IN THE course of one week the Irish nationalist population of the north experienced an Orange-Unionist pogrom, a massive wave of RUC brutality and a political mugging by a totally unsympathetic British government.
Drumcree showed once again why the RUC cannot be trusted to safeguard even the minimal rights expected from a democratic state.
The mass intimidation of the nationalist population has reminded everyone of the real nature of the state police The police force is a willing tool of Orange bigotry. The British ruling class has been shown as a passive sponsor of sectarianism. The vrange State still rules from behind a facade.
A mass radicalisation has appeared in reaction to the Orange attacks. The previously accommodating middle classes are reeling in disgust at the RUC.
With thousands coming back onto the streets to demand justice there is a splendid opportunity to rekindle revolutionary ideas. Yet all the early signs are that the Republicans intend to channel the anger in support of all-party talks.
Sinn Fein is busy trying to put the faltering nationalist consensus back together again. The consensus was badly damaged by IRA bombings in England.
Already the Republicans are protecting the SDLP from heavy criticism. The SDLP has escaped from a potential embarrassment with Sinn Fein's help.
After Drumcree many are openly querying the possibility that a just settlement could flow out of talks which reeven-handed British government to put pressure on the reactionary Unionists to recognise the rights and national identity of the nationalists.
Even the editorial in the local newspaper, The Irish News, which has been a strong supporter of the peace process strategy now expresses COOHOLS calling for talks. Unionism is on a reactionary high and the British government is keen to support their demands.
Many are saying that the nationalists are back to where they were in 1968.
This mood runs counter to the SDLP approach, which has always stressed the gains possible from all-party talks. Sinn Fein has failed to provide an alternative.
Such a strategy is not only certain to dissipate the energies and potential of the opposition inherent in the mass mobilisations, but it will in all probability fail to get the Republicans into talks on acceptable terms.
OUT Leicester demonstration raises demand for all-party taiks now The angry thousands are being led back into the trap set for them by the imperialists.
Anger is not enough. The anger needs to tina an alternave ponucal strategy and a new leadership. There is no way forward through an alliance with Photo-StalingradO'Neill the SDLP and the capitalist government in Dublin.
All-party talks are the surest way to shore up the sectarian state-there is no acceptable accommodation with the rabid form taken by contemporary loyalism.
We do not need a pseudo-nationalist family, but a socialist movement armed with an anti-imperialist programme which reaches out to all those Protestant workers who are not members of the Orange Lodge and who start out from the rejection of sectarianism.
We need to hear from all those trades union leaders like Peter Cassells, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions, who did not hesitate to organise rallies against the violence of the IRA when the ceasefire ended.
The same leaders have kept sılent in the face of the present sectaran violence. This needs to be broken if a socialist movement has any chance of winning respect on the streets.
We need the labour movement to fuse with those thousands already on the streets. We need to step up the mass SUCCO. demonstrations, not to chase them off the streets into a reactionary forum.
We need to demand:
• the disbanding of the Orange RUC;
• the spur out or te lalks process, • Dublin to break with the Unionist velO, • Irish self-determination now;
• the labour movement to break its silence.