Rattled Callaghan hounded on Ireland

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PRESS Nothing more under got the skin Callaghan's of avuncular electioneering campaign more thoroughly than the systematic interventions into Labour Party rallies by opponents of British imperialist repression in Ireland.

Despite police harassment, and violent intimidation by Labour Party 'heavies' supporters of the United Troops Out Movement and the RCG's 'Hands Off Ireland' group managed time and again to bring the Irish war to the forefront of stage-managed public meetings.

Lies and slanders

So rattled was Callaghan by this determined campaign that he resorted to outright lies and slanders against the hecklers, branding them as a "flying squad" of agitators which he claimed was meetings.

And Callaghan 'paid' to disrupt his SO devoid are the leaders of any answers when chailenged on Ireland that at "public" election meetings in Speke and in Cardiff "Hands Off Ireland" supporters were illegally excluded at the door, in defiance of the Representation of the People Act.

Hecklers ejected

Elsewhere hecklers were ejected from meetings only to be faced with police charges.

In the North East, Colin Randell, Secretary of Newcastle Trades Counci: and a longstanding Labour Party member, was thrown out of Callaghan's rally for asking if there would be time for questions, since he wanted to ask one about In Cardiff Pat Arrowsmith, running as a candidate against Callaghan on a 'troops out' platform, i was continually harassed and once arrested by Though Arrowsmith bluntly that promises of tax cutting were impossible to implement.

"Mrs Thatcher will have to establish working relationships with trade union leaders, many of whom have stated repeatedly that her victory would be a disaster, and who have become used at least to the appearance of having a major influence on government decisions."

Not only has the Tory press -shaken perhaps by the fact that the Labour vote did not collapse-urged caution, but almost all of them have gone into mourning for, the defeat of Shirley Williams, the Labourite who epitomised everything in social democracy most acceptable to capitalists.

Fear that a swing to the left inside the Labour Party would strengthen working class resistance has underlined what Socialist Press has said for more than a year.

The capitalists chose to go for power in their own namenot from self confidence-but from desperation. attracted only 132 votes, troops out' campaigner Brendan Gallagher, who ran as an independent socialist against Roy Mason in Barnsley, won a respectable 638 under very difficult conditions, and with a manifesto focussed exclusively on British repression in Ireland.

But while there was definite propaganda value of Gallagher's candidacy-in which he stood clearly as a representative of the Irish struggie against Labour's torture chiefthe impact of the interventions by 'Hands Off Ireland" supporters was minimised by their wrong cail for abstention in the Election.

The task of mobilising the British working class against the imperialist repression of their "own" ruling class cannot be achieved through abstentionism, but only through the struggle to expose the reactionary role of the Labour leaders in office.

It is to be hoped that those Mason wuurageous torces inat took up the challenge of making Ireland an issue in the election will now join forces with those socialists fighting in the Labour Party and the unions to make Ireland an issue on which to struggle for. the ousting of the, Callaghan-Healey leadership and the conetrintion . nf neinnintrat OLIUCLIVII pratored socialist alternative.

The embattled blanket' prisoners in 'H' Block at Long Kesh, and the republican forces continuing the war against British imperialism will soon discover that the Tories can crack down still harder than their Labourite lackeys.

The task for the next period is to build the mass opposition to Thatcher's reactionary government side-by-side with the fight for new leadership in the labour movement.