Irish women: fighting tions of Stalinism. Our view of Ireland is informed not simply by the ebb and flow of events in our country, but also by the place on two fronts of the Irish struggle in a world-wide battle against imperialism.
Imperialism's vicious and
THE INTERACTION between the civil rights struggle and the bloody response to 1968 activities of the organized feminist movement that exists in
1968 was a year of revolution, not simply
Ireland is the theme of this interview with Sue Pentel, a in Ireland, but around the world. In the admember of Peoples Democracy, the Irish section of the vanced capitalist countries a youth revolt
Fourth International. Sue is a founder member of Women marked the end of the boom years and the beginning of a deeper conflict between
Against Imperialism and an activist in the feminist and capitalists and working class. The Vietnatrade-union movement. The interview is taken from the mese people, aided by a mass solidarity
October issue of the British magazine Socialist Outlook.* movement, defeated US military power.
The reform movement in Prague, crushed by Soviet tanks, demonstrated that mass working-class resistance in Eastern Europe would mobilize behind the banner of socialism and cleanse it of the stains of Stalinism, thus feeding a new interest in, and support for, socialist politics among Westem youth. It was these shifts in the international balance of forces, joined to the burning resentment of an oppressed nationalist minority in the North, that brought about the explosion in Ireland.
The last 20 years have seen a vicious and bloody response by imperialism. This has brought them gains, but not shifted the overall balance. The 1987 stock market collapse shows that attacks on workers' rights and mass unemployment have not stabilized the imperialist economy. Since
Vietnam, the US has never recovered the power to simply send the marines in to crush revolution. This decline has prevented the defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution.
Since the Prague Spring, Solidarnosc has mobilized the Polish workers and resisted all attempts by the state to suppress it. The
S THE Irish women's movement a new feature?
Irish women have always played a prominent role in working class and anti-imperialist struggles. Individuals are well known: Anna Parnell, Maud Gonne, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, Constance Markieweicz. Less well known is the importance of their work to the struggle as a whole in organizations such as the Ladies' Land League, Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Erin), and Cuman na mBan.
They were involved in such work as the revival of the Gaelic League, the organization of the Patriotic Children's Treat (a protest against Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland at the turn of the century), the 1916 rising and the Civil War.
But there were also women's struggles in this period: the struggle for the vote carried out by the Irishwomen's Franchise League, and Inghinidhe na hEireann who produced the first-ever Irish women's paper, Bean na hEireann. This group of women saw their battle-cry as "Freedom for our nation and the removal of all disabilities to our sex".
There have been feminists active in Ireland in the past. What is new is the breadth and scope of the development of the women's movement that emerged in the late 1960s and which, despite all its weaknesses, has had a massive impact on Irish • Has partition created divisions in the women's movement?
The short answer is yes. It is much more difficult to build unity in two different jurisdictions, particularly in a situation where women are under attack. In the South, women have been attacked economically and socially because of the cutbacks of the Haughey administration, and have been defeated on issues of reproductive rights by the right-wing — [the anti-abortionists] SPUC and their allies. pied sie Muri, stace a liviole in the om i 21 In the North, women living in the occu-
International Viewpoint #150 • October 31, 1988
IRELAND 68-88 problems - harassment, state violence, imprisonment, poverty, housing — which, on the face of it, are very different from the problems of women in the 26 counties.
All of these problems stem directly from problems exacerbated by partition: the weight of the churches North and South; the backwardness of the economy; poverty and backward social attitudes.
Despite containing different currents, including reformists who are content to work within the confines of the two statelets, Irish feminism has attempted to organize at a 32-county level since the early 1970s, with a series of national conferences, a national unity initiative in the late 1970s, and national campaigns right up to the present day, such as Armagh [solidarity with women political prisoners] and the Defend the campaign [family-planning
So politically, Irish feminists have had no choice but to face up to the problem created by partition: the development of an anti-imperialist current shows their ability to transcend these and begin to fight to build a 32-county movement of women fighting for their liberation. • Historically, there has been a very uneasy relationship between women outside the republican movement and feminists within it. Could you explain this briefly?
The involvement of women in the national struggle is part and parcel of that struggle. Only when feminists have been active and built a relationship with anti-imperialist women has there been joint activity and the opening of debates.
The debates can be seen as a very healthy part of the process of development. Perhaps the tension is best understood as a conflict about priorities: for a republican the priority is the war of national liberation; while for a feminist the priority is the struggle for women's liberation.
