people are going to extraordinary lengths to saboLaRC Brendan Gallagher's general election campaign.
Brendan Will be standing againt Roy Mason in Barnsley, and one aspect of his platform is the demand 'Free Speech on Ireland'. But free speech is the last thing he is being given.
Despite valiant efforts by the Committee to Elect Brendan Gallagher, no public meeting hall in Barnsley has been willing to accept bookings from the Committee. Nor has any labour movement institution, including the Labour-controlled council.
Only one pub in the town was willing to allow Brendan to speak on •Ils premises.
eventually they too cancelled the booking.
Despite all this, the election campaign continues to gather momentum and support.
further details Committee to Elect Brendan Gallagher, c/0 Street, London N1.
Ireland Socialist JUST out is the fourth edition of Socialist which includes articles on the media and current security policies.
This excellent journal costs 30p and can be obtained from The Other Bookshop, Upper Street, London Postage is 15p extra, but three-issue subscription for £1 can be ordered from ISR, 60 Loughborough Rd, London SW9.
Dundee UTOM MEMBERS of Dundee United Troops Out Movement joined forces on March Zimbabwean students. occasion was the disruption of a meeting organised at Dundee University the Monday Club.
Star speakers WELC representative from the South African embassy and Loyalist MP Willie Ross. But the Tories eventually abandoned affair after UTOM and the Zimbabweans prevented further progress by drowning out the speakers.
The two groups then held their own joint followed by UTOM demonstration to the centre of Dundee. trying live up Charles Paisley, Both Paisley's outburst attracted attention when he opposed the Protection of Prostitutes Bill in Parliament on 6 March.
The Bill, Maureen Colquhoun, sought to abolish prison sentences soliciting and give prostitutes better protection from exploiand tation and victimisation.
Ian Paisley didn't approve His opposition to the liberalising measure was, motivated by stand for the For womenfolk'. Prostitutes, pre sumably, cannot be classed as Upper 'womenfolk'.
Haughey was involved in a different controversy. previous week he NI.
The the any A PECULIAR merging of views has occurred in / Haughey, said to be the most 'extreme' Republican in the Irish Cabinet, and lan arch-Loyalist from North Antrim, have moral sanctimonious speeches, but it was obvious enough all the same — the oppression of women.
introduced in his contraception, proudly proclaimed, legalising the availability contraceptives, introduced by Briefly, posals seek to restrict contraception, on a prescription only basis, to married couples. It is, problem."
That description would he said, doubt win approval from lan desire *to Paisley. For what Haughey was protection of all really saying was that his Bill was a Southern Irish answer to a Southern Irish problem.
Leaving aside moment the The Haughey's finally clearly could not apply to all of phrases and the Irish Bill on which, he 'was not of Haughey's pro IAN PAISLEY The Irish counties no applies in Great Britain.
Haughey's words effect as anything for the validity morality. description, Women, unmarried women, north-eastern enjoy the availability of contraception as sallic women's were in partitionist as question.
Paisley has ever
proclaimed. In that one phrase he founded and erected and defended an Irish border of especially young other will most CHARLES HAUGHEY acutely feel Haughey's ban on any form of control over their own bodies. But the political importance of the measure is not confined to democratic and rights. It relates squarely to the Irish national Much the same can be said for the type of religious hysteria an displayed by Paisley. His views are shared - on this, as issues by fair Rule percentage of the Loyalists of It COT mind the North of Ireland. The Calvinistic strain ideology retains a significant influence.
The spectacle of a bigoted Protestant morality in the North and a bigoted Catholic morality in the South might, despite their often agreement, suggest the propriety of two different states in Ireland, each legislating for its own religious majority.
But that would be getting the equation the wrong way round. Rather than justifying partition, such contrasts are a result A historical example illustrates this. In 1912 an Irish Home Ruler, Thomas Kettle, wrote: We Catholics voluntarily abjure the blessings of divorce, but we should never dream of using the civil law to impose our abnegation on those of another belief.' Kettle wrote that sentence in attempt to persaude Protestants in the North of the tolerance of the Irish Home Party. His sentiments were probably indicative of the feelings of SHICLEE Irish nationalists at the time.
But calls later the government of the 26-county Irish "Free State' did more than "dream' of such legislation divorce was specifically banned under the 1937 constitution was partition which allowed •thai constitution, heavily influenced as it was by theology, to be passed.
Would such legislation have had any chance of being passed in a 32-county Ireland in which one quarter of the population was Protestant?
Would Charles Haughey's COHECHEDOldE ICSUNCHOR on contraception stand any chance being introduced, passed, in a contempo. rary 32-county Ireland?
The asking of these questions provides the answer.
The simple conclusion is that the rantings of both Paisley and Haughey have their roots in the division of Ireland.
Irish socialist James Con nolly predicted in 1913 that the erection of a border in Ireland would offer up a 'carnival of reaction' on both sides of it. On the issue of women's rights alone, Connolly's prophecy has more than a passing relevance.
In the South today, growing socialist and women's movements will continue to fight and resist Haughey's edicts. But in isolation neither North nor South can be won from the existing theological influences:
That is why the struggle for women suocracon in ireland 1s intimately bound up with the struggle to destroy partition.
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Solidarity Gallagher vs Mason
Torture fan THE Queen's publie house in Haringey, North London,
adopted a common theme. disguised it