The day after the Provisionals declared their ccase-fire last June, a gunman opened up on a bus queue in the Glen road, Andersonstown area of Belfast. Three men fell wounded, and a man in a house behind the bus stop was hit by a stray bullet. The weapon used was a Thompson sub-machinegun, and the car carrying the gunmen sped away.
On the surface, the incident appeared to be part of an internecine IRA feud. But the car carry ing the gunmen was stopped by the RUC and the policemen bepan to ask questions. Their questions led to an Army statement on the following day which read: Shortly after midday a mobile patrol wearing plain clothes and on survelliance duty was travelling eastwards on the Glen road. A group of men standing at a bus turnabout opened fire on the patrol and shot through the rear window of the vehicle, narrowly missing a soldier. The patrol immediately fired back and the men were seen to fall.
But the RUC was not satisfied with the Army statement and was not going to allow the matter to rest there, The Civil Rights Association and the Association for Legal Justice also questioned the accuracy of the Army story. The men had not been armed, they claimed. and no shots had been fired at the car.
in a common struggle against repression, victimisation, and the crosion of hard-won civil liberties. This is our immediate task. present us all But every class-conscious worker knows this is a lie. Yet how many of these very workers believe exactly the same fairy stories when they are used to describe the rolle of the British army in Ireland? Britain must support the enemy of their enemy and demand the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. militants, This demands that we continue to make clear our unconditional solidarity with those forces who are actually fighting the British Army and British imperialism in Ireland.
We must continue to stress the central impor tance of the IRA's strugele. For the nationalist minority understands that if they can main tain the resistance to imperialism, particularly the armed resistance, they can rob imperialism of its most tried and true weapon in the north of Ireland - the ability to make a deal with the