What we think: the politics of Bernadette Devlin

BEFORE THE GATES of Armagh women's prison clanged shut behind her, Miss Bernadette Devlin sent a telegram of congratulations to the Greater London Young Conservatives, who had protested at the Rev Ian Paisley taking his parliamentary seat on the government benches.

Whatever the Christian merits of her turning the other cheek to the Conservative and Unionist Party which put her in prison, it has nothing to do with socialism or the working class.

The Workers Press is completely opposed to the imprisonment of Miss Devlin and fights for the widest possible campaign in the labour movement for her immediate release.

Her sentence is a direct attack on the N Ireland workers who sent her back to Westminster for a second term to fight against the Tories.

But the elementary lack of class consciousness expressed in her congratulatory telegram shows how farand in what direction-Miss Devlin has gone politically since she entered parliament in April 1969.

It exposes the anti-Marxists of the International Socialism group whose weekly paper 'Socialist Worker described her in the following terms:

'In Mid-Ulster, Bernadette Devlin fought on an openly socialist platform. She had no illusions in the parliamentary , system. She called for nationalization of industry and workers' control. She was viciously attacked by the church, the press, the bosses and the soggy "friends of the people" in N Ireland.'

She has been closely connected politically with the International Socialism group, who have been outspoken defenders of the presence of British troops to Ulster.

When her imprisonment sparked fighting in the streets of Belfast and Derry Devlin is said to have asked Stormont MP Ivan Cooper: 'Have they all gone mad?'

Like the Derry Labour Party's Eamonn , McCann, whose amateur peace - making efforts with Green Tory John Hume were shouted down just before British troops invaded the Bogside, Devlin clearly feels that now the protest movement in N Ireland is eclipsed by the struggle of young workers, the time has come to call a halt.

The British ruling class, as leaders like Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, not to mention Ireland's De Valera, can testify, is extremely adept at harnessing 'rebels" to its requirements.

Kenyatta received his political training at the hands of Fenner (now Baron) Brockway.

Michael Foot and the International Socialists clearly hope to do the same for Devlin.

Is the combination of flattery and intimidation which produced a Kenyatta in Kenya going to turn out a tame Catholic 'rebel' in Ulster?

What does her 'socialism' mean when she can congratulate the Tory enemy?

This type of class-compromise socialism is a sham. Her record in parliament shows Devlin to be a middleof-the-road parliamentarian with a threadbare socialist gloss.

She stood on an explicitly anti - communist platform, and rebutted charges that she was a communist by attacking the Soviet Union as 'state capitalist'.

Her main parliamentary plank was to call on Wilson to 'get his finger out' in Ulster, and when he duly sent 7,000 British occupation troops, Devlin welcomed them. The Labour 'lefts', like Michael Foot recognized one of their own kind and helped ner along the way.

A sure sign of her 'arrival' as one of what the 'Sunday Times' described as 'the beautiful people' was her attendance at 10 Downing St together with such people as Lord_ Sainsbury, Lord Goodman, Jack Straw, Tory journalist Peregrine Worsthorne and Richard Chamberlain.

At the last election, Devlin reversed her previous decision not to stand, and won her seat with an increased majority. The parliamentara tide obviously its attractions.

Now she talks in terms of a *loose socialist organization' which would, presumably, leave her free to do as she pleased in the Commons. British imperialism vitall)

needs a house-trained 'rebel to keep the Catholic masses in check in Ulster. With the aid of the revisionists, they could be grooming Devlin to fill the bill. The logic of her politics leads inexorably to this direction.

Without the utmost firmness on basic principled questions, Devlin will become a trap for the Catholic workers in Ulster just as sided as paisley for heir trap Protestant counterparts.

nat the strategy of 'divide and rule' in N Ireland.

le must make up her mind at once.