12 noon, SATURDAY August 13 Movement, Irish in Britain Representation Group, Labour Party Irish Society, Women & Ireland, are inviting sponsorship from individuals and labour movement organisations. Early sponsors include the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs.
Send donations/ seek details from BM T.O.M., London WC1N 3XX, Tel 071-609-1743. the process and no longer believing promises that have been broken a thousand times before - re-inforced by the announcement that the military would have the right to nominate one third of the 273 delegates to attend the assembly.
Parallel to this strategy has been increasing repression against the leadership of the Campaign for Democracy and the newly formed National Democratic Convention. Abiola 'One industry, One union' is basic demand Salcol is an all-white union.
The meeting of the three major federations decided to work with other unions, but not to allow their non-involvement to delay the unity process.
A task group, consisting of the office-bearers of the three federations, was set up to produce detailed proposals for the unity process. has been arrested after coming out of hiding and several senators critical of the military have also been taken into detention. In a clearl build up to wide spread repression Abacha visited the main barracks of the Nigerian military and police force (trained by the British military) to announce a 40% pay rise.
Nigeria's 'Kuwait' Repression is most severe in oil rich south east Nigeria. Known as "Nigeria's Kuwait" the local environment has been devastated by drilling and production activities carried out by Shell and Chevron oil companies.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) demands for basic environmental and social rights were met with repeated massacres of the people and the arrest of its leaders.
Since May more than 50 members of the Ogoni ethnic group have been executed during security forces attacks on thirty Ogoni villages in south east Nigeria.
This offensive, known as "Restoration of Law and Order in Ogoniland", indicates an intensification of military activity in a region which borders an area of disputed oil-rich land with Cameroon.
It is not out of the question that Cameroon's much more powerful neighbour could stirup a military conflict to divert attention away from the political and financial crisis at home.
Economic chaos
Military spending has quadrupled as a percentage of GNP and WORKERS UNTO It was also agreed to open a debate within each of the three federations.
The trade union movement recognises that despite the existence of a democraticallyelected government, the bosses remain a powerful force in South Africa and that this power can only be curbed by a united working class. health spending decreased by a third since 1970. The Nigerian economy is riddled with corruption. Such rich picking are, of course, what remains after the IMF and the World Bank has expropriated most of the economic surplus without the opposition of the Nigerian ruling class.
For the multinationals this was not so much of a problem as long as the oil flowed and the rigour of IMF structural adjustment programmes were adhered to. Now even that has ended. In a panicked attempt to control a disintegrating economy the military has recently increased direct control over scare foreign exchange and export finance in an attempt to prevent food shortages in urban centres in an attempt to pacify growing dissatisfaction with the economic chaos.
British arms
After Abacha's formal seizure of power in October 1993 the British government cut off development grants but agreed to maintain the supply of Mark 3 Tanks produced by Vickers in Newcastle and Leeds.
Imperialism understands where its long term interests lie - with the Nigerian ruling class which is subservient to international capital and which stands for repression of movements led by workers' action towards the resolution of any significant democratic demands.
Do not be surprised if the blood of Nigerian workers and peasants is spilt at the hands of the British-trained Nigerian military and with the use of British supplied military equipment.
CHINA'S economy is the fastest-growing in the world, recording scores of more than 13 per cent growth in 1992 and 1993.
No more dramatic example could be found of the dictum that economic growth, without a profound change in the social society, cannot alone improve the conditions of the working class.
For economic growth in China is accompanied by a huge attack on fundamental gains of the Chinese revolution.
The attempt to move to a market economy is resulting in Titone of workers being made redundant and a huge growth in the numbers of urban. and rural unemployed.
In 1993 in Heilongjiang province alone more than two million workers were sacked. Private entrepreneurs are replacing state-owned firms with thousands of sweatshops, which have low wages, long hours and unsafe working conditions.
The use of illegal child labour is an epidemic. And the numbers of workers killed or injured in industrial accidents has risen dramatically.
To make matters worse, 13 per cent economic growth is accompanied by inflation at around 20 per cent a year, eating away at the livelihood of every worker.
