Workers Socialist League

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

Army Stays Says Mason

Socialist Press no. 118, 27 September 1978 · scan p. 12 · about 414 words

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nels One juror told the New Statesman:

"He never stopped talking about it, even in the corridors and in the canteen during lunch breaks, on and on, trying to convince the other members,"

The Press agreed to suppress the foreman's past history but the court knew that even had Christopher Hitchens not spoken of it in the Russel Harty TV programme it would have been publicised after the trial by ABC supporters.

Now after the convenient illness which suddenly smote Judge Willis, a new judge will preside over the trial.

It becomes all the more urgent for the ABC Committee and the NUJ to call a Labour movement Conference to agitate for the case to be dropped.

It must focus on the need for strike action throughout the Labour movement should any of the defendents be jailed. Scargill - his base is Mason's constituency British imperialist violence will continue to be meted out to those Irish men and women that dare to struggle for the right of self-determination.

That was the clear ment by Labour's torture minister Roy Mason last week, in reponse to a growing-if motley -pressure for the withdrawal of troops.

The latest prominent advocate of withdrawal is leading Liberal politician John Pardoe, though the motives behind this statement are far from clear. his Mason's latest statement follows on his earlier declaration that the trained assassination squads of the British SAS will remain operating in ireland.

His statement clearly spelled out the class collaboration that lies at the root of Labour's slavish support for British imperialism.

"Business confidence is now being rebuilt, and new investment is being made in the province" • he delightedly declared.

The Labour leaders' clearly hope that the massive investment in sustaining the army of occupation in Ireland is beginning to bear fruits for British capital in the shape of intensified exploitation of the chronically unemployed and low paid Irish working class.

The scandal is that Mason, the front man for the reactionary Callaghan cabinet, rests on the staunch NUM support in his home constituency in Barnsley.

• A march through Barnsley on October 7 has been called by the United Troops Out Movement to highlight the role of Butcher Mason, and demand the withdrawal of troops.

It is essential that this initiative is linked with a fight throughout the Labour Party and trade union movement to drive out Mason and the Callaghan-Healey leadership whose hands are bloody from the vicious repression of the Irish working class.

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 118, 27 September 1978