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'Irish workers who really want to fight for a socialist Ireland will have to go beyond the populism of Sinn Fein, and take their stand on working-class Marxist AT THE 1983 Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, radical republicans won a clear victory for a turn to politics — and this right-wing and traditionalist reaction against "politics' and 'socialism' in the Republican movement, and whose first pronouncements in 1970 had been denunciations of 'extreme It was the political triumph of Nurthern Republicans who have long been the radical wing of the movement, In the first two parts of this article we examined the history of Republicanism and the main events in Northern Ireland since 1968. We need, finally, to examine the period immediately leading up to the. 1983 Ard Fheis.

After the power-sharing executive collapsed under the blows of the Orange general strike in 1974, the film of events since 1972 began to wind backwards, destroying the hopes of the majority of the Catholics - and of the British government - that a new political superstructure could be established in Northern Ireland on the basis of the sectarian Six County unit.

The IRA had been in the doldrums in late 1973 and early 1974, when the power-sharing executive was being set up and worked.

It was pushed very much to the sidelines during the decisive struggle between the Protestants and the British government (and its Unionist and SDLP agents) in May 1974.

Then the IRA's first response to the wreck of Britain's strategy was a surge of energetic militarism, which included stepped-up campaign in Britain.

When things slowed down, it became clear that the Republican movement was seriously disoriented. It must have been pretty clear to many in that movement that they had been decisively checkmated by the For most of 1975 there was an IRA ceasefire in Northern Ireland. This was the year in which Britain's Labour government set up an elected assembly to try to work out an agreed constitution to replace the one that the Protestant workers wrecked in mid 1974.

Sinn Fein was allowed to set up 'incident centres' , recognised by the British authorities, through which a considerable amount of contact and collaboration took place.

In early 1976* the constitutional assembly's Protestant majority reported its conclusions to the British governDEIT: that majority (that is, Procestani rule be restored imICE! Briair rejeczed this. # İr pita SUFIES FT: I5 defera of tae IRA be central stise goal, for the IRA was the source of both the military offensive that directly challenged British rule and partition, and indirectly the cause of the Protestant unrest.

Britain launched a new offensive against the IRA. As always, it translated itself into a savage assault on the Catholic community, a sizeable part of which gives active or passive support to the IRA.

Political status was withdrawn for all paramilitaries convicted after April 1976.

During the 1975 ceasefire some observers had not been at all sure that there would ever be a full resumption of the IRA's military offensive. When the offensive was resumed, it lacked some of its old vigour.

The IRA was, by all accounts, in a bad state of morale. Its discipline and organisation had been undermined during the ceasefire. Its survival and revival was partly due to the British offensive, which massively alienated the Catholic population.

The IRA reorganised itself on a tighter cell structure and fought back.

Individuals in the Republican movement may have believed it necessary for them to go political. But the movement didn't decide to do that. Conditions in the North pushed them towards politics, as the tragic five-year struggle in the prison camps built up towards the climax of the 1981 hunger strike.

In response to the Labour government's withdrawal of the 'special status' conceded by the Tories in 1972, Republican prisoners began the 'blanket protest' . They refused to wear prison clothes. When confined to their cells in blankets, they refused to 'slop out' Outside, 'Relatives Action Committees' agitated and built up support. Over five years the Catholic mass movement renewed itself, focusing on the prisoners.

By the time Bobby Sands was elected MP, and died on hunger strike - the first of ten - in 1981, the Catholic mass movement was on a scale not seen since 1972. There were even stirrings in the South, for the first time since 1972.

When the hunger strike was over, the Republican leaders had to decide what to do about the fact that their main gains bad been political gains, both in terms of community support and of tangible results.

The state of the SDLP made politics - the chance to become the electorally recognised representative of the Catholic community — irresistible to the Republican leadership. After years of wasting and going to seed in the no -politics wilderness imposed in Northern Ireland by Britain after 1976, the SDLP had been forced by the feeling in the Catholic community into reluctant, tepid support for the hunger strike.

It was pushed into the invidious position of indirectly supporting the Provisionals, thereby conceding a tremendous moral advantage to them.

