15 JANUARY 1976 A state of siege in South Armagh was declared by Harold Wilson in the House of Commons on Monday. There is no other way to describe the invasion of the area by 600 extra troops and the Special Air Services.
Ireland has seen the operations of the SAS since 1970. Aden and Dhofar, in the Middle East, have also suffered the attention of these cold blooded killers, whose speciality is the secret assassination and torture of those fighting against imperialism. Gerry Fitt of the Social Demoeratic & Labour Party, scab though he is, rightly compared their role with that of the CIA. The crack force of the British Army has never acted to keep the peace, but only to bring a hail of blood and terror to long-suffering populations.
Coopération between Wilson and the Southern Irish Government, to coordinate action north and south of the border, has now been achieved. A curtain of steel has been lowered around South Armagh. The institution of computer-coordinated screening, house to house searches and interrogation (i.e. torture), means that the truce has now been broken off by the Labour GovernNo. 133 ment. The 'truce' was meant to soften anti-imperialist resistance. Its calling off indicates the next stage of the Government's strategy Wilson was followed by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who rejected the open hand-over to Orangeism proposed by the Loyalist dominated Convention. Instead he put forward the involvement of the treacherous SDLP in a fake 'power-sharing' exercise. The Labour Government aims to achieve political stabilisation as the back drop to naked repression of the anti-Unionist population, whom Fitt and his kind claim to represent. PRICE 10p that the full responsibility for the repression in Irland lies with the British Government, there is no which culminated in the assassination of ten Protestant workers in retaliation for the murder of five Catholics-have aided Rees in his all those fighting against imperialism as "gangsters".
the real facts of the situation. The fact that for every one Protestant Labour Government is using the of the SAS which, in its turn, is a sop to the Loyalists. These are the bankrupt policies of the Labour Britain in Ireland will never be a solution but simply the cause of more problems for the Irish people. That is why every militant must campaign for the immediate withdrawal of the SAS and of all British troops from Ireland.
STEVE CANNON Unfortunately, despite the fact doubt that the actions of the 'South Armagh Republican Action Force'campaign to smear Republicans and Rees's slander aims to conceal murders in South Armagh have been blown up by the media, blurring the death, three Catholics have died. The latest deaths to justify the sending of The continued in volvement of February Ist demo!