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Dear comrade editor, The assessment (in SP 229) of the end of the hunger strike is in my opinion far too sanguine about the gains made by the republicans in Long Kesh.

There is no doubt that a deal exactly as described in that article (Irish Hunger Strikers Force Concessions) was negotiated between the leaders of the hunger strike and the Northern Ireland office and that deal had been hatched at the meeting between Thatcher and Haughey in Dublin.

Not unforseen But the failure to implement that deal was not the result of some unforseen "breakdown'.

The British government is pulled two ways. Its international reputation is damaged by the fact that it operates the most extensive concentration camps in Europe. An end to the dirty and blanket protests would thus be in the interests of British imperialism.

Dear comrades, Nearly 100 people marched through Bradford on 20 December to mark the 'victory' of the republican men and women hunger strikers in the battle for status..

Prominent was the contingent from the Workers Socialist League, which was larger than the tiny contingents from the SWP and WRP.

However the most striking factor about the march was the battle to mobilise support for it earlier in the week.

A motion on Bradford Trades Council to support the march was defeated 20-14 by an amendment put by the 'Militant' tendency and supported by the right wing.

Militant supporters on the trades council argued that the march could not be supported because it 'has no labour movement support? and it will be seen as support for the Provisional IRA' On the other hand the government is determined to score propaganda points over the Provisionals and to demoralise those who support the nationalist struggle.

ment would have been hailed as an enormous victory for the hunger strikers, despite the fact that political status was not on offer even in, the form of "special category' status.

Its implementation depended on a complex series of alternate 'concessions' which would have ended with republican prisoners wearing their own clothes, abstaining from traditional forms of prison work and having a large degree of free assocation and education rights.

It therefore seems to me inevitable that the agreement was not implemented. It had the same degree of predictability as being tricked by a street conjurer and the three card trick.

ocks The march of course was for political* status! However Militant would not support that either, preferring to label these heroic, anti-imperialist fighters as "terrorists" —an implicit backing of the Tories' attempts to label the H Block men as 'criminals' The Militant amendment was laughable-it contrasted support for the march with the immediate sending of a telegram from the trades council to the Home Secretary and the TUC asking for humanitarian conditions in the H Blocks!

Not so laughable however was the obvious collusion that had gone on between Militant and the most reactionary delegates on the trades council in getting the amendment passed.

So for any worker wanting to fight Tory policies not only for Britain but for Ireland, beware of misleaders of all complexions-right, lett or centrist!

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litant ! H' BI

Victory. Implementation of the agree-