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From Socialist Worker, No. 117, 12 April 1969, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
DUBLIN:– People’s Democracy, the militant Northern Ireland movement, carried its civil rights campaign into the south when it crossed the border post at Killeen, Co. Armagh, on Saturday chanting ‘Tories Out, North and South’.
The previous day meetings and sit-downs had been held in Belfast, Lurgan and Newry. At Newry 21 people were, arrested after the Royal Ulster Constabulary tore into a sit-down protest against the banning of a meeting in the town centre.
The purpose of the march to Dublin was to assert the fact that civil liberties and social justice are denied to the working class of southern Ireland as much as to the workers of the north.
Leaflets and speakers at meetings in each town we passed through concentrated on unemployment, housing and anti-union legislation.
A consistent campaign of falsification in the press tried to convey the impression that the main demands were for the free distribution of contraceptives and the provision of facilities for divorce – demands which the march voiced, but not as a priority.
The result was a rapid withdrawal of support by the Students For Democratic Action, who had been organising in Dublin. Isolated from the student Left, the march entered Dublin unsure of its reception.
But in spite of the absence of students, more than 5000 people gathered outside the GPO, scene of the 1916 rising (see centre pages), to welcome PD to Dublin. In the course of its passage through the slums of north Dublin, local residents came out, addressed meetings and joined the march.
Two hundred and fifty strong when it entered Dublin, the march numbered 1000 when it reached its destination.
An attempt to smear PD as being anti-catholic backfired in both the Tory press and on the timid Left. The march broke the back of clerical prejudice in the south and it is doubtful whether the old smear can ever be used again successfully to discredit a radical movement.
At the same time as the PD march, the Western Civil Rights Movement based on University College, Galway, marched from Galway to Dublin protesting against government agricultural policy which aims to clear the small farmers off the land.
They were joined by trade unionists from Galway and Dublin and arrived at the GPO at the same time as the PD marchers, symbolising the unity of the socialist struggle in Ireland, north and south.
It is interesting to note that on the day the Dublin students were working themselves into a frenzy about contraceptives and divorce, the Galway marchers were joined by two contingents, one from Sceim Na gCeardchumainn – a trade union organisation, the other a group of student priests from Maynooth seminary.
PD is now in the satisfactory position of being attacked by Paisleyites for its romanist tendencies and denounced by Green Tories as anti-catholic! Any socialist organisation in Ireland which draws on itself that type of simultaneous attack is clearly on the right lines.
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