The Plough Vol 04 No 07

The Plough

Vol. 4- No 7

Monday 12th March 2007



E-mail newsletter of the

Irish Republican Socialist Party







1) Editorial



2) Trade Union Issues



3) Bloodshed in Athens



4) From the Media



a. What Socialism can do



b. A shameful injustice



5) Letters

a. From Noel Maguire



b. The SEA is not an SWP – Front!



c. Editor’ reply



6) What’s On?





Editorial



The votes are counted. The talking begins to form a local administration for Northern Ireland/Six Counties. The winners prepare for power while the losers lick their wounds. But in a telling remark a newly elected DUP Assembly member said that the differences between the DUP and the UUP were that the DUP had “the personal touch.”



Indeed it will become increasingly difficult as the years go on to differentiate between the five main parties, the DUP, Sinn Fein, UUP, SDLP and Alliance. Already they are lining up to put their snouts in the trough of Chancellor Gordon Brown as they seek sweeteners in the form of “a peace dividend” of £1 Billion to share power with each other. In the past they have introduced pro-capitalist policies in the form of public private partnerships and there is no clear differentiation in the economic policies they have advocated. Of course the reality is that they will introduce and implement the economic policies dictated by the British Government and which have their origins in the policies of the international capitalist bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank. Those with the republican traditions who still harbour illusions in the radicalism of Sinn Fein should note the pathetic performances of Gerry Adams on TV in the 26 Counties/Irish Republic when he floundered when pressed on specific policies to deal with issues such as health.



When the IRSP took up a principled position of opposition to the Good Friday Agreement we were vilified by some on the left and by Sinn Fein (P) as warmongers and anti –peace. But we clearly indicated we opposed the GFA because it endorsed the British policy of divide and rule. It institutionalised sectarianism, cemented British rule in a part of Ireland, and endorsed partition. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Condition after condition was put on Sinn Fein, which saw massive decommissioning and eventually endorsement of the PSNI.



Faced with a set up that forced them into choosing sectarian camps the vast majority of the voting population choose to vote for the party that seemed the strongest to represent their sectarian interests. Hence the great success of the DUP and Sinn Fein in the elections taking just under 60% of the seats available. But before getting carried away supporters of Sinn Fein should note the actions of the PSNI during the elections. The arrest of a candidate outside the count, and the arrest of the husband of a Sinn Fein councillor was the PSNI sticking two fingers up to those Shinners who talked about putting manners on the Police. The reality is that the boot is on the other foot.



However there was little joy for anti-policing candidates or indeed candidates from the left. Below we print their votes. It makes sorry reading.



Republican Sinn Fein

West Belfast: Geraldine Taylor..........427 votes (1.3%)

Mid Ulster: Brendan McLaughlin..........437 votes (1.0%)

Upper Bann: Barry Toman..........386 votes (0.9%)

East Londonderry: Michael McGonigle..........393 votes (1.2%)

Fermanagh South Tyrone: Michael McManus..........431 votes (0.9%)

West Tyrone, Joe O Neill..........448 votes (1.1%)



Dissident Provos

North Antrim: Paul McGlinchey..........383 votes (0.9%)

Newry and Armagh: Davy Highland..........2188 votes (4.4%)

Fermanagh South Tyrone: Gerry McGeough..........814 votes (1.8%)



Other Republican Independents

South Down: Martin Cunningham..........434 votes (0.9%)

Foyle: Peggy O Hara..........1789 votes (4.4%)



Workers Party

West Belfast John Lowry (Workers Party)..........434 Votes (1.26%)

East Belfast Joe Bell (Workers Party)..........107 votes (0.35%)

South Belfast Paddy Lynn (Workers Party)..........123 Votes (0.40)

North Belfast John Lavery (Workers Party)..........139 (0.46%)

Lagan Valley John Magee (Workers Party)..........83 Votes (0.19%)

