Karl Marx on Ireland
"I have done my best to bring about this demonstration of the English
workers in favour of Fenianism (i.e. republicanism)…. I used to think the
separation of Ireland from England impossible. I now think it is inevitable,
although after the separation of that may come federation. (Nov 2nd 1867
letter to Engels.)
"-it is in the direct and absolute interest of the English working class to
get rid of the their present connection with Ireland.—-
The English working class will never accomplish anything until it has got rid
of Ireland. The English reaction has its roots in the subjugation of Ireland."
Dec 10th 1869 -On Britain. Moscow 1953 p501)
In January 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was set
and thus began the whole process of events that people in Ireland usually refer
to as the "troubles" It is important to take an overview of the last 40 years,
study the mistakes, the wrong assumptions, the errors and successes for the left
during that time. I will divide the period into three broad phases,
1) The democratic phase
2) The armed struggle
3) The reformist stage.
While I recognise this is a crude division it is a useful tool to gain an
overall picture of the last forty years and of course to learn valuable lessons
from that period of struggle.
In 1967 Ireland then as now was divided into two states. The Northern
Ireland state with its own local government under complete unionist control
discriminated against Catholics/Nationalists and its local ruling class seeing
themselves as firmly British and with an economy firmly based on heavy industry
directly linked to the British economy. However that class became anxious
following the election of the British Labour Party to power in 1964.
Sections of the unionist party leadership recognised that they would have
to make some small reforms to satisfy democratic demands for reform. They also
recognised that relations were beginning to thaw between the Irish Republic and
Britain. This was due to the decisions by the Irish bourgeoisie to abandon
protectionism.
" Foreign investment, particularly in exporting industries, was made welcome.
In 1956, new investors’ export-derived profits were made tax-free for a
fifteen-year period. Restrictions on foreign ownership of industry were phased
out, with full repeal in 1964. Recognizing the importance of low-cost imports
for the exporting industries, tariff barriers began to be lowered. Still
outside the Common Market, Ireland entered into a free-trade agreement with the
UK in 1965."
(Why Ireland Boomed James B. Burnham The Independent Review, v. VII,
n.4, Spring 2003, ISSN 1086-1653, pp. 537- 556.)
Indeed by 1973 both Britain and Ireland joined the EEC and this marked a
fundamental change in the relationships between the two countries.
There was now an imperative to remove obstacles to better relations between the
two ruling class. The biggest cause of friction was the situation in the north
of Ireland. The largest parties in the Irish Republic had their roots in the
republican movement in the1920’s resented partition and saw their role as
guardians of the northern nationalists, though’ mostly in a theoretical sense
and rarely in practical matters,
In Northern Ireland in local Government elections businesses had multiple votes
and only rate players were given the vote. Discrimination was the norm both on
the part of unionist business and also state bodies. Supporters of the Unionist
party were rewarded for their loyalty to the state by the awarding of contract
s housing, jobs etc. Control was exercised through organisations like the
Orange Order, a reactionary body designed to create an all class alliance that
kept protestant workers apart from catholic workers. But other sections of the
ruling class saw no need for change and in 1967 a ban was imposed on Republican
Clubs leaving republicans with no democratic means to express their
republicanism. This was at a time when the IRA was almost non-existent and
republicans were moving towards purely political activity.
Irish Republicanism was then going through major changes. Following the total
failure of the IRA campaign from 1956-61 the republican movement had taken a
left turn under the influence of people close to the Communist Party of Great
Britain and the Connolly Association based in Britain. Despite much opposition
from traditionalists and volunteers strongly influenced by Catholicism the
‘leftists" had by 1967 control of the Republican movement. They appeared to be
a radical populist party campaigning on nationalist and social issues.
