Pensioners and the unions

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YOUR article (February 3) on the elderly by Anne Marie Sweeney is welcomed by the politically representative pensioners' organisations as a contribution to the struggles of the pensioners.

The pension for a single person is only £32.60 per week and the heating allowance they receive is as low as £1.90 per week. More than 3 million elderly people are living below the poverty line. _ The Thatcher government has withdrawn 'special needs' benefits (grants for clothing, bed-linen, blankets, etc) and the cuts in rate support grants to the boroughs mean. less home helps, meals on wheels, etc.

The Charter of the Greater London Pensioners and Trade Union Action Association demands among other things that the pension should be paid to both male and female at 60 and that one pension of 50% of the national average grosS male earnings apply to both male and female, whether single or married.

On heating we demand that the Government should pay 75% of the two winter quarter bills. Travel on all forms of transport should be free throughout the UK.. Also, television licences and the installation and rental of telephones should be free.

The Pensioners' Movement aoes receive support from many unions. The TGWU Retired Members' Association has branches all over the UK and a central office at Transport House, with a full-time staff of a research officer and a typist. The Greater London Pensioners' Association has more thạn thirty trade union branches affiliated and many of them send delegates to our monthly meetings.

However, we get very The 16th century: English soi I and Charles I who violently imposed the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in Ireland" . Engels, in notes for his history of Ireland, states the following:

''1603:.. Elizabeth died. All Ireland was subjugated for the first time.

"James I: Everybody expected him to restore the Catholic religion... James however demanded that all officials, barristers and graduates of universities gave the Oath of Supremacy, and also restored the Act of Uniformity. He at once purged the Dublin Council of Catholics"

The religious beliefs were in fact secondary to the financial and political interests of the Crown.

In the reign of Charles I an Irish equivalent of Star Chamber was set up to implement the Oath of Supremacy and "to bring the people here to a conformity in religion and in the way to that to raise perhaps a good revenue to the little support trom the national offices of such big unions as AUEW, NALGO and the Municipal Workers, etc.

The interest of Labour Party activists in the pensioners' struggle leaves much to be desired. They should remember that one in five of the voting population is a pensioner.

CECIL SHARPLEY, vice-chairperson, London Joint Council for Senior Citizens.

Idiers return from clash with the Crown"

Perhaps most importantly for the subject at issue, Flack misdates the plantation of Ulster, which in fact took place from 1608 under James I. He seized 800,000 acres in six of the nine counties of Ulster - not including Down and Antrim, the counties which now have the largest Protestant majority, and were also colonised, but not under the compulsion of the British crown.

None of this would be worth bringing to readers' notice if not for accusations of 'rewriting history' and so on. Nobody in this discussion disputes that the British conquest and rule in Ireland was brutal, and is maintained by repression today.

All of the argument in Peter Flack's letter is aimed at proving that the Protestant population is 'pro-imperialist' ', a settler population like that in Rhodesia, and inhabits an "imperialist enclave' though they settled there before imperialism in the Marxist sense existed!

This raises a few questions. Firstly, is there a Protestant working class? Yes - though the letter never acknowledges this.

Uniting

Are we in favour of uniting the Protestant and Catholic workers in Ireland, while recognising that at present this is not possible? The answer must be yes, though Peter Flack's letter strongly implies that we can simply consign the Protestants to the 'dustbin of history' or the next boat to Stranraer, as 'proimperialist'. This is merely a policy of Catholic nationalism carried to its logical conclusion.

Are we in favour of measures to promote class unity, while making no compromises on the question of partition, which underlies informed, but the response from the workers in the factory has been just about nil so far. They are obviously worried about their own job We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words. Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28. Middle Lane. London N8. the present disunity? Again the answer must be yes.

The Provisionals' recognition of federalism until recently expressed this wish. We can have a fruitful discussion on whether federalism is the best means of ensuring the Protestants' rights within united Ireland, but it is indisputable that it is both desirable and permissible for Marxists to favour such measures as promote Protestant/Catholic class unity and allow the Protestants rights within the framework of a united Ireland.

Plca

One final plea: we should be able to discuss this without accusations of "lying" (unjustified, as I have shown); being "proEnglish", etc., and keeping to the political points of the discussion. Demagogy can only obscure the real issues under discussion.

BRUCE ROBINSON, Islington. ment for all the workers the nuclear/arms industry.

CND is organising a march to the ROF on Saturday March 5. We must