- From civil rights to Irish freedom
1968 IS THE YEAR of student revolts, of workers' occupations, of Vietnamese resistance to US imperialism and
THIS ARTICLE is reprinted from a special issue on 1968-1988 of An Reabhloid, the journal of Peoples Democracy, Irish section of the Fourth International. The
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International Viewpoint #150 • October 31, 1988
W
E NEED to learn the lessons of two decades of struggle.
These are not lessons of despair. Our movement has won of the banner of socialism raised by Czechoslovak workers important victories and forced concessions from the British. But these have not been against Russian tanks. It ushered in a new era in the class enough. No set of reforms will change the struggle, when battles in the advanced capitalist countries, reality of British occupation nor the depenthe so-called socialist societies ruled by a Stalinist dence of that rule on the preservation of unbureaucracy and third world countries fighting imperialist rule ionist domination.
There can be no real civil liberty without national liberation. The solution to our struggle requires a united, independent Ire-
That era has not ended. The tensions unleashed then are still land. Our task today is to plot a strategy that will end the present stalemate and at work on the world stage, and for that reason we will see make this a reality.
many books, films and reviews about 1968.
More significant than the concessions forced from Britain are the defeats our
1968 was also the year of the first civil rights marches in the movement has inflicted on it and the con-
North of Ireland. There will be fewer books about that, tinuing decline in its ability to impose a because few understand that the struggle of '68 is the stable imperialist rule. The civil rights struggle was given its impetus by the gradstruggle of today. This unbroken continuity is a measure of ual decline of unionist industrial and political power. The mass struggle accelerthe threat we pose to imperialist rule. But the length of the ated that decline. It smashed Stormont, struggle also means a bloody stalemate that we must fragmented the unionist monolith into squabbling sections and frustrated all the attempts to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Despite imperialist counterattacks, the British have not recovered from these body blows.
A study of our history does more than list single gains and losses. It also tells us much about methods of struggle. The 1969 pogroms by the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC), B-Specials and the Loyalist mob brought the gun firmly back into Irish politics. The pogroms, and the unbroken line of state attacks since then, give a full justification for armed resistance.
This necessity, and the danger and sacrifice associated with the armed resistance, has led many republican militants to see it as the central element of the struggle. This is not the case. Armed attacks have helped to disperse British military power, imposed a significant cost on their occupation and imposed a need to move in force in nationalist areas. They have not recorded any victories. These victories have been recorded by the united political struggle of the mass of the population.
Mass mobilizations are not an alternative to force. They are a different kind of force.
The masses advance either through the threat or the actuality of a mass uprising.
The British counter-measures - the pogroms, internment, Bloody Sunday pushed far enough, would have brought them victory at the cost of hundreds of dead. But every time that the British launched a new offensive the sleeping giant of the working class in the South be gan to stir. After internment and Bloody
Sunday that giant came to life. The general strike and the burning of the British embassy pointed to a scenario of mass uprising against their interests in the South. This, coupled with opposition within the British working class and internationally, has limited the options open to imperialism.
Relationship between military and mass struggle
This mechanism has not been clearly understood. Many opportunities to build in the South have been missed. The military struggle, instead of being subordinate to, and supportive of, mass struggle, has been detached and on some occasions has cut across the mass struggle. The chief examole of this is "Operation Motorman". The 'Bloody Friday" bombings helped weaken a movement that had lost impetus and gave the British the excuse that they had waited for to occupy the "No-go" areas and reverse one of the greatest gains of the mass struggle - the development of areas from which British military power was excluded.
began to converge. resolve.
But the mass struggle had already been weakened from within. The republican movement was the central leadership of the struggle, but mass struggle could be built only through alliances with other forces. The direction republicans looked for in those alliances was towards the Irish capitalist class. Directly with the Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) and indirectly with the Dublin government in the South.
But the aim of the capitalists is not a united and independent Ireland. Their experiment with an independent capitalist state based in just 26 counties had failed by the 1960s. This had not been a struggle against imperialism, but simply an attempt to gain a relative autonomy within the imperialist order. It was the search for a new imperialist stability within a partition framework that led firstly to an Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement and to the O'Neill-Lamass talks in the 1960s.
