Sunday 28 November 2004

The Plough Vol 02 No 15

The Plough
Volume 2, Number 15
28 November 2004

E-Mail Newsletter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party

1. Ukrainian Elections: Lessons for Ireland
2. Media Lies
3. Why Solidarity?
4. One-Eyed Police in Germany
5. From the Newspapers
6. Letters
7. What's On

*******

UKRAINIAN ELECTIONS: LESSONS FOR IRELAND

Those who have been watching the TV news this week will not have
failed to notice that one of the main stories was the contested
results of the Ukrainian elections. Channels like the BBC have tried
to present this as as struggle between 'democracy' and
'authoritarianism'. Scepticism however is required, as what we are
witnessing constitutes what Jonathan Steele called a 'post-modern coup
d'etat': "Intervening in foreign elections, under the guise of an
impartial interest in helping civil society, has become the run-up to
the post-modern coup d'etat, the CIA-sponsored third world uprising of
cold war days adapted to post-Soviet conditions. Instruments of
democracy are used selectively to topple unpopular dictators, once a
successor candidate or regime has been groomed." (Ukraine's
Post-modern Coup d'Etat, The Guardian, 26 November 2004)

The opposition's electoral campaign "is an American creation, a
sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding
and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been
used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.
Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies,
pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US
non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in
Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard
Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last
year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia,
coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk,
Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in Central America,
notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to
defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko. That one failed."

"'There will be no Kostunica in Belarus,' the Belarus president
declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade But experience gained
in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat
the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev. The operation -- engineering
democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience -- is now so
slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other
people's elections." (Ian Traynor, US campaign behind the turmoil in
Kiev, The Guardian, 26 November 2004)

Ian Trainor continues: "The Democratic Party's National Democratic
Institute, the Republican Party's International Republican Institute,
the US State Department and US Aid are the main agencies involved in
these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and
billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute. US pollsters and
professional consultants are hired to organise focus groups and use
psephological data to plot strategy...Officially, the US government
spent $41m (£21.7m) organising and funding the year-long operation
to get rid of Milosevic from October 1999. In Ukraine, the figure is
said to be around $14m."

The article concludes: "If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its
strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from
anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise
elsewhere in the post-Soviet world. The places to watch are Moldova
and the authoritarian countries of central Asia."

What should worry people in Ireland is this: what would stop the US
and the UK to do the same in Ireland? Imagine that in a future
election, a Republican Socialist candidate had serious chances of
winning, is it not reasonable to think that a similar 'post-modern
coup d'etat' would take place? Does this not vindicate our argument
that there cannot be an electoral road to socialism?

*******

MEDIA LIES

(Below we carry a short piece on a Sunday World article. Funny is it
not how at the same time that Spotlight, a BBC investigative
programme, are doing a programme on so-called INLA activity in
Strabane that the article appeared? Surely journalists and
investigative journalists at that, don't leak juicy if inaccurate
stories to the gutter press?)

The Sunday World on the 21st of November a news item "written," if
that is the word, by Stephen Moore: "INLA lodges cash in bank it has
robbed. Cheeky INLA bank robbers stashed their stolen cash on the very
bank they robbed. The terror gang is believed to be behind a
kidnapping which led to £300,000 being stolen from the Ulster Bank
in Strabane -- the same bank used by the terror group's political
wing!"

This story is somehow misleading. It is a wrong inference from two
different premises.

There was an incident in Strabane. There were media allegations that
the INLA was behind the incident. Willie Gallagher, an IRSP member,
also made some widely reported comments about that incident. However,
this is not sufficient evidence to prove that the INLA was behind this
incident. A professional journalist would not write that the INLA
carried out the robbery but that the organisation ALLEGEDLY carried it
out.

Mr Moore contradicts himself when he states that the group is
"believed" to be behind the action, but at the same time categorically
states that it robbed the bank. This may be a small nuance, but it is
an important one.

The IRSP has indeed Ulster Bank accounts. This is no secret, and never
has been any secret. However, there are no connections whatsoever
between this and the robbery allegedly carried out by the INLA.

If so, could Mr Moore please provide proofs that £300,000 was
transferred to one of those bank accounts he refers to? Because the
amount of money in those accounts is nowhere near a six figures sum.
The security apparatus, contrary to Mr Moore, are well aware of this
fact.

It would be incredibly stupid of the INLA to transfer the money they
allegedly robbed on those two public bank accounts open to scrutiny.
Mr Moore's story would have sounded more accurate if he had written
that the organisation had invested that money in shares on the stock
exchange or had placed it in secret bank accounts in Luxembourg or
Switzerland.

(Liam O'Ruairc)

*******

WHY SOLIDARITY?

At the recent Ard-Fheis of the IRSP a motion of solidarity with the
people's wars in Peru, Nepal, India, Turkey, the Philippines and
Colombia was put forward. This is why.

The left in Ireland and in Britain talks all the time about
"anti-capitalism" and "anti-globalisation" and complains about the
lack of "proletarian leadership" in Iraq and Palestine, but it is
silent about the most significant Marxist struggles going on in the
world at present in the countries mentioned. For example, parties as
far apart as the SWP and the CPI have been silent about the trial of
Abimael Guzman or the persecution of Jose Maria Sison. So the IRSP
believes that it is important that it takes the right side in those
important struggles.

We have a lot to learn from the like of the New People Army of the
Philippines or the Nepalese CPNM, or the Naxalbari. The Philippines is
made up of hundreds of islands and hundreds of dialects and languages,
but the NPA was able to unite all those under a common socialist
banner. The same for the Naxalites in India. If the CPNM are able to
join in a common struggle with the Naxalbarri, it will change the
whole balance of forces in the Indian sub-continent and in Asia. (My
personal view is that Nepal and India are strategically the most
important in the global struggle for socialism today.) A victory there
would be of crucial importance for the cause of socialism world wide.

Regarding Turkey, the IRSP has a history of solidarity with groups
like the DHKC, TKP/ML, most recently during the hunger strikes there.
Peru is an important struggle that has been forgotten. The left knows
and loves the Zapatistas, but hardly speaks of the PCP/SL. With the
current trial of Abimael Guzman, it is important for the IRSP to side
with the Peruvian revolutionaries.

That said, the IRSP does not take a specific stance on questions such
as whether or not Luis Arce Borja and Adolf Oleacha are CIA agents,
the struggle between the two lines in the PCP/SL, the disputes between
the RIM and the MIM and other polemics internal to those revolutionary
movements.

(Liam O Ruairc)

*******

ONE-EYED POLICE IN GERMANY

18 arrested at Nazi demo -- all of them anti fascists.

The thought that fascists can get together for a 'remembrance' demo
just a few days after the anniversary of the so-called 'crystal
night', the burning of all the German synagogues on Nov. 9th, 1938, is
absurd enough. But the events in the aftermath of this fascist
gathering are sickening and have to ring the alarm bells of all
anti-fascists in Europe.

On the way home after the neo-fascist gathering in Munich, two Nazis
were slightly injured in a scuffle with anti-fascists. The police
moved in on the anti-Nazi scene in hard-core style and arrested 18
people, several of them under age. In a follow up operation the houses
of the young people -- in some cases those of their parents
-- were searched. No judge had issued search warrants; the police
claimed that the prosecutor had given permission because of 'acute
danger'. Up to nine police officers stormed into the houses and even
observers of the scene who are far from progressive were surprised at
the heavy-handed operation. It took until the next day for what looks
to be the real reason to emerge.

Amongst the houses under police siege was the home of 19-year-old
Falko Blumenthal. He is the spokesperson of the Communist Youth
Movement (SDAJ) in Bavaria and was one of the arrested protestors.

Blumenthal's flat mate, Chris Sedelmair, a non-party aligned
anti-fascist, gave the following report: "It was a shock. I heard
someone coming through the flat door and thought it was Falko. The
flat was in darkness and suddenly I faced a large group of heavily
armed policemen; one of them pointed his gun at me. They had no proper
search permit, just an order under the 'acute danger' act. Falko was
actually in police custody at this point. They went into his room,
took his personal computer, his CD-ROMs and written documents. They
also searched the communal area, the kitchen and the bathroom."

Chris Sedelmair did not resist the search -- he couldn't have,
alone against a crowd of heavily armed policemen -- and informed
his solicitor. He views this outrageous act of police brutality as an
attempt to scare antifascist people in general and to criminalise the
SDAJ in particular. The Young Communists in Bavaria are a fast growing
region within the SDAJ, they are also known for their courageous and
very outspoken anti fascist work.

Though we know it can only be a symbolic gesture from so far away we
would like to assure Falko Blumenthal and his comrades of the
solidarity of the Irish Communists and indeed many other
anti-fascists. We will try our best to spread the information about
this as widely as we can. Keep up the good work, you are not alone. We
are getting stronger and more global.

