The signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the subsequent
ceasefire of the Provisional IRA after 30 years of armed struggle
raises the question: after so much sacrifice and bloodshed, what has
been achieved? Yet this question is being studiously avoided by the
leaders of Sinn Féin, who have exchanged the armed struggle for a
minister’s portfolio. Though they publicly deny it, the unification of
Ireland is off the agenda. The strategy, methods and tactics of
non-socialist Republicanism have ended in complete disaster.
The Irish Republican movement has been struggling for a united
Ireland for decades. Yet today it is clear to all that it is no nearer
this objective than when it was founded.
Marxists have always been in favour of a united Ireland, but
following in the footsteps of James Connolly, we have also understood
that this goal can only be achieved as part of the struggle for a
socialist Ireland and a socialist Britain. It can only be achieved by
class and revolutionary methods. The prior condition is to unite the
working class in struggle, and this can only be achieved by a return to
the revolutionary traditions and programme of Jim Larkin and James
Connolly – the programme of the Workers’ Republic. So long as
capitalism dominates Ireland there will be sectarian division and
strife, which will undermine and destroy the movement for Irish
unification.
It is particularly noteworthy that all those on the Left in Britain
and internationally who for years were happy to act as cheerleaders for
the Provisional IRA now have nothing to say on the subject. They have
lapsed into an embarrassed silence, which reflects their complete lack
of understanding of the “Irish question” and the extreme
light-mindedness with which they habitually approach the national
question, on which they have long ago abandoned the Marxist position
and capitulated to bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalism. This
leads inevitably to one defeat and betrayal after another. And still
they learn nothing!
He who does not learn from history will forever be doomed to repeat
it. It is time to take stock of the past of the Republican movement and
to draw a balance sheet. Only by such means can we extricate ourselves
from the present impasse, and build the revolutionary movement urgently
needed to prevent a further descent into sectarian chaos and achieve
instead the historic task of overthrowing capitalism and constructing
the 32-county Socialist Republic.
April 2005