South Antrim Marcella Delaney (Workers Party)..........89 Votes(0.23%)



Socialist Party



South Belfast Jim Barbour (Socialist Party)..........248 Votes (0.81%)

East Belfast Thomas Black (Socialist Party)..........225 Votes (0.75 %)



Labour

South Down Malachi Curran (Labour)..........123 Votes (0.26%)



Socialist Environmental Alliance

Foyle Eamon McCann (Socialist Environmental Alliance).........2045 Votes (4.5%)



People before Profit

West Belfast Sean Mitchell (People before Profit..........744 Votes (2.17%)





It is clear from these results that there is little or no support for those republicans who cling to the old certainties that the Provo movement once clung to. Indeed it is extraordinary that the group we refer to above as the Provo Dissidents only realised within the last year what the implications of the Good Friday Agreement were. Did they really believe the Provo internal propaganda that they were moving the struggle forward by recognising the police, decommissioning the IRA (P) and implementing pro-capitalist policies when in power?



Republican Sinn Fein’s complaints that they were denied proper coverage in the media is really a pathetic attempt to hide the reality that they have little support from republicans within the nationalist community. Their obsession with “English” as in their statement of Friday 9th of March, 07



“To consolidate English rule” and “by unscrupulous English governments.”



is a blatant attempt to appeal to a reactionary form of nationalism playing up people’s dislike of the English, a view shared by many people world wide. But what about not only British Imperialism but also world imperialism? And it ignores the reactionary nature of the ruling classes in Scotland and Wales who have embraced Imperialism, as indeed did the Ulster bourgeoisie. But their position is fundamentally wrong because they ignore or downplay the class struggle. They have forgotten every thing James Connolly wrote about, especially the bit about the flags and post boxes! “Imperialism would still rule you” The national question will be solved with the victory of socialism and not before.



Both the Workers Party and the Socialist Party performed poorly and in some cases it looked as if only their relatives voted for them. Splendid isolation may protect the purity of one’s politics but seemingly cuts no ice with a working class deeply divided and stuck into two sectarian camps. Ignoring or downplaying the reality of the sectarian divisions by abstract appeals to class unity in party statements and papers without actual action and unrelated to actual conditions on the ground is just another form of left liberalism. Both these organisations are in grave danger of simply becoming sects.



But from a socialist perspective there were some bright spots. The vote for Eamon McCann in Foyle showed the value of campaigning on real issues following long sustained work on class politics. While the IRSP has strong reservations about the stance of the SEA on key issues such as Imperialism, the national question, and broad fronts we applaud their work on key class issues. That is also probably why the People Before Profit got such a comparatively high vote in West Belfast. They emphasised the issue of water charges, which will affect every working class family if implemented. That obviously has struck a cord with much right across the sectarian divide. That discontent must be built upon.



The vote for Peggy O Hara was extraordinary given that there was no electoral experience from her team but the enthusiasm and dedication of her workers tapped into an emotion that needs to be built upon. The alliance between the IRSP/32CSM and Concerned Republicans shows what can be achieved among republicans on a platform that dealt with key issues of concerns for republicans but avoided a knee jerk anti Sinn Fein bashing approach. The comparative success of the Peggy O’Hara campaign has led some republicans to believe that a new Irish republican alliance (ira) can be build as a political party. Such a venture would ignore the ideological differences that exist between the existing forces. For its part the IRSP will continue to do what it has been doing over the past 11 years, while others stood on the sidelines, building a credible left revolutionary force advocating the Connolly /Costello road to revolution. The gradual build up organisationally of the IRSP in Derry over the last five years undoubtedly added to the vitality of the Peggy O’Hara campaign. It has established a base that can be built upon. Now the IRSP need to push positive policies approaches and ideas from an anti-imperialist and socialist perspective rather than get diverted down cul de sacs.



