Protestant workers and Irish politics

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SOMEWHERE alongside the railway line between Liverpool and Kirkby is painted the legend "Paisley is a dickhead - Ian, not Bob" • Such sentiments sum up the repulsion most ordinary workers in Britain feel about Uister Protestants in general, and Protestant politicians in particular.

The political situation in the North of Ireland is seen as an anachronism something which pre-dates the class politics of British society.

From this general background many on the far left derive a position of support for the national struggle, which equates the irish nation. with Vietnam, Palestine, Algeria, Zimbabwe, etc. It sees the Protestants as a monolithic procolonial block to be driven from ireland in the same way as the white Rhodesians, or the Pieds Noirs from Algeria.

Alistair Todd (SO 133) adopts this approach when he asserts the primacy of the national struggle. Anyone saying other. wise - trying to insist on the primacy of class struggle and the development of socialist politics in Ireland - at best is chasing after the will o' the wisp.

Unfortunately, real world situations are more complicated than the romanticised perceptions of national struggle held by young and not so young British lefts who sing "The Merry Ploughboy' in cosmopolitan alehouses after closing time on a Friday night.

The heroic nationalist population in republican communities is in a situation today of political isolation and impasse because of objective developments which have taken place since partition.

Hostility

They not only face the hostility of Protestants and the repression of British and Irish state forces, they are also suffering the neglect, apathy or hostility of the various political and social forces in the 26 county Irish state.

To pursue Protestant/Catholic unity is a chimera? Evidence for this is the fact that only once was there a juncture of class interests between the communities, in 1932.

But what about unity between the northern nationalist workers and the labour movement in the south? To my knowledge there. has been no evidence of this since the Bloody Sunday demonstrations of 1972 — a full eleven years ago. In fact the most 'left wing' forces in the South (Sinn Fein, the Workers' Party; Socialists Against Nationalism; the Irish Labour Party) have put themselves quite shamelessly against involvement of Southern labour in northern struggles.

It would be justifiable to say that the working class in Ireland is divided three ways - Northern Protestant, Northern nationalist, and Southern.

Does this mean that because there has been very little unity between southern labour and the Northern nationalist population in the past, this will always be the case? If Marxists adopted such an approach we would deny change in society.

To rule out a junction of interests between sections of Protestant workers and the nationalist population would also be a nonsense. We have to start from the fact that a small minority on its own cannot achieve the programme of ending British political rule in Ireland.

Somehow, conditions have to be created whereby this small minority can link up with the rest of the working class, North and South. In the creation of these conditions, nationalists and socialists must turn imperialist plans to their own advantage.

The essentially conservative character of Irish society precludes socialism as an immediate possibility. British imperialism can run a war in Ireland well into the next century if it wishes because the scale of casualties it sustains is politically acceptable and because it is fighting a community which represents less than 10% of the Irish population.

It would prefer to find a solution, however. Imperialism has four options.

I. Integration of Northern Ireland into the UK.

2. Repartition.

3. 'Independence for 4. Federalism.

Even Thatcher would rule out have to this are either to leave Ireland or to recognise their 'Irishness' . I would prefer the latter. I would say tht people's consciousness can change. I would say that large sections of the Protestant community would recognise a common interest with their fellow workers.

During the American Civil War, the emerging British labour movement sided with the Union against the Confederacy even though in the immediate term it was against their 'economic interests'. Since then the British labour movement has been riddled with racist and pro-imperialist sentiments.

Was the action of the Lancashire workers then an exception?

O'Mahony "fails to recognise" the social position of the Protestant workers? Comrade Todd suffers from political dyslexia. It is the fact that he does recognise them which makes his recent articles on Ireland so important. And this political recognition should aid the struggle of the Irish working class to throw off the yoke of capitalist oppression.

BAS HARDY Liverpocl re