BERNADETTE and Michael McAliskey are recovering rapidly from the wounds inflicted on them on January 16 by woud ve assassins.
The McAliskeys' spirit is undaunted. Bernadette was particularly angered by a report in the rebruary l issue of the Dublin Sunday Tribune that she was going to discuss her political future on February 2 at her first meeting with Michael after the shooting.
1 he implication was that she was thinking of leaving politics.
MOVEMENT But, she told me, she had never con"I live for the sidered that tor a minute. mass movement", she declared. "It's when vou're lust sitting back doing nothing that you start having personal problems and getting scared.
"When vou're involved in a mass movement, when it's going forward, when you leer you te accompusning someuning. all your personal problems and fears fade away."
PRICE Like all leaders of the oppressed and expioca, bernadelle laces parucural dangers. The enemy tries to impede the struggle of the masses by striking down its foremost leaders.
But the British government knew it would have to par a terrible price it Bernadette were allowed to die. tact is shown by the solicitude the autnonues nave snown lor ner In nospitai, despite tne brutanty and callousness with which they generally behave towards the Irish people.
Bernadette also owes her life to her own fighting spirit. She never stopped fighting. She did not trust the British doctors, and only stopped struggling against the insertion of respiratory tubes when a surgeon trom the Gaellcspeaking area of Donegal explained the procedure to her in her own language. for national liberation.
"He knew that I would see be was a friend if he spoke in Irish" she said.
STRUGGLE Bernadette's mind is occupied now with the question of how to carry forward the struggle against repression. In particular, she is thinking about how to use une us-comme local cectors m That the North and the general election expected in the South to extend the national support will be decisive in the next phase of the struggle against the formation of broad action commitpeople. (Abridged version of an article that first appeared in Intercontinental Press, February 16 1981). the language of the Irish people's struggle movement against imperialist repression.
Bernadette also recognises that interShe is appealing for tees evervwhere to mobilse the maximun support for the human rights of the Irish ABORTION Michael and Bernadette McAliskey.