Salute the liberation fighters of Bogside.
Salute their courageous and determined victory over the Royal Ulster Criminals. They have shown that urban guerrilla warfare led by an armed proletariat is possible in the United Kingdom. The fighters of Bogside have turned the history of Ulster on its head which is the first real step towards its abolition. The oppressed of Ulster have decided to Bernard Reaney reports from fight and they are right.
They have defeated the vicious and powerful police force by urban struggle and not by using the I.R.A. They have turned Orangemen against the British; they have put an end to the Unionists pathetic hopes of finding international financial salvation. The cramped and inhuman conditions of the Bogside ghetto, exposed beneath the walls of Derry have been transformed into sence of an emerging revolutionary socialist movement will expose the greatest weakness of the Irish workers and peasants. The Civil-Rights organisation is no substitute for building such a movement, the task of which will have to be undertaken by the revolutionaries around the CR and Labour Movement. Never was there a greater need for such a movement, capable of explaining the state of battle at each turn and unravelling in its course the knots of bigotry that divide the working class.
The right of self-defence against violent attack, and to struggle for civil rights by whatever means necessary has articulated itself in the new mode of self activity of the Irish masses, which holds out the most encouraging prospect for the creation of a new socialist movement. Furthermore, whatever the opportunist motives of Lynch, he has contributed to raising immediately the question of self-determination for Ireland. This was again evident in the Bogside where people were hopefully expecting the armed intervention of the Southern Army of volunteers, and in Dublin where demonstrators have demanded guns to go and fight in the north. The development of such a coherent movement for Irish self determination, backed up by large scale aid from the people of the South would threaten the very existence of the Ulster police state.
Consequently British troops patrol the streets of Ulster in defence of the police state which they have maintained for fifty years. Their credibility as protec tors of the local population is already in doubt.
The cover they have provided for the indiscriminate machine gunning of homes carried out by B Specials, and the arrest of many opponents of the Unionist regime is quickly being exposed.
The Labour movement and the left in Britain must understand the seriousness of the situation in Ireland and the responsibility they have towards the Irish people, suffering under their own native imperialism. To underestimate the dynamics and pace of the crisis, and to fail to mobolise all the resources of the Labour movement against British intervention, will leave the Irish people at the mercy of a bloody repression by British troops. The heroic people of Bogside will be the first to feel the forces of the counter revolution that Wilson and Clark are mobilising, just as they have been the spearhead of the Civil Rights movement and the present upsurge. To force Wilson to take out the troops; to defend the right of irish to defend themselves against the murderous forces of Orange reaction, and to take up arms for the fight for national self-determination is the elementary duty of the working class movement in Britain.
Whatever Wilson's strategy for maintaining the status quo in Ulster, or manoeuvres to prop up the old regime. the stage is being set not for peace, but a military advantage and socially liberated. And this against the wishes of Stormont, of the Dail, of Westminster or the pious bleatings of the Vatican. The people of Bogside have taken their lives into their own hands. It is not for us to complain that Bogside welcomed the British troops as a temporary relief from the Unionist police terror. Bogside as well as Belfast and Dublin will learn that real independwould be forced to fight for their lives against an immediate revolutionary upsurge throughout Ireland, which would not only destroy Unionism but threaten to topple the "Green Tory" establishment in Dublin. But no less an unpleasant prospect for Wilson, is a period of open and protracted violent struggle against British Imperialism, that will emerge out of the present crisis. From Derry to Belfast a new period of the Irish revolution is opening up - the Irish people prepare to take the freedom they have been so long denied.
Clive Goodwin in Belfast is a city in the grip of a Catholic working class rebellion against vicious oppression. The main Catholic areas are completely sealed off by barricades. The strength and extent of these fortifications is amazing. I counted over 50 commercial trucks, including a Coca Cola lorry, all overturned and pressed into barricade service. The barriers are manned day and night by workers wearing helmets carrying pick handles. Inside the ghettoes the organisation is superb: the solidarity appeared to be total. Much of the early work on defence was a spontaneous reaction against the police terror. But a leadership is now slowly emerging. Inevitably, in the working class district around Falls Road it is mostly the I.R.A. (or "the Army" as they are known). In the slightly more middle class area of Andersonstown it seemed to be People's Democracy. Stewards are everywhere and visitors are constantly checked for identification. Contrary to Protestant belief there are very few guns altho gh Catholics claim that it was only this myth of armed strength that saved their lives on the terror nights of August 13th and 14th. There are a few walkie talkies and there is the P.D. run Radio Free Belfast which has just begun transmitting. Defence is organised on a street by street basis with the committees sending representatives to larger action committees concerned with overall strategy and vital problems of supplies and defence. The barricades look impregnable. Behind them one can feel safe. I cannot believe that the Catholics will dismantle them without definite concessions. The minimum demand is the break up of the B Special storm troopers.
Wilson's phoney peace package must be rejected. To rely on the G.O.C. British troops to disarm the B Specials is ridiculous. It will never happen. The rebels now hold the initiative. They must strengthen their defences and hold on to it.
Dave Kendall reports from ence does not come in in the form of British troops or with Lynch and his opportunist, comic-opera appeal to the United Nations. They will learn that the tricolour of the bourgeois dictatorship in the South and the holy cross of Roman Catholic superstitions are their bitter enemies and that their only friends are the starry plough and the red flag.
heroic victory of the people of Bogside against the attempted invasion of their home by the RUC and the B-specials (Irish SS). The angry mood of the crowd was inflamed by the descriptions of the shooting and killings in Belfast given by two people who had come direct from the embattled Falls Road and Ardoyne districts. Their pleas for immediate armed assistance were met by shouts of "We will come" and demands for 'Free State' Army intervention. A number of liberal speakers won a fairly enthusiastic response from the meeting but offered no more perspective for action than the reiterated call for pressure on the Lynch government. A Catholic priest was greeted with little more than a murmur when he said "I disassociate myself from the intervention of the Army but what else is there to do? I don't know. AllI can say is God Bless you". (sic). To a liberal who suggested that the State Council be recalled and President De Valera be asked to intervene there were shouts of "What's he ever done for us?" Some of the speakers had stressed the necessity of bringing pressure to bear on the Government to send troops into the North, to occupy "a handkerchief of land" or a town to internationalize the situation. If they failed to do this they must give arms to people who wanted to go north and fight. A lone speaker from the Labour Party expressed his contempt for "the hysterical socialism of Wilson and Callaghan", and the British Labour Party. Cheering greeted his claim that his party was the party of Conolly and Larkin. The Plough and Stars (Connolly's flag) as well as the Tricolour was flying that afternoon. The crowd was way ahead of the platform. They wanted action now and were saying that they would go to the North The mood of the meeting was such that a large part of it would have stormed a Free State arsenal that afternoon had they not been addressed very coherently by a Dublin Trade Union leader. He said that the Irish had thrown away their opportunities before because they had not organized themselves properly. They must not throw away their opportunities again. He did not want to discourage people from going over the border but only asked that they do it in an organized manner as an organized force. They would be able to get the guns. If the Government did not give them guns, the soldiers at the barracks who had the keys would do so. (A message from a group of Free State NCSs was read later saying they were ready to go North as soon as the word was given by the people. The government of Ireland would have to move quickly. If it did not a general strike would be called throughout the South. Furthermore, they would call for the establishment of a people's army to complete the socialist revolution begun by Larkin and Connolly. With 1½ million Irishmen in Britain, most of them unionised, the Irish working class was capable of bringing the