No Passeran!

(First printed in Unity, paper of the CPI)

*******

FROM THE NEWSPAPERS

We have a society where in 1994, 2.8% of the people over the age of 65
were living on less than half the median income, but where in 2001 the
figure had risen to 18.2% and where the proportion of people with a
disability living on this income had risen six fold in the same time
period. The number of people in employment who were living in relative
poverty increased fivefold from 0.6 percent to 2.9 percent. The
proportion of people on old age benefit and living in poverty rose
from 5.3% in 1994 to 49% in 2001, and the proportion of recipients of
the widow's pension living in poverty rose from 5.5% to 42.1%. The
percentage of children living in relative poverty rose from 9.4 to
14.2%. Every budget during that period favoured the better off.

Irish society deteriorated during the reign of the Celtic Tiger not
just because of the income shift but because people were more stressed
and worked longer hours. There was an increase in depressive disorders
and despite the doubling of incomes since 1989, no increase in life
satisfaction.

(The Sunday Tribune, 21 November 2004)

*******

LETTERS

*

From: aiprf org

Dear friend,

The Indian State did not allow the revolutionary forces to celebrate
the unity of revolutionary communist forces and the coming into being
of Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the capital city of India. The
decision not to allow the gathering was an attempt to tell the world
that revolutionary forces in India are contained in a few pockets only
and have a marginal presence. It was also an attempt to stop the
spread of revolutionary influence in the capital city. While
bourgeois parliamentary forces are allowed to carry on their huge
gatherings with State's all help and assistance the people's
democratic and revolutionary forces are denied even the right of
peaceful gatherings and protests. Even the movements of the workers,
peasants, students and other sections of the people struggling for
their genuine economic and partial demands are suppressed with arrests
and bullets.

Here we are sending you what happened with the November 25th peaceful
gathering in Delhi, which was to express solidarity with the people's
democratic and revolutionary movements and to hail the formation of
the CPI (Maoist).

We take this opportunity to inform you and seek your support for
exposing the grossly undemocratic and repressive attitude of the
Indian Government.

Darshanpal -- President -- AIPRF

*

No person is illegal. Come out against state racism.

Next Wednesday December 1 there will be a candlelight vigil in front
of City Hall, Belfast to address the criminalization of those seeking
asylum who are being put in detention centres and prisons here in
Northern Ireland. The vigil is to coincide with the beginning of a
city council meeting (6pm) and the council members are being asked to
address the issue criminalizing the internationally recognized right
to seek asylum.

Details of the situation: In the Crumlin Road Detention Centre there
are at least 8 people, many of them black persons who were targeted
directly after arriving at the airport based on their skin colour and
foreign accent. At least one of them has legitimate papers and visa
and has been taken into custody on the suspicion of attempting to go
to the Republic of Ireland although he has committed no illegal
action! There is also a Chinese woman being detained at Hydebank in a
prison setting and with other prisoners. From what we know it seems
that she has been bullied by other prisoners including having water
thrown at her and her blanket pulled away from her. Her health is said
to be poor. She does not speak English and has no translators although
she now has a lawyer. The Human Rights Commission was recently refused
visiting rights to Hydebank by the prison authorities! At least one
person is also being held in Magaberry prison and the details of who
they are and when they will be moved to a detention centre are
unclear.

No person is illegal. Come out against state racism! Candlelight
vigil- bring your banners and your holiday spirits 5pm Wednesday Dec.
1st in front of City Hall.

*

AT&G fury at privatisation of Northern Ireland's traffic wardens
3 Nov 2004

The Amalgamated Transport & General Workers union today totally
condemned the decision by government (2nd November) to transfer car
park attendants (road service) and traffic wardens out of the civil
service to a private company.

The AT&G said this was viewed as another attack by a Labour government
on public services, whilst promoting and expanding the private sector.
Along with proposals for the transfer of water service staff, the
union estimated that over two thousand civil servants will transfer to
private companies by 2006.

The union calls on all unions to oppose the transfer of public sector
jobs and the dismantling of public services by a Labour government in
Northern Ireland.

For further information, please contact Albert Mills on 07712 899341
or the AT&G Belfast office 028 9023 2381.

*

For information,

Queens University Student Councils meeting held on 25th 11th 04,
passed the following motions:

1. This council opposes the war on Iraq and the war on terror, and
calls for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq.

2. This council support the Colombian trade unions call for a
worldwide boycott of Coca-Cola, until Coca-Cola apologise to, and
compensates the families of the Coca-Cola employees who were murdered,
because they were members of the trade union employed by Coca-Cola in
its bottling plant in Colombia. Moreover, the Coca-Cola Boycott will
only be removed when Coca-Cola recognise the human rights of workers
in Colombia to belong to a trade union of the own choice free from the
threat of murder/terror.

The council have place the boycott of all Coca-cola products into
immediate effect, further more: all profits made by the students union
from the sale of Coca-Cola products we be donated to the Colombian
trade union Sintraemcali to help fund their fight for justice for the
employees Coca-Cola, and for all workers in Colombia.

BOYCOTT COCA-COLA

*******

WHATS ON

*

The ARN-North Belfast are organising a candle lit vigil outside the
City Hall on Wednesday 1st of December. It is to protest against the
detention of immigration detainees. We had a similar ARN vigil around
this time last year outside the City Hall, which was the first visual
event that the ARN organised at the City Hall. So a year on we urge
all to attend this important vigil.

Candlelight vigil -- bring your banners and your holiday spirits

5pm Wednesday Dec 1st in front of City Hall.

The vigil is to coincide with the beginning of a city council meeting
(6pm) and the council members are being asked to address the issue of
the criminalizing of the internationally recognized right to seek
asylum.

Then on Thursday Dec 2nd at 4.30pm the S/B group along with the Queens
Students group are organising another picket at Homefinders on Botanic
Avenue. Again this is an important event and urge all to attend. The
picket is against the memo produced by Homefinders that says certain
homes should not be let out to people from the minority ethnic
communities.

And Not Forgetting -- Thursday night Dec 2nd, The ARN, Love Music Hate
Racism gig in conjunction with Open Windows Production. After the end
of a very active year come along and chill out or have a yarn and a
bit of craic with Anti Racism activists and supporters. Hear live
music from the 50's and 60's, as well as some county rock and other
music for the 'younger folk' -- with even throwing in some chilled out
vibes etc. £5.00 at the door -- Come and lend your support -- See
ya there -- Davy Carlin

*

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

Picket 6pm and 8pm Friday 10th December 2004 in Whitehall, opposite
Downing Street

End Human Rights Violations in Colombia

No Military Support for Uribe Regime

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was approved by the
UN General Assembly in 1948. Yet 56 years later, and despite the
ratification by Colombia of all the International Covenants that
followed the UDHR, the Colombian people continue to suffer gross
violations of their civil and political rights, but also of economic,
social and cultural rights. In the context of war that the country
endures, the state's repressive policies and impunity for right-wing
paramilitary groups fuels further violations. President Uribe has
opted for war and blocked the path to peace.

All principal articles of the UDHR are violated. Here are some
examples:

Article 2: everyone is entitled to rights without distinctions --
indigenous peoples such as the U'wa, Wayuu, Kankuamo and the Embera
Katios are being discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity
and their struggle for autonomy, culture and land.

Article 3: the right to life, liberty and security of person -- is not
being observed, as shown by the assassinations of trade unionists,
social leaders and even students by paramilitary groups, often with
the complicity of the state forces. These rights are further
threatened by the US military intervention programme Plan Colombia.

Article 7: All are equal before the law and entitled to its
protection, under Uribe, the state has blurred the distinction between
armed combatants and the civilian population. The victims of state
sponsored paramilitary violence are unprotected, yet the authors of
blood crimes and harassment of the population go free, especially when
members of the armed forces (army and police) are involved.

Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or
exile, detentions have increased to more than fifty thousand. We
highlight the cases of Luz Perly Córdoba, Human Rights Secretary of
the agricultural workers union FENSUAGRO detained on 18th February
2004, and Samuel Morales, President of the Arauca Regional Committee
of the CUT trade union federation and Raquel Castro a teacher were
arrested in an early morning army raid on 5th August 2004 in which
three of their fellow leaders were assassinated.

Article 13 the right to freedom of movement and Article 17 no one
shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property: peasants, African
descendants and indigenous communities are violently driven off their
lands to make way for multinationals like BP. There are 3 million
displaced people.

Article 19: the right to freedom of expression. Social leaders,
lawyers and trade unionists who oppose the government's neo-liberal
policies are treated as military targets. Documents reveal
Operation Dragon, in which military intelligence has targeted the
entire leadership of public sector union SINTRAEMCALI and listed 80
opposition politicians for close surveillance, the normal prelude to
elimination.

