This Month

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This month marks the fifth anniversary of the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. This Act represents one of the most serious attacks on hard won democratic rights this century.

Under it, hundreds of Irish workers, socialists and republicans have been intimidated and harrassed by the capitalist state.

It is important, theretore, for the working class to have an understanding of what the Prevention of Terrorism Act is, and how it serves the interests of the ruling class and imperialism.

Like any piece of legisiation, the capitalist state produces to protect its interests, the Prevention of Terrorism Act was a result of particular material conditions of the class Year of crisis PHOTO: Derek Spiers, IFL 1974 was a year of crisis the capitalist class in Britain, February had seen the fall of the Tory government under Heath, brought down by the miners.

This was followed by the return of a Labour administration led by Wilson, which was forced to scrap some of the more obvious anti-working class legislation of the Tories, but which nevertheless was pledged to work in the interests of British capitalism.

This was no less so in relation to Ireland.

Ireland had seen a mass working class movement take to the streets in 1968 against the imperialist backed Orange police state of 'Northern Ireland' This was but the latest in a series of heroic struggles against imperialist rule by Irish workers.

But by 1974 it had for the British ruling class become the most serious.

After five years of British army occupation the Republican resistance forces had still not been crushed, despite murder squads, concentration camps and torture.

Unholy alliance

It was against this background that the Catholic middle class represented by the 'Social Democratic and Labour Party' made an unholy alliance with the Protestant ruling class known as the Sunningdale Agreement.

Under • this shabby deal, which was backed by British imperialism and its puppets in the South, the Catholic middle class were to be fobbed off with few seats in a revamped Stormont, while the Catholic working class were to continue to bear the brunt of imperialist rule.

After the collapse of the Heath government, the new Wilson administration continued to pursue this policy.

In May 1974, the Power Sharing Executive' as it was called, met for the first time at Stormont. It was also to be the last.

In the previous fifty years the Protestant rulers of the six county statelet had used discrimination in jobs and housing to favour Protestant workers against Catholics to maintain their class rule.

And whenever the Catholics had shown signs of rebellion against the state the Protestant ruling class had used the mythology of "privilege' and a •Protestant state for a Protestant people' to turn Protestant workers against their Catholic brothers and sisters.

were different.

Their 'leaders' , it seemed, were prepared to sit down with 'Fenians' and 'papists, the "enemies of the state"

What the Protestant class, led by Faulkner, were actually doing of course, was to protect their class interests in relation to British imperialism.

But fifty years of sectarianism had done the trick.

Under threat

The Protestant working class now sought to protect their 'privileges-which in a time of growing economic crisis, seemed to be especially under threat.

In these circumstances there was no leadership except of the most reactionary nature.

It was these reactionary forces, led in particular by lan Paisley that now took the initiative against the Executive.

All over the province thousands of loyalist workers were on strike in protest against the Faulkner led Executive.

British imperialism in the six counties was now faced with a total shut down in engineering, shipbuilding and electricity industries most dominated by Protestant workers.

The right wing Ulster Defence Association set up road blocks everywhere and there was open intimidation of Catholic workers.

The British army, traditional supporter of right -8: 88 Mason Paisley wing unionism openly collaborated with the UDA.

The British government decided not to alienate the Protestant workers any further.

The Executive collapsed, exposing the futility of imperialist inspired "political initiatives in Ireland.

In this political vacuum imperialism had only one solution-continued military repression of the nationalist population in the six counties.

Following these events, the Provisional IRA launched a disastrously wrongheaded campaign of bombings on the British mainland.

There had been bombs planted the previous year; but this time the campaign was more widespread.

The main outcome of such a campaign was, of course, to alienate British workers and to lead to calls by the press and Tory MP's for increased repression and harrassment of Irish people in Britain.

Finally on Thursday November 21st two bombs exploded in the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town public houses in the centre of Birmingham-killing 21 people and injuring hundreds more.

Though the IRA denied responsibility, the press and the media immediately launched a campaign of anit-Irish hysteria in which the anger and frustration of British workers at the bombings was directed at Irish workers.

Subsequently six Irishmen were convicted of the 21 murders in a stage-managed frame-up trial and given sentences of up to 30 years in prison.

The convictions came in spite of the fact that statements the defendants had made in police custody had been extracted through beatings and in spite of glaring inconsistencies in the statements and prosecution evidence.

The bombings gave the excuse the government needed.

On November 29th the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provision) was passed through Parliament in 12 hours-with not one vote against.

The Act was certainly not a hurridly drafted document. It had been in preparation for some time before the bombings. But now was the right climate The parts.

political for it to be passed.

Act is divided into Part One deals with Proscribed Organisations'. Part Two, exclusion orders and the third part 'general and miscellaneous provisions' Under the first section the Home Secretary can ban any organisation considered to be concerned in "terrorism' OT connected with Irish affairs.

In effect this has meant raids on republican organisations in Ireland and suppression of republican propaganda.

The second part is in many ways more infamous.

