Irish Lse Nsos Restore

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The ignominious collapse of yet another propaganda blitz by the Tory press aimed at breaking the two-day pay strikes called by the Confed was marked this Monday when a pathetic 1,200 workers from the 5,000-strong workforce turned up for work at Rolls Royce's Derby works.

Heavy picket lines at the firm's Anstey works in Coventry acted as an added deterrent there, too, and in neither case did the company's threats of indefinite lay-offs succeed in drawing in enough scabs to start Locked All 30,000 Rolls Royce workers are now therefore declared locked out until the end of the Confed pay struggle.

At Hoover, another predicted 'revolt" produced only two would-be scabs!

Elsewhere, too, the two-day strikes, involving nearly 2 million workers have held solid, despite the limitations placed upon the action by Confed officials who have defied mounting calls for all-out strike action to win the full SSE workforce will intensify so long as employers sense that union leaders are holding back all-out action.

is significant that the most tenacious strikebreaking attempts have been made in Rolls Royce and BL, both of which, through the National Enterprise Board, are controlled by the Tory government.

There should be no illusions. The Engineering Employers Federation is the most ruthless of the bosses' organisations and working hand in-glove with Thatcher in confrontina the Confed LUI • W Confed leaders. must be called upon once again to respond in kind. This means escalating the strike to an all out indefinite stoppage and to naming the date for a mass national demonstration engineering workers in which the stubborn militancy that is sustaining these strikes can find a united focus of expression.

Opera Far from merely proposing Three years after Kieran Nugent became the first Irish republican prisoner courageously to refuse to wear British prison uniform in the Long Kesh concentration camp, 250 prisoners are still continuing the struggle for the restoration of Prisoner of War status stripped from them by the last Labour government.

The struggle, now, as then, takes place under the most horrifying and barbaric conditions of torture, intimidation and repression.

Left naked

Republican prisoners who refuse to wear prison clothing and thus be branded as 'criminals for On the Wednesday of Mountbatten's funeral alone 42 prisoners were beaten up in an orgy of violence by baton-wielding screws.

Nor is the ill-treatment restricted to male prisoners. In Armagh jail thirty five republican women are 'on protest', confined to their cells for 21 hours a day and subjected to continual harassment by screws.

Conscious move

This kind of savagery against defenceless prisoners is not simply the expression of the perverted malice by the prison officers: rather it is continuing and conscious move by British imperialism to force the most militant republican fighters to accept that they are no more than criminals.

Of course the attempt to 'criminalise' anti-imperialist fighters in Ireland is consistent with the present attempts of the Tory government to criminalise trade union activity such as picketing and strikes in the public sector.

Clear stand

For the crisis-ridden British capitalist class any organised opposition to its control should be made "illegal' and subjected to the full violence of the state.

Irish republican militants have shown by their courageous struggle over the last three years that they utterly reject such attempts to crush their fighting capacity.

The British labour movement, which also faces the frontal attacks of the same capitalist class that is BRIAN MEDL 25 YEARS DENIS fetises DAMA 15 YEARS NCEL SEAMUS CAIRKS CiARLES IRGUSON i© YEARS M'INTYREZ YEARS JAMUS SOLA 12 YEARS!

'H' Block fight currently repressing. the Irish people, must take a clear stand alongside the Long Kesh blanket men in their struggle for the restoration of PoW status.

This means, of course, fighting in every union branch and Labour Party for resolutions to the appropriate regional and national bodies calling for an end to the torture and the immediate restoration of PoW status, preparatory to an amnesty.

But it also means coupling this with demanding immediate withdrawal of the British army of oppres sion which remains the root cause of the continuing war in the six counties:

The Irish war of liberation must be made a central topic of discussion, debate and active solidarity within the British labour movement, whose reformist leaders share the responsibility with the Tories for the perpetuation and intensific. ation of the violent repression of the Irish people.

This year has seen attempts to raise such discussion in the labour movement. Newcastle Trades Council sent a fact-finding delegation to the six counties, which has published a report.

And in May of this year a successful labour movement conference on Ireland called in the Oxford area attracted 150 trade unionists and youth to a whole day of discussion on the war.

From that conference a committee to organise a labour movement delegation to Ireland has met regularly under the sponsorship of a number of local union branches and trades councils.

Its first labour movement bulletin on Ireland has sold out: a second is in preparation, and a public meeting is planned for October 12.

Meanwhile the Oxford NUJ branch has called on the union's executive to organise a special conference on Ireland.

Withdrawal

Such examples offer ways in which trade unionists in other areas and other unions should be actively campaigning on Ireland and creating conditions to develop the struggle for the immediate withdrawal of British troops.

Trade unionists and Labour Party members can obtain more details on the struggle of the 'H' Block blanket men and the campaign in their support by writing to the H Block information centre, 170a Falls. Road, Belfast

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(JOHN BURKE LIFE

PRISONERS: vaiWo