SCRP GRACE May I say on behalf of the Scottish Communist Republican Party how honoured I am to be invited to this important conference of anti-imperialists and communists. Today I wish to speak about the commitment of the Scottish Communist Republican Party to prisoner work, that is work among prisoners and their relitives. One of the first acts of the Scottish Communist Republican Party when it was founded was to affiliate to the Irish Republican POW Campaign. We give them the total support they deserve as imprisoned freedom-fighters against murderous British imperialism. We have also given priority to work for Scottish Republican political prisoners, and will continue to do all we can for these Scots, captured as they took up arms against British rule in [illegible] Scotland, thus [illegible] & sharing a common struggle with their Irish brothers and sisters. But today I particularly wish to speak of the struggle in Scottish peisons against the appalling conditions there. Prisoners are battling against isolation, deprivation, the denial of basic human rights and ultimately against the very existance of the Scottish Prison dystem itself. The Scottish Communist Republican Party places great emphasis on its work with the Scottish Prisoners Support Committee. With prisoners relatives and ex-prisoners we have begun the first work of its kind in Scotland. We have as our example the dedicated and sucessful work of the independant Relatives Action Committies in Ireland. Without their groundwork the mass mobilisation of the Hunger-Strike Action Committies would never have been possible. The Relatives Action Committees worked on the principles of independance, self-reliance and self-activity, carring out practical support work, public work and national and international propoganda work on behalf of the protesting prisoners. Why then should communists and anti-imperialists support and give priority to the struggles of all prisoners, ordinary as well as political? Why should we totally reject the label of criminal for all of them. Prisoners in Britain's prisons are people who have fallen foul of British "law and order". As communists and republicans we reject the entire British imperialist state. We reject its "justice" which is injustice incarnate. We reject its laws which aim only to keep the working class quiet enough to be exploited effectively. Karl Marx said that law-breaking is the lowest form of struggle against the state. It is isolated and individualistic but all the same it is a form of struggle. Those who engage in it are light years ahead of those who do not struggle at all. Over half the prisoners in Scottish prisonsts are there only because of poverty, because they could not pay fines. The real criminals in Scotland are the lying robbing British bourgeoise and their murderous servants, the police and the screws. Prisoners are at the sharp end of the British state, They confront it in all its naked inhumanity and brutality, stripped of every bourgeois disguise. They therefore have a much clearer understanding of the hature of the British state than other layers of Scottish society. Where they band together in stuuggle in prison, or where their relatives form prisoners support committies, they raise their struggle to a higher level, in conscious opposition to the state. PTO