Article 23 the right to work and form a trade union: last year 681
trade unionists received death threats, and 47 were assassinated
between January and August 2004. The trade unionists killed while
protecting the interests of their fellow workers in Coca-Cola bottling
plants shows just how vulnerable is the realisation of this right.

Elections in Colombia are not free. Uribe is now trying to change the
constitution so that he can gain a second 4 year term, with full
backing from Bush and an international media offensive to clean his
image.

British government support for Uribe helps whitewash a regime
responsible for the worst violations in the western hemisphere.
Despite a motion signed by 237 MPs calling for an end to it, Tony
Blair still supplies military aid. Now is the time for decent people
to insist on a change in policy.

FINANCIAL APPEAL:

We ask you to make a special donation to support our human rights and
campaigning work. Donations payable to Colombia Solidarity Campaign?
and send to: Colombia Solidarity Campaign, PO Box 8446, London N17 6NZ.

Many thanks.

Colombia Solidarity Campaign
PO Box 8446
London N17 6NZ
Tel: 07743 743041

Email: colombia_sc@hotmail.com
http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/

*

10 December 2004

Women's Rights are Human Rights - summit conference

Women into Politics will mark International Human Rights Day with a
conference on Globalisation and the challenges for Women's
participation and leadership. This conference entitled Women's
Participation and Leadership in Global Processes is a summit following
a series of workshops on globalisation and its impact on women's lives
-- locally and globally. The day is dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the
Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

The summit will address themes that increasingly define our world and
that pose enormous challenges to women, women's movements and
feminists worldwide. The conference takes place on 10 December 2004
in Grosvenor House, Glengall Street, Belfast, from 9.00am to 4.00pm
and will analyse the diverse forms of globalisation in local,
regional, and global arenas and its impact on communities and on every
woman’s right to participate at all levels of society and will
also explore ways of showing global solidarity.

There are limited places left so please contact Carola Speth on tel:
028 9024 3363 or email: dialogue@womenintopolitics.org to register.

*******

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*

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Sunday 21 November 2004

The Plough Vol 02 No 14

The Plough
Volume 2, Number 14
21 November 2004

E-Mail Newsletter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party

1. Third Report of the IMC
2. Teach na Fáilte North Belfast Welcome Speed Ramps
3 The Shining Path
4. From the Newspapers
5. Letters
6. What's On

*******

THIRD REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT MONITORING COMMISSION

[Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and Irish Republican Socialist
Party (IRSP)

3.4 In our first report we described INLA as a volatile mix of people
which, though less prominent than it had been, was still a significant
terrorist group. It remained active, and though it had declared a
ceasefire it had been involved in attacks in early 2004. INLA was
heavily involved in criminality, especially drugs, and we assessed it
as presenting a high threat of re-engagement, either as an
organisation or as individuals.

3.5 The picture of INLA's potential remains essentially unchanged. We
believe it was responsible for a combined robbery and kidnapping in
July. Over the six months covered in this report we believe that it
committed a number of shootings and assaults. Members of INLA remain
actively involved in organised crime.]

The above is taken from the 3rd IMC report. A number of points in
response to the above collection of lies distortions and politically
motivated comments need to be made.

It is significant that the heading includes both the INLA and the
IRSP. It is also worth noting that the other anti-Good Friday
Agreement republicans have their alleged political connections also
included. So we have the headings "Continuity Irish Republican Army
(CIRA) and Republican Sinn Féin (RSF)" and "Real Irish Republican
Army (RIRA) and Thirty-Two County Sovereignty Movement (32CSM)."

But lo and behold, despite having their so-called political parties
penalised as a result of the first IMC report, the pro-Good Friday
Agreement armies are mentioned without their political connections. So
we have the headings for them reading "Provisional Irish Republican
Army (PIRA)" and "Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando
(RHC)" but no mention of Sinn Fein or the Progressive Unionist Party.
Strange or what?

As to the content they are totally wrong about drug dealing. Despite a
number of requests all those who claim that the INLA are involved in
drugs have so far failed to produce any evidence. No INLA volunteer is
serving time for offences connected with drugs. But of course if you
repeat a big lie often enough people believe it. We know that criminal
gangs use the initials "INLA" as part of a carefully orchestrated
Special Branch plan to discredit republican socialism.

Reading the above comments regarding attacks there is no clarification
of what the nature of those attacks are? Were they shooting attacks on
security forces, police or what? By leaving it suitably vague any
interpretation can be put on it. No evidence is presented just vague
assertions. Any right thinking person who takes the IMC reports
seriously lives in a dream world. Even the British government which
set up the IMC in the first place snubbed it publicly by recognising
an UDA ceasefire scarcely a week after the IMC reported that the UDA
"was responsible for half of the paramilitary murders committed
between January 2003 and February 2004 and continued to be responsible
for shootings, assaults and exiling. It was also heavily engaged in
crime, including drugs and its feuds associated with criminal activity
had contributed considerably to violence in Northern Ireland. We
believed that these activities were known to the members of the UDA
Inner Council," and "The UDA remains heavily involved in many kinds of
organised crime, and remains an active organisation capable of more
widespread violence, with the will to commit it if judged
appropriate."

Ignored by the British government, snubbed by most of the relevant
community groups actually working on the ground and despised by
republicans of all hues there they are, the IMC, surrounded by their
only friends, the securocrats, spies, double agents, informers, drug
dealers and a few anti-republican academics.

Lord, its lonely at the top!!!

*******

TEACH NA FÁILTE NORTH BELFAST WELCOME SPEED RAMPS FOR GLENARD AREA

Teach na Fáilte North Belfast have today welcomed the preliminary
proposals set out for the traffic calming measures proposed by the
Roads Service.

After a campaign, lasting almost two years, addressing the need for
speed ramps in the Highbury Gardens and greater Glenard area, which
consisted of petitions and a long tireless process of letters and
telephone calls to the Road Service, Teach na Fáilte representative
for the area and organiser of the campaign, Paul Carson, said,

"Teach na Fáilte North Belfast welcome the proposals set out in the
plans for this traffic calming initiative. After campaigning for this
for the last two years, I am pleased to see that our cries haven't
fallen upon deaf ears. The need for these speed ramps throughout the
area should be the priority of the Road Service.

"Too many children in this area are constantly running the risk of
being knocked down by drivers speeding excessively throughout the
streets. There is also the fact that the black taxis and private hire
vehicles are using these small streets as short cuts through the area,
in order to escape the speed ramps in other parts of the district.
This can no longer be accepted in this day and age.

"Speeding drivers are capable of so much death and destruction, and as
the streets of Ardoyne are our children's playground, we have to
ensure their safety at all times. Their very lives depend on us.

"What needs to be addressed now is the size and position of the
individual ramps and for us to ensure that we have the right ramps for
the area. The increase in death driving and drink driving throughout
the Glenard area highlights the urgency of this matter.

"While we welcome the initiative we must be mindful that time is of
the utmost urgency for this to be completed, before some child is
killed on our streets. Teach na Fáilte would call upon the Black
Taxi Association to ensure that the drivers on the Ardoyne run are
complying with the designated route for the area and desist from using
the other streets as 'short-cuts'.

"We would also call for the co-operation of the various taxi depots in
the area to ensure that their drivers drive responsibly throughout the
district. Taking short-cuts is all well and good, but a life is
invaluable."

Teach na Fáilte would encourage residents of the working class
communities to begin to take ownership of these initiatives. We offer
our full help and resources to the community in order that they can
carry out these projects successfully. Teach Na Fáilte encourage
and support all initiatives that bring about self-empowerment to the
working class. For further information we can be contacted at,

Unit 8
Flax Centre
Ardoyne Avenue
Belfast
BT14 7DA
Tel: 9075 1705

Costello House
392A Falls Road
Belfast
BT12 6DH
Tel: 9023 8321

*******

THE SHINING PATH

In this book, Gustavo Gorriti presents a journalistic account of the
founding and early years of the Shining Path guerrilla insurgency in
Peru. Conducting its first armed raids in May of 1980 as the country
was returning to civilian rule after twelve years of military
government, over the next decade the Shining Path would lead Peru into
one of the most bloody civil wars Latin America has witnessed.

This is an important book, which challenges standard interpretations
and assumptions about the Shining Path, and it has done so since its
initial publication almost a decade ago in Spanish in Peru. Now
presented to an English-speaking audience in the University of North
Carolina's Latin American in Translation series, it will lead more
scholars, activists, and policy makers to reconsider this tragic
period in Peruvian history.