But of course appearances can be deceptive. Beneath the surface there were all
sorts of contradictions within Irish republicanism. Strong nationalist
tendencies existed and there was a pro catholic tendency that saw
Protestantism, Free Masonry and Judaism as enemies to be feared. Against a
background of the governing party of the 26 counties/ Southern Ireland, Fianna
Fail, having abandoned the nationalist protectionist policies introduced by its
founder Eamon de Valera in the 1930’s, Sinn Fein saw itself in the position as
the true guardians of Irish republicans and regarded the introduction of Free
Trade as both a capitulation to the forces of international capitalism and also
opening up the dreaded prospect of Communists coming to Ireland to take up
Irish jobs and threatening "our own Christian way of life"
"-if we become members of the Community no restriction can be placed on the
entry to Ireland of Communists from Italy, France or any other Common Market
country" (Tomas Mac Giolla-Nation or Province-Ireland and the Common Market
{Dublin 1963}
But what the leadership of the republican movement failed to realise was that
the attempt to build an economy around protectionism was always doomed to
failure given the increasing internationalism of capitalism.
Fianna Fail as the representative of the native bourgeoisie saw that their
future interests were tied in with those of international capital. During the
1950’s over 800.000 emigrated, poverty and unemployment were high and the
republican movement ignored these social evils and concentrated solely on an
armed campaign in the North. Indeed by 1967 the Southern ruling class had all
but given up on the national question seeing their future economic prospects
tied up with the European Economic Community and closer economic and political
ties with the United Kingdom.
In an effort to cultivate support the Republican movement, noting the growing
interest in socialism world wide in the sixties and influenced both by the war
in Vietnam and the developments of the Cuban revolution, began to speak the
language of socialism. Indeed over a weekend a small number of the leadership
of the IRA, without a serious debate among its rank and file, simply declared
that the goal from now on was the establishment of a Socialist Republic.
This decision was not done for ideological reasons but was based purely on
pragmatism. However what should be noted and learnt from that was that the
socialist model the republican movement imported lock stock and barrel was one
based on the official communist parties i.e. those loyal to the state
bureaucracy in the USSR. It is no coincidence that that was the model they
choose because the republican movement being heavily militaristic orientated
saw the Stalinist model as perfect. They could be no serious democratic
discussion within the organisation. The leadership saw themselves, the army
council of the IRA, as the de jure, the legitimate Government of the Irish
Republic, proclaimed in 1916 and endorsed by the 1918 general election.
In practice the melding of Stalinist and militaristic control worked well for
the republican movement. Volunteers of the IRA were ordered to join mass
organisations, vote for named individuals and loyally carry out what ever the
leadership dictated. Those who dissented were either labelled as right wing
Catholics or Trotskyite wreckers.
Tomas MacGiolla, formerly on the right wing and President of Sinn Fein
wholeheartedly embraced the new direction. These shifts in ideological
orientation are characteristic of mainstream republicanism.
"Sinn Fein began as a rightwing petty bourgeois organisation. In the 30’s
the movement was socialist in name. In the forties it was Corporatist and
Vocationalist. By the sixties it had gone for Socialism again in the seventies
back to Corporatism before becoming socialist again in 1982. But it has
accomplished all these changes in social outlook by remaining unchanged in its
nature as the militant wing of Irish nationalism."(Page 255 "Irish
Republicanism and Socialism" Pat Walsh- Athol Books -June 1994)
During the armed conflict the provisional movement swung a number of
times from right to left and back again depending on circumstances at the time.
The republican leadership knew that adopting a leftist stance would soak up the
energy of the left and refurnish their ranks as well as giving them
international credibility with revolutionary movements world wide. In 1967
despite the slow turn towards a leftist orientation the then republican
movement was probably best defined by its emphasis on armed struggle, a
rejection of parliamentarianism and contempt for the ordinary non-republican
people. Of course there were exceptions to this and Seamus Costello, later to
found the Irish Republican Socialist Party, build up a strong base for
republicanism among ordinary working class people by a militant class struggle
in his local area of Bray in Southern Ireland.
