Supporters of the Irish Republican cause in Dundee made a break with the past and a promising new beginning at a public meeting at which the video film ‘Ireland’s Hunger Strike’ was shown. The meeting attracted nearly 50 people. It is the tradition of public meetings in Dundee to attract only a handful of people allied to the British left groups, so this was indeed a break with the left record of treachery and scabbing on the Republican cause and movement.
The meeting was jointly organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group and the newly formed ad hoc Irish Solidarity Committee. The Irish Solidarity Committee is comprised of former members of the Dundee Troops Out Movement Branch, which we decided to dissolve earlier this year. Since that TOM Branch was formed in 1979, we have progressively despaired of the various left groups that persistently boast of their Marxism, internationalism and revolutionism and do nothing in practice. In fact, the SWP recently decided to cancel a meeting on Ireland because they could not get the Labour Party to sponsor it. Our fears about what TOM was doing other than nothing have gathered weight over the last couple of years when we read reports of the last two conferences. According to internal TOM bulletins, both rigging and bureaucratic manoeuvering occurred on a scale to put the most right-wing trade union Labour Party members to shame. The final straw was when both the SWP and the IMG withdrew support from a march in support of the POWs in Glasgow last February under the threat of Orange thuggery. It was after, this that we dissolved the Dundee TOM Branch and formed the ad hoc Irish Solidarity Committee. After this we approached the RCG and jointly organised the video film/public meeting. This was after years of SWP/IMG propaganda in which the RCG were labelled as sectarian ultra left, i.e. they give total unconditional support for Irish Republicanism. We recognise that the position of the RCG is the only just and principled position that anyone claiming to be a socialist or communist can take. We look forward to greater and closer cooperation in future with the RCG and so will other genuine communists, socialists and anti-imperialists.
Yours fraternally,
G.M.
for Irish Solidarity Committee Dundee
FRFI 11 July / August 1981
