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From International Socialism, No.47, April/May 1971, pp.5-6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The regimes of both the North and South of Ireland continue to face enormous problems. The demise of the Northern Premier, Chichester-Clark, has finally taken place. Although his Southern counterpart, Lynch, remains in power his overthrow has also been predicted many times during the past year. Yet neither regime has had to deal with a united opposition.
In the North the pattern of sporadic violence is maintained. Chichester-Clark had to meet constant demands from old-style revanchist Unionists for more severe measures against the IRA, who are blamed more explicitly than ever for the violence. He conceded by prohibiting the wearing of republican uniforms, but at the same time dissipated whatever credit he had gained by permitting the United Irishman (the ‘official’ republican paper) to be sold in public. He retained a reputation with the British government by trying to introduce necessary reforms. But at the same time, the most powerful man in his government, Faulkner, rejected all tripartite talks between Stormont, Westminster and Dublin, although such talks would clearly be in line with the British government’s hopes of a federal, neo-colonial solution for the whole of Ireland.
In the South the position of Jack Lynch had seemed untenable ever since revelations about plots to ship arms into Ireland for use in the North which involved government ministers. There was a crisis inside his own party which, although hardly articulated in political terms, reflected the crisis in the North. Moreover, galloping inflation and unabated pressure from organised sections of workers for wage increases caused him to grasp at an incomes policy. But he had to withdraw this when faced with trade union opposition. As an answer to both problems Lynch threatened to invoke a section of the Offences Against the State Act and intern people without trial – inventing a spurious ‘kidnap plot’ as the excuse. Again, however, opposition forced him to drop the idea (although he did not formally retract it). Finally, the lobby against the proposed entry into the Common Market continues to grow both inside and outside the Dáil (parliament).
All this would seem to add up to extreme political fragility. Yet Lynch’s position as leader of the Fianna Fail party, and therefore as Taoiseach (premier), was consolidated at the party’s riotous convention in February.
Both governments have therefore weathered very considerable storms and may continue to do so – even if personalities are changed – as long as they are not challenged by a political force organised on an all-Ireland basis with strategy of attacking not only Unionism, but also British domination and the neo-colonialist system upheld by the bourgeoisie in the South. The preconditions for the formation of such a force seemed to exist for a time two years ago. Today, however, both socialists and republicans are fragmented, along ideological and geographical lines.
In the North, particularly in Belfast and Derry, the chances of developing the struggle, beyond anti-unionism and anti-Britishism towards a confrontation with the whole system, appear to be lost, at least for the present. The ‘Provisional’ IRA as taken effective control of the ghetto areas, policing them and defending them against attack – a reflection of the British army’s strategy of containing those most hostile to the police and army within these areas.
Traditional forms of defensive and religiously sectarian republicanism are now stronger in many areas than two years ago, although such a defensive posture is not incompatible with the occasional act of terror, generally in response to territorial infringements. From the point of view of imperialism the possibility of legislative reforms solving the problem and imposing peace is made more difficult – not only because of the continued strength of virulent protestant unionism, but also because of the retreat-into-self of the Catholic ghetto population. If this makes things more difficult for imperialism, it also creates difficulties for revolutionary socialists fighting imperialism.
In general the activities of socialists (in the Derry Labour Party, the People’s Democracy (PD), and the Mid-Ulster Independent Socialists) have not related to the physical confrontations now centred, in the main, on Belfast. The campaign on bus fares run by the PD last summer was certainly non-sectarian, but was hardly conducted at a very high political level, and, as a purely consumer campaign, did not connect with possible demands of transport workers for higher wages and better conditions. Various attempts to focus interest on issues of ownership such as the Lough Neagh Eel Fisheries, or on issues of solidarity action with workers engaged in an industrial dispute, as in the cement strike, have scored only low-level and temporary successes. The issues of redundancy, which are recurrent for workers in Northern Ireland, sixty per cent of whom are employed in multinational firms, generally in subsidiaries which are the first to close when the market situation or ‘rationalisation’ demand, are notoriously difficult to fight on. It would almost appear that, having missed earlier chances, socialists can hardly intervene in the confrontations with the imperialist forces, and that they are obliged to wait until there is a pause in these clashes. Meanwhile, they carry on their isolated campaigns in the different areas and towns of Northern Ireland.
In terms of its internal development and its political consolidation, the People’s Democracy has certainly come a long way since the open meetings of just over two years ago. Its evolution towards a coherent political force is marked by the adoption in November of last year of a political programme, but one which notably contains no immediate demands or proposals relating to self-defence of workers and which includes the withdrawal of British troops as twentieth point in twenty two. Most recently, the People’s Democracy have marched with the Civil Rights Association in Tyrone (having previously withdrawn active support from that organisation), prepared for unity talks with left republican and socialist elements in the South and established a PD branch in Dublin. These last two moves reflects an awareness that the breaking of the pattern of ghetto and sectarian violence depends to a large extent on events in the South.
