It’s a elass struggle in

Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, May 2, 1959

Tibet

Tibet’s social institutions and culture are like those of Europe in the Dark Ages. The much-publicized monks (‘lamas’) number 150,000. As in medieval Europe, many are parasites; but they contribute to running the State in the interests of about 150 aristocratic landowning families, and monasteries also exploit peasant land’ Chinese governments have long been interested in Tibet because it lies athwart some of the very few possible land routes for invading armies into China.

Chinese moves in Tibet since the revolution can easily be related to the penetration of U.S. interests (financial and military) into Afghanistan or the haggling over Kashmir.

UNTHINKABLE TASK

Sensational British newspapers, primarily those served by Noel Barber, have suggested that the Chinese People’s Republic plans a full-scale conquest and colonization of Tibet. This seems so improbable as to be mere ‘cold war’ propaganda.

To colonize Tibet would involve killing off the present inhabitants, for there is no spare cultivable’ land, and the task of raising current output would be unthinkable.

To garrison Tibet would involve an army of 750,000 served by a gigantic and highly vulnerable transport link with China of up to 1,500 hard miles.

Nor is there any sign that, as yet, money economy or trade have become dominant institutions; trade inwards is in tea and outwards in wool, but it is terribly restricted by transport difficulties, and by the policy of the Tibetan government. _ The feudalists and their religious administrators not unnaturally want to exclude any ideas later than those of about the first century A.D.

FEUDAL LEVIES

So far the fighting has been entirely between the Chinese forces, small in number,“and feudal levies. There is yet no évidence that the Chinese have made any political impact on the peasants.

The big argument whether the Dalai Lama was kidnapped and forcibly abducted to India by the feudalists, or went voluntarily, is really a side-issue in the Asian revolution; it is important only to those who hope to defend the gains of the Chinese revolution in alliance with Asian feudalists and religious leaders.

The Chinese contact with Tibet inevitably must introduce changes which disturb the old régime, despitesthe 17-point pact which Mao’s government (with Nehru’s approval) signed with the Dalai Lama’s representatives in 1951, whereby Tibet recognized the supremacy of China but the Dalai Lama was to retain control over domestic affairs.

In short, the Asian revolution has still to reach this, the most backward, corner of the continent. The difficulties of the Chinese may well give the people of Asia an unfavourable impression, which can be erased only by much more decisive intervention to liberate the peasants from feudal burdens.

Even in Tibet, ‘peaceful coexistence’ between social systems may in the short run appear to be a workable policy, but can suddenly and rapidly be destroyed by the realities of life, and can result in weak compromises.

There is no parallel between the struggle for the Dalai Lama and that for Hungary. But Peking would win the confidence of the common people of Asia more securely by example and leadership in struggle against feudal landlords and usurers than by fine-split argument about who is really the head of the Buddhist hierarchy. Rifles and ammunition And so.-you had. in-Dublin--a workers" army with rifles in their hands, and, needless to say, ammunition in those rifles, accompanying the pickets wherever they went, pledged to fight and if need be die to protect their class and their class interests.

It goes without saying that police brutality stopped.

One amusing incident of this period was related to me some years ago by Bernard Conway, who was a dockers’ delegate at the time, and a member of the Citizen Army.

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He told me that on seeing the pickets marching down to the Quays accompanied by armed Citizen Army men, some of the officials and police who had been taunting them the previous day jumped into the River Liffey or ran for their lives.

As Barney put it, they thought their day of reckoning had come. And they were right too, had they not mended their ways!

In the vanguard But the Citizen Army did not stop at protecting pickets; it was moulded by Connolly into an effective fighting force, which three years later was in the vanguard of the armed struggle against British So we see Connolly acting as a true revolutionary, taking advantage of capitalism in conflict by striving to free a subject working class and peasantry.

Truly it can be said of the Irish Citizen Army that it was the forerunner of all Red Armies.

A meeting to commemorate Connolly will be held at Caxton Hall, London, on Tuesday, May 12, at 7.30 p.m.