printed an article by its editor stating that Socialist Outlook thinks the votes of Northern Ireland Protestants should not be counted in elections. This is a lie. We are against racial or communal qualifications for the right to vote.
Alongside our co-thinkers in the Fourth International we campaign against qualifications like this in South Africa or the Israeli state. In Britain we are for the right of foreign nationals resident in Britain to vote in elections to legislative bodies.
John O'Mahony's slur was look article his article Clarke pointed out that Gerry Adams lost his West Belfast seat because a numher of lovalist voters had switched to the SDIP to defeat him.
› Mahony of our workers who voted SDLP for Adams defeat. thereby implicitly proclaiming that Protestant votes should not count, echoing the obscene May 30, 1992 Catholic sectarianism of Sinn Fein'.
Looking over Clarke's article for themselves, readers will clearly see that this 'implication' which Mahony detects is a simple invention.
Maybe, as O'Mahony says, Socialist Outlook shares Sinn Fein's analysis of why Adams was defeated. But we do not share Sinn Fein's programme for Ireland.
Of course we are pacifists and are for the self-defence of the oppressed Catholic community. But we think mass mobilisation in the national struggle and the fight for socialism is the way peace and unity in Ireland, not one-sided reliance on armed struggle.
Until a few years ago Socialist Organiser carried stat it was for clarity i that it was for 'clarity debate'. Now it seems to be 'red' lie machine, justifying its existlies about other left currents.
Duncan Chapel Manchester Socialist No.22
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