It would be indefensible for socialists in the North to ignore the national and military questions. But no significant advance towards gaining the support of protestant workers will be made until socialists and republicans are seen as challenging the Southern regime in pursuit of working-class objectives. The viciousness of the British army may have heightened some of the anti-imperialist resentments that do exist among Protestant workers (whose Unionism does not denote love for Britain so much as a feeling of distinctness and superiority), but, given that it is when they are trying to get at the Catholic population of the Unity flats or the Falls Road that they are most often attacked by the troops, it would be illusory to attach too much significance to this. Protestants tend to view the activities of Catholics and republicans, even socialist republicans, as part of a conspiracy by the Dublin regime. The revelations at the recent arms trial in Dublin can only have encouraged this paranoia. If, however, the same organisations which are active in the North are seen concretely to challenge the policies of Fianna Fail, and thus to put into daily and militant practice the ideas of the Workers’ Republic, they may begin to gain credibility among Protestant workers.
The grounds for a challenge to capitalism in the South most certainly exist. The economic situation there deteriorates from day to day. Ireland, with its high dependence on trade and on outside investment, feels the effects of world inflation particularly sharply. The Southern Irish economy has failed to attain the planned-for growth rate of 4 per cent in the last two years. Unemployment is rising and is now 6 per cent of the industrial labour force. Unemployment and under-employment among the rural population is even higher. The credibility of the Fianna Fail government, which has promised 18,000 new jobs per annum on the basis of continued foreign investment, is questioned. If and when Ireland enters the Common Market, this problem will certainly be aggravated; the smaller native industries and the small farms, will in most cases be forced out of business. Lynch, however, is selling the Common Market idea on the ‘prospects of achieving full employment and ending emigration, which membership holds out.’ In the preparation for entry, which, of course, depends on Britain’s entry (three quarters of exports from the South go to Britain and North Ireland), it is most important that the industrial workers be disciplined. Industry, mainly under foreign control, has increased enormously in weight in the Irish economy over the last ten years. The value of industrial exports has increased five times, from about £40m. to over £200m.
Irish workers have regained their position at the top of the world strikes league with the cement and bank strikes of last year. There are strong traditions of industrial militancy among sections of Irish workers, but little experience of translating economic demands into political demands. All the political parties with the exception of Fine Gael have important active support among workers; all have an element of social democracy or populism (the appeal to small farmers) in their ideologies. Thus, the very bitter clashes which take place on the economic front, opposing farmers and workers to the government and the employing class, are only very indirectly reflected in political opposition.
The ‘official’ republican organisation, Sinn Fein represents in many ways a mixture of petty bourgeois nationalism and social-democracy, despite its connection with the IRA. Although the leftward trend within the organisation is to be taken seriously, there are still elements within it that are socially no more progressive than the ‘communalists’ and explicit anti-socialists of the rival, ‘Provisional’ organisation. While the ‘officials’ have been active and effective in the anti-Common Market and other single issue campaigns and although there are many working class people in the rank and file of the organisation who are also active in their trade unions, the organisation as such gives no lead on working class questions and has been behind the most militant workers on questions like that of wage freeze.
The rank and file of the Labour Party includes many who tend to agree with the ‘official’ Sinn Fein on questions such as the Common Market, ownership of the land, foreign investment and so on, as well as others who are closer to Trotskyist positions. Many of the delegates to the recent Special Conference on the Labour Party walked out when this decided it was prepared to enter a coalition government with the right-wing Fine Gael Party, should the opportunity arise. But the dissidents do not represent a coherent force.
Objective conditions are maturing to the point at which the intervention of a revolutionary socialist party is not only possible, but absolutely necessary if the opportunities presented by the approaching economic crisis, North and South, are not to be missed, as those of two years ago in the North were missed.
The possibility is growing in the South of a defection of worker and small farmer support from Lynch’s party as the implications of his neo-colonial policies become disastrously clear – and on grounds that dissident Fianna Fail opportunists like Haughey, Blaney and Boland (the defendants in the arms trial), whose anti-Labour records are well known, will not be able to exploit. In the North the realignment of Catholic politicians into the Social Democratic and Labour Party has not affected the situation significantly. As the ghetto strategy of many republicans brings no tangible results and the steam runs out of the Provisionals’ efforts, and as unemployment increases, even above the 45 per cent which at present prevails in some areas), a clear and coherent organisation will be needed to realise the potentialities of the situation. Republicans will begin to realise that the only way to keep British troops permanently out of their communities is by the driving of British capitalism out of Ireland through the working class taking power.
The human material for creating a revolutionary socialist organisation, which could cut through the ambiguities and complexities of the Irish situation, exists – but remains at the moment scattered throughout the thirty two counties, in a variety of parties and organisations, fighting particular struggles.
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