Connolly, class unity and the Irish struggle

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IN THE May 26 edition of your paper a certain Alistair Todd of Cambridge claimed the sanction of James Connolly for his proposition that attempts to unite Protestant and Catholic workers were "screamingly funny" in their absurdity. To substantiate this rather sweeping assertion he advanced two proofs - a specific one drawn from history and a more general one drawn from sociology.

Citing an exception to prove the rule Todd insists that the brief but very real unity achieved between the Falls and the Shankill during the 1932 Outdoor Relief Strike cannot be seen as a model for future activity. His reasoning is most instructive.

He doesn't deny Protestant capacity to express class solidarity with Catholic workers. His objection is that such solidarity can only emerge when "there was no apparent threat to partition in the mind of Protestant workers." To clinch the matter Todd tells us that Protestant access to alleged privileges crucially modifies the wagelabour/capital relationship. So much so that they "can have nothing in common with the Catholic working class." • Todd has most succinctly Foven together a number of themes that constitute in large measure what I would describe as the pathological condition of the British Left on the Irish question. Consequently his reasoning is worthy of critical scrutiny.

News Bulletin No 20 May-June 1983 AGANI NAM Firstly the facts. Not only did Connolly (and Larkin) not regard it as peculiar to unite Protestant and Catholic workers around bread and butter issues, but they: actually achieved some success when they worked for such unity.

In July 1911 for instance Connolly led out 300 dockers (Catholic) in sympathy with Protestant employees working for the Head Line Company.

Seamen

Most seamen had just settled a dispute in which they had been supported by dockers and now Protestant seamen reciprocated when cross channel dockers (Protestant) and deep sea dockers (Catholic) came forward with their own demands.

Collections for the strike were preceded through the streets of Belfast by a "Non-Sectarian Labour Band" composed of players drawn from both Orange and Catholic brass bands.

Three months later the Band was wheeled out again, this time in support of Catholic 'mill girls' who had approached Connolly for help in forming a union. Better paid Protestant 'mill girls' were already organised in the Textile Operatives Society, but many defied their leader Mary Galway and came out in solidarity with the Catholic workers.

Connolly had his enemies, of course, who like Alistair Todd were hostile to Connolly's El Salvador Solidarity Campaign: affiliation £5 for individual and £10 for organisations, from 29 (01-359 2270 efforts to forge trade union cooperation between Catholic and - Protestant workers.

While he was attending Mass during the 'mill girls' strike, the celebrating priest launched an attack upon him, and Mary Galway sounds uncannily like Alistair Todd when at the Belfast Trades Council she complained of Connolly's 'interference' and told him to "confine himself to the class of workers he was sent to represent.

What Connolly found "screamingly funny" was something quite different. Namely the reliance upon English literature and arguments to promote socialist sentiment in the very different conditions of Belfast.

Readers who wish to judge the matter for themselves can find the quote in its full and proper context on page 267 of the Penguin selection of James Connolly's writings or on page 41 of the Cork Workers Club pamphlet Ireland upon the Dissecting Table.' Solidarity Let us examine a little more closely the limited capacity of Protestant workers to express class solidarity. This is restricted, so Todd tells us, to periods when the threat to Partition is lifted.

Todd is unquestionably correct in recognising that while Protestants feel their sense of community to be under threat class sentiment is overwhelmed by national sentiment. But what is so remarkable about that? However regrettable it may • be the historical record is quite unambiguous. The working classes of all countries have invariably put nation before class when they have felt the borders of their territory, their community, their nation to be under threat. Whether the threat is real or imaginary the response has been the same.

During the history of the German dockers, there are not a few proud moments of class solidarity with their English counterparts, but I would suggest to Alistair Todd that it would indeed be screamingly funny in its absurdity to seek evidence of such unity during the fire bombing of Hamburg.

Quite unwittingly Todd has pointed to what could be the beginning of wisdom on the Irish question. The class unity of Protestant and Catholic workers against capitalism can indeed flourish, as Alistair Todd admits, but only if Protestant sense of cultural separateness from the Catholic Irish nation is respected.

Conversely, as long as socialists endorse the 'irridentist' republican campaign to subjugate Protestants into a nation they feel no part of, no working class unity will ever be possible.

The significance that Todd wishes to attach to the sectarian operation of the wage-labour/ capital relationship also bears little examination. In no capitalConnolly ist country will he find a pure unmodified labour market. The squalid goings on in the North East corner of Ireland are small beer indeed compared to other 'crucial modifications' of that relationship.

Young against old, skilled against unskilled, black against white, and, most crippling of all, men against women. What are the disadvantages suffered by Catholics in the Lagan Valley compared to the pervasive discriminations systematically practised • against female workers?

More often than not the "crucial modifications" will be legally and publicly institutionalised. Does Todd draw the conclusion he logically should from his own argument: emale workers can have nothing in common with male workers. If not, why not?

It is the. responsibility of sucialists to strive to unite all oppressed. Given the very diversity and mutually conflicting sectional interests that Todd is nut unaware of, no resolution is possible outside of an international context.

In this resides the most fertile part of Trotsky's heritage.

In the poisoned shade of stalin's legacy, national and sectional advocacy has corroded the earlier internationalist vision. When Todd reduces the matter to telling us what tribe/ team he is cheering for we have a measure of the fall.

JO QUIGLEY Halesowen

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