Fine Gael vot for gay

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An ranks Army 71 :Roy Mason, Labour's Minister of Torture, fired a well-aimed parting: shot before handing over to the Tories the task of upholding British imperialist rule in Northern Ireland.

This time the target was gay men in the occupied six counties.

The Westminster legislation of 1967 legalised certain types of private sexual acts between consenting males over the age of 21.

Never extended

This partial reform was never extended to the armed forces, Scotland or Northern Ireland, whre the vicious penalties of the 1885 laws still remain in force.

With the suspension of Stormont and imposition of 'direct rule', Mason had it within his power to extend law retorm to British-occupied Ireland simply by an Order in Council, and 'yes" vote in Parliament.

In tact, a draft law was published last. June, after a concerted . campaign by NIGRA (Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association) which had led to embarrassing exposure of British imperialism in the European Commission of Human Rights.

The forces of clerical reaction at once swung into hysterical activity. The hierarchy of the Catholic church thundered its usual condemnations of such 'blasphemous' behaviour.

The Rev. lan Paisley used his bases in the 'Free' Presbyterian Church and the 'Democratic' IRA spy in the of the British generals? 1nis iningung prospec was hung out for a brief period following revelations by the IRA that they had received a copy of a top secret Army intelligence It was with considerable relief that the press decided -after army briefing-that the spy did not have stars on his shoulder but was a postal worker.

Talk of hounding IRA sympathisers within the UPW has a comforting ring about it.

Some papers even spoke of an IRÀ infiltrator' into the Post Office as if no postal worker could possibly hold or develor such sympathies.

Not all papers carrier quite the same story. Thi Daily Star for example, sair that it was quite simply : straightforward theft o mail-later sold to the IRA. But whatever the precis formulation each paper wa Unionist Party to organise the 'Save Ulster from Sodomy' campaign, which claimed a petition of some. 70,000 signatures.

Judges This unholy alliance was swelled by senior judges, and no doubt by representatives of the 'peace-keeping forces' The Labour leaders quailed before this assault-all the more because they have never held any serious commitment to gay winhte The 1967 reform was introduced by a private members' bill from David Steel, and the Wilson leadership ensured only a free vote from the PLP.

Any suspicion of a principled stand on such basic democratic rights was completely smashed. in the spring.

Faced with the prospect of a parliamentary defeat, Callaghan bargained with the Ulster Unionists for their support. Amongst a whole series of demands, the Unionists insisted on the dropping of the draft law.

The Unionists were successful. In its submission to the European Commission Human Rights, the Northern Ireland Office argued that:

'The subject is a particularly sensitive and controversial one. It is therefore reasonable [!) for the law to be less liberal than that in England."

In the north, it is British imperialism which has continued oppression of gays.

But in the republic too, clerical reaction has combined with this same force to produce quite definite in its speculation and each paper used the issue of how the document was leaked to divert from what it said.

One other clear symptom of careful military briefing of the 'free' Tory press was the formulation of the way the document was presented in Republican News.

Despite their differences, the Telegraph and the Star both described Republican News as "the mouthpiece of the IRA"

Embarrassing

Every paper said the leak was "embarrassing but not politically dangerous"

But if the IRA leak caused embarrassment, the decision by a Californian court to refuse to extradite Peter McMullen-alleged by British police to be involved in a bombing at Ripon army barracks in 1974-caused fury.

The court ruled that under the 1972 agreement no extradition could take place for political crimes Paisley legislation easily among the most severe .. in the world.

Part of the legacy of British rule is the threat of liteimprisonment which hangs over gay men, however adult or consenting they may be.

At its recent conference, the Fine Gael party overwhelmingly adopted proposals for legal reforms on the Westminster model.

But Fine Gael is conveniently in opposition, and the Catholic hierarchy has not yet opened its assault on this move.

The oppression of gays throughout Ireland is just one aspect of the clerical reaction which denies any freedom of sexuality and restricts the rights of women.

The fight for an end to discrimination against gays must be waged in a struggle against that religious bigotry" which holds sway throughout the island, and which is a basic prop helping to perpetuate the imperialist oppression of the British state in the north.

and McMullen-who had been held in a Californian jail for a year-could be deported instead to the Republic of Ireland.

The Telegraph raged: "This is more than bad law. It strikes at the very basis of law ... Murder;

mass killing, extortion, bank robbing, torture, can be all exempted on political grounds"

The Sunday Telegraph admitted in despair:

"A growing number of Americans (now including many with no Irish affiliations) plainly believe that what is going on in Northern Ireland is an attempt by the British to maintain one of the last bastions of empire, not an attempt by the IRA to deprive Ulstermen of the right to self-determination".

It ruefully concluded: "There would be much to be said for sending a powerful mission to the United States to counteract IRA and Dublin government propaganda there." Postal workers in the Irish republic are at the forefront of continuing resistence to the attacks on working class living standards being plotted by the Lynch government and its lackeys in the irish TUC.

Their 13 week pay strike has wreaked havoc on business communications and threats to disrupt the campaign for the June 7 European elections by preventing the circulation of election addresses.

Militant picketing by postal workers led last week to court injunctions barring workers from picketing Dublin's Henston or Connolly stations, where employers had been using an express parcels service to get around the strike.

Intimidatory

As a result the POWU leadership called an "intimidatory picket" of the offices of the Confederation of Irish Industry and of the parcels service's Sheriff Street office.

The strike has attracted international support, including blacking action by UPW members in the North, and cash aid from the German postal workers union.

But it is not the only thorn in the side of Lynch's efforts to hold down the slave labour wages paid by Irish employerswhose rate of return on capital is among the highest in the world.

The decision ten days ago of the Irish TGWU bureaucracy to.

oppose the "National Understanding" drawn up by the government, bosses and Irish TUC chiefs, has struck a body blow at this strategy for disciplining the working class.

The "Understanding" dangles an exceedingly skinny carrot--involving puny tax cuts and a 15% wage rise over 15 months-in front of the Irish working class, in an attempt to lure workers into a stringent no-strike agreement.

With the ITGWU rejection means that the biggest single union delegation-65-strongwill be voting against it.

But ITGWU leaders have not rejected the deal on principle. Rather they are haggling over details.

There was not enough for the low-paid, they argued; they prefer flat-rate increases to percentages lechoes of Jack Jones!); they are not happy with the tax concessions; they Lynch want guarantees that the government will honour its side of the bargain; and they are not happy about no-strike clauses.

Whether or not they move in the next few days to swallow these objections and buckle down to accept the deal will depend on their assessment of their ability to contain potential rebellion within the ranks of their membership.

Certainly the ICTU itself is doing everything possible to railroad in the deal and to damp down the militancy on wages indicated by last months massive general strike in Dublin and other cities against Lynch's PAYE laws, which benefit Irish farmers at the expense of the working class.

Thousands of workers stopped work in a similar protest on May Day-but only on pain of disciplinary action against their unions. by the ICTU.

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