The release of State Papers from 1980 has shed further light on British government policy during the course of the Troubles. The Socialist Party has always argued that the British state above all acted in its own interests -in the interests of capitalism – during this period. The Papers add to the evidence which supports this analysis. In 1979 the Thatcher government came to power. In the same year the Provisional IRA, reorganised into a cell structure after it suffered significant setbacks in the period after the 1974-1975 ceasefire, launched a new offensive.
Coming mass revolts will see workers and youth look to Trotsky’s ideas
Seventy years ago the greatest living revolutionary of the time, Leon Trotsky, was murdered by Josef Stalin’s hit man Ramon Mercader. There had been a number of failed previous attempts on Trotsky’s life but this time a fatal blow from an ‘ice pick’ successfully destroyed the ‘brain’ of the working class and the symbol of implacable opposition to capitalism and totalitarian Stalinism. This event, celebrated in the Kremlin by Stalin and the bureaucratic elite he represented, also brought joy to the capitalist governments of Europe, America and the world.
Role of army chiefs and Establishment in killings and cover-up remains unanswered
The publication of the Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, more commonly known as the Saville Inquiry, has brought to light, once again, the murderous and brutal lengths the British capitalist state is prepared to go to defend its interests. The Saville Inquiry, which cost nearly £200 million and lasted 12 years, has officially confirmed what everyone has known all along – that those who were murdered by the British Army on Bloody Sunday were innocent.
When British troops went in to Northern Ireland
August 1969 was a turning point in the history of Northern Ireland. It was then that the Labour Government of Harold Wilson took the decision to send troops onto the streets, first of Derry, then of Belfast.
The measure was presented as temporary – troops were needed, they said, because, with riots sweeping the streets, with huge parts of Derry and Belfast sealed off behind barricades and with pogroms starting to develop, it was clear that the Unionist government at Stormont had lost control. It was to be a ‘stop gap’. The troops would be withdrawn ‘as soon as law and order is restored’.