What Powell said last Sunday is an echo of Loyalism down the years — another way of saying ‘‘A protestant parliament for a protestant people” What he and Bill Craig and the sectarian murder gangs represent will not go away if we just close our eyes and wish them away ,— they are a living reality for the population of the anti-Unionist.areas. They. must be faced up to now, — not only in the North but by anti-imperialist workers all over Ireland.

If Powell-and the combined forces of the Loyalist right-wing believe in total victory for what they call the — majority — then they must mean total defeat for the minority, with all that this entails. We have said over the past 6 years that there can be no going back to the days of Stormont rule and: Orange supremacy — to give in to Powell-and his politics would bring us back beyond that, toepre-historic times.

nicola ——