Many previous writings assumed ignorance of Shining Path ideology
because the guerrilla group did not find it necessary to disseminate
their propaganda broadly. Likewise, the Shining Path acquired a
reputation as an isolated movement cut off from international
organizations. Part of this assumption grows out of their strict
Marxist determinist view of history that society would move through a
series of stages with minimal human intervention. Nevertheless,
Gorriti utilizes interviews, Shining Path publications, and government
reports to describe the organizations ideology and strategy. He
maintains that outsiders could (and should) have known of the
insurgents' philosophy and intents had they only bothered to pay
attention to what the Shining Path was saying.

The Shining Path is commonly viewed as led by an elite cadre of urban
intellectuals who focused on rural zones in the Maoist strategy of
encircling the cities, which only later in the war led the insurgent
forces to close in on urban areas. Gorriti's book effectively
disabuses us of that idea. It demonstrates that for the Shining Path
the city was always as important of a theatre for the war as the
countryside, but at the onset of the conflict internal criticisms led
the leadership to minimize emphasizing urban actions in their
proclamations.

Gorriti also illustrates the Shining Path maintained important
international connections with Maoist organizations including ones in
Albania, France, and Berkeley. His descriptions of these interactions
present a new image of an organization, which saw itself as the
vanguard of an international revolutionary movement. Unlike what Che
Guevara mandated in his foco theory, the Shining Path did not seek a
jungle canopy for cover, but rather operated openly among the
population. The Shining Path also inverted the normal equation of
subjugating political to military concerns by privileging ideological
correctness over military strategies. One of the most
thought-provoking aspects of this book is Gorriti's reflection on the
implications of that reversal.

Observers often note the irony that the Shining Path turned to
violence just as Peru was returning to democratic governance. Gorriti
attempts to explain why the Shining Path rejected an electoral route
to change, but his bourgeois values and anti-Communist biases blind
him to the full significance of this decision. The book begins in
January 1979 with Abimael Guzman, the leader of the Partido Comunista
del Peru-Sendero Luminoso (Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path),
arrested during a general strike in Lima. He seems to imply that had
the military government not released Guzman at that point the country
would have been saved the subsequent tragedy, which befell the
country.

Throughout the book, the government failure to understand the nature
of this insurgency led to inappropriate responses, which deepened the
crisis. At the onset of the war, the Peruvian military was determined
to find Soviet or Cuban support for the guerrillas. No evidence of
these connections ever emerged, simply because the Shining Path
assumed a political line opposed to those doctrines. In fact, during
the height of the insurgency both the Soviet Union and Cuba would
become very critical of the Shining Path. Furthermore, the Peruvian
military was trained to confront Che Guevara-style guerrilla warfare,
not the type of war which Shining Path launched. Gorriti indicates
that the Shining Path insurgency was different from other guerrilla
movements in Latin America, but he fails to explain fully how and why
it was different.

Gorriti notes the failure of civilians to contain the Shining Path and
proceeds to champion a strong-armed government response as the one
path, which would have stopped the bloodletting. This is ironic since
Gorriti is often associated with human rights issues and the police
and military committed the majority of human rights abuses during the
war. This also reveals Gorriti's urban perspective and a lack of
understanding of conditions in the countryside, which led to the war.
For Gorriti, the guerrillas are misguided and misled, but he fails to
explain why so many Indians and peasants would join the Shining Path's
forces. He primarily sees the negative impact of the war on his world,
rather than the years of destruction and exploitation the white world
waged on the rural, Indian and peasant world. This book attempts to
analyze Guzman's motivations for launching the war, but says nothing
about what led the rank and file to join him. If, as Gorriti states,
people did not want the war, why did so many participate?

Gorriti's journalistic style presents the advantage that his writing
is interesting and easy to read. Robin Kirk has done an excellent job
of translating the book into English and interpreting cultural
references, which results in a work that is accessible to an
undergraduate or general public audience. The book, nevertheless,
includes several liabilities, which may hinder its usefulness in the
classroom. The book is very descriptive in nature, and is generally
short on analysis and interpretation. Finished in 1990 at the height
of the war, the book has a very presentist sense to it that will make
it difficult for students unfamiliar with Peru's subsequent history to
make sense of Gorriti's arguments. He describes the beginnings of the
war during which the Shining Path's military objectives were quite
limited and they did not yet engage in executions of popular leaders
or seemingly random terrorist attacks, which would later gain the
group a reputation for being pathological murderers and a death cult.
From the descriptions, which Gorriti presents in this book, the
Shining Path does not appear to be much different from the current
Zapatista uprising in Mexico or other more benign popular uprisings.
The alarmist tone of the book would ring true for a 1990 Lima
audience, but may not make sense for those unfamiliar with this
history.

For a general audience, it is disappointing that the book does not
contain a single map. In its original Peruvian edition where the
audience would be familiar with the country's geography, such a map
would not be necessary, but I suspect that for many readers of the
English edition, a map would clarify the early course of the war. The
book also lacks a broader international context for the emergence of
this conflict. Even a brief explanation of the Cultural Revolution in
China or Reagan's preoccupation with the Sandinista government in
Nicaragua would help explain to a non-specialist the events
unravelling in Peru.

This was to be the first of three books on the history of the
guerrilla insurgency, but the 1992 Fujicoup and subsequent detainment
of Guzman derailed plans to complete the other two volumes. The result
is a single volume with a chronologically narrow focus, which
minimizes exploration of the broader significance of the war. This
book does not explore the deeper roots of the conflict nor its
subsequent development. A much better work in this regard is Steve
Stern's recent edited volume Shining and Other Paths (Duke University
Press, 1998), but is unfortunately too long for most classroom use.
Although anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of this
conflict in Peru will want to read this book, there is still a need
for a synthetic interpretive discussion, which would pull together
what we know about the Shining Path and help us make sense of it.

[Gustavo Gorriti Ellenbogen. The Shining Path: A History of the
Millenarian War in Peru. Trans. Robin Kirk. Latin America in
translation/en traduccion/em traducao. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1999. xiii + 290 pp. Notes and index. $60.00
(cloth), ISBN 0-80-784676-7; ISBN 0-80-782373-2; $24.95 (paper), ISBN.
Reviewed by: Marc Becker, Division of Social Science, Truman State
University. Published by: H-LatAm (October, 1999)]

*******

FROM THE NEWSPAPERS

Vincent Browne made the following comments about a photograph of Mary
McAleese at her inauguration in Dublin Castle: "So many of those who
feature in that photograph could not imagine living on the average
wage here -- around 30,000 Euros -- let alone on the income at which
one quarter of the population live, less than 13 500 Euros. Of course,
it is better than it was previously, but is it fair? Is it fair that
thousands of barristers, solicitors, medical consultants, accountants,
even some broadcasters earn well over 500,000 Euros a year and think
that they are under earning? Or even over 100,000 Euros? When the
average is 30,000 Euros? Is it fair that so many struggle with medical
bills, school charges, even elementary household expense while so many
of the rest of us don't have to think about them? And, worse than
that, the political agenda ordains that nothing of any consequence
will be done about this in the foreseeable future..."

[Sunday Business Post, 14 November 2004]

*******

LETTERS

*

BERTIE AHERN -- REPUBLICAN SOCIALIST TAOISEACH?

We know that Fianna Fail styles itself as "The Republican Party". Last
week, Bertie Ahern declared that he was "one of the few socialists
left in Irish politics" (The Irish Times 13 November). Is it perhaps a
matter of time before Fianna Fail will call itself "The Republican
Socialist Party"? In this week's edition of The Village, Vincent
Browne outlined ten good reasons why Bertie Ahern is no Socialist:

1. Inequality has grown under Ahern. Ireland has the greatest income
inequality in the pre enlargement EU. ESRI statistics show that the
proportion of the population living on incomes below 60 percent of
median income rose from 19 percent in 1997 to 21 percent in 2001.

2. His first five budgets gave over 40 per cent of tax cuts to the
richest 20 percent of the population and fewer than 5 percent to the
poorest 5 percent.

Due to stealth taxes, the overall cost of living in Ireland is 18
percent above the European average, affecting most the more
disadvantaged sections of the population.

3. More people became homeless: the official count of homeless rose
from 2,501 in 1996 to 5,581 in 2002.

4. More people are waiting for housing. Households on waiting lists
for local authority housing rose from 27,427 in 1996 to 48,413 in
2002.

5. Fewer people could access free health care. Low-income medical
cardholders fell from 34.6 per cent of the population in 1997 to 25.7
percent in 2004.

6. A 2 billion Euros investment in the most deprived communities
promised under the RAPID programme has not materialised.

7. He has done little for Travellers. In 1998 11,448 travellers
families were living on the road. In 2004, 1,568 families need
accommodation.