The overwhelming victory of Sinn Fein is not a cause for despair for republicans or socialists. Rather it is an opportunity for the left to take stock and also take advantages of the stance and compromises that that organisation will have to make to exercise power. In the south of Ireland nearly one third of the electorate vote for a range of parties and individuals that can be broadly classified as “left”. As the economic conditions worsen in both parts of Ireland, as witnessed by the loss of 900 hundred jobs in the Munster area announced last week, the discontent of the masses will become evident. Already a number of rises in the interest on mortgages in both parts of Ireland has dramatically increased the cost of living for thousands. Spiralling house prices in the North has meant that 4 out of five houses now sold go to property speculators. Dublin houses prices mean that locals cannot afford to buy in Dublin. Young married couples are finding it increasingly difficult to secure suitable accommodation. The privatisation of public utilities and the cutting back of all the gains of the working class over the past ninety years is on the agenda of all capitalist Governments. The coming election in the South will make no fundamental changes regardless of which coalition is stuck together. The new Government will carry out the policies of globalisation at the bidding of the capitalist classes.



Now is the time for the left and republican left to build alliances that can channel the coming discontent into political advances for the working class. The door is now opening for the resurgence of the left because with new administrations looming in the North and South with no essential differences in policy but to implement pro big business policies the left can now become, in the unions and on the streets and hopefully in the electoral field a real opposition to the pro-capitalist policies of the new regimes.







Trade Union Issues



Friday, March 09, 2007

One of Ireland's leading trade unions is calling on politicians to stop focusing on tax cuts and promise measures to help manufacturing workers face job losses. The call comes following the news this week that almost 900 jobs are to be shed at various factories in Munster over the coming years.

The ATGWU is calling for an emergency jobs summit to be held to discuss the situation, which it says should be an election issue. "What it needs is a political focus and I wish the politicians would stop talking simply about tax cuts and focus on this issue," spokesman Mick O'Reilly said today.



Bloodshed in Athens

Riot police turns the student’s demonstration into bloodshed in Athens on 8/3/07



Growing popular opposition voiced by students against the government’s reactionary plans to privatize education in Greece brought many to the street protests planned on 8th March 2007 in Athens. However, the government who is hell bent on carrying these policies dispatched its riot police against the 30,000 strong mass students’ demonstration. The riot police launched brutal attacks against the demonstrators using fire grenades, tear gas and asphyxiating rockets, and savagely beating the participants arrested dozens of the protestors.



The riot police launched unprovoked attacks against the students, injuring many and arresting dozens of the protestors. Those arrested were illegally, refused permission to meet their lawyers for several hours. The injured were also refused medical care for many hours.



The attempt of the government despite the widespread collaboration of the media to criminalize the students’ struggle, has failed miserably. The same day other demonstrations were organized in Thessaloniki, late in the night and then in Athens during the next day in solidarity with the arrested students and in order to protest against the state repression. Notwithstanding the heavy handedness and open brutality shown by the police, thousands of people joined the supportive actions and even the media were obliged to be more careful and were forced to reflect aspects of popular opposition to the government policies on education expressed by the students.



The students are resolved to continue with their struggle and have called on the workers and other sections of society to support their just struggle.



Athens 9/3/07



From: ILPS Greece





=====================================================================



From the Media



What Socialism can do.



HAVANA, Cuba — Jose Gomez bounds around the patio of a sunny vacation cottage near the beach, giggling as his mother gently tosses him a soccer ball.

The energetic 2-year-old from El Salvador is one of thousands of poor Latin Americans who have received free eye surgery thanks to Miracle Mission, an ambitious program started by Cuba in 2004. ‘We’re doing it for free, so it’s not for economic reasons. It’s for moral reasons, to help these people who otherwise could not afford this care,’ said Dr. Lazaro Vigoa, deputy director of Miracle Mission at Havana’s Pando Ferrer Hospital. “My husband is a fisherman, and we could never afford this surgery,” Gomez’s mother, Julia, said of her son’s successful treatment for a droopy eyelid. “We’ve been in Cuba for 15 days, and everything has been paid for.”