In 1967 within the wider left there was a growing interest in the writings of
James Connolly, Marxist and Republican and the 1916 leader of the Easter
Rebellion stimulated by the 50th anniversary of the 1916 rising. Even the
servile and catholic conservative labour party began to allow the word
socialism within its ranks, even going so far as to boast that the "Seventies
will be socialist."
It should be noted that the Irish Labour Party is not a mass party of the
working class but more a collection of constituency parties based around the
personality of the local elected members and sharing a conservative social
outlook.
In the North a strategy was developed by a loose alliance of republicans
communists and liberals to advocate a struggle for democratic rights within the
British Northern Ireland state. This led to the foundation of the civil rights
movement, (NICRA) which brought thousands on to the streets in pursuit of
democratic reforms. First the democratic stage which would entail the struggle
for democracy in the North, then the growing over of that struggle into the ending
of partition and the establishment of a national Government for the whole of
the island. Then and only then would the issue of socialism be raised. But in
essence what this approach amounted to was a demand for a capitalist Ireland
and that certainly held no appeal to pro-British protestant workers nor indeed
for many workers and unemployed people who had to emigrate from both parts of
Ireland in the sixties seventies and eighties due to the levels of poverty and
unemployment then existing. Remember, the so-called Celtic Tiger only came into
existence in the mid nineties.
But while republicans were involved in the civil rights struggle they did not
necessarily control it and more right wing republicans regarded demands of
British rights for British citizens as anathema and un-republican. The approach
by NICRA while an astute move politically was based on a clearly separated two
stages approach to the whole national question in Ireland. It then found itself
at a loss when the inevitable happened and the narrow "democratic" demands
could not contain the wider democratic demand for a united Ireland. But
by that stage the leadership of the Republican Movement had become so tied into
the stagiest approach from a leftist stance that they could not shift gear and
the right wing republicans gained the ascendancy by their militancy within
nationalist areas.
Naturally there were other perspectives. The ideas of Trotsky began to
circulate more widely in the sixties and the radical student movement the
People’s Democracy was heavily influenced by Trotskyism. Two separate key ideas
evolved from the debates of that time. One that a campaign for civil rights if
it didn’t also campaign for economic rights would alienate working class
protestants for whom the struggle for civil rights was in essence simply a
struggle for Catholics. Therefore if Catholics gained then they, i.e. the
protestant working class must lose out in the field of jobs and housing. This
line of argument argued strongly that unless the whole issue of class was
raised then the struggle would inevitably end up in sectarian fighting.
Unfortunately some groups adopting that position then came to denigrate those
who were campaign for civil rights as sectarian. While on paper they paid lip
service to the struggle for democratic demands they never seriously engaged in
the democratic struggle retreating each time they spotted possible sectarian
issues rising. They failed to recognise that Lenin following Marx himself saw
that the vanguard needed to be in the fore-front of all manifestations of
discontent in society and that included so called democratic demands.
"-a tribune of the people, able to react to every manifestation of tyranny
and oppression, no matter where it take place no matter what stratum or class
of the people it affects; he must be able to generalise all these
manifestations to produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist
exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every event however small in
order to explain his socialistic convictions and his democratic demands to all
in order to explain to all and everyone the world historic significance of the
proletariat’s struggle for existence.
"What is to be done" VI. Lenin. (Foreign Languages Press Peking 1978 page
100)
A separate but related outlook stated that a link needed to be made between the
struggle for civil rights, the class struggle and the whole issue of
Imperialism in Ireland. This line of thinking was eventually to see the
emergence of the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
1 – THE DEMOCRATIC STAGE
The democratic stage of the struggle lasted from 1967 until approximately 1972.
That stage was itself made up of three separate stages.
Stage one –The Liberal stage- was when the key features of the
NICRA under the guidance of the Communist party was to lobby influential
people, influence the leaderships of the trade union movement and seek the
assistance of British Labour MPs. However against a background of almost total
indifference from the Unionist ruling class pressure mounted and NICRA agreed
to move up to stage two with street protests.
