Craig himself has insisted since last Monday's meeting that his proposal has nothing whatever to do with power-sharing, and that it in no way diverges from the UUUC manifesto, which explicitly ruled out any SDLP participation in a Northern Ireland administration at cabinet level. Clearly in his plan the SDLP would only hold office on Loyalist terms.
How much support Craig can actually muster behind his proposals is not yet clear. Some of those who supported Paisley at Monday's meeting have now switched positions, and the Ulster Loyalist Co-ordinating Committee - which with the Ulster Army Council links together all but one of the Loyalist para-military organisations - has come out in favour of the Craig 'plan Significantly, the only organisation excluded from the UAC and the ULCC is the Ulster Volunteer Force, which is opposed to independence and has seemed over recent months to be increasingly isolated within the Loyalist camp. It has lined up behind Paisley. Also "security.
SOLIDARITY 'Troops Out' supporters demonstrate outside last Saturday's meeting TROOPS OUT OF RET AN
was deadlocked, the politicians knew the Convention was going to tail, but they were trying to shift the blame from their own failure to make the Convention work onto the Provisional IRA.
Because otherwise what the Provisionals can say is: "We've had the ceasefire, pur the convention still broke down. isn't it surely time that you thought about our strategy - withdrawal of the troops and the right of the Irish people to control their own future? • Do you think you could tell me more precisely how the Army has been resisted in this area?
PS: First of all, the main weapon against So that was that with them, then somebody eise would come in and start up trouble, but in the end the last four or five regiments were hit on the first or second day they came in. It was a way of saying to them: "Listen, if you fellows behave yourselves. OK - but if you mess about you're going to get shot. And it was as simple as that. There's no more harassment now.
JS: The problem is how do you get through to the troops and say to them: Listen, you're here, you're doing a thankless job, and when you go back to England no-one will thank you.' There's evidence of that now - tor instance when the soldiers were beaten up in the red weekly Is september 1975 ireland/anti-fascism
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peace until out of here'