Cuba’s eye-care program, financed in part by its close ally Venezuela, has become a huge enterprise, employing hundreds of Cuban health care workers who have treated a half-million patients over the past three years.

Cuba has staffed medical clinics and other social programs in Venezuela for years, an outgrowth of the tight bond between Cuban President Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s socialist leader. In exchange, Venezuela provides Cuba with about 90,000 barrels of oil per day, about half its daily needs.

With a recent, dramatic international expansion, the program has also raised Cuba’s profile on the world stage, showcasing Cuban medical expertise while providing badly needed care in poor countries. Cuba has opened clinics and patient screening facilities in 27 nations from Africa and China to the Caribbean and across Latin America.



The effort is a humanitarian gesture and an important goodwill diplomatic tool for Cuba, which lost its prime political and financial benefactor when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In what many analysts regard as a U.S. attempt to counter such Venezuelan and Cuban efforts, President Bush — who is on a weeklong tour of Latin America — announced plans last week to direct millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Latin America to expand health care, teach English and improve housing.



Despite the important oil imports from Venezuela, Dr. Lazaro Vigoa, deputy director of the Cuban program, dismissed reports that the program has become a big moneymaker for Cuba.



“It’s a big headache for the Cuban government, not a money-maker,” said Vigoa, who practices at one of Havana’s main hospitals, Ramon Pando Ferrer. “We’re doing it for free, so it’s not for economic reasons. It’s for moral reasons, to help these people who otherwise could not afford this care.”

Cuba has long been proud of its health care system and has sent doctors to countries around the globe for decades as part of an outreach program that resembles the U.S. Peace Corps program.



The eye-care program is the brainchild of Castro, said Vigoa, who formed the idea after hearing that participants in adult literacy programs in Venezuela had such poor vision that they couldn’t see their reading lessons.

Although Miracle Mission has taken the partnership to a global level, the program’s rapid expansion has drawn some criticism. One international news report suggested that the quality of care was being sacrificed in a bid to run up impressive statistics, a charge that Vigoa disputed.



“We monitor the surgeries to make sure there are no problems,” he said, showing a visiting reporter a control room with a bank of television monitors that carry live feeds from the hospital’s 34 operating tables. “Our philosophy is first-rate care.”



Foreign patients typically receive examinations in their home countries and are then scheduled for surgery in Cuba. Most travel on Cuba’s national airline, Cubana. Once in Cuba, they are bussed to one of several hospitals providing the surgeries. Some stay at hotels that have been converted into patient housing, and others stay at Tarara, a seaside resort about 20 miles from Havana.

Although some Cubans reportedly resent the red-carpet treatment given the foreign patients, Vigoa said his hospital operated on more Cubans than foreigners in the past year.



Katia Triana, who lives outside Havana, said Cuban doctors suggested that her daughter Katherine’s detached retina might be best treated in Chile.

“The trip to Chile cost $7,000, but I didn’t pay a cent,” she said.

“This has been wonderful for my little girl.”



With 800 ophthalmologists already trained and hundreds more enrolled, Miracle Mission has become the biggest Cuban health program.

“We’ve grown rapidly, but we’re prepared for it,” said Dr. Reina Martinez, who runs the Tarara facility. “We have treated patients who have been blind for years. It’s very emotional when suddenly they can see again.”

FROM: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/03/11/11cuba.html

By Mike Williams INTERNATIONAL STAFF Sunday, March 11, 2007)









A shameful injustice

Cuba’s 50-year defiance of US attempts to isolate it is an inspiration to

Latin America’s people.

There is a wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean after the many lonely years in which Cuba held high the torch, with free universal healthcare and education, and world-class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won’t find a Cuban today who says things are perfect - far from it - probably all would agree that compared with pre-revolutionary Cuba, there is a world of improvement.

