Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

Labour's Ireland debate scrapped

Socialist Press no. 107, 5 July 1978 · scan p. 5 · about 217 words

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There will be no Labour NEC report on Northern Ireland for this year's Labour Party Conference.

A 101-page report has been scrapped. Labour Weekly, the official journal of the Party, declares that this is:

• because of fears that it would create misunderstandings in the province". (emphasis added)

One time 'left' Michael Foot proposed the report be referred back to the "Home Policy" and "Organisation" committees-meaning that it will not appear at Conference this year.

Collaboration Every time the Labour bureaucrats mention Ireland their approach reeks of their age-old "collaboration with British imperialism, and their refusal to side with the struggle of the Irish people for self determination.

Whether it be referring to the north of Ireland as a "province", , referring report on it to the 'Home Policy" Committee, deciding that NEC disagreements mean that the Labour Conference should not discuss Ireland at all, these opportunist politicians can't help but show their arrogant contempt for the Irish liberation struggle.

Repression

The "left" dominated NEC has quite happily supported torture-master Roy Mason's bloody and violent repression as supervisor of the imperialist forces-but draws the line at allowing differing views to be discussed at the Party Conference.

There was not hand raised against the decision to scrap the report and the discussion. British soldier in Ireland

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 107, 5 July 1978