Stop Secrets Case Now!

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John Berry were committed for trial at the Old Bailey on Friday under the Official Secrets Act.

Each faces sentences of up to 14 years imprisonment if convicted.

The charges against them, under Section One of the Official Secrets Act, are notmally used against foreign espionage agents.

The case certainly raises the issue of the right of journalists to investigate secret government activities.

At a time when press barons are whining continuously about "press freedom" the proceedings at Tottenham Magistrates Court have shown exactly how This is part of a worldwide signals intelligence operation known as "Sigint'.

Government witnesses told the court that not only was the Sigint set-up secret, but the fact that it was secret was also secret!

The labour movement must mobilise in defence of Aubrey, Berry and Campbell.

Workers must demand the dropping of all charges, and the repeal of the repressive Official Secrets Act.

This means also demanding the removal of Home Secretary Merlyn Rees and the Lib-Lab coalition government, who are pressing these charges in the interests of the bourgeois military machine.

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to the People of Ireland!

"Our Freedom must be had at all hazards."-Wolfe Tone.

Tho time das come to practice the advice of Fintan Lalor, namely: to trala our bands and our deads, for tbo day will come when we and they will bare to use then [!

The workers must be deciplined and alert if they aro ta enjoy the just proceeds of their la The selbods of discipline and alertass and the raeans of power lo train our hands, aro provided by THE IRISH CHIZEN ARMY.

This organisation embraces the full principles of Republican Democracy: itst aim is lo sink tbi lifernace of Birth, Privilege and Creed under the common sasse of the irish People. It standsior a Talon of Progrosire Natlonelle with the Democralic forces of Ireland, and Its pollcy in to acbiere thati for which Theobald Wolfe Tone died, ana Jont AN INDEPENDENT lI Irissen! detn tbe Cltlzen Armay NOV aad halp wa to bulld HON. SEC., LIBERTY HALL DUBLIN.

Muscail do Mhisneach, a Bhanba The workers i must It has beca wall sell: All inquiries to be addressed to:

Tone died, and + EET the Cliten Army NOW aad being.

These initial hopes were prove illusory though.

Within 5 days the rising was crushed, and at 3.30 pm on Saturday April 29 Pearse unconditionally surrendered to the British forces.

Within 4 days the executions of the leaders began: by May 10, British Prime Minister Asquith was telling the Commons that there had been 14 executions, 73 sentences of penal servitude, 6 of hard labour and 1,706 deportations from ireland.

Ultimately there were to be 90 death sentences (16 carried out) and roughly 3,500 men and 79 women under arrest or sentence.

James Connolly, who had been wounded during the course of the fighting, was strapped to a chair and shot on May 12.

The last of the leaders, Roger Casement, was hanged in Pentonville Prison on August 3.

With the executions over and the revolt crushed, the British Cabinet felt content and began to turn its eyes to more pressing matters: Brusilor's offensive in Russia, the battle of Verdun and the sea battle at Jutland.

But the calm which followed the rising and the executions was entirely deceptive.

Resistance

The reprisals and repression had not knocked the resistance out of the Irish people; on the contrary, that resistance was inspired nationally and was to develop in the following years into the War of Independence.

The fact that the rising itself failed has provoked many times the comment that it was nothing but a putsch-a conspiratorially arranged insurrection executed by a handful of people with no base of support at all.

On the surface such a view view seems reasonable enough: the rising was confined almost exclusively to Dublin, was confined to a tiny insignificant minority of the country, numbering at which alone could guarantee success.

Moreover the insurgents were badly armed: they had been relying on a shipment of arms from Germany, but on April 21-Good Friday-the ship carrying the weapons was intercepted by the British SUCIALISI PRESS, wednesday . ted itself in street fighting conducted by a section of the urban petty-bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations, suppression of newspapers etc. Whoever calls such a 'putsch' is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon." (The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up) (emphasis in original).

The main point is that the Irish uprising did not run counter to the direction in which the masses of Irish workers and farmers were slowly but surely moving.

It was an event which both sparked off and anticipated a mass movement directed against British imperialism. It had also been prepared for over the preceding years. Indeed, a decision had been taken as early as September 1914 to stage a revolt, and during the war detailed planning for the insurrection began in the summer of 1915.

Volunteers The bulk of those who were to fight in 1916 came from the Irish Volunteers, an armed movement which had been formed in 1913 partly in response to the creation by the Northern Unionists of the Ulster Volunteer Force, opposed outset.

The misfortunes of the Easter uprising was its prematurity, the fact that it took place 'before the European revolt of the proletariat had time to mature'. (Lenin op cit).

No party But perhaps a greater misfortune was that it lacked a revolutionary party such as the Russian workers possessed; for if such a bolshevik organisation had existed in Ireland, the bourgeois democratic revolution could have been carried out within the framework of a socialist reorganisation of the

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"The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance.

most 1,000. It was divorced from any mass movement