Left Archive: Republican News, Vol. 2, Number 100, 25th August, 1973, Sinn Féin

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This edition of Republican News was printed in August 1973. It provides a good sense of Provisional Sinn Féin during this period and the avowed orientation of the publication as ‘The Voice of Republican Ulster’. It is well put together and has a strong focus on prisoners in Long Kesh, what is termed the Curragh Concentration Camp, Armagh, Crumlin Road and Mountjoy. The main article looks at the situation of PIRA prisoners in English jails. The other front page article draws attention to the fact of eleven ‘Irish women now interned’.

Other pieces on the newspaper include a cartoon on the LittleJohn Affair, Troops Out rallies in the UK and Germany, an analysis on ‘Whither SDLP?’ and a long piece on ‘The Irish Working Class and the IRA’.

This latter argues that the:

…success of the IRA lies with the Irish working class people, particularly in the North of Country. Despite the repression used against them, despite the psychological and physical forces which have been tried on them, despite the military occupation of their ghettoes and despite the final weapon of murder (much favoured by Brit. and Loyalist Extremist alike) they continue to resist all and to support their Army in its endeavours towards freedom.

It continues that while the I.R.A. is a Republican Army…

…[it] is also a socialist Army and their socialism is the distinguishing feature from other so called Nationalist or ‘Anti-Unionist’ bodies.

And it argues that:

It is realised that James Connolly’s belief than an Irish Republic with a Capitalist Economy would be but an extension of England’s Economy and thus under English rule, is as true to-day as it was in 1913. Thus the war cannot be said to be won until the Éire Nua or the New Ireland is achieved.

The piece also includes an appeal from 1923 ‘To the Free State Soldiers’ which asks the same Army in 1973 to study it carefully.