[ON FEBRUARY 18 the voters in the Irish…]

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ON FEBRUARY 18 the voters in the Irish Republic go to the polls for the second time in seven months. The Fine Gael/ Labour coalition had a majority of just two over Fianna Fail and its life hung at the mercy of tve independents. If fell trying to introduce a vicious monetarist budget which proposed to savagely increase VAT on such items as children's shoes and clothes, and taxes on beer and petrol.

Fine Gael had campaigned on a promise to cut taxes.

The economy is in a dreadful state. Unemployment is at 13 per cent (147,000 people), inflation at 23%. The budget deficit ran at 17% of Gross National Product.

The charge that the previous Fianna Fail government, led by Charles Haughey, had cooked the books and disguised the extent of the economic crisis, is given wide credence, and Haughey's standing in the opinion polls is about half that of Garret Fitzgerald, the coalition prime minister.

Fine Gael is campaigning on the basis that the budget, with minor changes, 1s the only solution. Fianna Fail agrees, essentially, but is demagogically pretending that it can do things with less pain to the electorate.

Disarray

The Labour Party is in serious disarray. A majority of: the administrative committee is said to be opposed to a new coalition.

Nevertheless a unanimous text was agreed for the sake of presenting a united face to the electorate.

Then the party leader Michael O'Leary and the chairman, leftist Michael Higgins, Lord Mayor of Galway, started giving out conflicting accounts of the Party's intentions about a new coalition with Fine the rank and file are known to be opposed to coalition. The decision to go into a coalition was taken by a narrow percentage of conference delegates: it is now reckoned that a conference would reject coalition.

There is a revival of the left after the exoduses and purges of the "70s, and Higgins, an opponent of coalition last year, probably speaks for the majority of the Party. A number of local parties have mandated their candidates to campaign on socialist policies rather than coalition.

(Yet opposition to coalition is not confined to the left, but also includes those, like former general secretary Brendan Halligan, who calculate that the coalition's policies are the kiss of death for Labour).

Solidly And the unions affiliated to the party are in revolt at the savage monetarist policies of the coalition. They are now solidly opposed to a new coalition venture,. and there are rumours that there have been threats of disaffiliation.

Only the Dail (parliamentary) Labour Party is firmly for coalition.

What will happen if Labour holds the balance in the Dail is of course a different matter.

In the election the Irish electorate have got the sort of choice that the state of Utah used to give a condemned man: he could choose the rope or the bullVl JOHN the ele the Sor Garret et, to be hanged or shot.

Provisional Sinn Fein is running five candidates, the Irish Republican Socialist Party 6, and there are a few independent socialists, but the choice is between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael with Labour more or less, if no longer securely, in tow.

Fine Gael is also campaigning on 'Fitzgerald's crusade to change the constitution and make the south less obnoxious to the Six Counties, while Fianna Fail say that such changes should come as part of a deal with Britain and the North and not before.

The proposed changes would include divorce reform and the dropping of •Dublin's claim to the territory of the whole island.

Fitzgerald has commented that the difference here is that Fianna Fail looks to Britain to solve the probl IN A major new development of struggle, hundreds of thousands of workers across South Africa mobilised political strike last : Thursday, in protest against the death of à trade unionist in police detention.

Last week, a white trade unionist Neil Aggett became the 46th known political prisoner to fall at the hands of the security police. He was an official of the Food and Canning Union, a militant black trade union with a long history of struggle.

The apartheid regime has maintained its hold O'MAHONY surveys ction provoked in uth by the defeat of Fitzgerald's budget em (by agreeing to Irish unity and coercing the one million Protestants), and Fine Gael wants reconciliation, and work towards reconciliation, between the Protestant and Catholic communities and the two areas of Ireland.

There is truth in that comment, but the attitude socialists should take is not easy to determine. If the relinquishing of the claim to the North can create some greater chance' of conciliating the Protestants then it is worthwhile. As a factor in the current struggle of the Northern Catholies, however, the abandonment of any claim to the North is denounced by the Republicans and by those socialists who support them (Like People's Democracy) as a betrayal.

