Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 18:49:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Spoon Collective <spoons-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: M-G: RSPOWs Open Portlaoise to CIRA Prisoners (fwd)




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 03:03:46 -0800
From: IRSC <irsp-AT-netwizards.net>
To: IRL-POL-AT-HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
Cc: IRISHLAW-AT-irlearn.ucd.ie, irishnetw-AT-aol.com,
    marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu,
    marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: RSPOWs Open Portlaoise to CIRA Prisoners

Gary, Bap asked me to draft something for the internet addressing these
issues--I put it out over a joint signature, in recognition of your
position as International Secretary, but also over mine, to give you
a position for deniability--that is, if anything causes problems, you
can blame that part on having been added by myself.

Slan, mo chara,

Peter

PS  Hope you're on-line again soon.


 "The IRA prisoners who give their allegiance to the Continuity Army Council
 were moved on February 3 from Limerick prison, where they have been
 incarcerated since January 1996, to Portlaoise prison. The prisoners and
 their supporters have been campaigning for political status and have been
 without an exercise yard and proper facilities for some time."

               --Republican Sinn Féin, Saoirse, March 1997

The Irish Republican Socialist Party welcomes the transfer of the Continuity
Irish Republican Army prisoners to proper accomodation in Portlaoise Gaol. As
political prisoners, the incarcerated members of the CIRA should never have
been subjected to the attempted criminalisation of their organisation
represented by their imprisonment in Limerick Gaol.

Republican Sinn Féin, however, gives sole recognition for this transfer to the
CIRA prisoners and their supporters, rather than to the Republican Socialist
Prisoners of War in Portlaoise who facilitated them.

The Republican Socialist POWs, who were themselves forced to undertake a hunger
strike in August 1996 in order to secure just parity of treatment with other
republican political prisoners in Portlaoise, put themselves at considerable
inconvenience in order to provide accomodation for the IRA prisoners in the
gaol.
Their action, undertaken on behalf of political principle, added to the already
strained relations between themselves and prisoners of the Provisional IRA
in the gaol, who had refused Portlaoise admittance to the CIRA prisoners in
the first place. It is no exageration to state that had it not been for the
action of the Republican Socialist Prisoners of War, the CIRA prisoners would
still be held in other gaols of the twenty six county statelet.

It would have been thought that common decency would have dictated that RSF
would have aknowledged this debt of honour to the Republican Socialist POWs,
but there is a deeper political significance in their failure to do so.

On its Web home page, RSF states:

"Republican Sinn Féin is the only national organisation in Ireland committed
to the re-establishment of the Sovereign All-Ireland Republic proclaimed in
1916, which was endorsed by the majority of the people of Ireland, acting as
a unit, in the All-Ireland general election of 1918, the last such election
throughout the 32 counties." RSF is well aware that the Irish Republican
Socialist Party, who provided RSF with the first plattform to speak from in
the occupied six counties late last year in Derry City, have never waivered in
their commitment to the re-establishment of a 32 county Irish Republic since
the IRSP's founding in 1974, twelve years before the RSF was born, yet it is
prepared to recognise none but themselves as committed to this noble objective.

Once again the Irish people find themselves forced to ask whether "Sinn
Féin" means "Ourselves Alone", or "Only Us?"

At a meeting in Donegal last Monday evening between IRSP representatives and
senior RSF representatives, as well as in at a public meeting of the recently
formed Liverpool branch of RSF attended by Manchester members of the IRSP, RSF's
reprsentatives REJECTED involvement in a republican broad-front. As the
principled actions of the Republican Socialist POWs in Portlaoise demonstrated,
the building of a broad-front of republicans, socialists, other Irish anti-
imperialists can enable our forces to win collectively that which we may have
been denied alone. The old saying remains true today:

"If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately."

THE WAY FORWARD lies with the erection of a Republican Forum, such as has
been called for by the Irish Republican Socialist Party, where the opportunity
exists to reforge a consensus in opposition to the disasterous "peace process"
negotiations and pan-nationalist alliances of the Irish petty bourgeoisie.
-


Gary Adams                              Peter Urban
International Secretary,                North American Coordinator
Irish Republican Socialist Party        Irish Republican Socialist
Committees     
  





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