A new approach rose out of the grave of Bobby Sands MP.

' An armalite in one hand, and a ballot paper in the other'. , became the self-definition of the radical wing of the Republicans, based in the North. This was the politics that took over the national organisation at November's Ard Fheis.

The radicalisation of Sinn Fein had many complexities. (And it was accompánied by a turn away from any serious notion of conciliating the Protestant workers. But the abandonment of 'federalism' is a big subject in itself, and has already been discussed at some length in SO).

The Provisional Sinn Fein and IRA were born in a reaction against a one-sided turn to a variant (quasi-Stalinist) of left-wing politics. Their leaders were of the traditional Republican mould, plebeian but right wing, formed around one-issue politics and possessing an ideology in which nationalism was closely fused with Catholicism.

One reason why the Republicans in the '40s and '50s were so unrelievedly right wing - in contrast to the '20s and '30s, and earlier - was the thinness of its ranks. Scattered over the surface of Irish society, they lacked organic contact, involvement, or concern, as a political movement, with the social problems of either workers or small farmers.

In the North in the '70s it was different. The Catholics of the cities and towns were the specially oppressed, in semi-permanent unemployment, sunk in poverty and often in hopelessness.

In addition, the leaders of the Republican movement and its activists saw their own reflection in movements of the oppressed throughout the world, just as the Catholics of Derry in the late '60s saw themselves as the counterparts of the Blacks in the USA. (They called themselves 'white blacks').

Apart and aside from all questions of political conviction, a movement like the Provisionals in conditions like Northern Ireland's has an additional and imperious reason to be radical - it needs to attach as many people as possible to its nationalist cause. Social agitation and becoming involved in community politics has the same recommendations to the Irish-separatist physical-force politician Belfast as to the parliamentary Liberal politician in Liverpool -it builds support, it makes the politician the champion of the community.

The political faction of the Provisionals initially presented their ideas to the movement as an essential part of the social logistics of fighting a prolonged guerilla war which, they said, might last for 20 years.

The other strand woven into the new approach was the powerful historical tradition of left-wing, mainly populist, Republicanism, which the Northerners inevitably drew on.

In the 1960s James Connolly's writings began to be widely circulated and known for the first time in decades. But the reservoir of left-wing Republicanism is only indirectly linked to Connolly. It has two distinct sources, both post-dating Connolly.

One is a development of Republicanism towards involvement with 'the men of no property' in the aftermath of the defeat of the Republicans and the setting up of the Free State at the beginning of the 1920s. This is a genuine populism, with typical populist lack of clear distinetion between workers and farmers who make up 'the people' Real concern for the people is combined with the hard-headed nationalist belief that nationalism needs them (rather than them needing nationalism).

We must turn to the men of no property, said Wolfe Tone in the 1790s, and his words were deliberately picked up and repeated by the socialist Republican Liam Mellowes, writing from Mountjoy jail in 1922 about the deal that the southern Irish bourgeoisie had made with the British Empire to subvert and overthrow the Irish Republic. (Mellowes was later shot by the Free State government).

This Republicanism presented over many decades by George Gilmore and Paedar O'Donnell.

The other source of Republican populism is Stalinism. The notion of the two-stage revolution - first complete the 'bourgeois revolution', and only then fight for socialism - was translated into "Irish' as the idea that national independence had to be 'completed' as a first stage towards socialism.

The native strand of left Republicanism, moving logically towards working class politics, met up with the Stalinists in the '30s, and had all its nationalist limits reinforced and strengin. ened. 'First win the broad common demand for the independent national Republic - and then go for the Workers' Republic' was the slogan of the majority of the left-wing Republican Congress, which included the Stalinists, in 1934.

These ideas gained influence in the '70s because they seemed to offer a reconciliation of socialist and radical goals with an immediate focus on the nationalist war in the Six Counties - begun by the Provisionals in their right-wing phase.

So where is Sinn Fein at after the Ard Fheis? It is where sections of the Republican movement have often been before. Gerry Adams' speech was the measure of it.

Adams made it plain that the organisation under the new leadership will continue the war in the North.

