Army takes ove Belfast factories
Socialist Press1979 1979-11-21Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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The requisition and military, takeover of two small factories on Belfast's Whiterock industrial estate marks a further step in the increasingly desperate struggle to secure imperialist control over the occupied six counties of Ireland.
The new military outpost will be developed as an additional fort-the fourth within one square mile-with an overview of two nationalist estates, Turf Lodge and Dermot Hill.
More than 20 jobs have been lost as a result of the factory closure, in an area of truly massive unemploymentclaimed to be as high as one in every two adult males.
TV cameras
The takeover at Whiterock runs alongside the establishment of an advanced army observation post on the top of a multistorey nurses home attached to the Royal Victoria Hospital.
And in the nationalist stronghold of Andersonstown television cameras have been installed which can survey the entire surrounding area.
The miserable collapse of Humphrey Atkins' half-hearted and half-baked political "initia.
tive" and the continued offensive of republican forces against for the occupying imperialist army have, in other words, led to a renewed military crackdown in the North, in which former spymaster Maurice Oldfield is giving a leading role to the army in contrast to earlier moves to "Ulsterise" the defence of imperialist interests.
This continued éscalation of the conflict by British imperial. ism, and the contempt with which the military rulers regard the jobs, homes and democratic rights of the Irish population, show yet again that there can be no peace in Ireland without the 'e army move ! ur ryuntruen immediate withdrawal of British troops and acknowledgement of the right of the Irish people to self determination.
The provision of jobs for the long term unemployed of the six and the 26 counties of Ireland requires in addition, not the piecemeal gestures of the British imperialists or the Lynch government, but the construction of a Trotskyist revolution-. ary leadership committed to the struggle for a socialist planned economy in a united Irish workers' republic.