George Bush, the antithesis of this process, is now in Brazil at the start of a mission to lure five countries away from regional economic integration. However, the many thousands in the streets demonstrate the region’s vast repudiation of Bush and what he stands for, something polls reflect unanimously.



All Cuba’s achievements have been in defiance of US efforts to isolate Cuba; every dirty method has been used, including infiltration, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, economic and biological warfare and incessant lies in the media of many countries. I know these methods too well, having been a CIA officer in Latin America in the 1960s. Altogether nearly 3,500 Cubans have died from terrorist acts, and more than 2,000 are permanently disabled. No country has suffered terrorism as long and consistently as Cuba.



The Cuban revolution has always needed intelligence capabilities in the US for defence purposes, even before it took power in 1959. Such was the fully justified mission of the Cuban Five, who have been in jail since 1998 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in Miami, where they had no chance of a fair trial. Their sights were set exclusively on terrorist operations against Cuba - activities ignored by the FBI - and they neither sought nor received any classified government information. Their cases are still on appeal, and will be for years, but their biased convictions rank with the legal lynching in the 1920s of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchist immigrants, among the most shameful injustices in US history.

Current US policy can be found in the 2004 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (updated last year with a secret annexe).



A fundamental goal - the same, I remember, as in 1959 - is the isolation of Cuba to stop this bad example spreading. If successful, this would mean no less than annexation by, and complete dependence on, the US, in fact if not in law. Other goals still intact are to foment an internal political opposition and economic hardship, leading to hunger and despair.



Yet nearly 50 years of US economic warfare hasn’t worked, even though Cubans estimate the cost to them at more than $80bn. After the freefall in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy began to recover in 1995. By 2005 growth was 11.8% and in 2006 12.5%, the highest in Latin America. Exports of services, nickel and pharmaceutical and other products are booming, and the US has not been able to stop this.



In the end efforts to isolate Cuba have failed. Last September Cuba was elected, for the second time, to lead the Non-Aligned Movement of 118 countries, and two months later the UN voted for the 15th consecutive year to condemn the US embargo, by 183 to 4. In 2007 Cuba has diplomatic or consular relations with 182 countries, and Havana hosts seemingly endless international conferences. In recent years Cuba’s resorts have been attracting more than 2 million tourists annually. Far from isolating Cuba, the US has isolated itself.

More than 30,000 Cuban doctors and health workers are saving lives in 69 countries, many in difficult areas. Meanwhile 30,000 young people from dozens of countries are studying medicine in Cuba on full scholarships. All come from areas lacking doctors.



Cuba’s literacy programme, known as “Yes I can”, has been adopted in nearly 30 countries, with thousands of Cuban volunteers teaching. The scheme, conducted in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Creole, Quechua and Aymara, has helped some 2 million people to read and write, most of whom continue their education afterwards.



Thanks to this international assistance, Cuban prestige and influence - and international solidarity with Cuba, - have never been greater. It was to defend these worthy programmes that the Cuban Five, unjustly convicted, went to Miami in the 1990s. Freedom for them should be the cause of everyone for whom human rights and justice are important, both in the US and around the world; and that cause can be supported in 300 Free the Five solidarity committees in 90 countries. Philip Agee, a former CIA secret operations officer, is author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary. He travels in Cuba and Latin America as a campaigner, and manages an online travel service to Cuba.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2030797,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1



Philip Agee

Saturday March 10, 2007

The Guardian







Letters



A statement by Noel Maguire

Friends and comrades a chairde,

As many of you know already, my latest application for repatriation to serve the remaining years of my sentence in the country of my birth, has once again been refused by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

I am at a loss as to why the Dept continues to refuse me my rights. Under the European Convention on the rights of prisoners to serve their sentence in country of origin, I qualify on all counts. My wife and two young children live within an hours journey of Portlaoise and Mountjoy Prisons, and my brother, sisters, uncles and aunts all live within visiting distance.

