W HAT DID you mean by a
broad anti-imperialist front? This is an idea that has been knocking around in Ireland for the last 20 years. What is new is that it has now been adopted by republicans as the principal strategy that they are now working on.
A MAJOR decision at the annual congress [ard-fheis] of
And I suppose, in real terms, it dates from a republican point of view from about three
Sinn Fein, the political organization of Irish or four years ago when [Sinn Fein presirepublicanism, was to begin to promote the development dent] Gerry Adams started making the point that if the struggle for national indeof a broad anti-imperialist movement in Ireland.
pendence was to be successful, then it had to take on the question of imperialism in
The first broad national conference pursuant to this was
Ireland. Republicans had to find a formula held in Dublin on February 18. It was attended by to create a mass movement that would challenge imperialism and the forces symparepresentatives of the Communist Party, the Socialist thetic to it on the broadest political canvas.
Workers' Movement, People's Democracy (Irish section of the Fourth International) and independent nationalist
• What exactly do you mean by "taking on imperialism?" After all you've personalities such as the economist Raymond Crotty, as been fighting imperialism in the well as representatives of Sinn Fein.
North for 20 years.
In the South of Ireland, republicans have
The conference adopted the perspective of organizing a not been involved directly in the political and social struggles. We were preoccupied series of discussions, projecting a demonstration in with the Northern part of Ireland because it
Dublin for the twentieth anniversary of the redeployment was dominated in a very physical way by of the British army on Irish streets. It also elected a
British imperialism, and we were respond-
13-person planning committee.
The last 20 years have politicized republicans to the extent where they now see that
A few days after the conference, Jim Gibney, one of the the opposition to change, both political and principal republican leaders involved in the project and to radical social change, isn't just the British government in the North but is in fact one of the strategists of the H-Block campaign, gave the also the Dublin government in the South.
following interview to Gerry Foley in Belfast.
• So, "taking on imperialism" means taking on economic imperialism, as opposed simply to taking on imperialist military power?
I think that Gerry Adams on a number of occasions in his articles on building the mass movement pointed out that imperialism isn't just military. It's economic, its social, it's cultural. And those are the areas where we are now trying to get involved and raise the question.
DOCTOR.
What we are trying to do, and it's a formidable task, is wherever imperialism impinges on the life of the working people of the country, we are going to try to give those working people some leadership. Now, I have to say that the organizationthat is, Sinn Fein - in the South of Ireland is only beginning to take on board this question. It has traditionally been a support
... MY ULSTER'S MAKING ME SUFFER: TERRIBLY!
organization for the Northern struggle.
What we're now at the stage of doing is politicizing that party, radicalizing that party's ideological understanding of society, and trying, out of an organization that was once a support organization for the struggle in the North, to build a revolutionary party. One which is capable, competent of using all forms of legitimate political struggle, to focus attention on the consequences of imperialism dominating Ireland. • What sort of economic program do you see as the center for building this movement?
I made the point at the conference in Dublin on Saturday that I don't think we are at the stage of raising economic demands. I think that the stage which we are at is the stage of raising the consciousness about the quality of people's lives. • But you want to present an alternative to people. What are the outlines of this alternative? Do you have the outlines of an answer to the problem of emigration, answers to the problem of economic development?
In the South, for example, the argument of the bourgeoisie is that the 15 strategy for developing the country April 3, 1989 • #159 International Viewpoint
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IRELAND A broad
IRELAND is giving tax breaks for the imperialist corporations to come in.
Specifically on questions of tax breaks to the multinationals, the history of the multinationals in Ireland since the late 1950s clearly shows that that strategy for industrializing the country, for providing secure employment, isn't working. That the South of Ireland is a tax haven for multinationals and they haven't been able to provide longterm secure employment, and that can be seen from the numbers of people who are leaving every year — 30,000 left last year. That's only the public figure. Other people are estimating that it is much higher. And then of course there's massive cutbacks in education and social services, endemic unemployment.