Strikes
Chinese workers are not taking this offensive lying down. Since March of this year there have been major strikes and go-slows in Shenyang, Dalian, Hengdu, Shenzhen and other manor cer Labour unrest is particularly acute in the north east of the country, the centre for many of the state-owned heavy industries. More than 300 strikes and protests occurred in march and April this year in the north east provinces of Anhui, Heilongjiang, Gansu, Liaoning, Shaanxi and Sichuan. Some of these strikes lasted more than 40 says and involved more than 200,000 people.
According to China Labour Bulletin there have been two huge protest demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people in the industrial towns of Harbin and Qigiha'er, both in Heilongjiang province. One report said that some workers committed suicide in front of government officials, while others chanted "We want to survive, we want to eat".
Nothing scares China's Stalinist leaders more than organised labour protests. Some of the harshest prison sentences doled out after the 1989 Tienanmin Square massacre was against organisers of the Federation of Autonomous Trade Unions.
Thus Communist party leaders have attempted to head-off the present wave of protest by extending benefits and passing new laws protecting workers living conditions. These however are mainly symbolic.
ploy has been to heap the blame on "foreign entrepreneurs" and to encourage unionisation of new enterprises by the tame official All-China Federation of Trade Unions. But "unofficial" labour activism is still being harshly repressed and workers' demonstrations brutally broken up.
State-owned
More than two thirds of all Chinese workers still work in state-owned industries, giving the lie to claim by many exMaoists that capitalism has already been restored. Nonetheless China's leaders aim to ghordinate the state sector to the "laws of the market" by making them compete against de-regulated private firms.
Official government estimates claim that 20 million of the 109 million state workforce are "surplus to requirements". Others say that this is a massive underestimate.
The structure of employment will change drastically as the "iron rice bowl" is gradually broken. Large numbers of workers in state industry, up to 40 per cent, are "non-core" workers, employed in company nursenes, cumics. cafes and other facilities which have hen nart of the gains made by Chinese workers since the 1949 revolution.
Bankruptcies
These "non-core" workers will gradually be eliminated. But the crunch issue, as in Russia, will be whether the government allows state-owned firms to go bankrupt. Since 1988, 1000 enterprises have been allowed to close down on financial grounds.
But this in China's huge economy is a tiny number. For the moment the central bank continues to pay out subsidies to state enterprises.
So long as the rules of the market are applied, this cannot According to the State Statistical Bureau 34.2 per cent of all state firms made a "loss" in 1992, and that figure had increased to 49.6 per cent in 1993.
With a state budget deficit of $15bn a new clampdown on central government subsidies is in the offing, with the potential for huge numbers of bankruptclas Official statistics claim that unemployment in China is 2.6 per cent. But these figures do not include around 200 million "surplus" rural workers, unable to find jobs. Mechanisation and the vastly improved efficiency of agriculture since the 1979 reforms have created a rural employment crisis.
An estimated 30 million people have drifted from the countryside to the cities to become the new urban poor, unemployed and forced into a marginal, squalid existence in ghettoes, especially in the coastal towns About 30 million Chinese work in foreign-owned firms, but this is on 5 per cent of the workforce; 10 million new workers come onto the labour market each year.
As a result of all these changes the social fabric of China is rotting. Corruption among national and local party cadres in rampant, and law and order is totally breaking down.
The police are deeply involved in criminal activities in every major city. Travellers are regularly shaken-down by roaming gangs, and a huge culture of violence and streetgangs has developed among youth.
The only response from the Communist Party leadership to this growing crisis is repression, but with corruption and crime so all-pervasive this repression is ineffective.
The general model which Deng Xiao-ping's regime has promoted is that of "market Stalinism" - market reforms plus an increasingly authoritarian police regime, with the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 66, July 1994, Page 7 Communist Party trying to stamp out all unofficial dissident activity. Each year the number of death sentences, and those sent to labour camps increases. Last year there were more than 2000 executions, while there are more than a million in the labour camps.
While trying to keep tight control, the CCP leadership has in fact created an explosive cocktail. There is mass unemployment and growing inequality in the cities. There is a stagnation in rural incomes and millions of rural unemployed.
