IsT Labour movement must lead 'troops out' fight

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Sinn Fein supporters clad in blankets to draw attention to Long Kesh prisoners The desert Western Sahara taken a sheep new turn.

Last week military government of Mauritania signed a peace treaty with the Polisario Front, and formally renounced its claims on the territory of the former Spanish colony.

This latest devalopment does not in any way signal the end of the war. But it does mark a dramatic shift in the political situation within the Maghreb (Arab dominated north-west Africal.

Faced with the prospect of humiliating military defeat and a developing economic and a.nI.s i.sgii political crisis within Mauritania the military dictatorship which came to power last year has been driven to break ranks with its dominating alty, Morocco.

In nome, the Mauritanian government held the southern third of the Western Sahara, the Tiris el Gharbia.

The treaty did nor specify whether this territory should be relinquished with some form of referendum, or simply passed over to the exile government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic established in Algeria by the Polisario Front.

In either case, the major K?e eP....:- problem of the Moroccan army still remains.

King Hassan Il has declared that his 8,000 troops will be withdrawn from Mauritania itself.

But he has no intention of renouncing the war for the Sahara at this stage.

The Moroccan occupation forces will remain in the Saguia el Hamra, the northern two-thirds of the Western Sahara with their massive deposits of phosphates.

But in reality it was also If the British government needed persuading that talk about defeating the IRA was whistling in the dark it received dramatic confirmation at the weekend.

On a wet afternoon in Belfast more than 5,000 republicans publicly identified themselves with the armed opponents of the British army by attending a rally at Casement Park where the IRA paraded its arms, and some of the most wanted republicans on the army's list spoke without fear.

In Britain the demonstration through London called by the Young Liberals was attended by between 5,000 and 6,000about half of whom had formally adopted a policy of immediate withdrawal troops.

No support The WSL, who brought a contingent of about 120 onto the march, made it clear that it offered no political support to the proimperialist positions of the liberals.

It is clear that in signing the liberal platform the IMG anci the SWP were not making an 'error' For them the march is the beginning of a cross class alliance in which their activists will fall in behind the liberals' plan for extricating the troops without disturbing the oppression or upsetting the British imperialist grip on the Northern Ireland state.

That is why the SWP, whose record of failing to support solidarity action against British imperialism has been notorious, suddenly supported this march with an enormous contingent of 1,500-many of them youth drawn around the Anti Nazi League.

Even the British Communist Party, which for years has scabbed on the Irish war of liberation, seeking only a withdrawal . of troops to barracks and a 'Bill of Rights' from the British imperialists, felt able to sign the platform demands, and turn out on the march.

The question all those who claim to support the. Irish struggle for liberation must answer is how the defeat of the British army and British imperialism is to be achieved.

Liberals-with a large or small l'-feel unhappy that Britain is one of the world leaders in torture and repression and look for ways to mitigate these systems.

Not only do they have no ambition' to break'up the prospect of achieving their limited aims.

The British state-under Labour or Conservative governments-has long since abandoned any feeling of embarrassment.

That does not mean that the liberation struggle in Ireland cannot be materially aided in Britain..

It does mean however that the only class capable of forcing the removal of troops from Northern Ireland is the working class, under a principled working class leadership.

There is no short cut to building inside the British work.

ing class a powerful movement for the defeat of British imperialism in Ireland. Nor is there any way socialists can avoid this vital task.

Demands. must be taken up inside the trade unions and the Labour Party to commit bodies to an anti-imperialist positionnot just in words but in action.

Such a fight will come up hard against the leadership of the unions, who have consistently supported British rule and British oppression, and the leadership of the Labour Party who have been responsible for carrying that policy out.

Blacking It means fighting to remove from office those who stand in the way. It means identifying those areas where blacking action can be taken against supplies for the British armyand fighting for blacking action.

it means fighting for political stoppages against repression and in support of those forces fighting the British army.• Within the context of such a solidarity campaign-for the immediate withdrawal of troops, for political status and the release of republican prisoners and for the smashing of the whole apparatus of imperialist repressive legislation workers must also go further.

They must demand self determination for the frish people as a whole and the smashing of both the Stormont state and the bourgeois state in the South.

Oxford labour movement bulletin on Ireland - issue 1 includes speech by Brendan Gallagher. Copies are available (25p incl postage) from Socialist Press.

Issue No. 2 now out! Articles on the fight against the Corrie Bill, the cuts, how the Tories are trying to drive women back into the home, interview with Danish Trotskyists and more.

Available, price 6p plus Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

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