Workers' Liberty 19, March 1995

Click here to download article as pdf . Britain abolished Home Rule in Northern Ireland in March 1972, after 50 years during which the Six Counties had been governed from Stormont Castle outside Belfast. For the 23 years since then Northern Ireland has been under British direct rule. Through all its 50 years “Stormont” had been a Tory-Unionist government of one-party Protestant rule and an organiser of sectarian discrimination against Catholics. Catholics were never less than one third of the population of the Six Counties: they are 45% now. The destruction of “Protestant home rule” was worked...

Cause for glee: the Tories are deeply split over Europe. Our glee could be purer if the left had something clear and worthwhile to say on Europe. It has not. Click here to download article as pdf . From 1961, when Britain first abortively applied to join the European Community, up to the early 1980s, most trade-union leaders, and the mainstream left of the Labour Party, were against British entry into the EC, then for withdrawal. They felt cosy in Britain’s circles of power, and feared that they would get fewer sops from the remote bureaucrats of Europe. Margaret Thatcher’s assault on the...