Corruption
As the corruption and exploitation of sweatshop workers deepens, as poverty increases against the conspicuous luxury of the party elite and new middle class, the strikes and demonstrations of recent months will be repeated. The scenario is one of a fast-growing economy descending into social chaos.
This is compounded by conflicts inside the ruling bureaucracy, especially regional conflicts between the leaders of the coastal special economic zones, the vector for much foreign investment, and the central government.
Unless the Chinese workers are able to forge a political alternative to challenge the ruling bureaucracy's rush to destroy the collectivised economy with its associated gains for the workers, a unified Chinese state could collapse into civil war between regional bureaucratic warlords.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 66, July 1994, Page 8 Bernadette McAliskey By Bernadette McAliskey Bernadette McAliskey was a key leader of the Northern Irish civil rights movement and of the "Battle of the Bogside" Derry uprising in 1969 which exploded the Irish national question into contemporary politics. Surviving a brutal Loyalist assassination attack in January 1981, which left her gravely injured with multiple gunshot wounds, she has continued to fight for the nationalist cause from a socialist perspective, despite not being a member of the mainstream nationalist Sinn Fein. Here we reprint her speech, sharply rejecting the "peace process" in its present form, at the Briefing AGM in London on July 2.
PALESTINIANS Arafat's deal will lead to Palestinian 'blueshirts" IF YOU LOOK at the parallels between Ireland, Palestine and South Africa and if we evaluate them politically, those three struggles can politically clarify us on the principles underlying the oppression of those people - and the principles underlying the struggle against that oppression.
Those of us involved in the struggle against imperialism can directly learn from one another. That's why we in Ireland try to get our hands on everything we can about the fight of the PLO and the ANC.
I can tell you that where I live, in a small Irish rural community, watching Yasser Arafat, we felt a profound anxiety about the Oslo talks. When the Oslo accords were signed in Washington, the 16 or 17-year old Republican kids in Coalisland painted a huge slogan on the wall, a very funny pun: "Yasser in the Middle East - No Sir in Coalisland!".
They recognised not only that a mistake of historic proportions had been made by the Palestinians, but they were in imminent danger of a similar mistake being made by their own leadership. Exactly the same mistake.
While we were debating and discussing in the Republican community, it was heartbreaking to me that people who could see quite clearly what was going wrong in Palestine were making the same mistake in the Six Counties.
I think that the situation in Palestine has frightening parallels with that which the Irish struggle faced in the 1920s. Michael Collins, in the leadership of the movement then, claimed that the partition deal done with the British was "the freedom to win freedom".
The "freedom to win freedom", the division of Ireland into two states, led to a strengthening of British imperialism and a weakening of the Irish national liberation struggle; I think in Palestine it will lead to a strengthening of Israel and a weakening of the Palestinian struggle. It confuses the issue, and it divides the people. What you get as an end result is a Palestinian policeman, faced with an unfinished struggle and Palestinian dissidents. What you get is a "Free Stater" That's what we call them. What you get is a Blueshirt. What you get is a right-wing member of the Garda, like we have in the Southern Irish state, who doesn't have time to deal with drug pushers or rape, because the whole mind-set of his organisation is set on hunting down Republican activists. With these kind of deals you end up further complicating the 'issue, because what you don't Women demonstrate against H-block special prison wings have, whatever the decision is, is a democratic development from the bottom up. And in Ireland we are making exactly the same mistake. Ireland divided THE BRITISH created a divided Ireland after the war of independence. Having demobilised the struggle, and after the partition of Ireland, having set in train the civil war in the South, the British were very effective in neutralising the progressive forces in Ireland.
People in Southern Ireland prefer not to tell you that the civil war was lost - or won, depending which side you're on. They just tell you that there was a civil war, it just happened, and then we went on to build the 26-county state.
After the civil war, most of the progressive elements of Irish society had been forced to emigrate, were imprisoned or so demoralised that they fled to the mountains, or they fought and died in the Spanish civil war.
That's what happened to the progressive elements in Irish society - except for the nationalist community in the North. The issue was fragmented and we were forgotten about. The British continued to oversee and finance the undemocratic state in the North, and it continued that way until the mass civil rights movement exploded in the Six Counties in the late We have had 25 years of unbroken struggle; and that is represented outside of Ireland as 25 years of "the Troubles". I assure you the trouble has all been ours. We have had 25 years of overt military occupation. Many people who have been to the West Bank, or to South African townships in this last period of struggle. will tell you that the intensity of military occupation is higher in the North of Ireland.
