International Viewpoint 24 November 1986
Two steps forward IN THE 100th issue of International Viewpoint, at the end of May this year, we launched a subscription and fund drive for the magazine. Our targets were to win 100 new subscriptions and 4,500 US dollars in contributions before the end of this year. We need just a small last effort by our supporters achieve these modest targets. HILARY ELEANOR
By the first week of November, we were able to record an increase of 85 subscriptions and 4,000 dollars (£2,750) collected for IV's fund drive. We have had from readers in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and addition to many contributions from readers all over the world. this promotion campaign, difficult times for an internationalist, revolutionary magazine. sence of any other source of aid, we have to rely on our supporters maintain the magazine and win
International Viewpoint is distributed to in the world, but in the overwhelming majority of these the living of the mass of people is well "poverty line". To continue to extend world, we depend heavily on readers
Within the limits of our resources, we are constantly trying to improve the look and readability of the magazine, and hope that you will continue suggestions for improvements.
In the first half of 1987, thanks in good part to the contributions to our fund drive, we will be able to make a advance through the purchase of new computerized wordment. Not only will this help us to cut costs and save valuable time, but enable us to be much more fiexible
EDITORIAL Of course, all this doesn't herald the demise of our campaign for new subscribers and funds. We will need continued support in the new year to offset the costs of our new technology, and to continue improvements to IV.
In order to give a last minute boost to our current campaign, we are making a special offer for one year subscriptions that come in before January 31st of a free copy of the Resolutions of the Tweifth World Congress of the Fourth International. This World Congress was held in January 1985, and all the major resolutions are reproduced in this 110-page special issue of IV, with an introduction to the debates that were held. Subscribe now to save money
We hope that our readers will use this special offer to win new subscribers over the next two months. Current subscribers whose sub runs out later than January 31st can take advantage of this offer by resubscribing earlier than usual. A further 21 issues will be added to the remainder of your present subscription. And of course, this special offer would make an ideal Christmas gift!
There is an additional reason for taking advantage of this special offer an excellent response to our appeals, particularly
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VIEWPOINT Take out a one-year subscription before January 31st, 1987, and we will send you a FREE COPY of the Resolutions of the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International!
This 110-page special issue of International Viewpoint is worth 50 francs.
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now. Unhappily, mainly due to the wild fluctuations of the capitalist money markets, from the first issue in February next year we will have to make some small adjustments to our cover price and subscription rate. Although there will be no changes in our prices in French francs, our sterling cover price will rise very slightly. Both the subscription rates and the cover price in dollars will rise, but for our readers in the Americas this will be the first time IV prices have risen for four years.
Knowing that IV is not cheap in comparison with similar size national publications, we will do our best to keep these increases as low as possible. But with most of our income coming in sterling and dollars, the wild cavortings of the international exchange rates have hit us particularly hard. Alongside this, our printing and postage costs have both increased this year making price changes inevitable.
But we think IV is well worth the extra cost. It offers a unique opportunity to keep up with news and analysis from correspondents all over the world in a way that national journals, by their very nature, cannot.
With your continued support, we look forward to an even better new year.
International Viewpoint 24 November 1986
IRELAND tion of advocates of political action the militants' rejecconformed to tion of politics.
In the 1916 Dublin uprising, the radical leaders were executed.
The radicalization that was developing in the was halted by the acceptance of the 1918-21 war of independence Anglo-Irish treaty that sold out the struggle. The pro-Treaty forces managed to isolate the militants politically and crush them militarily.
In the 1930s, there were major the Republican movement a radical political-social program. They failed, because of the incapacity of the left and because of
A GREAT DEAL more was at stake in Sinn Fein's decision in November to drop its policy of refusing to participate in the Irish parliament than an electoral or political tactic.
In his address to the Sinn Fein congress, the organization's president, Gerry Adams, explained quite clearly what was involved:
"We should not reject participation out of hand, but we should always be aware that such rejection may become essential. It depends on the objective reality and conditions of the time. It is merely a problematic, deeply-rooted and emotive symptom of the lack of
Republican politics and the failure of successive generations of Republicans to grasp the centrality, the primacy and the fundamental need for Republican politics. This truth must be grasped. It is a difficult one for many to accept given the conspiratorial and repressive nature of our own past, our distrust for 'polities and politicians' and a belief that 'polities' is inherently corrupt. But once it is grasped then everything else follows logically, especially the need to develop our struggle at the level of people's understanding."
GERRY FOLEY
Thus Adams explained that tactics have to be based on material conditions and adjusted to the understanding of the people. He acknowledged that this was a difficult concept for the movement to accept and that successive generations of Republicans had failed to grasp the need for a political program of their own.
how could a revolutionary
But a long fight movement wage such without an understanding of ideas that are basic for most other revolumovements in the world tionary today? The answer points up both the strengths and weaknesses of the
Republican movement.
It is a very old movement with roots in a revolt against the moralistie pacifism of Ireland's first mass movement, the movement for
Catholic emancipation. Daniel O'
Connell and his clerical associates made non-violence into an abstract principle.
Their
Young Ireland left wing made armed struggle, therefore, into a principle, divorced from polities and concrete reality.
That established a pattern whereby the militant nationalist movement
4 tried to keep its eyes fixed on the perspective of preparing for armed struggle tended to become symbolic, designed to arouse by inspiring example rather than to win concrete objectives as part of a general program for organizing the masses of people. The material difficulties of the struggle reinforced this attitude. Radical social conclusions
This conception did not prevent the militant nationalists from being drawn behind mass campaigns led by Adams said in his speech, it made that inevitable because the fighters did not have a political program of
Conversely, always tended to come to radical over, repeated opportunist degenerathe powerful pressure the reactionary Irish clergy was able to bring to bear, both directly and indirectly. After the Second World War, a progressive Republican leadership around McBride tried to undertake political action, but got lost in parliamentary Campaign for civil rights
After the disastrous defeat of the IRA guerrilla campaign in Northern Ireland from 1956 to 1961, for the first time the majority of the Republican leadership embarked on a course of left-wing political action. It made an historic breakthrough by giving impetus to the campaign for civil rights for the oppressed Northern Catholics. That movement created the basis for the mass struggle against oppression that has continued for 18 years.
But most of that leadership, the "official" Republicans, became afraid of what they had unleashed. An important factor in this was a stagist theoretical framework thev took over from Stalinist political advisors. They did not expect a "democratic" movement to lead to a violent crisis of the Northern society. And so they failed
They immediately faced a rebellion from those who saw them as militarily weak, who formed the Provisionals, the present Republican movement. The Officials feared the Catholic revolt was "setting Protestant worker against Catholic worker." And so they tried to retreat from the struggle. That being impossible, they more and more tried to impose their concept of politics by bureaucratic means, leading to enormous bitterness and a violent split. Their organization was destroyed as a political force and became a pro-imperialist sect, now called the Workers Party. This experience became a major obstacle to politicization in the Republican movement.
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