The new "realpolitik" was reflected among middle-class Catholics who were to form the SDLP. They wanted freedom for their class within a Northern state. The working class who made up the actual body
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of the civil rights movement saw it as a step on the road to a united Ireland. The capitalist role in the civil rights movement was one of destruction and sabotage. Within months of the 1968 October 5 march in Derry they attempted to dissolve the movement by calling a truce with unionist Prime Minister O'Neill. The Burntollet march by Peoples Democracy exposed unionist intransigence and made this impossible.
The history of the SDLP since then has been one of collaboration, splitting the movement, recruiting for the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), and breaking a ban on participation on public bodies after internment. Their high point came with the power-sharing executive set up through the Sunningdale Agreement, when they sent the bailiffs against those they had encouraged to go on rent and rate strike.
We see the same picture in the South. Jack Lynch promised that he could "not stand idly by" during the 1969 pogroms. He didn't. The South quickly established a massive border security system to defend partition and launched sweeping restrictions on civil liberties to defeat
Latest link in chain of collaboration
The Hillsborough Agreement is the latest link in the long chain of collaboration. Irish capitalism now spearheads the attack on national self-determination. Garda-RUC links, mass raids, extradition, support for partition and a unionist veto — this is the programme of Irish capitalism. The British don't need to give anything in return — simply they fund a modest public relations campaign that promises reform is just around the corner.
It is not surprising that 20 years of trying to form alliances with Irish capitalism have ended in failure. What is surprising is that in 20 years the anti-imperialist movement has not had the strategy of alliances that centrally targets the working class in the South. Throughout this period, the actions of that class have had an immense importance in defending the northern struggle. The spontaneous mobilization of southern workers has, at key points like Bloody Sunday, marked the limits of what the British can do and their ability to employ the level of force that would crush the resistance.
In two decades in the South the national question has led to mass demonstrations, attacks on British interests, mass industrial action, the fall of governments, the election of prisoners to the Dail. Yet there has been no ongoing mass movement based in all 32 counties, although the H-Block struggle did develop the outline of such a
There are a number of problems. There is no mass party of the working class. The capitalist parties have the support of the majority of workers. The trade-union leadership represents a reactionary and undemocratic bloc within the workers' movement. Above all, the mass sympathy of workers in the South is not by itself sufficient to build a movement. They themselves suffer from imperialist economic exploitation and face unemployment, austerity and the emigration boat. To win the consistent support of workers the anti-imperialist movement must reflect these
There is no doubting the revolutionary aspirations of the present leadership of the republican movement. This is itself a result and a gain from our struggle. Yet this leadership is largely confined to the North. It can only advance by taking up the leadership of the working class and oppressed in all 32 counties. To do this means a thorough-going critique of the present political and trade-union leadership, an intransigent defence of the working class against austerity measures and an intransigent defence
IRELAND 68-88
Our history also shows us the means of building mass action. Mass action is built around demands. Not just any demands, but the demands that represent the tasks of the day for the working class and oppressed.
An alternative method of building called "popular frontism", pioneered by the Communist Party, is to search for the "lowest common denominator" — in practice the demands that the most right-wing forces will accept. The analysis of the Communist Party influenced the formation of the Civil Rights Association. Civil rights demands were chosen to ensure the support of middle-class forces, but they also represented the immediate tasks and point of attack for
The SDLP never joined another united movement after [SDLP leader] Hume and company succeeded in dismantling the civil rights movement. Yet movements like the Northern Resistance Movement, the Political Hostages Release Committee and the H-Block/Armagh movement were able to mobilize tens of thousands of SDLP supporters and prevent the leadership collaborating in key British initiatives. They identified correctly the tasks facing the working class - defeating internment, defending political status. Republicans and socialists uniting around these tasks were able to build mass action.
### Demands alone are not enough
But demands by themselves are not enough. There are also many campaigns that have had absolutely correct demands without successfully mobilizing. An example is the Relatives' Action Committees. They fought around the same issues as the H-Block movement but lacked the open democratic structure of the H-Block committees. It is only when political, trade-union and community groups can affiliate as organizations and democratically discuss demands, strategy and tactics that a movement develops the vitality of mass struggle.
Democracy is important because it allows change. The demands and strategy of the movement can adjust to shifts in the struggle. It's absence in the Relatives' Action Committees meant that when the struggle moved on, the leadership fragmented. Also, it broadens support because oppressed people can bring their own concerns and demands and lobby for their inclusion in the programme of the united front.