So we have had 25 years of unbroken struggle, but somehow this becomes 25 years of "war", or 25 years of "terrorism" if you believe the British. But what has not been recognised is the breadth of struggle at the base, which is not just the "war".
This has been expressed in community organisations, in women's organisations, in prisoners' welfare organisations a dense mass of people's self-organisation. That has been the base of struggle in the North.
The political leadership and manifestation of that struggle has been Sinn Fein. Without doubt, the biggest and unchallenged leadership of that struggle has been Sinn Fein. And in terms of the military struggle, the leadership has been in the Irish Republican Army.
It is irrelevant what you think of these forces, those are the three main elements of the struggle - militarily the IRA, politically Sinn Fein, and a huge network of base organisations, many of those organisations inter-meshed with Sinn Fein, but many outside it.
This was the situation of the movement when we started to share the experience of the Palestinians. That's where we were when we discovered the "talks process" - going back to the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985 and then the "constitutional talks" which broke down at this time last year.
The constitutional talks did not break down because of intransigence by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the only organisation based on the northern nationalist community allowed to take part. They did not break down because of intransigence by the Irish government. Both were prepared to concede Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution which states that the Northem Six Counties are part of the territory of Ireland.
In fact these Articles are not in the gift of the SDLP or the Irish government. They are not a territorial claim, but a statement of fact on behalf of the Irish people. That the future of Ireland is in the hands of the people of Ireland. This is laughed at by Britain, which is so backward that it does not even have a written constitution!
Thus the constitutional talks did not fail because the SDLP and the Irish government were prepared to concede nothing. They were prepared to concede everything. But the Loyalists and the Unionists still walked out. That's where we were 12 months ago - the constitutional talks in ruins, and SDLP leader John Hume sitting with his back to the wall, wondering what to do next. democracy WE CONTINUED demanding the creation of democracy in Ireland. And it has to be understood that when some of us talk about a 'united Ireland" we are talking about a democracy - the democracy that was fought for in the war of independence, the democracy envisaged in the democratic programme of 1918, a democracy first envisaged in the Wolfe Tone uprising of 1798.
We are not talking about extending the ecually distortea and undemocratic state of the South. We are talking about the creation of a new democracy, where the people of Ireland, free men and wornen, can determine for temselves the principles under which we can govern ourselves.
You cannot have that if you are governed by somebody else who refuses to get out of the way - whether it's in Palestine, South Africa or Ireland.
But our leaders for- ranks" got mat. They forgot what we wanted. I have the utmost respect for Gerry Adams, but Gerry Adams made not a tactical error, but a fundamental error of principle, the same one made by Yasser Arafat in Palestine. We do not fight for democracy so that our leaders can engage in secret negotiations with anyone. That is not what democracy is about it.
Secret talks
That was a fundamental error by the leadership of Sinn Fein, an error on the question of democracy. They made a mistake on the basic issue of democracy when they decided to have secret negotiations with John Hume, and then come back and tell the rest of us about it.
Just as happened with the Hunger Strikes, just as happened with Catholic emancipation, just as happened in the 1920s, just as happened with the Land League - secret negotiations with the British lead to disaster. They lead to the British making treaties which are broken as soon a they are signed.
Gerry Adams went to John Hume and made a secret joint proposal, not telling the Irish people what it was. Irish prime minister Reynolds agreed with that proposal, but didn't tell anyone what it was.
Well I'll speak for myself. I did not spend the whole of my adult life in this struggle so that someone could come and say "Here's a secret present from granny, but you're not allowed to see "I have to say: no deal made in secret is binding on me. The struggle to create democracy also means a struggle for democracy in our own what it is". We used to play that game when we were kids. Granny held out her closed fist, and you had to say whether you wanted it. Only if you said "yes" were you allowed to see what it was. I gave up playing that gamne when I was five years old. WE ENDED UP with the Downing Street declaration which says we can have peace, only if the IRA would •I say what many people in the broad democratic movement say: if there's a "peace process", then show me the process. Show me the means by which we get from war to peace, justice and But the British say, well if you don't have a ceasefire, then you can't get into talks. That poses the question - "why are we going into talks, what are we going to talk about?" And the British say: "we can't tell you what we're going to talk about unless we have a ceasefire. But we can tell you that it's part of the peace In the midst of all that, what have we gained and what have we lost? To see it you have to look at the Downing Street McAliskey addresses 1981 demonstration in support of Republican hunger strikers declaration agreed between the British and Irish governments.
