British Army of Oppression Out of

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In any people killed.

And behind the lies, bluff and bluster of British press and media propaganda, behind the contemptible ""bi-partisan" agreement between Labour and •y pouticians on the need to maintain: the military occupa tion of the six counties of tre land, a real, full scale WAR is going on.

The war is between the armed might of the British imperialist army, seeking through unstinting use of the ¡boot, the bullet and the truncheon to preserve the centuriesold domination of the Irish people by the British ruling class: and those Irish men and women courageous enough to take action and take up arms in the struggle for national liberation and an end to foreign oppression.

Defeat

We are not neutral in this war. As socialists, as resolute opponents of British capitalism at home and abroad, we stand 'unashamedly for the defeat of the British army in Ireland, for the immediate withdrawal of troops, for the right of the Irish people to self determination, and for the building of a revolutionary leadership that can establish a united Irish workers' republic.

While the capitalist press sheds cynical crocodile tears over the assassination of former imperialist chief Lord Mountbatten and the successful IRA ambush of the British army patrol at Warrenpoint, the mass media stand adamant in their defence of the policy of military occupation and imperialist rule that remains the root cause of the war.

While condemning what they term the "crimes" of the IRA they remain deliberately blind to the crimes committed with full legal' sanction by the real terrorists in Ireland-the armed forces, the RUC and the other appendages of the British state machinery.

stalk the streets of the six counties-the equivalent of an occupying army of 500,000 in Britain.

They are backed up by a huge network of spies and informants and by unknown numbers of undercover SAS assassination squads They have almos. unlimited rights to stop, sears, interrogate, torture, jail, mair. and kill anyone they suspect of opposing imperialist rule.

Their loyal assistants are the sectarian thugs of the RUC, whose vicious torture of suspected republican sympathisers has been condemned by a series of international bodies including Amnesty International and scandalised even the Carter regime in the USA.

Behind the RUC stands a system of prolonged "remand" for republicans which amounts to internment without trial, the rigged no-jury Diplock Courts and jails in which convicted anti-imperialist fighters are branded not as prisoners of war but as common criminals.

Terror gangs

And as if this were not enough, the Loyalist UDR and a spectrum of legal and illegal Loyalist paramilitary groups function freely with the connivance of the RUC, murdering and terrorising the Catholic population in the six counties.

Crimes

All these crimes go unremarked in 'the media, under the heading of "keeping the peace": Yet as soon as anti-imperialist • forces take action to strike back at the occupying forces, their agents, or their figureheads such as Mountbatten, the full wrath of the mass media is brought to bear against them.

The Workers Socialist League does not advocate the kind of strategy adopted by the IRA. In particular we question the purpose and effect of assassinating prominent individuals, particularly when such strategy is so clearly a substitute for any serious attempts by the IRA to mobilise the mass of the Irish working class on both sides of the border in the struggle against British imperialism and the puppet Lynch regime.

But as socialists we defend absolutely the right of the IRA and other anti-imperialist forces to conduct all forms of struggle -including armed struggleagainst the British oppressors.

Force withdrawal

The task of the British workers movement in this struggle is to take up the fight in every way possible to force the withdrawal of the British army support wage cutting and spending cuts at home.

Union branches

Every union branch, every Labour Party must be called upon to declare itself and fight for a policy of:

*Immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.

*Self determination for Irish people.

*Restore Prisoner of War status to the republican and socialist prisoners in the Blocks of Long Kesh and Armagh jail.

*Black supplies in Ireland!

*Kick out the CallaghanMason clique!

The thousands of workers and youth who marched in London on August 12 behind the Troops Out Now banner showed that there is a growing awareness • of the need for British workers to support their Irish brothers and sisters.

It is important that the fight for a principled policy on Ireland is taken forward in the labour movement as part of a struggle to build a new, revolutiohary leadership in the working class.

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Occupation 15,000 uniformed soldiers