Lawyers slam Mason

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SOME CALL IT PROTECTION for se For pass demonstrations and into individual discussions with sympathetic" , "left" MPs:

The NUS Executive members responsible for this farcical "G-day" proposal must be censured at the coming NUS conference, and must be forced to organise a genuine cam paign which the government and trade union bureaucracy will not simply be able to laugh off.

such a campaign should be based on demands for mandatory grants for all students-concentrating on the needs of students in the PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report further education sectore who are at present discriminated against.

The grant should be increased to make up for the inflation that has cut it away since it reached its highest level in 1962/3.

However, with the rising cost of living, once-a-year increases are not enough: all students should fight for grants to be increased to TIM keep up with inflation, so that they are not eroded further.

Students should unite with trade unionists in price committees to assess how inflation is hitting their pockets, and by what rate grants and wages should increase.

Trevor Phillips (NUS President) and his Broad Left friends will never be Opponents of the British military occupation of the North of Ireland have for a long time pointed out the way in which prolonged remand of unconvicted republican prisoners has become an unofficial system of internment.

It has become commonplace for anti-imperialists to remain anything up to 2 years in jail before being brought to trial.

But last week Labour's Northern Ireland torture chief Roy Mason went one step further-and stripped prisoners of their legal right to appear in court prior to remand.

The occasion for this new attack was the industrial action by prison screws-but the speed of Mason's action demonstrated how thin is the veneer interested in organising their membership to fight around these demands.

Instead they are doing their best to dissipate student militancy into such pointless activities as "pray-ins".

The WSL urges its student supporters to join the fight for building a leadership in NUS which is capable and willing to fight on the above demands.

last NUS "legality": behind which British imperialism masks its military repression.

The sheer arrogance with which Mason proceeded to defend his actions outraged even the legal profession in Northern Ireland. Last Tuesday a group of 23 junior barristers met to demand Mason's resignation.

Contemptuous They drew attention to his contemptuous remarks in Parliament, in which he declared:

"I am aware that those defence counsel who regularly defend Provisional IRA terrorists are seething with anger."

Mason had gone on to talk unconvicted remand prisoners as:

"people who have committed murder, conspired to murder and terrorist offences."

The barristers pointed out that Mason's actions and words amounted to "the latest excess from a man who has consistently shown nothing but contempt for the due process of law in this jurisdiction"

Eventually, though deaf to these protests, Mason lifted the emergency legislation as the screws voted to resume normal working. His hypocritical remarks summed up the reactionary role of the whole Labour leadership on the Irish "The due process of law in Northern Ireland must remain sacrosanct [!] but the security of our province is equally important."

The scandal is that Mason is not a Tory minister. He is an NUM-sponsored minister in a Labour administration.

Hostility

The British Labour movement must act to remove these reactionary "leaders" whose open collaboration with British imperialism against the Irish people is a clear indication of their hostility to the working class in Britain too.

In mobilising to drive out the Callaghan/Mason clique and force a withdrawal of British troops from Ireland, maximum trade union and Labour Party contingents should be mobilised on the Prisoners Aid Committee national Day of Solidarity with Irish Prisoners .of War on Sunday November 26.

ASTMS.

Preparations for the conference are well under way. All union branches and labour organisations have been circulated with details of the conference and there has been a response from several directions.

The conference provides the basis for turning the fight against the cuts, which has been mainly defensive, into a political offensive:

In Sheffield, the tendency so far, has been to respond to cuts as they occur, sometimes successfully (as was recently the case with Thornbury Annexe, part of the Children's Hospital).

But this doesn't stop the cuts coming. In order to prevent the cuts a political offensive needs to be waged.

This is the reason for the conference-to discuss the situation in Sheffield within the context of the general political situation.

The resolution is central to this task.

If the conference adopts the resolution. it will pave the way forward for an important development, both in Sheffield and nationally.

The points raised in the programme can only be realistically fought for in the context of a national campaign against the bureaucracy of the trade unions and Labour Party.

As such, the WSL would urge support for the initiatives taken in Sheffield, both by organising similar conferences based solidly on the labour movement and by sending delegates to the conference to be held in Sheffield.

The conference will take place on Saturday December 2 at the Mount Pleasant Centre Sharrow Lane, Sheffield, from 10.00.am till 5.00pm.

Speakers include delegates from. Hounslow Occupation Committee, the South Oxford Nursery Campaign and the Socialist Medical Association.

Prisoners Aid Committee DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH IRISH POWS November 26 Assemble Hyde Park 2.30pm March to Clerkenwell Green *Solidarity with Irish POWS! *POW status & amnesty for all Irish Political Prisoners ! *Brits Out of

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