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Labour NEC The Tory White Paper on the six counties of Northern Ireland was at least accurate in one respect: it made. no secret of the fact that the very existence of the sectarian statelet depends upon the brute force of the 15,000 strong British army of occupation:

'The involvement of the UK government in the fight against terrorism-in terms oi manpower, equipment and installations, and their operational use -is such that it is not realistic to enviseage conferring on Northern Ireland administration full responsibility for the criminal law and the police and prison services. Equally, the administration should not conduct its business either OF Amid the outraged .comments by the Tory press about the recent Labour Party NEC motion on Irish political prisoners, not one paper actually presented it in full.

In fact the resolution, reflecting the politics of the Militant tendency includes the inevitable reformist let-out that:

"The NEC is implacably opposed to the programme and methods of terrorism. Equally, however we are opposed to repression and torture..

In other words the NEC by endorsing the resolution in no way sided with the struggle of the oppressed Irish people against the state machinery and armed occupation forces of the British oppressors-simply taking an impartial "humanitarian" stance on Britain's longestrunning colonial war.

Nor indeed does the resolution in any way call for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland-a position rapidly gaining currency in the But in supporting the demand of republican prisoners in 'H' Block at Long Kesh and Armagh Gaol for political status, and calling for the scrapping of the no-jury Diplock Courts, the resolution does mark a major step forward from the reactionary politics of Labour's right wing leaders.

In raising the issue now throughout the Labour Party, socialists should fight to commit the NEC to extend its position to a principled demand for the immediate withdrawal of British troops.

"This NEC deplores the appalling conditions which exist in the prisons of Northern Ireland.

We note with concern news paper reports that women prisoners in Armagh jail have been beaten by mate warders are locked up for 23 hoers a day isolated or excluded from the concern for security which is pervasive".

• It is therefore at gunpoint that the people of the six counties are being presented with the pseudo-"democratic"

proposals of Humphrey Atkins" White Paper with its ludicrous platitudes about "preserving the primacy of the ballot box"

No say In fact, no matter which way the majority were to vote under the new proposals, they would have no real say over their political future, since the White Paper makes it clear that "the overriding authority of Westminster should be preserved" and that the proposed devolved assembly would have not even token powers over defence, and denied proper sanitary and medical facilities.

In Long Kesh, H-Block, male prisoners, because they refuse to foreign policy, law and order or even taxation. It therefore would have powers roughly equivalent to the Greater London Council.

And, should it ever actually take shape, the assembly would remain rigidly tied to the purse strings of the British Tory government-the White Paper bleats about the level of public spending in Northern Ireland which was £2,600 million in 1979-80, only 56% of which was raised in the six counties.

Nothing could more clearly underline the utter irrelevance of such an assembly for the working class of the six counties -whether Protestant or Catholic -who face the full brunt of the capitalist crisis in the form of chronic crumbling savage fall unemployment, social services and in living standards.

While the Tory government has reluctantly taken steps to prevent the collapse of the Harland and Wolff shipyard, the recession in British industry has been sharply reflected in the six counties with closures in textiles -headed by Courtaulds-and in engineering. The closure of the Grundig plant in West Belfast, with the loss of 1,000 jobs will bring unemployment there to at least 25%.

Against this stark background the manoeuvres of the Loyalist and SDLP politicianseach seeking best advantage and the largest number of lucrative and superfluous positions in any new puppet assembly-stand out in their true colours.

The Loyalists-whether they be Paisley's so-called Democratic Unionist Party or James Molyneaux's Official Unionists -stand flatly opposed to any kind of deal that concedes a substantial voice to the SDLP.

Both have therefore rejected out of hand Atkins' proposal that after the election of an 80man Assembly by proportional representation, an executive should be composed in such a way as to include similar proportional representation.

This would mean that a party with 25% of the votes would take a quarter of the seats on the executive, and would amount to a re-run of the abortive "power-sharing" experiments attempted under Edward Heath.

Neither Paisley nor Molyneaux have any interest in attempting to sell such a deal to their supporters: each has in his own way attempted to ensure that the talks with Atkins produce a firmly Loyalist-run assembly which can offer at least the semblance of government.

The SDLP, on the other hand, representing the Catholic petty bourgeoisie, has predictably welcomed this "power sharing" proposal of Atkins, and is much less able to pronounce itself in favour of his second proposal, which is for an executive made up of the majority party or parties, which then offers them anything at all.

This is made particularly ditticult by Paisley's strident Slatements denouncing any kind of minority veto over Loyalist legislation, and explicitly rejecting any kind of involvement of the Dublin government in talks or closer relations.

The fact is of course that with nationalist sentiment still rising in the six counties, the Atkins proposals fail to offer anything to the Catholic minority trapped in the gerrymandered and sectarian statelet.

The very existence of Northern Ireland as a British province is in defiance of the wishes of the majority of the Irish people.

The material problems facing Catholic and Protestant workers North and South can be resolved not by constitutional tinkering, "devolution" Paisley-style "democracy" but only by the struggle to drive out the British imperialists and their hangers-on, and for a united socialist Ireland.

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