From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph-AT-indigo.ie>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 19:19:13 +0000
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Karl's post was Re: M-I: General elections and 


KARL: Hi Gary

GARY: But what I feel that Karl underestimates is the significance
of the vote for Sinn Fein.  North and South of the Border Sinn Fein
candidates have done well.  In the North before the recent local
government elections the moderate (yukk!) Social Democratic Labor
Party said that a vote for Sinn Fein was a vote for "murder". well
thousands voted fro Sinn Fein.  The SDLP has now said that this was a
"vote for peace"!

KARL: You are under an illusion. The politics and ideology of Sinn 
Fein is essentially no different to the SDLP, the DUP and the OUP. 
All of these parties seeks a solution within the framework of the UK 
state. In short they are all unionists. However the SDLP and in 
particular Sinn Fein seek to disguise their unionism. Let us be frank 
about it Gary! Sinn Fein has in effect abandoned the claim that a 
struggle for national self-determination will force British forces 
out of Ireland. Its new approach is to plump for a deal which would 
entail a innocuous Irish dimension while the Union is preserved and 
perahps even strengthened.

Furthermore  a glance at the programme of SInn Fein will indicate how 
bourgeois its policies are. Indeed one has only to look at the way in 
which SInn Fein sucked up to Albert Reynolds while he was Prime Minister 
of the Irish Repbulic as well as President Clinton to recognise how 
pro-imperialist an organisation is Sinn Fein. Both these figures are 
obviously bourgeois leaders.

Incidentally I am glad this message is not like the nasty message you 
wrote concerning me something like a year or more ago. It does not 
serve the interests of positivbe debate to engage in this kind of 
exercise. 


                                                   Karl


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