The movements of the struggle have not been united fronts. They have essentially been defensive formations organizing around immediate issues. A new movement would need a more long-term strategy. It would need to take up broader issues of democratic rights (women's rights, for example), and to articulate transitional demands that begin to pose for the masses the need for revolutionary change — a con- 19 crete example would be the call for an all-
International Viewpoint #150 • October 31, 1988
IRELAND 68-88 Ireland constituent assembly.
This gives clear pointers for building the mass movement today. The Sinn Fein/ SDLP talks will not lead to these. Hume, Haughey and company are 20 years older and wiser. They will not be caught a second time, especially in the absence pressure from an existing mass movement. In fact, the starting point for mass action - the immediate questions of defence involve confronting these figures, as the present imperialist offensive is based on their support for the Hillsborough Agreement.
Opportunity to relaunch the mass movement
The twentieth anniversary of the civil rights struggle gives the opportunity to relaunch the mass movement. Such a movement must start with the task of immediate defence. It must oppose the Hillsborough Agreement and the effects of its implementation in both parts of Ireland: state and judicial repression, extradition, job discrimination, support for the unionist veto, the erosion of political independence and civil liberties in the South and the extension of British rule into the 26 counties.
A democratic structure would enable the movement to build on the support of political parties, trade unionists and community groups. It would also allow a very important debate to take place. There are issues other than these questions that would concern many sections of the working class and oppressed. These include: opposition to emigration as a state policy; austerity; the super-taxation of workers; the domination of foreign multinationals; the attacks on neutrality and government support for the imperialist war-drive; the rights of women to control their own bodies; discrimination against gays; and the Irish language.
Without this programme a new movement can mobilize about 50 per cent of the northern nationalists and about seven per cent of the southern working class (those actively supporting the H-Block movement). To go beyond this it needs at least to allow oppressed layers to bring these issues into the movement and discuss their inclusion in the overall programme.
Also, a full-blown united front structure would present an overall alternative to the capitalist policy of collaboration with imperialism. It would confront the confessional nature of both Irish states by calling for the separation of church and state and, even more centrally, lay down a challenge around the call for an all-Ireland constituent assembly - not as some constitutional manoeuvre after British withdrawal, but as the actual mechanism to force that withdrawal by beginning to construct, at local and national level, the actual institutions of a free society and putting to the test all 20 those who give verbal support to Irish freedom.
It should be evident that the stalemate with the imperialist forces has roots that go far deeper than the present phase of struggle. One central problem is the political programme of the main revolutionary leadership, the republican movement.
Republicans are absolutely correct to identify the national question as the key issue of the Irish revolution. They are incorrect to see it as the only issue. The correctness of their analysis can be seen by the way in which the norther struggle has continuously dominated Irish politics for 20 years, confirmed republicanism as the revolutionary leadership and resisted successive moves of British repression. The insufficiency of that analysis is shown by the fact that after 20 years they command the active support of only two per cent of the southern population and 15 per cent of
There have been many changes in the republican movement and the establishment of a left leadership, but it remains essentially a revolutionary nationalist movement aimed towards the Irish people as a whole. They want the support of southern workers, but do not aim to organize the working class as a class nor recognize their central role in building a successful revolution. There remains a real confusion about the role of Irish capitalism that is at the centre of the present strategic crisis.
Imperialist oppression is seen as being expressed through the military occupation of the North. Austerity, unemployment, church rule and multinational control, also the product of imperialist rule, clearly understood as elements of the national question. This leads to a disjointed approach. The republican movement gives support to workers' struggles, but doesn't fight for the leadership, and sees it mainly as a way of winning support for British withdrawal rather than of linking the immediate demands of workers to the demand for national independence. It also leads to a minimalist approach to socialist politics. The leadership have a quite consistent support for socialism, but see its implementation as an issue that will arise after independence. They adopt a "stages" approach to history, and focus narrowly on what they see as the present "stage" of na-
Constant progress in republican politics
History doesn't work like that. Twenty years ago, republican and civil rights leaders decided that we were in the "stage" of democratization of the North. They tried to block the emergence of the national question, but the struggle itself put this on the agenda, and only those able to adjust to the new reality remained in the leadership.
