Ireland made too easy

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70p (plus 16p p&p) from WSL, PO Box Special issue on struggle in the unions: also contains articles on workers' politics and national liberation, and the Stalinist state 'unions' 135, London N1 ODD THERE are so few books or even pamphlets giving a short, accessible . socialist overview of Irish history that those who attempt the difficult task deserve a welcome.

Despite the slapstick comicbook style - not very appropriate, and at times uncomfortably close to anti-Irish jokes — the conclusions are serious. British troops should get out, unconditionally. There must be a united Ireland -and or united saintist Preland.

Phil Evans (a contributor to Socialist Worker) rejects the widespread view that this socialist Ireland can be won by a mystical 'growing-over' of the present nationalist struggle of the Northern Ireland minority. Evans insists on the centrality. of ProtestantCatholic working class unity. This can be achieved by a workers' socialist party, 'with the will to seize for the workers ui Ireland the wealth of Ireland' The book does 'not say how that party will be built, or how the few historical examples it cites of Protestant-Catholic unity could be generalised: but these are bigger questions, perhaps, than can reasonably be dealt with in a book of this scope.

Some faults, however, should have been avoidable. There are a lot of factual errors, some startling, as when leader liam Redmond is diet scribed as leader of the Irish Republican - Brotherhood, a conspiratorial military organisation.

And, despite the socialist conclusions, social and economic background is neglected in comparison with political and military sound and fury.. The various abortive attempts at a French invasion of Ireland in 1796-8 weniore space nan oconnelle. While Catholic nationalism of the early 19th century has fairly full coverage, no account is given of the Irish labour movement since 1916.

Most. readers, I think, would find it difficult to get a . picture Martin Thomas reviews 'Ireland for illustrations by Phil Evans, addition Writers and Readers, £2.95.

of the very different social content at different times of Irish nationalism and of Protestant Loyalism.

The criticism made of the Republican tradition lacks historical sense. All military actions - trom those which whatever their . politica advisability, are certainly legitimate acts of war against British occupation, through to indefensible s pub bombings - are deplored as terrorist, and exactly the same criticisms as for today are made of the armed uprising led by Robert Emmet in 1803. (In the name of what alternative is Emmet criticised? Working class mass action? There was no cohesive working class.)

A sense of social and economic change is equally lacking from the account given of British ruling-class policy towards Ireland. Why did the Liberal Party - at the time the main representative of the industrial bourge- push Home Rule for Ireland from the 1880s through to World War 1? No explanation is offered.

No mention is made of the British ruling-class: policy of pacifying the Irish countryside by a state-organised buyout of the landlords in the late 19th and early 20th century, nor of the attempts by the British bourgeoisie in the '60s to edge towards reunification of Ireland.

Britain's continued presence in Ireland is explained far too crudely in terms of the profitability of investment in Northern Ireland. Don't the overhead expenses far exceed the profits? Phil Evans concedes that they do - but then shifts to the idea that the purpose of the military presence is to protect British investments in the South.

This is nonsense. Straight aconomic domination, withi out any direct political, inter: vention, is quite, adequate Beginn rs, main text and al text by Eileen Pollock.

for British capital in Ireland - just as it is adequate for the US capitalists who are now the biggest investors in the 26 Counties. The problem is that in the meantime the British ruling class is committed to beating down the Northern Ireland Catholics as a precondition for the desired cold, controlled remodelling from above. ' The book could not reasonably be expected to give a comreconciliation. It can, however, be criticised for vastly oversimplitying the problem through its lack of grip on social and economic change.

Evans ends. with an assertion of faith in the possibility of unity. 'It has been done before' - by Wolfe Tone. Yes, except that Tone's Ireland was socially and economically worlds apart from the island today. • 'The 26 Counties is nonsectarian', Phil Evans states - oddly, in view of the fact that just some 60 pages earlier he has pointed out its sectarian features. This sugary avoidance of unpleasant facts is all too common on the left, and probably is part of the reason why we have not been able to convince more people about our basic argument. for Irish freedom.

In 1970 the Irish socialist Michael Farrell wrote, in a pamphlet published by the SWP (then IS): 'The one million Protestants in the North are not like their co-religionists in the South in 1922... The Northern Protestants are overwhelmingly working class. Though they have little enough in the North, they stand to lose even that in the South... They fear that history may bring its own retribution and the discrimination used against the Catholics in the North might e used against them in initectre anc An attempt to impose a. Green Tory, united, Ireland: would, Farrell argued, lead to no better than 'a communal bloodbath' and 'the desolation of the North' • The problem could only be solved by 'an organisation of genuine socialists fighting Green Tory gombeen men in the 26 Counties as vigorously as the Orange Tories in the North' By 1976 he was writing that 'the 26 county state has been fairly free of anti-Protestant discrimination' and "There would be no basis for sustained Unionist resistance to a United Ireland' (i.e. even a Green Tory united Ireland).

What had changed? Had the prejudices of the Protestants proved less powerful? Or the 26 County state more enlightened? Far from it.

Farrell had shifted (rightly) from a focus on civil rights within the Northern state plus general socialism to a realisation that the fundamental 'civil right' in question is the right of the Irish people as a whole to self-determination; but then he had modified his perception of the facts to fit more comfortably with the conclusions. From illusions in the possibility of ignoring the Border, to illusions about the possibility of reconciling the Protestant workers with Green Catholic nationalism...

There ought to be a good market for a book on Ireland without illusions' AS a tribute to the great surrealist director Luis Bunuel, who died recently, BBC 2 is showing a selection of The Republic of Sin:-.

Both at 9.25 p.m.

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Socialist Organiser, 18 August 1983 Page

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