We are also saying to those who are trained economists, who understand intimately the economic infrastructure and its weaknesses, is: "Look, it's time, long past the time when you've got to come together with other radical democrats in the country and present an alternative, and to present it not necessarily on the basis that we are going to fight elections on it, but present it on the basis that we want to build a popular movement that is going to take on board the implications of imperialism in Ireland.
I think that it is important that whatever movement we build, that it has a national character to it, and that that national character is capable of taking on board the two distinct political realities North and South, which are linked by the economic circumstances that the nationalists, indeed the Protestant working class as well, face in the North, along with the working-class people across the rest of the country. • What form do you see this this movement taking?
We only adopted the policy in February of this year. And I think that it would be presumptuous of republicans to say precisely how this movement is going to be built. We're only one element. So, we've got to talk to people. What I do think we need to produce is a movement that has got its arguments worked out, which has roots deep in the working communities, both in a rural setting and in an urban setting.
It has to say very clearly that what passes for politics, passes for democracy in Ireland, what passes for economic security in this country, is totally unacceptable. And within that broad area of argument we then have to define a) the terms of that alternative, and b) the strategy to bring that alter• Presumably, if it's premature to be specific either about the program or the structure of the movement, what you're proposing is discussions. That risks being nebulous. Do you think you can attract community and union activists into that framework?
Right across this country there is a net16 work of people involved in all sorts of political opposition to the states North and International Viewpoint #160 • April 3, 1989
South. To a large extent they're working away on their own. They're fighting the state on their own, and the state is able to deal with them, to marginalize them.
So, the task is to weld together that network. and it's important to begin in the manner that I outlined, it's important to begin at that level, so that you can bring into the various conferences those people that you referred to, to allow them to take discussion, to allow them to make their experiences known to the other people in that conference hall.
This is particularly necessary for people from the North, because the North has been dominated by the military struggle and the national question for the last 20 years. Within that struggle, there's an economic dimension to it that is yet to emerge. Those people who have struggled for the last 20 years in the North, when they come to look at the situation in the South, they haven't the experience, they haven't got the political intelligence required to give the sort of leadership that's needed. So, that's why there's a need for dialogue. • OK, but the sort of people who are involved in struggles would want something fairly immediate and fairly concrete. How do you propose to deal with that? Are you thinking in terms of an action program?
As I said earlier, in precise terms, we haven't it worked out. We're only beginning the process. Whatever the issue is, the campaign is action-related, has to be. For example, we're living in the shadow of Divis flats. Divis Flats was a notorious housing development put up in the 1960s where people were cooped up in flats like battery hens. It took a 15-year campaign by local people for those flats to be demolished. That's an action-related campaign.
We're trying to motivate people in the areas in which they themselves have been working for the last number of years. But we are also trying to put it in a global context. We have considerable political clout in the North, that's not the case in the South. We shouldn't be seen as being arrogant, as having all the answers. At the same time we have to be careful because of the paranoia and fear that exists among people in the South who are political activists about violence and about the IRA. So, there is almost a sense in which we are at a stage of confidence building as well among anti-imperialist political activists, that they don't see us as transporting the type of political activity that republicans by necessity in the North have to get involved in. • This anti-imperialist movement that you are talking about would not take a positive position on the armed struggle?
No. Not a positive or a negative one. • One of the arguments at the Dublin meeting was that in all the working-class struggles over the last year, none of them have raised the national question. They have all been directed against Southern capital. What's your answer to that argument?
Partition has had the effect that it was intended to have. It has divided the working class people on this island. It has caused confusion on the relationship between British imperialism and world imperialism as a whole and, of course, domestic capitalism. If we were playing the principal role in those type of struggles, then the national question, the government's record on the economy and its record on the national question could be debated simultaneously. • What sort of people do you think you can mobilize in a movement like
Obviously, we will be targeting the people who are at the sharp end of the economic crisis in this country, principally the working class North and South, whether they're on the land or in the cities. And we're also trying to attract sections of the radical intelligentsia to this cause. Because I think that a movement of this nature has got to embrace the most progressive and democratic element in the country, and so therefore it has got to take in the broadest political forces.
