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British workers movement has duty to support Irish struggle a Taiwo President Gerry Adams went out of his way to combat what he regards as a "red scare" against the republican movement:

"First of all there's one thing which should be said categorically-there is no Marxist influence within Sinn Fein, it simply isn't a Marxist organisation.

"I know of noone in Sinn Fein who is a Marxist or would be influenced by Marxism...

"I think its very important that we trace this back to the first person who started this, which was Roy Mason-who said on the one hand we weren't political but were Marxists...

"We tend to see it as more serious than the descriptions used before. As the struggle progressed those things were seen to be lies...

"We see this as a more significant development than the gangster or Mafia connotations"

So for Sinn Fein leaders it is worse to be called a Marxist han to be called a gangster! IRISH NEE ALSOLN LITICAL FRISON The IRA has likewise branded statements linking the armed struggle with Marxism as "an attempt to discredit the cause of Irish liberation".

But the fact is that without a programme, a policy and a revolutionary party dedicated to the mobilisation of the irish working class, in alliance with the small farmers, the national struggle itself in Ireland is unwinnable, and the 'socialism' of Sinn Fein amounts to little more than the utopian parliamentary 'socialism' of the British Labour Party.

The Workers Socialist League, as a Trotskyist organisation, stands four-sqaure behind a Marxist programme and strategy to win the Irish war of liberation, and carry through the struggle for a workers' republic.

• Within this context we give unconditional but critical support to the anti-imperialist struggles currently led by the republican - movement,. and defend them unconditionally against the repression of the British and Irish state machines.

We stress that the Irish war must not be seen as an issue confined within the borders of Ireland itself.

It is an international responsibility of the world's workers' The British wonders movemen 0 f to mobilise maximum practical and political solidarity with the liberation struggle and fight for the defeat of British imperialism.

And it is a bitter, but unavoidable fact, whether or not Sinn Fein cares to admit it, that the bulk of those prepared to brave the hazards of raising this struggle in the British workers movement at this point of time are Marxists, committed to the struggle against the reactionary labour bureaucracy and for the independent interests of the international working class.

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STATUS OUTCALS BLITICAL