Hunger striker stands for Parliament

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In a brilliant move to highlight the five-week old hunger strike at the Long Kesh concentration camp in the North of Ireland, republican prisoner of war Bobby Sands is to stand as a candidate in the April 9 by-election in Fermanagh/ South Tyrone.

While he continues his fast in the prison hospital in Long Kesh, a united campaign will be waged on his behalf by supporters of the National H Block/ Armagh Committee.

Withdrawn

To promote that campaign, other • nationalist candidates withdrew from the fight for the seat, left vacant by the death of Frank Maguire..

His brother Noel withdrew at the last' moment, calling on his supporters to lend their backing to Bobby Sands.

And Bernadette McAliskey, still recovering from a Loyalist assassination attempt, also withdrew in favour of Sands, who is running not as a Sinn Fein candidate but specifically on a "Smash H Block and Armagh Jail" platform.

Despite the fact that the Unionist opposition have also The firebomb attack on the SWP's socialist and trade union bookshop in Digbeth, Birmingham, underlines the upsurge of right wing violence in recent months.

The use of a car to block the exit to the bulding makes it clear that the attack was politically motivated. The man immediately questioned by police is believed to be a member of the National Front.

Police linked the firebombing with the firing of a crossbow bolt in a racialist attack on Karamat Hussein in broad daylight in Birmingham.

But fascist violence is on the increase in Britain, adopting a pattern more sımuar to the activities of fascist groups in Europe.

Convictions There has been a recent flurry of convictions of British Movement and NF thugs on charges that range from murder, through arson, to the possession of an armoury of firearms.

Even the police have been forced to recognise the turn by the fascists towards terrorist tactics.

McAliskey Noel Maguire achieved the rare feat of standing a single candidate-Harry West-Sands seems certain to win the seat-and thus ironically become an elected MP while on the point of death in a military prison hospital.

Nothing could more clearly expose the hypocrisy of Britishstyle "democracy" in the six counties and the lies of those The arson attack that led to the massacre of 13 West Indian youth in New Cross is another symptom of the growing tide of racist violence.

That this has now been extended to an attempt to murder the occupants of a left wing bookshop should be taken as a further stark warning by the labour movement.

The case was certainly bizarre: a woman's dead body was found in the charred remains of the car. But this merely underlines the instability and mindless violence of the elements being recruited and who claim that the republican fighters are simply isolated. individual criminals without popular support, This campaign offers a further opportunity to break the conspiracy of silence on the hunger strikes in the British and Irish mass media, and step up the struggle for the prisoners' demand: the restoration 'of political status for republican prisoners.

It should be taken up as part of the fight within the British and Irish labour movement for political and material solidarity with the hunger strikers.

Rernadette MeAliskev told a Belfast radio interviewer that:

"If a hunger striker emerges as a candidate in the by-election not only would I, without question, immediately withdraw from the election, I would consider it an honour as a voter in this area to sign the nomination form and I would work the shirt off my back for thát prisoner and the other prisoners he is renresenting."

Obligation:

It is high time that socialists in Britain began equally to grasp their obligation to devote the necessary political energy and resources into mobilising solidarity action with the republican prisoners.

While the British media remains consciously silent on the issue, and the Labour and trade union leaders preserve their guilty silence and bipartisan policy with the Tories on Ireland the Irish prisoners are mounting a crucial challenge to British imperialism and the Thatcher government.

In fighting the attempts of the British imperialists to brand them as › "criminals" and demanding proper recognition as prisoners of war, the republican prisoners are waging a struggle which British workers must support.

Defeat Tories Bobby Sands and the other 'H' Block hunger strikers have put their lives on the line in the fight against Thatcher. They have insisted that they will not give in unless the Tory government first concedes.

It is up to us in the British labour movement to do everything in our power to assist that struggle-as part of the fight to weaken and defeat British imperialism.

*Victory to the hunger strikers! Political status now! Vote Bobby Sands!

*Troops out of Ireland now! Self determination for the Irish people!

O-AND not for a full-scale invasion but simply to help repress street demonstrations and riots, and to assist in the arrest of selected militants.

Such measures would stem from desperation but the Polish bureaucrats have few other options open to them. If they back off now, Solidarity will gain still further in strength and prestige: and an outright Soviet invasion, with its immense political and economic problems would increasingly emerge as the only way to crush the militancy of the Polish masses.

The one factor that could assist the Polish Stalinists in such a confrontation is the political limitations of the Solidarity leadership. Bobby Sands Though clearly divided between more moderate and more militant elements, Solidarity has never set its sights at anything other than more or less reforms within the existing system. • Solidarity has never attempted to remove or replace the government, and though its strike committees have repeatedly acted effectively as a rival power to that of the State, this has never been formally recognised or developed.

Whether or not this week develops into the decisive week of struggle in Poland, it is necessary that this political weakness is combatted in the next period by the construction of a leadership in Solidarity committed both to the defence of the na tionalised property relations in Pi oland and to the political overthr ow of the Stalinist bureaucracy that has plunged the economy into such chaos.

Challenge

• This means the development of the power of the working class through the construction of workers' .councils to challenge the power of the Stalinists at factory, area and national level; and it means preparing to defend these organisations against • state violence through the development of armed workers' defence squads.