EAMONN McCANN imparted a maxim to me once that has served roughly as a socialist maxim ever since. Whether he picked it up from Trotsky, or devised it himself, I do not know. Mr McCann is a brilliant defender, in his own right, of the working class.

We were on our way to a meeting of the business class in Derry, who were at that time deeply worried by the riots which had begun to engulf the town. It was 1968, people were throwing stones and unemployment was endemic.

"It is unemployment which causes violence, not violence which causes unemployment, and until you get that causal sequence correct, you cannot bring peace," he taught me, and the glum burgers who thought that stone-throwing was the problem.

Twenty-five years on, with bullets replacing stones, Eamonn has cautioned us all to keep a sharp eye on the 'Adams-Hume talks. The two men, one claiming to espouse socialism, the other a supporter of capitalism, have nothing in common, he infers, unless it be the cessation of violence. They have no common agenda for the betterment of the working class", Mr McCann wrote in the last issue of Hot Press, "except along capitalist lines".

As he has pointed out on more than one occasion, when the forces of revolution and capitalism decide to compromise, it is the revolutionary who must yield ground. So it might be that the socialist agenda takes a back seat while Hume and Adams work out conditions for a cease-fire.

politically evil

There is more than a suggestion that Gerry Adams would have sold out the cause of the working-class if peace - that is to say, the cessation of the armed struggle - were to occur without having simultaneously brought to a successful conclusion the strike in which workers employed by Pat the Baker are currently engaged. Mr. Adams should also, it is inferred, be insisting that banks be nationalised and all capital debt be written off.

This would mean that Gerry Adams should more or less be aiming to change the whole world, or at least that sector of it which is governed by the rules of international finance. Nothing less will satisfy Eamonn McCann's rigorous standards of peace with justice.

A bit much, is it not? It's not as though Gerry Adams brings the unqualified support of the trade union movement to his cause. He can't even count on the Derry Trades Council, of which Eamonn McCann is the current chairperson. Ditto for support from feminism, Greenpeace, the ANC, the PLO, save-the-whalers, rock and rollers, the socialist faction in the European Parliament, the British Labour Party, the AOH, or illegal Irish workers in America.

At most Mr. Adams can rally Sinn Fein and the IRA to his cause. That, of course, would be a lot. That would be wonderful. I can't think of any serious-minded people who would object one bit if Gerry Adams were to deliver a cease-fire, and I know of many who would honour him and them for it. With the exception, it would appear, of Eamonn McCann who manages simultaneously to hold the view that the IRA's armed struggle is "politically evil" as he said in a recent broadcast, while castigating Mr. Adams for contemplating an end to that struggle without having also won the socialist revolution.

It would be carping, at this juncture, to point out that not everybody shares the desire of Mr. Adams, Mr. McCann and such humble camp-followers as myself to bring about the unadulterated rule of the working class. This does not mean that we who are in the painfully evident minority are wrong. It does not mean we must wait in line until the demands of other factions are met. It does not mean that we should shut up.

Moral Courage

It would do no harm however to recognise that for an awful lot of people - the huge majority in fact - an end to the war, which means of course the forswearing of armed struggle on all sides, would be most welcome, whether or not it is accompanied by an immediate alleviation in the economic conditions of the working class. It would be no small thing to wake up in the morning and know that no-one will die that day because of bullets and bombs.

In fact, that would be an enormous and radical improvement in the lives of, say, the people of West Belfast. Let me go further - most people in Ireland would heave a sigh of relief, and the relatives of British soldiers would be none too displeased either. I can think of millions of people who would be delighted, now that I think about it for more than one second.

And there is no doubt that funding along the lines of the Marshall Aid plan would be pumped in to secure the peace, such as is now proposed for the West Bank and Gaza in the wake of the PLO-Israeli cease-fire. There will even be quite a few jobs in it, because financiers and politicians know, as surely as Eamonn McCann knows, that unemployment is one of the causes of violence.

Gerry Adams is showing more moral courage than other parties to the conflict. He is an example to us all. Fair play to him.