Under it, the Home Secretary can exclude from Britain anybody he deems to have been involved in 'terrorism' This, in effect, is deportation from one part of the state to another-something not seen in Britain since the Poor Law. people, mainly trish have been deported to Ireland North and South-though few have actually been charged with any 'crime' Indeed in 1976 a whole Coventry Irish family was served with an exclusion order-with little or no protest from the labour movement.

This part of the Act is clearly designed to intimidate Irish people.

The third part of the Act, which deals with 'general and miscellaneous' has specifically strengthened the powers of the It allows for a police constable to arrest a person he reasonably suspects to be "in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism'.

Few charged

Under this section hundreds of people have been picked up and held for questioning about terrorism'-though very few have been charged with any offence.

Indeed while held in custody the majority of people have been asked details about their private lives, their friends and their political affiliations rather than specific acts of terrorism'.

This is obviously a cheap and convenient way for the police to build up political files on militants within the labour and republican movement.

It can be seen, theretore, that the PTA is not so much designed to prevent terrorism' as to stifle any flow of information about Ireland and to prevent discussion about Britain's role in Ireland within the labour movement.

So far well over 3,000 people have been held under the PTA though only a handful have actually been charged with any terrorist offence and still fewer convicted.

year When it was introduced the PTA was to be renewed every six months.

That period has now increased to twelve months.

Though a number of left" Labour MPs have voted against its periodic renewal it still remains on the statute books.

The capitalist state seems determined that it shall remain more or less permanent.

It is important that those 'lefts' who have correctly taken a stance against the PIA be forced to put their talk into practice and make sure that this attack on the working class is smashed.

One way in which their words can be tested out is by demanding they fight for the removal of the right-wing pro-imperialist Callaghan-HealeyMason leadership of the Labour Party, and spell out a principled internationalist policy.

The question of the PTA and Ireland in general must be raised in every Labour Party and trade union branch.

There must also be a call for the immediate removal of troops from Ireland, political status for Republican prisoners of war as a step towards their release and self-determination for the Irish people as a whole.

Ten years of the Irish War, five years of the PTA 24 November 1979 2 p.m. Kennington Park (Oval Tube)

March to Brixton Prison

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The Who album QUADROPHENIA appeared in 1973. Although in part a loving their confrontations with rockers in 1963-4 at south-east coast seaside resorts, the album also shows considerable disenchantment with the trappings of youth subculture-casual sex, drugs and rock music The trouble with this disenchantment is its thoroughly reactionary perspective.

Self pity

Because the mod-lifestyle doesn't provide an adequate release from the drudgery of work and the emotional-sexual traumas of adolescence, the album's hero Jimmy rejects his mod pals and sinks into self-pitying withdrawal, where he finds a perverse consolation abstract notions about love and the self as some essential core divorced from any historical reality (eg. the song 'The Real Me').

This change in Jimmy, from being a mod to being a far more escapist protohippy, results in his suicide: dropping-out is a form of death-wish.

Such mystical claptrap is partly explained by the Who's own previous career. After their celebration of youthful rebellion in the early '60s (eg 'My Generation'),. they. moved with the psychedelic times and sought something a little more spiritual-and profitable.

This turned out to be the self-consciously arty rockopera TOMMY (1969) and the • wholesome religious values which were packaged with it.

Guitarist Pete Townshend had, in fact, become obsessed with Eastern mysticism and the teachings of Meher Baba.

TOMMY reflected Townshend's new-found 'philosophy'. and it was no surprise in 1975 when crackpot Ken Russell directed the film.

The QUADROPHENIA album was no more than a gloss on the TOMMY one, but its autobiographical setting in the mod milieu with which the early Who' were vaguely associated, meant that the film project needed a director like Frank Roddam who had proved himself adept at TV realism.

Whatever his credentials, the QUADROPHENIA film is only intermittently realistic and remains imbued with the album's dubious values.

Condoned

Jimmy's disaffection with his life is seen in terms of madness, but a madness which the film condones as a sort of pessimistic, suicidal liberation from things earthly-parents, job and mod.

Being very much the exmod Jimmy suffers from status, as youths being done for assult give the magistrates as much lip as they like.

The picture of working-class life in the film is equally lacking in surface authenticity.

The working-class seems to comprise two camps: the slow mums and dads who are sunk into apathy in front of the TV screen, and the fast sons and daughters who are speeded up on amphetamines, very early Tamla Motown and scooters.

When Jimmy turns his back on all this we're meant to feel some sort of sympathy. But because what work scenes of Jimmy as a messenger boy, have more of a basis in the reality which faces many young working-class people: that they're in a dead-end job-probably for the rest of their lives.

However, the film can't take its analysis of this area very far, when it has a hero who opts out SO completely-off a cliff!

Domesticity

Still, that's maybe a better solution than that of the hero in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER who, tiring of the "bad girls' of the disco, music papers have praised QUADROPHENIA for its realism; but, leaving aside the bigger question of the validity of cinematic realism itself, how can a film tell the real(ist) story of mod if it doesn't have a grasp of the process of incorporation to which all subcultures are doomed?

This is not to mention QUADROPHENIA'S lack of realism when it comes to detailing the wider social context: mildly angry films like Saturday. Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner say much more

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Now, it appeared to the Protestant working class; things

nostalgic trip back to the days of the mods and