The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-10-13

British infantry, the lnsklllen
fusselliers and the Kings Roy
al riflerS, have been rushed
here and have taken part in the
suppression of huge unemployment
demonstrations in the first of which
more than ten thousand workers took
part. The troops and police are US
ing armored cars in the working
class districts.
The workers stopped street cars
and bus service and barricaded
themselves in the working class dis
tricts. They dug trenches and strung
barbed wire and were only driven
out after the most stubborn fighting
While the struggle was going or
in the streets and workers were be-
ing shot down by troops and police
the officials of the British trade I'M
ions, to which most of the Belfast
workers belong, were in conference
with the Lord Mayor.
There are more than one hundred
thousand unemployed in the Belfast
district, in which are located the
Harlan and Wolf shipyards, the sec
ond largest in the world, and the
principal section of the Irish linen
industry. The Irish Revolutionary
Workers Groups Communists are
taking leading part in the struggle.
The Communists have been active or
ganizing the unemployed in recent
years. The Belfast workers have a
long tradition OF militancy in strike
struggles and are known for their
stubborn resistance to police attacks.
British imperialist sources blame
the Irish Republican army for the
resistance to the police and troops.
There is no doubt but that Irish Re
publican army, which recently
formed its own party, and are under
petty bourgeois nationalist leadership
have large following in the Orange
Protestant North.
The extreme measures taken BY
the British authorities-the use of
regular troops and firearms for the
first time in suppression of unem-
ployed demonstrations - show that
the Belfast struggle, arising out OF
the terrible restitution of the work
ers is definitely connected with the
struggle for national liberation; that
there is a growing unity movement
Of the working class of the Protestant
and industrialized North and the
Catholic and agrarian South for
complete separation from Great
Britain.
The militant struggle in Belfast is
bound up with the sharpening of the
economic crisis throughout the whole
of Ireland. Belfast has been hard
hit as result of the unemployment
among shipyard workers and the
cutting down of the linen trade, es-
pecially due to economic crisis in
the United States which formed the
main market for Irish linen. The
situation has been made even more
intolerable by the separation of the
five Northern industrial counties
from the Southern agricultural dis
tiicts, the latter making up the Irish
Free stateA
With the coming Of De Valera into
office, as a result of his promise to
conduct struggle for national liber-
alton and his program of social de-
mands of the workers and peasants,
the situation in Ireland has not i'm
proved. De Valera has been giving
way steadily to the pressure of Brit
ish Imperialism. The situation of
the workers and peasants of the
Irish Free State has been severe as
a result of the agrarian crisis. The
restriction Of immigration to the
United States by American capital
ism and by the cutting down of as
sistance on the part of the Irish
in the United States as
a result of the crisis here. De Valera
has been using the reactionary state
machine against the strikers and un-