Issue 061, Saoirse : Irish Freedom (May, 1992)

              40p usa 24 per year uimh 61 bealtaine - may 1992 co in may 1992 a total of 383,700 people are jobless in the 32 counties over 2,000 people have lost their jobs since albert reynolds became head of the dublin administration for every 1,000 people who join the live register 3 million is paid out in benefits the maastricht treaty will mean more of the same see below c3 53 the 2,400,000 irish citizens on the voting register in the 26 counties have a rare opport unity to express their disenchantment with the politicial establishment when the maastricht treaty is voted on in the upcoming referendum on thursday june 18 # why is a european union ' necessary '/ no leinster house pol itician will give an ans wer to this question but instead they are planning to terrorise the people into voting for it a dub lin government source told an irish independent jour nalist as much during april the truth is that europ ean union will mean the end of what irish sover eignty and neutrality there is now as the western european union weu becomes the military wing of the ec dublin ministers object ed to the common defence policy provisions of the maastricht treaty articles j.4.2 and j.4.4 which directly link the european union to the weu and nato but their object ions were ignored at the intergovernmental confer ence drafting them late last year s6amus brennan dublin minister for educ ation admitted on rte's questions & answers pro gramme on april 27 that a military union was inevit able under maastricht conscription ten of the present 12 ec states enforce con scription on their citizens only britain and the 26 counties do not under a military union it is clear that forced military ser vice to a west european army will be the norm and that this force will be needed to drain off mass ive unemployment for what ec commission pres ident jacques delors des cribes as the resource wars of the next century new voting procedures under maastricht could see a decision on the ec going to war being taken by a qualified majority will we be bringing up our children to fight against their will in the army of a european military super state ? why is a european monetary union emu necessary ? no politician or econom ist has yet put forward a coherent case for mon etary union instead we are told that the alter native is leaving the ec which is not true the 6 billion we are promised has not been agreed by the ec and even if agreed would come here in any case under existing ec treaties monetary union will mean savage cuts in pub lic spending for the next ten years as we have to reduce the 26-county pol iticians debt — not ours — of over 27 billion to a level of 60 per cent of gdp there is no tax or spend ing union in emu so the ec will remain a rich man's club aimed at in creasing wealth not dis tributing it the entire ec budget will amount to only 1.37 per cent of ec gdp in five years time lies in 1972 when we en tered the eec we were promised jobs at home 0 emmet o'connell left ) and anthony coughlan of the national platform for employ ment democracy and neutrality spelling out the economic pitfalls of the maastricht treaty at a press conference in dublin on april 23 markets abroad since then the jobs have been abroad and the home market has been opened up unemployment has increased four times over in the past 20 years yet albert reynolds and co want us to trust them once more with more of the same lies that are destroying our country and our ability to determine our own future ourselves they will be spending taxpayers money in the coming weeks to push their latest failed policy on the people the white paper due to be sent to every household should be returned unopened to department of the taois each government build ings upr merrion st dublin 2 say no to mi hubert h.humphrey tricht .... while > still can ! farmers leaders say vote no farmers leader paddy phelan ufa called for a no vote to maastricht on april 28 saying that michael davitt and their fore bears in the land league fought for the three f's he called for the adding of a fourth f to the list fair treatment any farmer who fe unfairly treated by government at the present time should vote no to maastricht it was just the thing that was needed now to bring them to their senses and give them a knock back he said for their treatment of farmers mayhew/mates new face of an old enemy the appointments of sir patrick mayhew and michael mates to the posts of secretary of state and minister of state respectively in the british administration represents a return to the big stick by the british tory rulers in the six occu pied counties they are the new but hardly novel faces of an old enemy sir patrick mayhew mayhew admitted in the british house of commons in 1988 that there was a prima facie case against certain ruc personnel on charges which included conspiring to pervert the course of justice arising out of the ill-fated stalker inquiry into the deaths of a number of unarmed irish people he said the deci sion not to prosecute — in spite of the availability of evidence - was in the brit ish national interest which took precedence over the course of justice in this case responding to the appointments ruairi o bradaigh president re publican sinn f6in said that the new british secre tary cannot then be re garded as impartial on any count he is by the nature of his appointment pro british rule in the six counties but also in view of his record he is pro unionist as well he can not be seen by nationally minded people as anything other than an enemy the families of the shoot-to-kill victims will note that mr andrews dublin foreign affairs minister says he will not raise the failure to prose cute with the new secre tary and seamus mallon of the sdlp says that all that is in the past ", he said he noted also that john major has used his newly gained overall majority to try and cement british rule in the six counties the talks about the six count ies are irrelevant to irish republicans the fact that irish freedom is not on the agenda makes them so and no one claiming to be a republican can have any interest in them ruairi o bradaigh said hanging mayhew's deputy mi chael mates called in his first speech in westminis ter in 1974 for hanging to be brought back in the six counties for those resis ting british rule he served 20 years in the british army himself and was in the six counties up to his election in 1974 serving in the british ministry of de fence in belfast during the loyalist political strike of that year a member of the tory right-wing mon day club and vice-chair man of the party's comm ittee on the six counties he was chairman of the backbench defence select committee up to the recent british general elec tion in 1984 he told the brit ish government to ignore unionist opposition to fos tering anglo-irish rela tions provided the dublin government recognised that a united ireland would not be possible in the near future by de mocratic means this is essentially what was put in place in the anglo irish agreement of 1985 bodenstown sunday june saluns co kildare dublin bus leaves 13 aston place beside virgin megastore at 1.30pm