IRELAND election dilemma

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. The 20th Irish Dail came to an end last week with the announcement by Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave that elections were to be held on June 16.

The major parties contending the election are the present coalition partners, Fine Gael and Labour, and Fianna Fail, which has been the major opposition party since it lost the last election in 1973.

During that time inflation has risen by some 25% and over 12% of the working population are unemployed.

Indeed, in Dublin alone where one third of the country's population live, unemployment has risen by a staggering 60% in the past 18 months.

The coalition strategy for these elections is to try and divert attention away from its record, and to posture instead as the only force willing and able to defend the South from (mythical) IRA attacks.

In line with this policy; the government has passed a series of anti-republican laws which have allowed Irish courts to send over 700 republicans to prison.

These laws include the Emergency Powers Act, and the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Acl which allows the Southern government to try political suspects for offences committed in the North of Ireland.

The opposition Fianna Fai have announced that they will repeal the former act and "re-examine" the latter, if they win the elections.

This declaration is a transparently feeble attempt to win a few votes from those liberals who find the. coalition's draconian measures a bit too severe, and an effort to hold on to the traditionally nationalist vote of Ireland's small farmers.

Economically, Fianna Fail are also trying to discredit the Cosgrave regime by putting forward programme of major tax and rates cuts, with an "employment creation scheme" aimed at creating 80,000 jobs by 1980.

Not only are these vague promises totally inadequate to deal with the problems facing the Irish working class, but it is highly doubtful if Fianna Fail have any intention of putting them into practice.

For during the 16 years of their previous rule (1957-73), a whole spate of reactionary measures, culminating in an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, which allowed the courts to convict on the word of a Police Superintendant alone, were enacted.

On the question of the imperialist occupation of the North of Ireland, all three main parties are likewise. more or less agreed. matter who wins these elections and the coalition look to have the advantage just now, "cross-border co-operation" is bound to continue.

The problems facing the Irish working class-rampant inflation and mass unemployment; savage, church-inspired restrictions on the democratic rights of contraception and abortion and divorce; the presence of 15,000 British soldiers in the North upholding the Orange State there-these problems will not be solved by any of the parties squabbling for votes on June 16.

Fine Gael represents in undistorted form the interests of Ireland's bourgeoisie. In this they are ably assisted by Fianna Fail, whose electoral base is the small farmers and shopkeepers of Ireland, but whose policies are now inextricably enmeshed with those of imperialism.

The smallest of the three parties Labour, has completely subordinated itself to Fine Gael at every opportunity (by entering : into coalition governments in 1948-51, 1954-57 and 1973-77), and has merely served to cross the t's and dot the is of their conservative partner's thoroughly anti-working class policies.

In certain the semi-Stalinist further expand Israel's frontiers.

The DMC are verbally opposed to their expansionist policies, arguing instead that territorial concessions should be made in order to secure peace.

But it is quite clear that Begin will brook no opposition in this respect.

republican Workers Party (formerly Official Sinn Fein) is standing candidates.

But their reneging on the struggle in the North, and the dead end reformist policies they pursue both there and in the south presents no alternative-even as a protest vote- for southern workers.

Provosional Sinn Fein, the one force actually fighting imperialism in Ireland, is not fielding candidates since it rejects participation in either the Northern or Southern administrations as long as Ireland is partitioned.

In this situation, socialists in Ireland should campaign in the working class for abstention in these elections, but should connect this to a fight for the immediate breaking of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition as the minimum precondition for voting Labour.

Indispensable to such a struggle is an all-Ireland revolutionary party fighting for socialist revolution as the only way in which the tasks posed by Ireland's aborted democratic revolution will be solved.

GENOCIDAL

If this genocidal racist can accomplish this, armed only with machine guns and handgrenades, what is he capable of with an army of 400,000, 612 combat aircraft and some 2,700 tanks-not to mention further backing from the Already reports have emanated from PLO sources claiming that over 1,000 Israeli troops invaded the village of Shuba in South Lebanon last week.

The Israeli army have denied this charge, but there can be no doubt that they are already pursuing a more aggressive attitude in border areas. And this policy can only lead to a new Middle East war.

Even now the Kuwaiti daly paper Al Siyasn is speculating on the possibility of a fifth Arab-Israeli war this autumn.

The hard shift to the right in Israeli domestic and foreign policy makes the prospect of such a conflict a very grim reality. Within Israel no political party has come out on a principled basis against Begin's expansionist policies.

Nor can any, for all of these parties remain committed to the Zionist State of Israel and reject utterly the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

As long as that right is denied, the Middle East will feature as an enormous powder-keg in world