[The end of the 1l-day Loyalist strike against…]

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The end of the 1l-day Loyalist strike against British security policy in Northern Ireland has been acciaimed as a major victory for Roy Mason and the Northern Ireland office.

But even though Paisley and his cohorts failed to win their demands for tougher security measures and the restoration of Stormont, they were able to extract important concessions from Mason.

For even before the strike ended, a five-point package had been agreed by Mason and Ballylumford power workers.

This package included intensified military operations in Catholic areas, greater use of undercover anti-terrorist squads and an increase in RUC numbers to some 6,000.

Already Mason has fultilled one of these points by announcing a doubling of SAS operations in the republican stronghold of South Armagh, and there can be no doubt that he will do his utmost to meet the other points ägreed upon.

The strike fizzled out largely because of a lack of response from Protestant workers. The first major setback to the Ulster Unionist Action Council (UUAC) leading the strike came on April 29, when 8,000 workers at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in East Belfast voted to stay at work.

And though absenteeism was high at engineering works, over 70% of the workforce were reporting for work by the third day of the strike.

Even more decisively, the UUAC tailed to shut down the Ballylumford power station which generates two-thirds of Northern Ireland's electricity. On the fifth day of the strike, May 6, workers there voted 286 to 171 against striking.

Nevertheless, the UUAC did secure important local support, particularly in Paisley's parliamentary constituency of North Antrim.

The docks at Larne were shut from the very outset, and in Ballymena, farmers blocked the town centre in support of Paisley and the strike demands.

CONTROL

This support has remained solid, even after the strike for in the local elections on 17 May, Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party took control of Ballymena town council by increasing the number of seats it held from 4 to 11.

Full results of the elections were not available as we went to press, but first indications are that Paisley and the extreme Loyalists have made some important gains despite predictions that the strike's demise would see their electoral Iout.

Post-strike Northern Ireland is no more advanced politically than it was three weeks ago. Official rumours from the Northern Ireland Office suggest that a new round of meaning Catholic SD Unionist Alliance talks" between the LP, the Official and the "moderate" is in the offing.

POWER

But these talks can neither resurrect the pre-1972 pattern of majority rule, nor the powersharing executive and Council of Ireland which was brought down by the UWC stoppage in 1974.

Instead, all that 1s being proposed is some form of "administrative devolution" ie, an enlarged local authority devoid of legislative power, and bearing no relation to the political situation in Northern Such an institution may find favour with local politicians, but it will undoubtedly be rejected as a charade by the people of Northern Ireland themselves.

No solution to the Northern Ireland conflict is to be found within the context of the Northern Ireland state.

The only way out of the present impasse is through the defeat of imperialism and the destruction of the Northern Ireland state it upholds.

But these tasks can only be achieved if fought for by a united Irish working class led by a revolutionary Trotskyist party. The failure of the UUAC to lead the Protestant workers out on strike has revealed an important rift between the reactionary Loyalist leadership and the mass of Protestant workers.

Revolutionaries in Ireland must try to take advantage of this rift by pressing ahead with demands for the establishment of armed defence squads to protect both Catholics and Protestants from UDA, UVF, SAS and regular British Army attacks.

TROOPS OUT

Here in Britain the fight for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Ireland must be stepped-up by linking it with the demand for an end to the Lib-Lab coalition, and for the expulsion of right-wingers like Mason, and his predecessor Merlyn Rees from the The struggle against British imperialism in Ireland is central to the struggle for proletarian revolution in Britain, and only by linking the two can the age-old "Irish question" ever be successfully resolved.

asn Immediately after the To capture of the Greater Lond Council their new plans f housing (or rather, dehousin have begun to emerge.

century, Plan for a "sale of t of council properties already well-known.

Horace Cutler, the new G] ores intention to do and council responsibility for providi and maintaining homes.

If this is allowed to happen t already chronic housing crisis London will increase wi thousands more people, especia the young, unable to find son where to live.

Already the Tories have beg the eviction of people who ha been forced to squat in emp properties for lack of somewhe decent to live.

Some of these had agreemer with the Labour GLC wherel they paid rent and were allowed stay.

On the massive Ocean Estate Stepney, council homes will taken over and transformed in offices-with over a million squa feet of empty office space alrea existing in Central London.

leaflet distributed by t Workers Socialist League on t Ocean estate warned workers a tenants that the Lib-Lab coaliti would not stop the Tories a called for the initiation of a labo movement and tenants inquiry in the housing question as the fi step towards mobilising mass res tance • based on a social alternative.