8. Bertie Ahern is reneging on his commitment to the poorest
countries. Overseas development aid will increase to 0.5 per cent of
the GNP by 2007, not the target set of 0.7 percent.

9. The citizenship referendum fanned racism.

10. By permitting US troops to use Shannon airport, he has implicated
Ireland in the US led-war initiated in defiance of the UN.

Very interestingly, the article suggested "Ten Ways to be a Socialist
Taoiseach":

i. To reduce inequality, a Socialist Taoiseach should introduce a
series of redistributive budgets, which increase tax on the rich
(income tax, inheritance tax, capital tax, close loopholes) and reduce
tax on low earners (cut indirect tax, end stealth taxes).

ii. The budget should seriously increase social welfare rates. Higher
social benefit payments funded by higher taxation are the chief means
by which other states reduce poverty and inequality.

iii. House the homeless instead of putting them in bed and breakfasts.

iv. Increase local authority house building. Start by delivering on
Government targets of 40,100 new houses between 2000 and 2006.

v. Introduce free GP care, the norm in Europe.

vi. Deliver on the promises made to the deprived communities at the
launch of the Rapid Programme.

vii. Implement the Government's own National Traveller Accommodation
Strategy.

viii. Increase overseas aid by 180 million Euros a year in order to
meet the target of 0.7 percent of the GNP.

ix. Grant citizenship to the families of all children born in Ireland
to date. Introduce legislation, which restores birth right
citizenship. Introduce a green card immigration system where residency
rights are not tied to a particular job.

x. Withdraw landing rights for US military planes at Shannon.

Republican Socialists will study this minimum programme very
seriously.

LOR

*

Dear friends,

The second ARN-Love Music Hate Racism {LMHR} gig has been set up for
December the 2nd. This is being done in association with UNISON
activists and shall take place in the John Hewitt in central Belfast.
We will be getting a few bands to play and as I know many are linked
into our network I am therefore putting out a call to those who are
willing to give a bit of their time and talent to e-mail us at
antiracism_ni@hotmail.com or myself at carlindavid@hotmail.com!

After a solid year of activity through raising the issue of, and
standing against, the tide of racism and racist attacks that had
become almost daily 'reported' occurrences, this will be a good chance
for us to get together at the end of the year. So book it into your
diaries now, as it will be a chance for the ARN and its activists and
supporters to come together for a bit of craic. I will keep you
informed.

Davy Carlin

*

Open Letter to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign from Victory to the
Intifada.

A recent article by Linda Grant entitled Talking Tough in Gaza?
(Guardian Weekend Supplement, Saturday 13 November) exposed once again
Marks and Spencer's involvement and support for the illegal
settlements in the occupied territories through its illegal
importation of settlement goods. The Gush Katif Settlements even have
their own ethnic minorities: foreign workers from Thailand and the
Philippines who, at the time of the first intifada, were brought in to
replace Palestinian workers in the hothouses which grow organic
produce such as tomatoes, green peppers, lettuce and houseplants they
say is bound for Marks and Spencer.

Palestinians are literally starving today with massive unemployment,
unable to move around to trade their goods or farm their lands, which
are confiscated and bulldozed daily. Amidst this the war criminal
Ariel Sharon was reported in the Sunday Telegraph to be up for
nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize when it is clear that his project
is far from peace, it is the continued policy of expansion of Israel's
borders and the ethnic cleansing, genocide and oppression of the
Palestinian people. It is essential that any boycott campaign in
solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is effective and reaches the
consciousness of ordinary people all over Britain. There is a need to
focus on one particular store in order to have maximum effect and that
has to be the biggest British offender Marks and Spencer.

PSC groups throughout the Country are getting active in the campaign
to Boycott Marks and Spencer as part of the Boycott Israeli Goods
Campaign. On the international day of action against the Apartheid
Wall on 6 November, PSC groups in Nottingham and Brighton held pickets
outside Marks and Spencer in their respective cities calling on the
public to boycott the store.

They joined VTI activists in London, Manchester, Durham, Canterbury,
Leicester, and Stratford-upon-Avon who are organising regular
demonstrations to Boycott M&S. As you know VTI have been boycotting
M&S weekly since the beginning of the intifada.

The national boycott of M&S, initiated by Victory to the Intifada,
targets M&S not simply because it stocks so many Israeli goods and
illegal settlement products, but because it is Britain's biggest
corporate sponsor of the Israeli Government and a symbol on every high
street in the UK of the occupation of Palestine.

We are calling on the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign to give their
full support to the National Boycott of M&S.

victoryintifada@hotmail.com

*******

WHATS ON

*

Tuesday, 23rd November, 8pm

"The Chilean Economy: Neo-liberalism, Imperialism and the Poor"

Talk given by Chilean economist Orlando Caputo

Over the last 30 years, since Pinochet dictatorship, Chile has been
subjected to all sorts of economic experiments by the gang of "Chicago
Boys" (economics students from that university) that ruled the country
hand in hand with the military. It became an actual laboratory for
neo-liberal policies. These policies have affected the standard of
life of the working class dramatically, transforming the country to
one of the most unequal in the whole world (it's now the 7th worst).

In this process the hand of US imperialism hasn't been absent, having
an active role in shaping our country into the interest of an ever
narrower local ruling class, and of the US big businesses who rule the
fruit business, the copper mines and many other resources of a
primary-exporting economy.

The Chilean example becomes a paradigm for the New World Order. The
process of impoverishment of the Chilean working class and the
progressive reduction in the limits of democracy are global trends.

Meeting: WSM office, 5 Merrion Row (off St Stephen's Green), ring the
"Latin American Solidarity Centre" bell.

Speaker: Orlando Caputo Leiva, Chilean Economist, currently an
academic in UNAM (Autonomous National University of Mexico), member of
CLACSO (Latin American Council for Social Sciences) and ex-member of
CODELCO council (Chilean National Copper Mining Company) under the
Unidad Popular Government (1970-1973).

Tuesday, 23rd November, 8pm

Hosted by the Workers Solidarity Movement

*

Thursday 25th November

Migrating Songs
Linen Hall Library
Thursday 25th November at 8pm

Tickets only £7.50 to members, to book call 028 9032 1707.

Playing five string banjo, and accompanied by her son Kieron Means on
guitar, Sara Grey will be tracing the migration of songs from
Scotland, through the north of Ireland and onto America.

As a youngster in North Carolina Sara Grey was surrounded by music.
She got her first banjo at the age of 15 and her Dad played the
fiddle, which Sara remembers as: "a bit of Cape Breton, a bit of
classical stuff, some Quebecois tunes." She started collecting songs
during the late sixties -- exchanging ballads in the logging camps of
northern Ontario, and the fishing communities of Nova Scotia and Cape
Breton -- swapping a song for a song. Interested in the migration of
songs across the Atlantic she made several collecting trips to the UK
and eventually she moved to Scotland in 1970, where she still lives
today, on the Isle of Skye.

Although helped by Radio 2's Mike Harding, she first found it
difficult to get gigs in the traditional folk clubs, as they didn't
want an American singer. But she quietly proved that there is interest
in the ballads that traveled, and "got honed down, mislearned, or
improved," as The Tradition Bearers' Brian Peters describes it. Some
stayed exactly the same, as Sara discovered with the County Fermanagh
broken token song Her Mantle So Green, which is sung in just the same
way in New Brunswick, just north-east of her old home in New
Hampshire.

*

10 December 2004

Women's Rights are Human Rights - summit conference

Women into Politics will mark International Human Rights Day with a
conference on Globalisation and the challenges for Women's
participation and leadership. This conference entitled Women's
Participation and Leadership in Global Processes is a summit following
a series of workshops on globalisation and its impact on women's lives
-- locally and globally. The day is dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the
Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

The summit will address themes that increasingly define our world and
that pose enormous challenges to women, women's movements and
feminists worldwide. The conference takes place on 10 December 2004
in Grosvenor House, Glengall Street, Belfast, from 9.00am to 4.00pm
and will analyse the diverse forms of globalisation in local,
regional, and global arenas and its impact on communities and on every
woman’s right to participate at all levels of society and will
also explore ways of showing global solidarity.

There are limited places left so please contact Carola Speth on tel:
028 9024 3363 or email: dialogue@womenintopolitics.org to register.

