Socialist Republic, Vol. 4, No. 2
Date:1981
Organisation: People's Democracy
Publication: Socialist Republic
Issue:Volume 4, Number 2
Contributors: Info
Joan Brady, Alan Bruce, James Gallagher, Martin Mac An Ghoill, Paul Hurley, Brendan Kelly, Denis Larkin, Ciarán MacNamidhe, Ruaidhri MacNeill, John Magee, Sean Marmion, John O'Leary, Rose O'Mahony, Sue Pentel
Type:Publication Issue
View: View Document
Discuss:Comments on this document
Subjects: Hunger Strikes, 1980/81

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Commentary From The Cedar Lounge Revolution

21st August 2017

Many thanks to the person who forwarded this edition of Socialist Republic. Published at the height of the hunger strikes it is strongly focused on that issue with front page articles criticising Fianna Fáil, the SDLP and Cardinal O’Fiaich for not engaging sufficiently. There is also a piece that calls for “Worker’s Action” in order to win the demands.

Inside there is an outline of a ‘Strategy for Victory’ which in addition to agreeing with broader demands also argues:

… work in the areas to demand that councillors and TDs support the five demands; to involve themselves in the campaign and fight openly in their parties in defence of the prisoners. In the North it might be possible to build an open conference of councillors to discuss action.

And:

The chief need now is to remobilise and learn the lessons of the hunger strike in formulating a new policy…. we need to defend ourselves and we need to expose the bourgeois allies of imperialism above all we need to prove the method of mass action as the crucial weapon for the prisoners and for the anti-imperialist cause.

The contents of the eight pages is though very wide ranging in addition to those pieces. There is an intriguing piece on the then-current dispute at the De Lorean car plant at Dunmurray, calls to defeat Paisley, a piece on the shooting of Bernadette and Michael McAliskey. There’s also pieces on how UCC banned a Gay Society and on ‘Which Way Forward’ for the Women’s Movement. This is accompanied by a piece on the ‘Jail Experience’ of the Armagh Women. Another argues ‘No to Racist Rugby’.

One small piece looks at ‘an interesting debate at the AGM of the Workers’ Union of Ireland at RTÉ’ and notes that a motion calling for the repeal of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act and for the right of the public to know was opposed by an ‘SF-WP fellow traveller’. In all only three voted against the motion out of an attendance of 80. It also suggests that ‘in other bodies of the union SF-WP have attempted to prevent discussion of the issue’.

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