IRISH WORKERS’ UNION

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Contents include :— Behind the Rail ‘Settlement’

Statement by the Editors Politics of Prosperity and Depression Tom Kemp Freedom and Revolution Alasdair MacIntyre Lessons of the Dining Car Strike - Brian Arundel Building the Bolshevik Party . Brian Pearce LETTERS Why has The Newsletter had nothing to say about the Irish Workers’ Union? A month ago the North London Press declared ‘New Marxist Organization in North London—lIrish Workers Are Urged To Fight Imperialism’.

In the next issue a letter appeared from a B. Wilkinson, doubting whether the Irish Workers’ Union was capable of fighting imperialism because of its ‘Trotskyist Support’. Wilkinson implied that the Trotskyists could only do harm to the established organizations who were, he claimed, already fighting imperialism, namely, the Connolly Association and Sinn Fein. The week after this, the North London Press told another story: ‘Irish Workers’ Union “Not a Marxist Body”.’ This time a Mr. Callinan, organizer of the Irish Workers’ Union, took the floor to tell us that his organization was ‘positively non-Marxist’. Well, is it or isn’t it?

North London Reader.

EDITOR’S REPLY

The Socialist Labour League is in no way responsible for, or connected with, the Irish Workers’ Union.

Featured in the constitution of the Irish Workers’ Union is a clause making ‘members of the Communist Party and its auxiliary organizations’ ineligible for membership of the [WU. For good measure Fascists are also banned.

The Socialist Labour League is absolutely opposed to witch-hunting and considers that this clause is designed to deny the rights of Communist Party members who are members of a legitimate working-class party.

We are anxious to establish the maximum of united action on the left to defeat bans and proscriptions and therefore would be opposed to our members participating in the Irish Workers’ Union as long as that clause remains in its constitution.

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The Catholic Herald has no doubts about our attitude on this matter. On February 5, ex-Stalinist Douglas Hyde writing in~ the Catholic Herald said: ‘The IWU takes the view that as Marxists they (the Trotskyists) are just as unwelcome as the Communists themselves and it has already made its intentions plain’ by expelling one of its own leaders as a Trotskyist.’ Hyde is evidently referring here to the expulsion of Pat Donovan from the IWU who wrote in The Newsletter of January 2, denouncing the ‘exclusion’ clause in the union’s constitution.

MARXISM IN AFRICA

What does James Baker mean when he says: ‘So far there is little sign of the emergence of a Marxist leadership among the Africans; but neither is there any sign of reformism’? While agreeing with the first part, can we say that there is ‘no sign of reformism’? The very absence of a Marxist leadership gives the middle-class (and thereby the native capitalists) the hegemony of the revolution.

The revolutionary middle-class leadership has a contradictory character. Imperialism has nothing to fear from a few dozen native lawyers, doctors and politicians, but when these few dozen mobilize the poor peasant masses (Nyasaland and Algeria) and the workers (Kenya and Rhodesia, etc.) on a limited anti-capitalist programme in support of their own banner of pan-Africanism, then imperialism is seriously threatened.

African constitutional reformists of the Banda-Nkrumah type say to the imperialists: ‘Give us political power or else we will be unable to hold back the “extremists” ’ (i.e., workers and poor peasants). In no other way can we assess the AllAfrican People’s conference held in Tunis or Mboya at the Kenya conference.

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African reformism is prepared to compromise for political But. independence without agrarian reform and nationalization quickly becomes dependent on foreign capital.

African reformism has no answer to this, the answer lies in the hands of the masses who are the motive force that puts - the reformists in power.

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