*******

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*

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Sunday 14 November 2004

The Plough Vol 02 No 13

The Plough
Volume 2, Number 13
14 November 2004

E-Mail Newsletter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party

1. Political Secretary's Report to the 2004 Ard-Fheis (Edited Version)
2. Kids Die For Profit
3. Robbing the Poor to Pay the Rich
4. Letters
5. From the Newspapers
a. Brussel Sprouts
b. Most Smoking Deaths in Poor Areas
6. What's On

*******

Below is an edited version of the POLITICAL SECRETARY'S REPORT TO THE
2004 ARD-FHEIS of the Irish Republican Socialist Party

Comrades,

In this the 30th year of the founding of our party it is an honour and
privilege to address you as Political Secretary. Although 30 years
old, we are also a relatively new party, because we have had to
re-build from scratch. Many in the party have no long-term experience
of political work and maybe lack the skills that other more
professional parties may have. But comrades while the party may be
organisationally in its infancy we are not children when it comes to
the politics of Ireland. We are, and I say this without arrogance, the
most principled radical revolutionary party in Ireland precisely
because we have stayed true to the core principles of republican
socialism.

While republicanism is progressive and democratic, it stands for 'the
people' or 'the Irish people', not just the Irish working class. Our
republican socialism primarily stands for the interests of the working
class. Our politics draws its inspiration first and foremost from the
struggles and ideas of the working class in Ireland and worldwide
rather than simply the republican tradition. But, comrades, no serious
revolutionary movement or process can be built in Ireland outside or
apart from that republican tradition. Republican socialism attempts to
develop the radical potential within republicanism. You cannot
establish socialism in Ireland unless you resolve the national
question, and that national liberation is meaningless unless it also
means the liberation of the working class. The national struggle and
the class struggle are organically linked. The struggle for national
liberation is not opposed to the struggle for socialism, but an
integral and necessary part of it.

The task of this party is to help train and prepare the working class
to take power. This is what Connolly and Costello attempted to do
politically, militarily, and industrially. The central task of the
Republican Socialist Party is to try to direct the struggles of the
working class by organising and leading all the oppressed on the road
to power by engaging with all struggles and point them to a political
struggle against the capitalist state.

Some of the above words I have stolen from the writings of one of our
younger comrades. The youth of our movement have absorbed the core
principles of republican socialism and no matter what organisational
cock ups we may sometimes have, no matter what policy or personality
clashes we have, there is no doubt in my mind that we are on the right
road. And we are on that road because of the collective spirit of the
comrades in this movement. Comrades young and old who have come
through some very trying times.

Ten years ago this movement was in shambles -- the party was
non-existent, the army was under the control of an apolitical and
possibly British controlled leadership -- the prisoners had no
political recognition and there was an almost total lack of respect
within the working class for the Republican Socialist Movement. The
PIRA had taken the first tentative steps towards surrender to
imperialism. Opposition to the moves towards accommodation with
imperialism was muted and based only on more of the same failed armed
strategy. The defeat of the northern resistance struggle was signalled
by the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the entry into a
British administration of Sinn Fein (Provisional).

Our own role in contributing to that defeat has to be acknowledged.
Our indiscipline, our militarism, our acts of sectarian violence, our
macho posturing, our recruitment policies, our inability to man
manage, our failure to politically educate and build up an experienced
political cadre, our failure to engage with the wider working class in
Ireland outside of the northern ghettos, our motor mouth propaganda,
our neglect of our own socialist values, and our failure to learn the
lessons from the writings in particular of Seamus Costello and Ta
Power. All these things and more helped to contribute to a situation
where the mass of the people could only see one republican leadership
they could follow even unto defeat.

When a small number of us sat down in 1994/95 to see how we could
rescue the movement from the dead end it was in we tried to hammer out
a number of basic principles we would follow. The necessity for
collective leadership was paramount. Also it was important to trust in
and listen to the membership and apply the Ta Power principles to all
we were going to do. Chief of those principles was the primacy of
politics. This led us to agree with Gino in the subsequent failed
negotiations with the Torney gang that if there was to be an amicable
split then we would keep the party name and they could have the army.
That was how strong our commitment was to the process of
politicisation.

For it was clear even then that the armed struggle phase was coming to
an end. When the movement was formed in 1974 the world situation was
very different from what it was to become in 1994. The Cuban
revolution was a beacon of hope, the Vietnam war had shown that
imperialism could be defeated, and the Soviet Union still existed and
competed with Communist China in trying to assist, usually for their
own narrow selfish ends, national liberation struggles. The Heath Tory
government had been brought down by workers actions in England. And in
Ireland there was both armed and mass struggles taking place. The
economy of the South was in trouble and workers militancy was at a
high level. It was possible to believe that socialism was achievable,
that we could build the Workers Republic of Connolly within our
lifetime.

Fast-forward twenty years, 1994, and the world was different. The USSR
had collapsed, China had set out on the capitalist road. Actual
existing socialism appeared to have failed with the exception of Cuba
and Vietnam. There was one dominant imperialist power. Thatcherism had
ripped the heart out of many working class areas and a culture of
selfish me-ism was flourishing. In Ireland there was a clear yearning
among the mass of the nationalist population for some way out of the
dead end that the armed struggle had taken us. And among the
Protestant working classes the process of de-industrialisation meant
that a sense of despair was gripping many areas. Even the language of
anti-imperialism now seemed old fashioned and out of date. In the
South the Celtic Tiger was announced with fanfare and many,
particularly upper working class and middle classes, were doing very
nicely thank you.

It was against this background that we began the process of
re-building. Almost immediately we were faced by armed attacks from
the Torney gang that cost us the life of Gino Gallagher who had been
the driving force behind the re-building. That meant that nearly the
best part of a year was taken up with internal matters of security and
meant that the public face of the movement was one of fratricide.
Therefore we had no political influence had a weak, very weak support
base and many people who in other circumstances would have been our
supporters simply did not want anything to do with us.

Once the movement overcame the Torney gang, for the first time in many
years, maybe even since 1977, all sections of this movement spoke with
one united voice. Party and army shared the same vision, shared the
same goals, shared the same approach. Leading comrades took personal,
never mind political, risks to deliver the '98 ceasefire. And they
took those risks because that was the politically correct thing to do.
Does anyone here doubt, particularly in the light of the experiences
of the Real/Continuity IRAs, the correctness of that decision?

Furthermore we have seen a steady increase in the party, the calling
of Ard-Fheiseanna, the slow politicisation of volunteers, the relaunch
of "The Starry Plough," the establishment of our websites and,
comrades, most important of all putting our ideas back on the
political agenda of the working class. Comrades, the result of all
this work by so many of our comrades is that the IRSP is now taken
seriously, not by our enemies, but by our class. If any of you share
the notion that we seek acceptance from the Provos, the Brits, the
loyalists or the Free Staters, then discard that notion now for you
forget who we are. At all times the central question we should ask
when facing an issue is does this advance the interests -- not of me,
not of the Irps -- but of our class. It is because we are a serious
revolutionary party dedicated to the overthrow of imperialism and
capitalism that political work is so vital even though for some it can
be boring and unexciting.

Some comrades feared that our involvement in ex-prisoner work through
Teach Na Failte would mean that the movement would suffer. The
contrary is the case. We have benefited from our involvement with
Teach Na Failte. Through Teach Na Failte we were able to reach out to
many who had become disillusioned and walked away from the movement.
The memorial committee under the leadership of Gerard Murray played a
major part in reaching out. We have more influence now than two years
ago, we have more activists now than two years ago, we have more
stability than we had two years, and thanks to Teach Na Failte our
dead volunteers now have public memorials to their memory. We now have
two offices in Belfast, one in Strabane, and one in Derry. That's down
to local initiatives and we have been able to use Teach Na Failte as a
driving force for all parts of the movement. All of those involved in
Teach Na Failte, especially Eddie McGarrigle, deserve the warmest
congratulations of this movement.

The leadership that has steered this organisation over the past 10
years have done a magnificent job despite military attacks, political
scorn, personal difficulties, and the everyday fear of a bullet in the
back of the head from any one of our many enemies. I know they won't
thank me for it but, comrades, salute in particular (names deleted).
Of course there are others whose contribution has been immense.

The current leadership of the whole movement has been the longest we
have ever had. You have heard some of my speeches about old men
dreaming dreams of days of former glory. I would hate to think that
that was us. Dreaming dreams of former glory while the world moves on.
No, comrades, we need renewal and change and I hope this Ard-Fheis
gives us all hope and expectation for further advances for the working
class.

A slow, steady political approach has nourished many of our members,
given them confidence to grow politically and contribute greatly to
the respect this party and movement now have with a lot of people but
more importantly with the advanced sections of the working class.
However this approach can be frustratingly slow and I know some
comrades were impatient with it. Fair enough. Others, however, seem to
mistake it for weakness and have sought to take advantage of it. Their
egos cannot submit to the greater good of the movement. None of us in
the leadership is above criticism. I hope in the debate when I finish,
comrades, feel free to speak their mind with out fear or favour but
with respect for all of us here as comrades. Of course no procedure is
perfect. It is for the Ard-Chomhairle to ensure that our internal
procedures are transparent, accountable, and democratic. We need
dedicated revolutionary comrades who can make a positive contribution
to the liberation of the Irish working class. Comrades, we need to
raise both our sights and our standards. Second best is never good
enough especially for a party seeking to build socialism.

