Now! Reland

Scan page 5

coincide with a rapid ebb in moves continue there is now the morale of the imperialist a new threat of embarassthe failure of the "Ulsteris- Speculation is growing ation" of imperialist rule in that the Pope-whose antithe six counties, growing communist crusade in sections of army staff are Poland was so loudly now demanding that the applauded by the Tory press Tories appoint a "security" -may use the occasion of supremo who will effective- his visit to Ireland to join ly reassert the dominant Irish Cardinal O'Fiaich in role of British troops over denouncing the brutal treatthe RUC in the repression ment of republican of the nationalist popula- prisoners of war in the 'H' tion. Blocks at Long Kesh. in the war of liberation occupation forces.

In a clear admission of ialists.

Angry calls for a formal reintroduction of internment are also mounting, as the army recognises that even the existing draconian measures-summary arrests, tortures, beatings, prolonged remand, no-jury courts and concentration camps-are failing to subdue the liberation struggle.

Murder squads

Meanwhile the frustrated RUC are evidently making available substantial files of information from their computer centre to savage murder squads run by the Loyalist UDA and UFF in a bid to provoke a wave of sectarian assassinations of republican and Catholic workers.

But while these desperate ment arising for the imperSymbolic Worse still, he could make such an attack in the town of Drogheda, the site of English dictator Cromwell's barbaric slaughter of Catholics 330 years ago, and symbolic of the age old oppression of the Irish people by British imperialism.

Pope John-Paul is scarcely likely to receive a rapturous response in the British capitalist press should he take such a stand.

But it would be yet another indication of the embarassment that British repression in Ireland now represents to even the most reactionary governments and forces on a world scale.

Opportunity

The scandal is that the leaders of the British labour movement have yet to dissociate themselves from the repression meted out by their own' ruling class in The October 20 national demonstration called in Oxford by Sinn Fein in solidarity with the struggle of 'H' Block prisoners for the restoration of prisoner of war status offers the opportunity for union and labour movement branches to declare their solidarity with the liberation struggle by mobilising in support.

MARCH

October 20 at 2 Assemble Chapel (off Cowley Rr Bring your ban

Scan page 6

The United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) is undoubtedly the largest and most widely known of the currents that have emerged from the postwar crisis of the Trotskyist movement.

With thousands of members d sections or sympathisil ations in dozens ot countrie it is viewed by many militants as "'the" Trotskyist Fourth International.

line Workers Socialist League does not share this view. We see the USFI as a movement that has departed on numerous key questions from the positions and method put forward in the Transitional Programme on which the Fourth International was founded in 1938.

We know, of course, that the two other main groupings that lay claim to the title of "Fourth International" are both now substantially smaller than the USFI.

Both of them-the Healyite "'International Committee" (run by the British WRP) and the "Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International" (run 'by the French OCI)-certainly hold political positions as bad or far worse than the USFI on many questions and are themselves (like the USFI) wracked by internal crisis.

Disorientation

But the bankruptcy of their rivals is in our view no argument for recognising in the USFI the exclusive continuity of the Trotskyist movement,