There is no reason to question the sincerity of this declaration. The question is: are those right who see the change in the Provisionals as the beginning of a journey that leads away from physical force on principle?

That road has already been travelled by the ex-Republican Free Staters in the 20s; by the ex-Republican Fianna Fail in the 30s; and by the ex-Republican Clann na Poblachta in the '40s. In all of these cases, sections of Sinn Fein, stripped of the commitment to physical force on principle, became more or less radical bourgeois parliamentary parties.

On the question of abstentionism, the Ard Fheis was, as we saw in part 1, somewhat selfcontradictory. Nevertheless there was a tremendous departure trom the bedrock principles of the movement when it decided to take seats (should it win them) in the EEC Parliament.

This makes a bizarre situation. In the Six Counties, a radical organisation might choose as a tactic (on grounds of the artificial nature of the state)

what Sinn Fein arrives at from tradition and first principles.

In the 26 Counties, Sinn Fein's abstentionism is utterly absurd. The 26 County parliament has operated for 60 years as a stable bourgeois democracy whose legitimacy is supported by the vast majority of the populațion. Any move beyond this system is a matter of persuasion and political processes. In practice the Republicans accept this: since the '40s, despite incidents like the recent kidnapping of the millionaire Don Tidey, it has been an article of faith that there is no political basis for war on the 26 County state.

The massive reaction to the killing of one policeman and one soldier in the 26 Counties -there is still talk of banning Sinn Fein — should remind the Republicans why they adopted that policy back in the '40s.

Yet while in practice accepting it has to work within the 26 County framework, Sinn Fein refuses to participate in parliament: it is just 'a stone to trouble the living stream' of political Why? Because the Republican movement is a single-issue movement. Onto the stem of that single issue, radical social politics have been grafted, or have sprouted, at different times over the decades, but abstentionism has remained fundamental. It has been the guarantee against being distracted, the way to ensure that social questions cut channels to the national question and do not displace it.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein will participate in the much less solidly established EEC Parliament.

Inevitably, the approach decided by the Ard Fheis will generate pressure to break from abstentionism.

If electoral results are even a part of your objective, then it makes sense not to give yourself the handicap of additionally having to convince people to vote for a non-practising parliamentary representative.

The Ard Fheis's approach has who are not opposed to using elections selectively and judiSocialist Organiser no. 160 January S 1984 Page 11

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OIL BOBBI SANDIS KJERAN DOMERTY TI OL FRANCIS HUGHES PADDY AGNEN ID YOL RIAY MICREESIY AOL DAISY O'HARA opulism?

in the based on the 1916 declaration if class social forees.

OK ciously.

They have good reasons for suspicion. The Republicans, even right-wing Republicans, are intransigent revolutionaries. Their revolutionism consists in a stark rejection of existing political and state structures, and the pursuit of other, ideal, alternative structures, which do not exist.

Physical force is the only practical action that is recognised as directly having a bearing on the work of substituting the desired ideal for what exists now. The fetishes of physical force on principle and abstentionism complement and reinforce each other.

And it is a fact, as we have seen, that time after time Republican groups that have abandoned abstentionism have become enmeshed in the existing establishment.

The true explanation for the fate of these ex-abstentionist groups, however, is in their class composition and their social politics, which were petty bourgeois and not revolutionary.

A Marxist working-class organisation can use tactics and techniques in a varied way, working in a bourgeois parliament or through armed streetfighting, and remain all the while true to itself. But once the tactical fetish that separated these ex-Republican groups from the existing order was cleared away, there was nothing solid to maintain their revolutionary stance.

Abstentionist and physicalforce-on-principle Irish Republicanism has many things in common with Spanish anarchism. Its fate in relation to government is similar to that of those anarchists who 'denied' politics and the argued for participation EEC parliament thus:

''To fight the EEC election on an abstentionist basis would be madness when it provides the best opportunity ever to beat the SDLP"

The way Martin McGuinness argued the case for abandoning abstention from the EEC parliament has more than equal application for the South. Even if there is no intention by Adams and his co thinkers to manipulate the movement towards abandoning militarism, the combination of armalite and ballot box is an uneasy one.