I have no relatives in Britain and I have not seen my children for six years

I have received numerous communications from the Dept of Justice - and the Irish embassy here - but at no time ever have I been given a clear-cut satisfactory explanation for my applications being refused. Furthermore I am now informed I cannot apply again until January 2008. This is contrary to the legislation agreed my all EU member states - that a prisoner can at any time apply for repatriation to country of origin.

I am an Irish citizen, hold a valid Irish passport, and to all intents and purposes I qualify for repatriation in law. My co-accused have all been repatriated and I believe my continued detention here is victimisation - if not illegal.

I appreciate all that is being done for me outside these walls by good

Comrades and friends at home and abroad who believe my incarceration is a

Travesty of justice

Noel Maguire

HMP Full Sutton,

York. YO41-IPS.

06.03.2007







THE SEA IS NOT AN SWP - FRONT

Comrades,

you may call this “letter to the editor” or reply to an article or whatever you like. Plough Vol.4-No 6 “reformists, policing and the state”



No doubt, the issue of policing has caused a lot of debate and continues to do so. But all I can read from Gerry’s article is a criticism of one group’s position to the matter. It is known that you don’t like the SWP (in many aspects that makes two of us) but do you not think under a headline as “wide” as that one, you should have looked at the SDLP and SF’s position first? But be that as it may, I am more concerned with your repetition of the wrong “theory” that the SEA in Derry is a front organisation of the SWP. Why they don’t stand under their own party’s banner - I don’t know. “People before profit” is - so the general belief in left circles - a “front” (I have problems with that definition and would prefer to talk about a group with strong influence of.) of the SWP, which was founded in the Republic. I don’t know the Belfast group well enough to judge their position on the SWP.



THE SEA IS NOT AN SWP - FRONT, AND SHOULD YOU REPEAT IT A HUNDRED TIMES, IT WON’T MAKE IT ANY MORE TRUE!



Having been formed as a pressure group against an incinerator for litter, it is now being supported by all sorts of (more or less) progressive people, the majority of them not SWP. If I had any doubt about that, I would withdraw my support today. Yes, the SWP people are there and it is their good right to be. But do you really think - to use but few examples- a credible, longstanding union activist like Eileen Webster would join a “front” of the SWP?

Would you think the railway workers who formed “Into the West” to try and struggle in a more organised way against the destruction of the Belfast - Derry train route (at least partially successful so far) have no better plans in life than to support such a front? They are very down to earth trade union men and women who saw that the SEA was the only force in Derry who really cared about their cause.



Do you seriously believe that Marion Baur (who stood in the last election for the SEA), a woman who has been an active Communist and in her country of birth, a member of the executive of her union( a trade union with a membership almost the size of the population in the 6 counties)- in short an experienced political activist for over 20 years- would go for an SWP front?

I could continue this list and it includes myself.

The SEA (and I have no doubt, the SWP people might wish it to be “their” outlet) has always drawn people on bread and butter issues rather than communal conflict and that makes it not the only but certainly one of the few workable broad fronts (emphasis on broad) in this divided part of the world.

I don’t think it is the end of the line.



I would like to see candidates of my own party in this election and remember my prediction - it will be the case soon. Maybe more valuable because more efficient would be a broad left alternative. It should include the SEA, the SWP, your own party and my own - indeed any serious force in favour of change towards a better future (which can only be a socialist one). But for now:

Have we done enough to get there?

Have we looked further than “the point of our own noses” and our own often too narrow politics?



Have we seriously tried to put the common ground before the divisions?

You know the answer as well as I do and until we get there, there is not a thing wrong with supporting one of the very few - many faults it may have - attempts to work on issues which are crucial to the working people of the six and indeed all 32 counties:

· Opposition to water charges

· Support for the trade unions and defending their rights

· Struggle against racism

· Placing environmental matters where they should be, in the centre of politics

· Fighting against the war-mongering US-, British-, and indeed all other capitalist powers



You know what that is?