Stage two- The street protests – changed everything. In full view
of the world media the local police the RUC, batoned protestors off the street
including the respectable members of the nationalist population. This
galvanised not only the student population but also many within the nationalist
working class population who had not as yet seen, the relevance of the
democratic phase of struggle to their lives. They came in their hundreds then
in their thousands on to the streets as their justifiable anger at years of
oppression boiled over.
The leadership of NICRA was now attracting the attention of the nationalist
middle class who had for so long avoided political struggle. They now jumped on
the bandwagon and attempted to draw the struggle into purely reformist and
peaceful avenues of protests despite the continuing violence from the RUC and
its supporters within loyalist working class areas. Whipping up the fears of
the protestant working class was easy for the Unionist leadership for the
loyalist working class had the first pick of the jobs and housing available to
working class people. Many of them were marginally better of than their
catholic equivalents but of course many were also worse of. However they saw
themselves as having more in common with their capitalist leaders than their
fellow workers. So while a political struggle began for control of the civil
rights struggle between conservative elements and the more militant and more
class orientated students/republicans and socialists the democratic struggle
movement into its third and final stage.
Stage three: The mass struggle –This was when the political
consciousness of the nationalist working class reached its highest level under
the pressure of huge working class areas suffering regular raids, being
tear-gassed and the state in reducing internment torture and brutality as part
of its everyday weapons of harassment.
People began to take control of their own areas, and established free zones
outside the control of the state forces. Inside these free areas political
discussion and debate between republicans and socialists developed at a high
theoretical level. However there was also a struggle for control of these
areas, which sometimes erupted into intra-republican violence. Tensions had
been caused by the failure of the IRA in 1969 to defend nationalist areas when
the RUC/B Specials and loyalist mobs initiated a pogrom against the
nationalists leading to the largest movement of civilian populations since the
Second World War. Despite the fact that the few volunteers to defend the
nationalist areas where all members of the official IRA and stayed loyal to
that organisation, the newly formed provisional IRA skilfully manipulated the
facts to emerge as the so-called defenders of the Nationalist population. Many
working class Catholics flocked to join them and many of these were motivated
by desires for sectarian revenge against the protestant mobs that had attacked
catholic areas.
Hence a bitter political and military struggle was to begin that ultimately saw
the end of the mass struggle which reached its peak after the British
occupation forces massacred 14 civilians demonstrators in Derry on January 30th
1972 since called Bloody Sunday. The effect of Bloody Sunday was to encourage
recruitment to the PIRA who seemed the more militant. They launched an economic
bombing campaign, which took a high toll of civilian casualties, further
alienated Protestants from republicanism and saw a downturn in the mass
struggle.
The guerrilla campaign also intensified loyalist reaction, which took the form
of individual murders of any Catholics. But it should not be forgotten that any
democratic advances for the northern nationalists had always been met with by
violent loyalist reaction. The popular way of expressing this then, as now is
best summarised by the writing on the wall KAT (Kill all Taigs, ie catholics.)
Hundreds were killed from 1972 but the security forces of the state which
partially sponsored and trained these loyalist killers, denied these were
sectarian killings and called them "motiveless murders" It is now clearly
established that the British state endorsed the murder campaign of the
loyalists. British agents handed over files of nationalists to loyalist murder
gangs. They gave them guns. They trained them and directed a terror campaign
against the broad nationalist /catholic population. And still today they refuse
to acknowledge their collusion. Irish republicans need take no lectures from
the British state on so called "terrorism"
2 – THE ARMED STRUGGLE
The armed struggle
So by 1974 mass
demonstrations had ended, provisional IRA continued with its economic bombing
campaign, the nationalist population was at the receiving end of murder
campaign led by loyalist para militaries under the influence direction and
control of the British security forces and the RUC. This in turn led
republicans down the path of sectarian actions and it has to be admitted that
all republican organisations were guilty of this cardinal error.
