A United Nations Commission for Human Rights report has been forced to confirm what many people have known for a long time. That there is an organised relation between the loyalist death squads and the British security forces. It confirms that Brian Nelson, who was head of intelligence for the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), was a British army agent. He was involved in the murder of 15 people, 15 attempted murders and 62 conspiracies to murder. Most well known of these murders, whilst under army orders, was that of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. Finucane was killed by the UDA on Feb. 12, 1989, just three weeks after Douglas Hogg, a government minister, had complained in parliament about solicitors who were sympathetic to nationalists.

These revelations come against a background where the truth about British rule in Ireland is unraveling. In recent months:

The government has finally conceded a new public inquiry into the killings of 14 civil rights protesters by the British army on Bloody Sunday, Jan. 31, 1972. This move only came as a result of the international campaign for justice led by relatives of those who died.

Under pressure from nationalist residents to deal with the rightist Orange marches the government has set up a `Parades Commission' to look at their rerouting. Yet it has appointed to the commission former UDA leader Glenn Barr and the only two Catholics appointed have previously worked for the RUC police, giving it a obvious bias. Residents of the Garvaghy Road, where Orange marches go every July, gave a clear answer to this : 4,000 marched there on March 22 to say they will oppose these Ku Klux Klan-type reactionaries trampling down their streets.

David Keys, the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) supporter murdered inside Long Kesh (Maze) prison by his fellow LVF inmates was a former British soldier and suspected RUC informer. The three others held for the Poyntzpass murder of a Catholic and Protestant were also former British soldiers.

Whether British withdrawal is secured in this round of the talks or in the future, depends on Britain's rulers coming to terms with the need to end their brutal and bloody rule of Ireland. As the current talks reach their conclusion it gets clearer there is only one key question: whether there is to be a united Ireland. Britain is not and has never been the neutral arbitrator in Ireland, shouldering the `white man's burden' in civilising the natives. After centuries of plunder Britain artificially divided Ireland in 1921. Its rule has been maintained through tens of thousands of troops and an armed police force. Behind that is an institutionalised system of discrimination exists against Catholics at all levels from jobs and housing to education. This is what is meant in practice by `Unionism' and what Britain is seeking to defend. It has only been through the 30 year long fight by nationalists, led by Sinn Fein, that the final chapter of this murky history is being written.

Working people in Britain have every interest in taking the side of those fighting against the British government for the unity and independence of Ireland. It is the same government that cuts disability benefits, scapegoats single mothers, covers up the beating of prisoners, and allows racist murderers to get off scot-free. As the recent events over Iraq show, this same government is also preparing to take us to war for them in the coming months and years. As working people resist here they will come up against the same policies used against the Irish, just as the miners did in their 1984-85 strike. Progress in the fight for Irish freedom is progress for all working people. One example of this is how the breaking of the police frame-ups of the Guildford 4 and Birmingham 6 opened up a can of worms in the British injustice system, leading to many others winning their freedom.

That's why the Communist League candidates in the May 7th Council elections will put at the centre of their campaign the call for Britain to go: the troops must come out, the RUC must be disbanded, the prisoners released, and repressive legislation ended. Today we especially join the call for an independent public inquiry into the Brian Nelson affair.  
 
 
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