Haringey calls for withdrawal
The 20th anniversary of the start of the Civil Rights Movement
was marked in Haringey, North London, with a meeting in the
area's Irish Centre attended by five hundred people and addressed
by Tottenham Labour MP and black rights campaigner Bernie Grant.
Bernadette McAliskey and journalist Michael Farrell also spoke.
The event launched the Haringey Year of Action for Ireland and
many further events are planned in the borough to promote British
withdrawal from Ireland. The year will end in August 1989,
exactly twenty years after the British troops were sent in by a
Labour government.
The meeting emphasised the links between the struggles of black
and Irish peoples. Speakers described the use of the PTA and the
discrimination faced by Irish people in the area.
Bernie Grant called for British withdrawal leading to Irish
reunification as the only way towards peace. He rejected the
recent Labour Party policy document on Ireland because it gave
loyalists a veto over the future of the whole island by saying
that Irish unity could not happen until it was supported by a
majority within the artificial six-county state.
Bernadette McAliskey and Michael Farrell both received standing
ovations when they addressed the meeting. Farrell stressed the
need for Irish people to make links with black people in their
struggle for freedom. McAliskey said that Irish activists should
distinguish themselves from the mass of white people by their
support for anti-racist campaigns.
Phoblacht 27 October 1988
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)