Our own movement disillusioned by the ceasefire called by the Official IRA and
also by its turn towards reformist politics broke from the IRA and established
the IRSP and then two months later the INLA.
We were now in that phase of struggle dominated by armed struggle. Comrades and
friends let me make my own personal position as clear as I can. While I
had doubts and hesitations about some tactics used during the course of the
struggle by both the IRA and the INLA I supported that armed struggle. In the
early phase of the democratic struggle I along with many others practised non
violence in demos etc, I soon got fed up being beaten off the streets and
seeing the forces of reaction beating the shit of working class people. After
all it was Trotsky who wrote.
"We encounter violence everywhere … we did not invent violence and
terrorism … we are born in capitalist violence … we live and die in
imperialist terrorism … they are our "daily bread."
However armed resistance has a limited time line or else will become
counter-productive. Some republicans have elevated armed struggle as the
strategy to achieve their aims. They do not take account of the prevailing
conditions the mood of the masses nor the economic social and political forces
at play. By divorcing the armed struggle from the mass struggle, by
elevating armed struggle as the only way to defeat Imperialism, Irish
Republicanism failed. Elitism took hold. (There is an elitism that
arises in armed groups and one of our Comrades, Ta Power did an excellent
analysis of this in a seminal document for the IRSP that began our long journey
away from militarism and back towards socialism.)
Not only were the mass of people within nationalist areas slowly becoming
disillusioned with the struggle itself as they were reduced to the role of bit
players only to be mobilised at the command of an army council but many
activists both in the military and political field became demoralised. There
was no attempt to link up the every day struggles of the people with the
overall anti -imperialist struggle. Instead of turning towards the organised
working class north and south Provisional Republicanism found
itself in a cul- de -sac going nowhere. And in despair it reached towards the
Churches and the ruling classes in Britain and Ireland to rescues them from the
hole they were in.
The process of winding down the armed struggle and reaching a settlement with
Imperialism took a long time but on reflection it is now clear that the
provisional Republican leadership were in contact with both British
intelligence services and the British Government even as IRA/INLA volunteers
were dying on hunger strike for political status in 1981.Rather than turning
the massive support that the hunger strikes engendered into a mass anti
-imperialist struggle Republicanism used that emotion to begin the long slow
steps towards parliamentarianism. At the same time the armed struggle
continued but apart from occasional spectacular successes in military terms but
was increasingly ineffective and counter productive.
Armed struggle is not some romantic and heroic way of changing the world.
Forget the iconic images on student posters of Che. The reality is different
and brutal.
Tying an unarmed man with a large family, to a bomb in a truck and making him
drive it to a military establishment where the bomb explodes! Walk up behind a
policeman and blow his head off. Plant a bomb in a restaurant that blows
children apart. Order people from a bus, ascertain their religion and then
shoot the ones whose religion you don’t like. Plant a device under a car not
knowing if the intended victim or his/her family will be in the car when the
bomb explodes.
Such actions, while having devastating consequences on the victims also have
consequences on the volunteers who carried them out. Long years of
imprisonment, the alienated children the broken marriages, the broken lives,
alcoholism and all for what??? For sharing power in a Northern state with Ian
Paisley as First Minister, and administering British rule.
It can be argued that republican violence was a legitimate political response
to state violence. When the INLA killed a leading Tory I personally felt that
was a legitimate exercise for it took pressure of besieged nationalist areas of
Northern Ireland. But as a long-term solution to the problems of the working
class that is not the way forward because
"the capitalist state does not base itself on government ministers and
cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new
people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to function"
("Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism" Leon Trotsky 1940)
No socialist, no Marxist no human who cares for the future of humankind and
the planet we live on, can afford to be a pacifist. There are times when only
violence is a justifiable response to injustice. But there is also a time to
call a halt to armed resistance if it proves counter productive. We cannot
afford to allow righteous anger to dictate our actions. Yes, we can emphasise
with the victims of state violence, we can understand the anger of the
oppressed, and we can share in the frustrations of the dispossessed. But we
have a historic duty to not bow down to the emotions of the moment. We have a
duty, as working class militants to provide clear analysis of the situation,
provide the theoretical understanding of the events happening and give
leadership to our class both in theory and deed.