An opinion poll shows a big majority in Northern slashed; millions face unemployment without any benefits; redundancies are increasing; inflation facing workers is estimated to be around 20%.

Over the last few months the government has increased the level of repression and unleashed a new wave of arrests and strikers, trade union militants, and students.

But there are clearer and clearer signs that the workers are building the strength to resist those attacks. A wave of strikes over the last few months has forced the government to retreat from a planned new law to tighten control over pensions. Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, favours Fitzgerald's approach over Haughey's and has more confidence in Fitzgerald • Whichever side wins, the new Council of Ireland, which has just started informal meetings, will continue. Haughey initjated the rapprochement with Britain last year, and in the election campaign the essential claim of Fianna Fail is that they would handle it all better, because in a more macho style, than their opponents will.

This Southern bipartisanship is very important, because a new attempt by Britain to reforge a political superstructure in Northern Ireland is imminent. It will perhaps be launched to mark the tenth anniversary of the abolition of Northern Ireland's home rule parliament in March 1972.

What is expected in the new approach is that there will be an elected assembly of about 80 members.

This time, unlike 1974, Hundreds of thousands of workers across the country responded to a call for a half-hour strike to protest Aggett's death. The docks, the motor industry and significant parts of the metal industry in particular were brought to a standstill.

The response was strongest in those industries where trade union organisation is most developed;

from those workers who have been involved in militant struggles; and from the part of the country where SAAWU organises a mass trade union.

It was achieved even with relatively weak trade union structures; in the race of victimisation threats there will be no attempt to form an executive immediately, and no foredoomed iately, and no foredoomed attempt, as in 1975, to start with constitution drafting.

There will instead be the creation on a proportionalrepresentation basis of committees to run agreed areas of Northern Ireland, with power to vet Northern Ireland legislation. As these areas of working agreement expand, there will be a 'mixed executive' with the addition of local politicians 'IRELAND: TIME FOR TORY POLICIES TO GO' Labour movement conference organised by LCI and CWI.

Saturday February 27, starting 11am at The Theatre, 309 Regent St, London W1. Delegate's or observer's credentials £2 from 1 North End Rd, W14. in announcing how much they oppose police state laws.

But workers will find no allies amongst the class which lives off their exploitation and oppression.

Mass

In a mass political strike, black workers have given their own answer to state efforts to intimidate and weaken them. By protesting the death of a white trade unionist, they have shown that in the movement they lead, there is room for all, including white workers and those from the middle class who are willing to join a movethere will be movement ti wards agreed Norther Ireland government wit the consent of the bi majority.

It will culminate wit complete devolution power to a fully-former I Si County Executive.

Logjam

The logjam in Norther Ireland may begin to shil dramatically and quickly fo another reason.

The recent conviction of leader of one of the Protest ant ultra groups (Tara together with others, fi running a child prostiti tion ring from a children home, has created scandal which is snov balling. It already involve a leading Protestant par military. It hasn't stoppe rolling yet by any mean and threatens to engulf I less than lan K Paisley, fr helping to cover it up.

McAliskey

Bernadette McAliskey, brave socialist and ant imperialist activist Northern Ireland sinr 1968, who between 194 and 1974 was the only rev lutionary for many years sit as an MP at Wes minster, is standing Charles Haughey's Dubl seat on a left and heavi nationalist platform, 'F an Independent United Ir land' '. It is improbable th she will win - but n impossible.

All in all, however, t major event of the electi will be what it does to ti Labour Party and the tras by Jim Farnham outside the South Afric Embassy to protest t death must be made to ta up the fight for labo movement solidar action.

The condemnation the death by Tony Be and other Labour Pa leaders must be turned ir active campaigning st port for ongoing labi movement solidarity acti And we must redoul our efforts to build imme iate. solidarity action the strikes inside Sor Africa at Dunlop Floori and Wilson Rowntrees particular: Because the are subsidiaries of Brit companies, suppe ing strike action here a any appropriate blacki