The effects of the recent London bombings show that clearly. Insufficient evidence is available for a hard assessment. It is possible that the bombings were an expression of the Adams faction's determination to really combine gun and ballot box, and to head off division by doing so. But that is the least probable explanation.

The bombings in London are too pointedly destructive of Gerry Adams based on the 1916 declaration of the Irish Republic and on the 1919 'Democratic Programme' of the Irish parliament, Dail Eireann.

Both of these documents had a certain radical social edge to them in their own time (though they were never anything more than documents). The 1919 document was drafted by the Irish labour leaders, and adapted by Dail Eireann in return for the labour movement subordinating itself to the nationalists during the struggle with Britain for independence.

Vaguely

They are not documents of social radicalism today. They do no more than talk vaguely about the state having social re. sponsibilities, treating 'the children of the nation' equally, and so on. Before the welfare state, that was radical, but today even the Tory party of Margaret Thatcher would at least pay lip-service to such principles.

Despite this, it is indisputable that the Republican movement has moved left, and that most of its members want it to be a leftwing and socialist movement based upon and championing the working class and working farmers.

The Sinn Fein/IRA remains a loose populist party which cannot in its present form function as a serious force for socialism in Ireland. Indeed, because of its attitude to the Protestant workers in Northern Ireland, it is bound, despite good intentions, to work against working-class socialism.

It remains the military leadclass social forces.

How is the Provisional Republican movement populist? Its composition in the North is mainly working class. Despite this, the typical populist confusion about classes is expressed, not so much on the level of confused ideas about the definition of class, but in their attitude to the Protestants.

Since the Protestants include the big majority of the working class in Northern Ireland, an attitude to the Protestants also implies an attitude to the working class, and has decisive implication for the identification and definition of the force that will bring socialism.

The Provisionals' populism is expressed in their always implicit and sometimes explicit Catholic • communalism. For there will be no socialist revolution in Ireland without the decisive core of the Protestant working class.

The idea of socialism created by a military elite, no matter how much support it has in the Catholic community and no matter how good the back-up services they create by community politics, is inconsistent with working class politics. Yet this is implied in the Provisionals' nation and their practice of proceeding by way of a military struggle for socialism irrespective of the (Protestant majority of) the working class.

It is this central, immutable commitment to military struggle, on principle, now - provided only that there is sufficient support in the Catholic community to make it practicable -which shapes and moulds what the Provisionals can and cannot do with the Protestant working class. tinn and identitv of the revolu- tion and identity of the revolutionaries is also expressed by their elevation of the nation and nationalism above class. They have counterposed narrow concern with nationalism to the sine qua non of socialist advance — working class unity.

It has fallen to the Sinn Fein radicals to spell out the logic implied in the Provisionals' approach to the Northern Ireland situation. Here the traditional Republican fetish of physical force shapes what they do and don't do - and what they could hope to do — in relation to the Protestants. Commitment to socialism has no visible effect on these limitations, and is seen as primarily aimed to help create support for the military For all these reasons the polities of Sinn Fein are the opposite of what the Irish working class, North and South, needs. Even a mass growth of Sinn Fein among the Southern working class on these politics would have no possibility of creating a united working class Out of their graves springs a new Sinn Fein movement and South.

Moreover, the nationalism of Sinn Fein is a mystified and confused nationalism which is used to obscure the actual problems. Central to Ireland and Irish nationalism is the fact that between a quarter and a fifth of the people of Ireland are the main obstacles to Irish unity.

But in Sinn Fein politics, the history of British crimes against Ireland, and the reality of British army control in Northern Ireland now, is used to obscure and muddle this - to present the problem of the Protestants as merely a sub-section of the problem of British occupation.

This means evading the nature of the basic problem which any organisation which wants to forge Irish unity - let alone Irish working class unity - must face and solve.

Irish workers who really want to fight for a socialist Ireland will have to reject and go beyond the populism of Sinn Fein, and take their stand on working-class Marxist socialism.

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in an organisation that started out as an explicitly

also generated suspicion, even in those (like Rory O'Brady)