RELAND strikes against IRA laws

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Our last issue referred to Already there has been widespread opposition to this legislation - mainly from workers in the construction industry, where unemployment is rampant.

On September 2nd, 800 workers from Tara Mines near Navan struck and marched through the town.

Shortly afterwards workers at the Syntex site near Ennis, and at the Asahi site near Killala downed tools and demonstrated against this pernicious legislation.

• The executives of several unions here notably AsIMs, the National Engineering and Electrical Trade Union (NEETU) and the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (AGTWU)

have passed motions of opposition to the Bills.

Indeed, thé Waterford branches of the ATGWU have called on former official Tom Kyne - now a deputy in the Free State parliament - to vote against the Bills.

Whether the unions involved use their industrial strength against this legislation remains to be seen.

So far, no political organisation in Ireland has offered any effective opposition to the Bills.

Without exception - from the Provos to the Stalinist Communist Party of Ireland - all groups have bemoaned this "erosion of civil liberties."

No group has yet offered any programme which concretely links the anti-imperialist struggle in the North with Southern resistance to this legislation.

And, significantly, no group has offered any programme for workers in the fight to maintain jobs and living standards.

The opportunities exist for building a revolutionary Trotskyist party in Ireland i but so do the difficulties.

But only by facing up to, and overcoming those difficulties will the so-called !. Irish problem be solved. Failure to do that can only mean further repression and the crippling of Irish workers - North and South.

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the anti-Republican, anti- working class legislation now being passed in the South of