Fightback

In looking back at the Good Friday Agreement, Gerry Ruddy points out that it has served to stabilise British rule in the North as Sinn Fein has been absorbed into the establishment. In this situation he stresses the need for republican socialists to focus on working class and socialist policies.

A Basque Marxist was on a speaking tour of the North of Ireland at the end of October. He spoke to audiences in Belfast, Strabane and Derry mainly composed of republican socialists, but not only. There was keen interest in seeing how the experience of the Basque situation could be applied to the North of Ireland, and vice versa. We make available here a report, originally published in The Plough, the journal of the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

On February 23 three comrades of the International Marxist Tendency attended the Republican Socialist Youth Movement's (RSYM) winter day school in Belfast. Jim Daly, Sean McGowan and Bernadette McAliskey spoke on various aspects on the question of Republicanism and Socialism and the role of the working class. Francesco Merli spoke on Venezuela. There was keen interest in the ideas of Marxism and the school bodes well for the development of the RSYM. A HOV speaker also took part in this year’s Connolly Festival on February 22 and 23, while Labour Youth organized another talk on Venezuela in Galway with a speaker from HOV on February 26.

Last week the Executive in the North of Ireland presented its budget. It has been presented as a budget that will create jobs, improve services and reduce poverty. A closer look reveals tax concessions and incentives for the bosses and cuts in jobs and social spending and increased taxation for the workers. They are preparing social turmoil in the future.