Our political analysis of the pacification process and the signing of
the Good Friday Agreement was and is spot on. The strategy of Sinn
Fein brought them electoral gains and bourgeois approval. So much so
that they now cannot condemn the election of Bush. It brought them an
almost mafia-like control of many nationalist areas. The slow spread
of corruption within formerly staunch republican areas is alienating
many not only from the Provisionals but also from any politics.

Their grand strategy did not split unionism. Now the DUP are the
largest unionist party. Well done, Gerry!! It did not destroy
Stormont, it did not reform the police, and it did not improve the
chances of Northern Catholics to get jobs. It did not gain a United
Ireland. It did exacerbate the poison of sectarianism, it did deliver
the weapons of resistance into the cemented dumps of the imperialists,
it did demean the magnificent struggle the masses of Northern
nationalists waged from 1968.

Their argument that within five years they could be in power north and
south of the border cuts no ice with me. So what? They as junior
partners will introduce repressive measures against the working class
and increase stealth taxes that will further exploit the exploited.
Having closed hospitals and introduced privatisation into the public
sector the politicians of Sinn Fein (P) will have no problem working
along side the builders, speculators, exploiters of Fianna Fail and
unionism of whatever variety.

Some of us in this hall years down the line may well be in jails under
the control of Sinn Fein ministers. That's the price revolutionaries
have to pay. If you want to change society then expect trouble, expect
reaction, expect repression.

But lets not build our party on what others do. What do we do? That's
what Ard-Fheiseanna are about, deciding what direction we take. There
is no leadership driven control that tells you what to think.
Regardless of any other position you hold, comrades, when you enter an
Ard-Fheis, when you vote, when you speak, you do so as an IRSP member
freely and without directions from anyone else. All my own personal
political activity and that of those of us who set out in '94/'95 to
save this movement, for the past ten years has been about giving the
movement back to the membership. That's what the struggle against
Torneyism was about. You in this room vote and act as free individual
members of the best revolutionary organisation on the islands off the
coast of Europe today. Our policy is decided by the membership not by
the leadership. That's why Ard-Fheiseanna are so important.

Finally, comrades, I know I have not dealt with a wide range of
issues. I have not put our struggle in Ireland in its international
context, I have not set out clearly our future strategy, but I didn't
think you wanted to hear a four hour speech ala Fidel Castro. In the
aftermath of my speech please feel free to criticise, to question, to
condemn, to educate, to elucidate, or to support. We Irps were not
born to be yes men or women.

Finally, may I finish with a quote from James Connolly?

"The architects of that freedom will and must be the Irish working
class. Ours is the task to prepare them. While that preparation is
going forward we must take our place in every good and wise movement
for the upholding of the highest ideals born of the age long struggle
of our people."

*******

KIDS DIE FOR PROFIT

Sub-contractors of giant chemical company Bayer are employing about
1.500 children younger than 15. The kids are working in fields, which
are growing cottonseed for Bayer. This is the result of a research
project, which has been done by the three non–governmental
organisations German watch, Coordination against Bayer dangers and
Global march against child labour.

The three groups have made a formal complaint against Bayer because of
their constant and serious breaking of the OECD–guide lines for
multinational companies. The research project, which was conducted by
a scientist from India, gives a grim picture. Bayer–daughter Pro
Agro buys cottonseed. The growers use child labour. The kids don't go
to school, they work up to 14 hours per day, they earn less than 50
cents per working day and their health is being damaged for life. At
least 3 children aged 8, 12 and 13 died within the last couple of
months. They were killed in the fields, poisoned by pesticides.

70% of the children are kept in what can only be described as a brutal
form of slavery. The parents are given an up front loan which the kids
have to work off, including absolutely horrendous interest. In many
cases this "contract" lasts several years. Other kids are being bought
by cotton farmers, separated from their families and have to live in
huts without any basic facilities. These huts are being built on the
fields.

Cornelia Heydenreich of German Watch told me: "We have been trying to
talk to Pro Agro about the problem of child labour for the past year
without any progress. We are now trying to put increased pressure on
them by making an official complaint to OECD." Rainer Kruse of Global
March Against Child Labour: "Risking the lives of these kids must end
now. Every new cotton growing season damages a new generation of
children." Philip Minkes of the Coordination Against Bayer Dangers
says: "The Company has known about the conditions at its
sub-contractors for many years. It would have been an easy thing for
them to solve the problem of child labour by paying better prices and
introducing strict controls. Nothing has happened."

Nothing is going to happen as long as their endless greed drives Bayer
and the like across the globe, chasing for more profit.

Cotton production in India at present is using more than 100,000
children and the numbers are on the increase. Shanta Sinha is the
general secretary of the Indian Foundation Against Human Rights
Violations. She has made the fight against child labour one of her
priorities the main reason for the cruel situation she says, are the
unfair contracts which firms like Bayer are forcing upon the cotton
framers. The prices are so low that the producers have to employ
children as cheap workers. Shanta Sinha: "One of our main demands are
fair contracts for the farmers and better prices which would help put
an end to child labour which is one of the most cruel forms of
exploitation."

Shanta Sinha and many other activists are motivated by humanism and
unselfishness. Unfortunately Bayer -- a true heir of IG Farben who
used prisoners from the concentration camps as cheap workers -- is
absolutely unwilling to integrate human demands into its calculation
of the profits margins. They have to be right and that is all that
counts -- capitalism without any disguises!

But as often with even the greediest of companies, organised protest
can force them to make concessions. In the case of the kids from
India, the protest is growing. German Watch, Coordination Against
Bayer Dangers, Global March Against Child Labour, the Indian Human
Rights Foundation, the Dutch India Committee, the International Labour
Rights Foundation (USA), Amnesty International, Hivos (Holland) and
Novib/Oxfam have got together and developed six minimal demands:

1) Immediate implementation of an action plan to abolish child labour
in the Indian cotton industry. Guarantee for every child to be allowed
to go to school.

2) Fair prices for cotton farmers which enable them to employ grown up
workers and pay them at least the official minimum wage, equal pay for
men and women.

3) Abolishment of all forms of slavery in the production of cottonseed
in India.

4) Protective clothing and gear for working with pesticides and
training for farmers in the use of them.

5) The right of the workers to form trade unions and negotiate their
wages has to be respected.

6) The implementation of the minimal demands has to be publicly
accountable and observed by independent experts.

Very basic demands indeed in the year 2004! Their fulfilment will by
no means end the system, which has lead to barbaric situations like
this time and time again. But it would put a halt to the killing and
crippling of kids in the cotton fields in India.

And even these very humble demands will only be made reality in a hard
struggle. The Bayer workers and indeed the labour movement as a whole
will have to play an important role. So far not a single trade union
has added its voice to the protest -- if this doesn't change soon,
they will go on killing kids for profit.

[By Marion Baur. First written for Communist Party weekly paper
Unity.]

*******

ROBBING THE POOR TO PAY THE RICH

How the Irish the government has picked your pocket.

The government has turned Ireland into a tax heaven for the wealthy,
paid for by the less well off through stealth taxes. The government is
rewarding the rich to the tune of 8.5 billion Euros while
simultaneously clawing back billions from low and middle earners a
Sunday Tribune investigation has revealed (14 November 2004).

Over the last few years, Minister for Finance Charles McCreevy
introduced a range of stealth taxes and charges, steadily increased
VAT, which has pushed up prices in shops, and sanctioned massive price
hikes in electricity, gas, postal service and waste charges. In short,
McCreevy was robbing Peter to ensure Paul stayed wealthy; robbing from
the poor to give to the rich.

His switch to stealth taxes has hit the lower paid hardest because
they spend a larger proportion of their income on consumer goods.
These concern smoking, VAT, bank cards, electricity, waste and water
charges, TV licence, driving and public transport. In the five years
to 2004, consumer prices in Ireland have risen by 17.5 percent, over
twice the EU average, and government led decisions have contributed to
almost half of that increase. On the other hand, a whole series of
generous tax reliefs means that many of our multi-millionaires pay no
tax at all. A group of 41 people who last year earned over 500,000
Euros a year paid no tax at all. According to revenue figures
presented to the government last week, the exchequer loses 8.5 billion
a year through those various tax breaks. As the government needs 40
billion Euros to run the country, this is a big chunk out of its
budget.

