The United Secretariat of the Fourth International reaffirms its solidarity with the Irish political prisoners presently held in H-Block of Long Kesh prison (the Maze) and the Armagh Women's prison.
In particular we declare our complete solidarity with those prisoners who have now undertaken a hunger fast "to death," in pursuit of their demands to be treated as political prisoners.
These demands involve: the right of prisoners to wear their own clothes; the right to refrain from prison work; the right to freely associate with each other and to organize their own recreation and education; the right to have full remission of sentence (parole rights); the right to have visitors and receive mail.
The Tory government of Margaret Thatcher has declared that no concessions will be made to the prisoners.
These rights were previously granted to Irish political prisoners in 1972. They were arbitrarily abolished by the British government four years later. The claim of the British that the prisoners concerned are "ordinary criminals" is totally false. The fact that the prisoners are tried before juryless courts is one indication of their exceptional nature.
Furthermore, respected international bodies such as Amnesty International have reported that many of these prisoners were tortured in order to force them to sign "confessions." In 90 percent of cases such "confessions" have been the sole basis on which the prisoners were convicted.
The Irish Republican prisoners are incarcerated for one reason only-the continuing occupation by Britain of the northeast of Ireland. The prison camps erected in Ireland by Britain are a consequence of the resistance to that occupation.
It is now sixty years since British imperialism enforced the partition of Ireland against the wishes of the majority of the Irish people. The creation of the artificial, British-occupied statelet in the six north-
"So, the women are still sitting in these eastern counties of Ireland was an affront to democracy and to the principle of selfdetermination. In that respect those who continue to resist the partition of Ireland do so in the name of democracy.
The harsh treatment handed out to the Irish republican prisoners has done nothing to curtail that resistance. On the contrary, the hunger strike has already mobilized more people on the streets of Ireland than at any time in the past eight years. As many as 25,000 demonstrated in Belfast on the eve of the Hunger strike and four weeks later, on November 22, a similar number took part in a protest in Dublin.
Against this resistance British imperialism in the North of Ireland now has
Left Makes Big Gains in
Candidates of working-class parties substantially increased their showing in Peru's November 23 municipal elections over left-wing vote totals in the national elections last May. Running in an electoral front called the United Left (IU), they won control of eight departmental capitals, including Arequipa, the country's second largest city.
In Lima, the capital, the candidate of the ruling People's Action (AP) party received the highest vote, with 35 percent of the total. But this was a sharp drop from AP's 45 percent in Lima in the national elections. The IU candidate for mayor of Lima, labor lawyer Alfonso Barrantes, received 27 percent of the vote, up from the 21 percent that left parties had won in May.
In some working-class suburbs and shantytowns around the capital, Barrantes won an absolute majority of the votes cast.
The left's vote totals would have been even higher had it not been for widespread apathy, reflected in an abstention rate of fighters for their people."
"gecurity forces" under its control numbering over 30,000 soldiers and police-to control a population of less than 1.5 million. The British ruling class also has on its side the right-wing, pro-British "Loyalist" gangs who are now threatening to launch a civil war against the republicanminded population of the North of Ireland. In this context an international campaign of solidarity with the anti-imperialist resistance in Ireland is all the more vital. The Fourth International pledges its support for such a solidarity campaign and, in saluting the heroism of the hunger strikers, recognizes that the only lasting solution to the Irish conflict lies in the complete and immediate withdrawal of Britain from Ireland.
Peru Municipal Elections nearly 50 percent in many areas. As the London-based Latin American Weekly Report noted in its November 28 issue, "if the voters' disillusionment had not been exceeded by their apathy, IU would have done even better. The left's tactic of holding mass meetings throughout the country proved highly successful in areas particularly badly hit by unemployment, inflation and public spending cuts. It will continue to pick up support as the government's deflationary policies bite ever deeper."
Perhaps the biggest loser in the elections was the American People's Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), Peru's oldest bourgeois party and the one that had long had the largest mass base. The municipal elections marked a continued decline in APRA's support. The party's mayoral candidate in Lima won only 16 percent of the vote, compared to APRA's 27 percent showing in May.
Throughout the country, in the words of the Latin American