The election manifesto of the SEA in short words.

Should we sit and wait for the big, broad, all united left alternative, or should we try and struggle around what’s there already? Do you think the presence of the SWP is going to keep me from that?

Communist regards

Hermann Glaser Baur

(Active member of the C. P. I. and obviously still a supporter of the SEA)



Editor ‘s Reply



Comrade Hermann,



Thank you for your response to “Reformists, Policing and the State” If you read the article again you may note that at no time was there any mention made that the SEA was a front for the SWP. I completely accept what you say about the SEA. Like you I believe in genuine broad fronts but you surely recollect that at a conference of the SEA two leading cadres of the SWP stated that they would not work in any broad front with the IRSP. The rest of the SEA did not demur from that position. For from it being an issue of in your words of “you don’t like the SWP” it is a serious political difference that is at issue here. In rushing to defend what was not under attack you completely ignored the issue that was central to the article, policing and its role in the state. That is an issue that should not be ducked and we believe that that is precisely what McCann and the SEA by extension did. The issue of policing is not a communal issue for in our own contacts within the protestant working class we know that policing is an issue that concerns and affects them also. Are the left only to deal with safe bread and butter issues? Do we ignore equality, poor housing discrimination and other issues, which could be construed to divisive? That certainly could not be the position of communists.



As regards the issue of” sitting around” Hermann should know full well that over two years the IRSP tried to engage with a wide range of political organisations and of course most of them ignored requests for meetings.

Nevertheless the IRSP will continue to engage with those prepared to engage with us. Is the SEA now prepared to engage with us Hermann?

Fraternally

Editor.







What’s On?



The New Lodge Community Empowerment Partnership is holding a Respect week from 12th-16th March including an unveiling of a Rosa Parks mural and a migrant workers day.

On Monday evening they are planning to show the Rosa Parks film, but as of yet it hasn;t been delivered. If anyone has a copy, could you contact Dessie Donnelly @des_donn@yahoo.com? If you are interested in getting a programme contact

Leo Morgan at the Ashton Centre 90742255



We Won't Pay Campaign

Upcoming meetings

Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone

7.30pm Thursday 8th March

Valley Hotel

Ballymena

8pm Wednesday 14th March

Adair Arms Hotel

Larne

7.30pm Monday 26th March

Larne Leisure Centre

Bawnmore, Belfast

7pm Wednesday 28th March

Millgreen Youth Centre

Shankill Rd, Belfast

7pm Thursday 29th March

Shankill Leisure Centre

. Successful local meetings

. Well done to the organisers of recent meetings held in Lisnaskea, Irvinestown, Enniskillen, Crumlin, and Donegall Pass where local We Won't Pay groups were established.

. If you want to set up a local group in your area, contact us.











Thursday 22 March, 7 p.m. International Women's Day event



Doffers and Dockers: Belfast Industrial Struggles, 1906-7

Speaker: Theresa Moriarty

(Author of biographies of Delia Larkin of the Irish Women Workers' Union and

Mary Galway of the Textile Operatives' Society of Ireland). Chairperson:

Dawn Purvis (T&GWU). Linen Hall Library (Fountain Street)

Organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions





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It is the policy of the Plough to acknowledge information and articles from other sources.



The Republican Socialist Youth Movement have re-launched their website.

It can be viewed at

www.rsym.org



An Glór / The Voice

News sheet of Belfast Republican Socialist Youth Movement

January 2007

Circulation: 400



- Brit police never acceptable

- Maghaberry Prison protest continues

- Assets Recovery Agency, a question of money

- Support the Turkish death fast

- Ard Fheis rejects any move towards INLA decommissioning

- Volunteer Davy McNutt RIP

http://www.rsym.org/pdf/magazines/anGlor1.pdf



The Republican Socialist Youth Movement have produced a short video on the situation concerning Shannon airport and its continued use by American troops and the CIA. The video can be viewed at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH0WqJb95l8



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