July 24, 2000
PORTADOWN, Northern Ireland — Hundreds of local residents had gathered here July 9, behind razor wire and barricades erected by the British Army, and successfully prevented for the third year running a rightist Orange Order parade from going down Garvaghy Road, a majority Catholic community here.
For years, the Orange Order has organized hundreds of triumphalist parades in Northern Ireland. Nationalists have often been assaulted and their homes attacked. But in recent years, opponents of the rightist marches have made gains. In 1998, for the first time, residents of Garvaghy Road prevented the rightists from going through their neighborhood.
The Orange Order has been a key pillar of British rule. But along with the broader Unionist forces it has been seriously divided and weakened by the last 30 years of unbroken Irish nationalist struggle.
July 25, 1975
Moscow officials are preparing to transfer Ukrainian historian Valentyn Moroz to a prison-hospital for compulsory psychiatric care. Moroz was sentenced in November 1970 to nine years imprisonment and five years exile. His crime was to have written four essays upholding the social, cultural and language rights of Ukrainians against Moscow’s official policy of Russification.
After being subjected to extremely harsh conditions in prison, including nearly two years of solitary confinement, Moroz began a hunger strike. He continued to refuse food for 145 days. The prison physician said Moroz requires psychiatric treatment because “a normal individual could not have endured a five-month hunger strike.”
The threat that he may be incarcerated in a psychiatric prison-hospital should be protested by supporters of democratic rights everywhere.
July 24, 1950
NEW YORK, July 18 — Meeting last weekend, the National Legislative Convention of the Socialist Workers Party appealed to all workers for support in the 1950 elections. The SWP warned that “for the American people, the war in Korea and other wars which may follow can only mean loss of life on distant battlefields, the lowering of living standards and loss of liberty.”
The Election Platform stresses the party’s opposition to intervention in Korea, its defense of civil liberties, the rights of minorities and the independence of the labor movement. The platform sums up its goal as the establishment of a Workers’ and Farmers’ Government.
Among the highlights in connection with the convention were nationwide radio broadcasts made by Farrell Dobbs and Joseph Hansen, “World Empire or World Socialism” and “What Next for U.S. Labor.”