Historically, these differences have emerged around different campaigns — the suffrage, the Armagh women, the Defend the Clinics campaign. Before the campaign around the Armagh women and the emergence of a 32-county anti-imperialist/ feminist current, there was quite a high level of hostility in some sections of feminism against the idea of armed struggle. While this still exists among some small sections of "feminists", many young activists of the 1980s have a general partition perspective, and are interested in the political developments on women that have taken place in Sinn Fein.
The only way to resolve these tensions in a productive way is within an autonomous movement that openly debates how to build a 32-county movement of women. It cannot be resolved within one organization or simply by asserting that socialists see the women's struggle as an integral part of the national struggle. The links between wom22 en's issues and the daily struggle must be made continually - and only a strong women's movement can do this • How did an anti-imperialist feminist movement develop?
The current developed on a 32-county scale out of the debate around the importance of the Armagh women political prisoners to Irish feminism. The debate was started by a group called Women Against Imperialism — a group founded by women who were both feminists and active anti-imperialists, and who recognized the importance of the leading role of women in support of the prisoners. When Women Against Imperialism started in the late 1970s, most of the activists in the Relatives Action Committees were women. They marched, they picketed, they pushed the struggle forward - and yet their concerns as women were ignored, as were the women in Armagh gaol.
Women Against Imperialism was directed at opening up the women's question inside the anti-imperialist movement as much as opening up the debate on anti-imperialism inside the women's
In fact, the campaign around the Armagh women had a profound effect on both movements. The debate on women in Sinn Fein and the creation of Sinn Fein's Women's Department, and the sympathy for the anti-imperialist struggle in the women's movement were the long term result. • How has the debate on feminism and nationalism developed?
The debate has gone beyond the question of armed struggle. In post-Amendment Ireland [the constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion], active feminists are concerned with survival and finding allies. Since its adoption of a progressive attitude to women in general, Sinn Fein is able to contribute to that debate and feminists within Sinn Fein need not feel so isolated.
Unfortunately, because of the collapse of the organized anti-imperialist/feminist current in the women's movement during the hunger strikes, the debate that started has not really developed very far. We in Peoples Democracy see this debate as essentially about the strategy for building a 32county movement and the need for this movement to be based on the working class and anti-imperialist movements. • What is the women's movement's attitude to Armagh/Maghaberry today?
There is still a small current in the women's movement that is hostile to republicanism, but the atmosphere in the women's movement has changed greatly in the last ten years. Most feminists now would be generally supportive of women political prisoners and concerned about issues such as strip-searching. When Mairead Farrell was assassinated in Gibraltar there was a wave of indignation inside the women's movement. The killing happened during International Women's Week in Belfast, when a large number of feminists from all over Ireland went to Maghaberry to picket in support of republican women in prison
On International Women's Day itself, a large meeting of feminists in Belfast's Queen's University unanimously observed a minute's silence for Mairead, who was also a student at Queen's when she was killed; a public statement of outrage was signed by hundreds of feminists in Dublin the following week. • How do feminists relate to the war of national liberation?
Aside from reformists and those who are sectarian towards republicanism, the right of the Irish people to take up arms would be generally accepted by feminist activists. Many of these women would recognize the need to fight against partition and to reunite
There are differences on the type of actions that take place and the strategy that is necessary to defeat imperialism. But for many women the necessity for the armed struggle was illustrated during the hunger strikes, and thus the debate inside the women's movement of the early 1980s has moved on from the false "feminism versus nationalism" polemics of the early 1970s.
The discussion now is much more about the role of women's questions inside the anti-imperialist struggle; how women should organize; the importance of building an autonomous, independent women's movement; and the need for feminists to build progressive alliances.
This debate, vital for Irish feminists, is really only beginning. Interestingly, it is not only women who are discussing these questions, but these debates have also opened up inside other milieus such as Sinn Fein, the anti-imperialist movement as a whole, the trade unions where there is a strong group of feminists, and to a small extent the Irish language movement....
There are no easy answers. Irish feminists face a unique combination of problems, some of them reminiscent of those of third world women, exacerbated by the ongoing British military presence — yet in a country that is in the heartland of Europe!
Our strategy must therefore be based on the realities of the situation in Ireland. We cannot afford to sit around and wait for a mass explosion of feminist consciousness as developed in Europe. Nor can we simply expect that the fact of women's involvement in the armed struggle will in itself bring automatic acceptance of the need for women's liberation. Only an independent movement of Irish women looking at their own concerns will be able to develop their own model of development, based on a 32county anti-imperialist perspective. *
*Socialist Outlook is a monthly magazine produced by socialists in the Labour Party. Yearly subscriptions £8.50 (Britain), £13 (Europe), £18 (others) from Socialist Outlook, PO Box 705, London SW19 1HA.
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