In 1994 the then leader of our movement Gino Gallagher outlined clearly the
republican socialist position, in a speech to students,
"That is why in the light of the Ceasefires and the so called peace process
the Republican Socialist Movement took a conscious decision to take no action
that could be construed as endangering that process. Indeed we opened many
avenues of communications with others in order from our viewpoint to make more
widely known the socialist perspective of our movement. But let me say that
whilst we are not prepared to endanger the current process we have no love for
it. We remain to be convinced and I doubt if we could ever be convinced, of the
genuine intent of the British Government. We doubt if after all the flag
waving and displays of chauvinism that we have seen recently and will see
tomorrow- (USA
President Clinton in Belfast) the position of the working class, apart from the absence of political
violence, will have in essence changed. Unemployment, low wages, ghettoised
housing, class ridden education systems, extremities of wealth and poverty, and
people divided by religion and poisoned by prejudice; these things will remain.
And they will remain we believe no matter how many meetings take place between
the representatives of Irish Capitalism and British Imperialism. Major or Bruton will not solve the
fundamental problems of the peoples of these isles."
Two years later Gino was
murdered by agents of the British state who had infiltrated our movement. But
his analysis 13 years on is still valid. Taking that analysis as our guide our
movement convinced the INLA to declare a ceasefire in 1998 and it why today we
try to convince other republicans that the only road to travel is the socialist
road.
3 – THE REFORMIST STAGE
The provisional leadership used the armed struggle during the eighties and
nineties to wring some political concessions from the British Government as it
prepared to move into the reformist stage. The electoral success Sin Fein
achieved following the hunger strikes in 81 convinced the Adams leadership of Sinn
Fein that the creation of a nationalist broad front with middle class
nationalists in the North and with the Southern Ruling class was the best way
forward to advance nationalist demands. Gone was the radical phase of the early
eighties, gone went references to socialism and in place of anti -imperialist
demands for a united Ireland the slogan of the day became "equality."
The provisional republican movement were now preparing to settle for equality
for Irish nationalists within the British state. And so began the Adams Hume
talks, negotiations with the Irish Government and eventually talks with the
British Government that led to the 1994/1997 ceasefires, the Good Friday
Agreement, the Saint Andrews Agreement and now a devolved Northern Ireland
Assembly firmly committed to a neo liberal economy programme. To achieve this,
the provisional movement, decommissioned their weapons, recognised the British
claim to rule the North of Ireland, dismantled their army and are now involved
in running the police force.
It has to be clearly stated that this is not a victory for Republicanism. It is
certainly not a victory for socialism. The republican armed struggle has been
clearly defeated. A united Ireland is now further away than it was in 1967. The
divisions between Catholic and Protestant workers have never been wider.
Vicious sectarian attacks still take place. Working class communities are
separated by so-called peace walls most of which have gone up since the ending
of the armed conflict.
Sectarianism is institutionalised in the six county state. And all the while
the speculators move in buy up property and charge exorbitant rents to working
class families who are now priced out of the home ownership market. The British
Prime Minister wants to reduce the minimum wage in the north and the local
administration is preparing to impose massive water charges, rate increases and
continues the policy of dismantling public utilities and selling them off to
private industry.