There has been a constant progress in republican politics over two decades. New questions have been posed, and have led to tensions and divisions. These have threatened the unity of the movement, and the prospect of splits has meant that the movement by itself has not been able to resolve the issues. The solution came from outside the movement, from the mass struggle. This threw up new questions, subjected different positions to the test of the class strug gle and minimized the effect of splits by rejecting those who failed the demands of the struggle, providing new forces to take
A successful revolution must involve the majority of the militants in the republican movement. It must also involve their mobilization around a political programme much more radical than that presently held by the movement. The experience of mass struggle helps political progress towards this goal, but it is not enough by itself.
Marxist programme part of a living process
A political programme for revolution does not arise spontaneously from the experience of any one struggle. It has to be based on the results of many struggles all over the world and scientific analysis of the mass experience of the working class throughout its history. This programme is the programme of Marxism. It can't be preserved in a static way in literature. It is part of a living process and can only be defended and developed by an independent party of the working class. This tradition of independent working class action is the second great tradition of the Irish revolution - the tradition of Connolly's socialism - and it is this that Peoples Democracy is dedicated
Marxism provides a totally different analysis to that of republicanism. For us, the national question is not an issue on its own but is bound up in a world-wide class struggle. Imperialism is not simply the British military occupation, but the ownership and control of all of Ireland. The Irish economy is not based on the needs of Irish people, but on imperialism's need for tax-free profits, unrestricted exploitation of natural resources, a strategic military base and the source of a reserve army of labour that can be exported on the emigration boat to
The class interests of Irish capitalism are expressed through this framework of imperialist control. Too weak to survive alone, they welcome imperialist aid in their exploitation of Irish workers.
Partition is the mechanism of this control. It fragments the working class into different states, different religions and different interest groups, while strengthening clerical and reactionary forces both North and South. Above all, it is a denial of democracy. In the absence of the central democratic right to self-determination, all other democratic rights are eroded. Repression, states of emergency, the use of special powers and military power have sustained both
For the working class, partition is both the barrier that blocks the road to workers' power and the issue of democratic rights that can enable it to take the leadership of an alliance of all the oppressed. All the oppressed layers of Irish society suffer from imperialist exploitation, but only the work. ing class has the power and organization to defeat imperialism.
We see the Irish struggle as a process of permanent revolution. The call for a united Ireland is a revolutionary demand. The means to make this a reality require the self-organization of the working class, the construction of a new revolutionary leadership and alliances with all other progressive forces. Socialism provides the programme around which this movement can be built. It both makes Irish freedom possible and ensures that the revolution will move onto workers' power.
Peoples Democracy's politics come not simply from our twenty years of experience in the struggle, but also from our membership of a world-wide movement — the Fourth International — that springs directly from that section of the Bolshevik Party opposed to the betrayals and distor-
Soviet bureaucracy has been forced to institute reforms that have had the unwelcome result for it of unleashing the first signs of a workers' opposition. In the past weeks, stock markets have tumbled in London and Wall Street. A new generation took to the streets of Prague to demand the removal of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Contra mercenaries came limping over the Nicaraguan border, pushed back by the Sandinista revolution. We are still living the era of 1968. The revolutionary overthrow of imperialism is still on the agenda.
Nowhere is this more true than in Ireland. 1968 blew apart the unionist all-class alli-. ance and brought down the sectarian state that guaranteed stable imperialist rule. Twenty years later, even after the direct co-option of Irish capitalism through the Hillsborough Agreement, imperialism has still not found a solution.
We should remember that unionist premier, Terence O'Neill, had mass nationalist support when he promised reforms. It was when the promises were found to be
IRELAND 68-88 empty that the explosion occurred. Today, Irish nationalism won the same response when they promised that the Hillsborough accord would end the nationalist nightmare. Instead we had the Stalker affair, the Birmingham 6, the Gibraltar assassinations, British soldiers clearly guilty of murder being acquitted, extradition and more repression. Both Fianna Fail and the SDLP face uncertain futures.
It is not the strength of imperialism or lack of sacrifice on our part that has led to a bloody stalemate. Rather, it is our failure to build the political programme and the structures of mass and class action that can bring victory.
We must face these challenges now. A united, democratic, united-front structure must be built. The basis of mass resistance to the Hillsborough accord should begin in all 32 counties.
By uniting in action, socialists and republicans can find the common ground on which to debate and to forge the defeat of imperialism.