Branch News (1963)

Party News from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

As in the past, we are making an urgent appeal to Members and sympathisers, to ensure that as many people as possible obtain and read the Socialist Standard. This special appeal is made each December and the subscription form in this issue is a simple way in which to fill in names and addresses, and send off to Head Office with the appropriate postal order. Many of us have saved a few extra shillings to spend, as most workers have some days off at the end of the month. Why not spend some of the savings by sending somebody a years supply of the Standard? It is hoped that new readers will not only pass on their copy, but will order copies to be sent elsewhere. It is well worth trying.

Mid-Herts Group are holding two meetings—one on Thursday, December 5 and Thursday, January 2. Details with Meeting Notices. Recently the Group held a meeting attended by the Central Organiser. It was decided not to form a branch at present, and to attempt to increase activities, e.g., fortnightly meetings (instead of monthly), alternating between Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City, perhaps with the assistance of Wembley Branch members.

Belfast Branch (WSP) has agreed to contest at least five seats in the Municipal Elections to be held next May. Candidates have been selected for three wards—Duncairn, Shankhill and Pothinger. Two other Wards are under consideration. Shankhill and Duncairn have been contested by the Party before, but this will be the first attempt at Pothinger—a Ward where a lot of effort has been concentrated and where Socialist Standard sales are very good. There will be Labour, Unionist and Communist opponents and the Party will take the opportunity of putting the Socialist alternative to all the reformist groups. The campaign has already started with literature sales drives and the distribution of leaflets.

Open-air meetings in Customs House Square are well established with audiences averaging 50 each Sunday. Questions are good and the meetings continue until dark. This behoves well for the Spring and Summer when the party hopes to hold week-night meetings there. The Sunday meetings now commence at 3.30 p.m. Despite weekly challenges, none have been accepted by the Labour or Communist Parties. The local organiser of the N.C.L.C., Mr. Andrew Boyd, has agreed to a Public Debate in the New Year-- "Which Way to Socialism? " Further details in January.

Swansea Branch is active, more so now that several members are settling in the vicinity which makes it easier for the work to be done. Comrade Harris recently gave a talk to the Students of Swansea University College on "Why Socialists should Oppose the Labour Party.” Several articles have appeared in students magazines, written by Party members. Comrades Mellor and Brain recently attended an open-air meeting of the Nazi-Panzer Group and distributed Socialist Party literature. It is hoped, in the near future, to combine a talk in the University with a public meeting in the town. All in all the Comrades in Swansea are optimistic and looking forward to much future activity.

Phyllis Howard

Violent Belfast (1969)

Book Review from the November 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Holy War in Belfast, by Andrew Boyd. Anvil Books 8s. 6d.

Belfast has a tradition of sectarian disturbances which is still alive as the fence the Army has put up between the Protestant and Catholic slums shows. Andrew Boyd gives here a simple blow-by-blow description of major riots that took place in 1857, 1864, 1872 and 1886. He has added a couple of hastily-written chapters which are supposed to bring the position up to date, but his book really ends in 1886.

That was the year Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill was defeated. It was also the year the Orange Order became respectable. Up till then it was a secret society of poorer Protestants whose parades were nearly always accompanied by disturbances. Their aim seemed to be to provoke the Catholics whenever the occasion arose. As such they were regarded as a nuisance by the government and for many years Orange marches or the display of Orange banners were prohibited. Many of the clashes described by Boyd were between police and Protestants.

The pattern is familiar: raving Presbyterian ministers, gun-fights, mob violence, intimidation, barricades, murder, arson, looting and battles with the police. In nearly every case the aggressors were the Orange extremists. In every case it was the poor, Protestant and Catholic, who suffered the consequences of this violence in terms of death, injury, homelessness and unemployment.

Inflamed by the anti-popery of their preachers, the Protestant workers feared that Home Rule would mean domination by the Catholic majority in the rest of Ireland. The landlords and the rich capitalists knew this was so much nonsense but they had a very real economic interest in encouraging hostility to Home Rule. The landlords wished to protect their right to exploit and oppress the Irish peasants while the capitalists wanted access to the profitable markets of the British Empire. To protect their economic interests they decided, as Churchill’s father Lord Randolph Churchill put it, to play the Orange card. Catholic-baiting and anti-popery became the stock-in-trade of the Unionist Party which emerged in 1886 from the anti-Horne Rule elements in Ireland.

Since 1920 this Party has itself ironically enjoyed a measure of Home Rule over six counties in the North East of Ireland. Lord Craigavon, Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister, declared that they now had a “Protestant government for a Protestant people”, a statement not calculated to encourage the “loyalty” of the non-Protestants who made up a third of its subjects. To deal with those who were likely to be “disloyal” the government soon passed the notorious Special Powers Act; set up a special para-military police force of which the equally notorious B Specials survive; abolished proportional representation in elections and gerrymandered local council wards—all really needlessly since the Unionists had a built- in majority if they could continue to play the Orange card successfully.

Today, however, this has become an embarrassment — with the need to attract overseas investors and with full free trade between Ireland and Britain (including Northern Ireland) due in 1975—and some Unionists are trying to repudiate their past. But this will not be easy since not only do many of their followers still hold to the bigotry their masters once taught them but the records show that what Paisley says today nearly every leading Unionist—Minister, MP, aristocrat, judge or churchman—said yesterday.

For the record (since the publishers do not disclose this) Boyd is a member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and is obviously out to discredit the Orange Order and the Ulster Unionist Party. That’s easy, a great deal easier than defending the NILP, which is but a second unionist and loyalist party with an unrivalled record of opportunism including support for the Special Powers Act.

Adam Buick