This all against a background of growing economic instability, not only
nationally but worldwide. The economy in the rest of Ireland while has been
buoyant for the past fourteen years has begun to run out of steam. The building
trade which helped spark off the so-called Celtic Tiger is facing a slow down
and is likely to see 35,000 jobs lost in the sector
over the next 18 months, according to Davy Stockbrokers. All the signs
indicate that there will be a downturn in the economy. That downturn will have
its biggest impact on working class families. It will have little effect on the
33, 000 millionaires.
"According to Davy, housing completions
will start to fall between now and the end of the year and unemployment will
creep up to 5 per cent by the end of 2007 before reaching 6 per cent by the end
of 2008" (Irish Times Tuesday 24th July 2007)."
During the armed struggle Republicans,
except for a brief period ignored social and economy issues even when
unemployment and poverty gripped huge numbers of workers. Instead they
became preoccupied by both the armed struggle and "our community". (I.e.
nationalist areas from which the armed struggle was based) Many republicans
were also antagonistic to the trade union movement, which was seen by them as
pro-British.
If Irish republicanism is not to become irrelevant then we argue it must become
socialist as well. The armed struggle is over. The last time I counted there
were 6 IRA’s. (Provisional IRA, Real IRA, Continuity IRA, Oglaigh
na Eireann, Official IRA (ORM) and Official IRA (WP) and numerous organisations
all claiming to be republicans or and socialists. That of course is a
ridiculous situation and serves the Irish working class badly. Instead of all
this nonsense as to who are the real republicans and socialists, those who are
serious about changing Irish society need to get back to basics-the basics of
Socialism-the basics of Marxism.
I make no claim that the IRSP is the perfect vehicle to carry on the
revolutionary struggle in Ireland. It is far from perfect. But it has a
revolutionary tradition; a firm base in the nationalist working class a correct
analysis of the current political process in Ireland an internationalist
perspective and an ability to learn from mistakes. Twenty-one years ago Ta
Power, later to be assassinated, wrote a powerful document analysing our
movement. He pointed out the way forward and his words are as relevant today as
they were then. If every republican socialist, inside or outside, our own
organisation followed Ta’s advice then we would have a credible revolutionary
organisation with growing influence inside the working class movement.
"A revolutionary party must
have a revolutionary ideology, an ideology that enables us to analyse the
world, the motive force at work in the world, and plan a campaign based on the
analysis.
"A campaign that
is consistent, principled, and bold in its implementation, maxims as a guide to
action is an ideology; it represents the historical interests of the working
class, which through the medium of a revolutionary party, aims to overthrow the
capitalist order and begin the construction of communism."
However there are day-to-day tasks that need to addressed now. We need to stand
shoulder with the workers in the public sectors, north and south that are
coming under attack from cuts in their services. We need to campaign for a
massive increase in social housing. We need to stand against all
manifestations of sectarianism. We need to highlight the continuing injustice
of partition and the plight of political prisoners wherever they are We need to
take up each and "every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no
matter where it take place no matter what stratum or class of the people it
affects"
Forty years on from the beginning of the civil rights struggle with the
national question still unresolved we face a new situation. The left in Ireland
is weak, divided and riddled with political sectarianism. Republicanism is
defeated and also bitterly divided. It is clear that the approaches used by
both republicans and socialists over the past forty years have failed to make
any significant advances within the working class movement. We need to learn
the lessons and remember the words of Ta Power :
"We must be
vigilant that we don’t sink into the morass of sectarianism, mixing, pettiness
etc. We must not get involved in unprincipled slanging matches etc, into
positions that are sectarian, anti-revolutionary, morally damaging, that give
succour to the enemy and that confuse and divide the working class.
"Marx, Lenin, etc. confronted all fundamentals
in a courageous, merciless, ruthless manner. Why do we fail to do so? Is it
inherent in us? Are we up to this task? Do we lack the courage and maturity to
do this? Are we amateurs and not professionals? We know the lessons of history,
we know the mistakes, and we either act accordingly or collapse. Salvation lies
in clarity and the courage to implement change!"
Comrades, that approach is the way forward for the Irish left.