In fact there's very little in the document, only about 12 lines, which is the joint opinion of the British and Irish governments. One thing that is is the guarantee that there will be a decision on Irish unification held separately within the North and South but not in the two together, simultaneously. That just guarantees the Loyalist veto, because they have the majority in the North: it's a reinforcement of partition not an attack on it. The Downing Street declaration is a joint agreement to rebuild the structures of the Northern state.
Think what is being asked of the natonalist community in the North. We are being asked not just to demilitarise our struggle, but to guarantee that we shall never again lift up arms in struggle, to give up arms forever. But if we were really getting freedom, they wouldn't even have to mention that.
The whole debate is being debased in this "process". It's being reduced to "peace or war", "do you want more people to die?". The whole issue has been removed from its context and the villains of the piece are the people who are militarily opposing British military occupation.
There is no mention here of demilitarising the British army, nor of demilitarising the Loyalist assassination squads, who are armed and trained by the British. No talk of disarming them. And no talk of dismantling the state's array of repression - the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Emergency Provisions Act, the right to harass and attack kids in the street. That's not even in the discussion.
Is there a commitment in the Downing Street declaration for an end to discrimination, to the end of religion-based apartheid, for the right to live in dignity And within all this talk of "power sharing" we need to ask "who is going to share power with whom? And who is going to be left powerless?".
The British government is playing on the political weakness of our own movement. They have underway a process designed to strengthen the structures of the existing Northern state. How do they WHAT THEY WANT to do is integrate an elite into a new political arrangement which doesn't challenge the existence of the Six County state - the Catholic OBEs, the aspirSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 66, July 1994, Page 9 ing middle classes, those people who for 25 years didn't wet their fingers in struggle.
You've got to have a totally blinkered and dogmatic view not to see what the British are up to, and why they're trying to drag Sinn Fein into this "process". They want a minimum of changes, a minimum of concessions, just enough to get a certain proportion of the Catholic community to change their allegiances.
Of course this will not be acceptable o secions or ine roean commını who will regard it as "capitulation". And make no mistake, in order to deal with them the British are preparing an attack on them too. They are demonising what they call the "Protestant underclass", a disgusting phrase, the poor Loyalists who never got much out of the Six County state, despite their utter and bigoted loyalty to it. The Brits are preparing just to intern them if they resist.
One way of approaching such a deal, which would integrate sections of the Six County Catholic middle classes, is to discuss some form of "joint sovereignty" with the southern government. The nationalist community should reject this.
Brendan Behan once said: "there is no condition of human misery which cannot be made infinitely worse by the arrival IRELAND UNFREE of a policeman". I want to update that: there is no condition of misery of the Northern Ireland Catholics which cannot be made much worse by the addition of the Southern Ireland government.
But with "joint sovereignty" we would be faced with two right-wing, undemocratic governments, limiting our ability to fight for democracy and progress in Ireland.
The internal debate in the Republican movement in which I am involved now is an attempt to make those I love dearly behave in a democratic fashion.
But I have to say: no deal made in secret is binding on me. The struggle to create democracy also means a struggle for democracy in our own ranks.
If rejecting the British attempts to derail our struggle means we have to fight on for another 25 years, then so be it. Let those who are tired rest. Let those who want to retire, retire.
Right in the middle of O'Connell Street is Parnell's statue, and on it are inscribed the words: "No man has a right to set the boundary of the right of a nation." I say: no organisation has a right unilaterally to call the struggle to end, to set limits on democracy. Over my dead body.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 66, July 1994, Page 10
CROSSMAGLEN & DISTRICT SUPPORT THE HUNGER STRIKES
Integrating the Catholic OBEs