AT FIRST GLANCE the latest political crisis in the Southern Irish state appears akin to a row in a Mayfair gentlemen's club - the President resigning because the Minister Defence calls him nasty names. But behind this lies a potentially explosive poltical crisis ane O'Dalaigh's resignation is the first real setback the Irish has met in its attempt to construct one of the most repressive regimes in western 'democracy.
This repression is highlighted by two measures recently passed by the Irish Parliament (Dail): the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act, and the Emergency Powers Act.
The powers embodied in these measures enabled the Fine Gael/ coalition to outlaw sinn Fein. and to ban any Sinn Fein spokesperson from appearing the state controlled radio and television.
As well as this attack on civil berties, ine emergency measures allow anyone to be jailed for up to ten years if they incite or invite anyone to join the IRA. The testament of a Special Branch officer is the sole evidence needed to secure carried through so easily, conviction for this 'offence'. There are also new police powers under which a suspect can be held as long as seven days before being charged of or released.
All these draconian assaults on normal bourgeois 'rights' are being accompanied by the stepping up of torture in Irish prisons and police stations, the threatened execution of Marie ane Noel Murai guilty of murdering a policeman by a non-jury trial - and the forcing off the air of an occasionally radical current affairs television programme Seven Days.
Wrath It was because the legal sensibilities of the ex-judge O'Dalaigh made nim wonder whetner the proposed measures were constitutional that he referred them to Supreme Court. This brought down the wrath of the coalition government on his head.
Minister of Defence Donegan call-ed O'Dalaigh 'a thundering disgrace - a remark which, as it was leaked to the press before it was actually should be seen as a defeat for a bureaucratic the ointment which the which HaSE O'Dalaigh's resignation.
Now the 26 - declared government of Jack the economic crisis Ireland is facing the kow-towing NISH made, was a carefully considered attempt to silence the liberal fly in President had become. It was this remark Friday produced Counties face the prospect of a presidential election, and even a possible general election. It will not just be the Government's record of repression which will be an issue in such a contest; its appalling economic record will also be on trial.
But the capacity of the opposition Fianna Fail party to seriously challenge the coalition on both issues is strictly limited. The last Fianna Fail Lynch also passed a series of repressive measures, and it has no answer at all to At root both the economic crisis and repression have the same source OT SUCCESSIVE Irish governments to British imperialism. With the dependence of the Irish economy on the British econ- Ireland as a whole. omy and with the Southern Government backing Britain's attempt to silence and destroy Republicanism, no real alternative to the coalition s policies can emerge - unless those policies offer a direct challenge to ainst Britain's presence and influence in What the constitutional crisis has underlined is that all the attempts of successive Irish governments to isolate off the Six Counties have now met with failure. The struggle agHI HOME IN THE SOUTH British imperialism North has spilled over into the South in its most dramatic form yet. And until that struggle has been won, Ireland will always be in crisis throughout its 32 counties.
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Last week GREG BENTON explained why the purge of the 'radical' faction in China had been and argued that it
DAIL DEBATE EMERGENCY
IS THIS ANOTHER OF THOSE REFORMS WHICH SHOULD MAKE NORTHERNERS