*******

LETTERS

Comrade,

Further to your article on the Black Watch, it should not be forgotten
that they ravaged this country too. I enclose this song about their
exploits here:

Black Watch

You've heard about the B-men the cruel RUC
You've heard about the Black and Tans in bygone history
But there's another regiment the devil calls his own
They’re known as the Black Watch commissioned by the throne

Strolling down the Falls Road with riot guns and gas
Terrorising women as they're coming out of mass
A bunch of Scottish traitors we never will forget
Thank God we know the IRA sure aren't beaten yet

These soldiers come from Scotland a place you all know well
From the hardest part of Glasgow the teddy boys do dwell
They're given a British uniform they're given a British gun
They joined a British regiment to have themselves some fun

When I grow up and marry and have a little son
I'll tell him of the regiment the terrible things they've done
And when that he grows older becomes a man like me
He'll become a volunteer and set old Ireland free

Go raibh maith agat,
Seán

*******

FROM THE NEWSPAPERS

*

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

The European Commission wants to give the EU cops at Europol the right
to access giant databases of individual bank accounts -- while the
European Union's own 200,000 bank accounts remain unaudited.

The proposals, intended to give Europol a role in fighting financial
fraud, were published in an EU Working paper in June and repeated by
Europol at a tax crime conference in Prague last month. Delegates were
told that the EU will support the establishment of central registers
of bank accounts, as exist already in France and Germany.

Meanwhile the UK's serious fraud office (SFO) is deciding whether to
investigate the European Commission, based on evidence presented by EU
whistleblower, Marta Andreasen, the former chief account who was
sacked after claiming that corruption and misuse of public funds were
rife within the commission.

The documents she has handed to the SFO show that the Commission has
200,000 accounts in 45 different banks. The EU Court of Auditors has
refused to sign off the budget every year since 1994 because the
accounts are so riddled with errors or are unverifiable.

[From PRIVATE EYE, London, 12-25/11/04]

*

MOST SMOKING DEATHS IN POOR AREAS


More than 1,600 people in England die each week because of smoking,
with the greatest number of deaths occurring in the most deprived
areas, a study says.

Some 86,500 people died in England on average each year from 1998 to
2002, the Health Development Agency said.

About 62% of the deaths were men and 38% were women. The area with the
highest proportion of smoking-related deaths was north Liverpool,
where 43% of deaths in people over 35 were due to smoking. This was
followed by Knowsley, also on Merseyside, and Tower Hamlets in east
London with 42%.

Harlow in Essex, Islington in north London, east Hull, central
Liverpool, Southwark in south London and north Manchester all had
smoking-related death rates of 40%.

Highest proportion of smoking deaths North Liverpool 43% Knowsley,
Liverpool, 42% Tower Hamlets, London, 42%. The lowest rates were in
the west and south east. In East Devon 23% of deaths in over-35s were
down to smoking. In Bexhill and Rother, East Sussex, and Uttlesford,
Essex, the figure stood at 24%.

It is the first time the figures have been broken down on a regional
level and has led to renewed calls for anti-smoking measures in the
Public Health White Paper, which is due to be published next week.
Deborah Arnott, director of campaign charity Action on Smoking and
Health (ASH), said: "The study clearly shows that the highest rates of
smoking deaths and smoking is in the most deprived areas.

"If the government is serious about tackling health inequalities it
should introduce a smoking ban in public places and work places."

Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, said the
country was in the "grip of a smoking epidemic."

"Smoking isn't just a national problem, these figures show clearly how
our local communities are affected.

"I believe this will be a useful document for everyone working to
tackle the prevalence of smoking in this country."

And Dame Yve Buckland, chair of the Health Development Agency, added:
"Smoking is an important cause of health inequalities -- the poorer
you are, the more likely you are to smoke, you're less likely to quit
and you're more likely to die from smoking related causes."

Lowest proportion of smoking deaths East Devon 23% Bexhill and Rother,
East Sussex, 24% Uttlesford, Essex, 24%. The report, The Smoking
Epidemic in England, produced by the University of Portsmouth for the
HDA, showed that 85% of lung cancer deaths were estimated to be
smoking attributable with 17,400 deaths from chronic obstructive lung
disease being caused by smoking.

About 11,500 deaths from ischaemic heart disease, caused by the
inadequate flow of blood, among those over 65 were estimated to be due
to smoking. But overall smoking deaths dropped from 120,000 a year in
1995 to 106,000 a year between 1998 and 2002 across the UK -- a fall
largely attributable to the falling number of smokers.

In 1974 45% of the population smoked but in 2003 the figure had fallen
to 26%.

Simon Clark, director of smoker's lobby group Forest, said to say it
was an epidemic was "crackers" and was bringing the anti-smoking lobby
into disrepute.

"I think this is just an attempt to bully the government into bringing
in a smoking ban.

"Statistics can be very misleading. I am not saying smoking is not
harmful but smokers also often lead unhealthy lifestyles and eat a
poor diet and this contributes to death as well."

A British Medical Association spokeswoman said the report made
"depressing reading."

"As doctors we know that behind all these statistics lie personal
tragedies. This so-called 'pleasure' is costing people their lives."

[Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4003969.stm]

*******

WHATS ON

*

IRAQ: THE TRUTH OF THE US MILITARY EXPERIENCE

·Teachers Club, 8pm, Monday November 15th
·Speaker: John McDonagh
·Video: "The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children"
·Chair: Mary Kelly

John McDonagh is a Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist. He works
with US veterans of the Iraq war and will describe the real experience
of the US military in Iraq. He will talk about the level of morale and
the resistance to the war and occupation within the US military. John
also runs a radio station based in New York which has consistently
opposed the US military use of Shannon and supported the disarmament
actions of Mary Kelly and the Pitstop Ploughshares.

Also, will be shown a video on the work of Prof. Siegwart-Horst Gunter
who exposed the destruction caused by depleted uranium from the two
Iraq wars and the war on Yugoslavia: "The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium
and the Dying Children." Prof. Gunter was recently in Ireland to
support Mary Kelly at her trial in Ennis.

Organised by Fairview Against the War

Contactfairviewantiwar@eircom.net for more information.

*

Wednesday 17th November at 4pm

The South Belfast Anti Racism Network have decided to call a picket on
Homefinders for Wednesday 17th November at 4pm. A flavour of their
vetting procedures was described in Sunday Life and the Irish News.

Homefinders in Botanic Avenue has marked "no Chinese!!," "not suitable
for people from ethnic backgrounds" and "not suitable for Chinese or
Black community" against a number of homes. The messages were written
in an internal document, believed to have been circulating in May.

Homefinders have excused such vetting saying they are protecting the
minority ethnic community, defending their own staff and property, and
that it happens in other parts of Belfast!

*

Thursday 25th November

Migrating Songs
Linen Hall Library
Thursday 25th November at 8pm

Tickets only £7.50 to members, to book call 028 9032 1707.

Playing five string banjo, and accompanied by her son Kieron Means on
guitar, Sara Grey will be tracing the migration of songs from
Scotland, through the north of Ireland and onto America.

As a youngster in North Carolina Sara Grey was surrounded by music.
She got her first banjo at the age of 15 and her Dad played the
fiddle, which Sara remembers as: "a bit of Cape Breton, a bit of
classical stuff, some Quebecois tunes." She started collecting songs
during the late sixties -- exchanging ballads in the logging camps of
northern Ontario, and the fishing communities of Nova Scotia and Cape
Breton -- swapping a song for a song. Interested in the migration of
songs across the Atlantic she made several collecting trips to the UK
and eventually she moved to Scotland in 1970, where she still lives
today, on the Isle of Skye.

Although helped by Radio 2's Mike Harding, she first found it
difficult to get gigs in the traditional folk clubs, as they didn't
want an American singer. But she quietly proved that there is interest
in the ballads that traveled, and "got honed down, mislearned, or
improved," as The Tradition Bearers' Brian Peters describes it. Some
stayed exactly the same, as Sara discovered with the County Fermanagh
broken token song Her Mantle So Green, which is sung in just the same
way in New Brunswick, just north-east of her old home in New
Hampshire.

*

10 December 2004

Women's Rights are Human Rights - summit conference

Women into Politics will mark International Human Rights Day with a
conference on Globalisation and the challenges for Women's
participation and leadership. This conference entitled Women's
Participation and Leadership in Global Processes is a summit following
a series of workshops on globalisation and its impact on women's lives
-- locally and globally. The day is dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the
Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

The summit will address themes that increasingly define our world and
that pose enormous challenges to women, women's movements and
feminists worldwide. The conference takes place on 10 December 2004
in Grosvenor House, Glengall Street, Belfast, from 9.00am to 4.00pm
and will analyse the diverse forms of globalisation in local,
regional, and global arenas and its impact on communities and on every
woman’s right to participate at all levels of society and will
also explore ways of showing global solidarity.

There are limited places left so please contact Carola Speth on tel:
028 9024 3363 or email: dialogue@womenintopolitics.org to register.

*******

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*

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