In the early days of this present administration in Dublin, you've seen the explosion of popular anger that there was whenever the Fianna Fail government did a blatant U-turn on its pre-election economic promises, when it said that it wouldn't introduce the hair-shirt budget that the Fine Gael party were proposing. Then days after coming into office, they went one better and introduced an even harsher budget. Now, the reaction to that was massive anger, seething discontent, and that manifested itself on the streets of the South of Ireland.
Those are pointers for people who want to see change of the potential there is within a sizeable section of the organized and unorganized working people in the South. Now the question that's relevant of course is whether or not that movement, or that sentiment, that anger, can be constructed into a movement for social, economic and political change. That's the big question. • What sort of a structure do you envisage? Do you see this as a mass revolutionary party, or a front like the FMLN in El Salvador?
I can't answer that question. I've been involved in the building of a number of popular movements, and I've sat in the organizing committees of most of them, and we never were able to predict the struc tures. There is an unpredictability about movements of this type. The H-Bloc movement was the biggest popular movement we were able to put on the streets. But its structure was a spontaneous development. 1. For an account of republican invovement in the Divis Flats campaign, see IV 95, March 24, 1986.
At this stage, we are saying that we have no preference one way or the other as to what type of structured mass movement • OK, I'm sure you will have to feel your way as you go in building such a movement. But I would think that even at an early stage you would have to answer a question from your own people about how you intend to prevent it from being co-opted, as so many social reform movements have been before in Ireland.
I appreciate what you're saying that we have got to guard against any movement being eclipsed. As concerns our ability to prevent a movement either from running out of steam or being taken over, if we don't have the political intelligence to prevent that from happening, then we should be in the political business to begin with.
I suppose because we have a long-term vision of the type of new society that we want to see in this country, it's incumbent on us to make sure that we learn the lessons of history, and that we appreciate the way in which you put a movement of this type on the streets. We have to realize that some people who will go only a certain distance, and others will go further. And what we have got to try and do is be in the vanguard of that movement to ensure that it doesn't stop halfway, and that the job is left incomplete for another generation to accomplish.
I think that the determination of the republican forces in the North to see British rule ended in Ireland within the time of their contribution to this particular struggle is a guarantee of its success. And if we can translate that resilience into a movement on the island for change, then we can draw off that resilience to see the struggle through to
I am being deliberately vague on these questions because it's early days, and we don't want to raise expectations only for people's expectations to be dashed and for this development to be frustrated.
• Even in terms of this sort of discussion, is there another conference like the Dublin one projected? A series of discussions?
There's a series of discussions. This is, as you know, the twentieth anniversary of
British troops coming back onto Irish streets. Last year, the 1968 Committee, which was a committee designed to educate people about the politics of 1968, did a very worthwhile job in laying the groundwork, and some good work was done there. Slowly but surely we were raising the whole question of popular movements through the
'68 Committee.
Last Saturday's meeting in Dublin was about moving a stage further with what the
'68 Committee did, because the '68 Committee was a Northern-based movement.
The meeting of the committee elected by the Saturday conference in Dublin set up an attempt to construct a national consensus, conferences principally and through a mass march in Dublin on August 14, the day British troops came back onto Irish streets. And then there's the pop gig for younger people who want to be political songs and music. So, they have a program to work to, there is a series of conferences where we want to get people from the trade-union movement, the women's movement, journalists, economists, people from those walks of life. We are going to bring them together separately in different conferences in different parts of the country, North, South, East and West, and argue about these questions.
We are meeting on February 28 to start our first working day on this question. But
I'm satisfied that there are enough people out there from those various walks of life who are prepared to stand up and say, "Our view on the last 20 years of war in the
North, the last 20 years of economic decline in the country, is that the cause of both is to be laid at the door of imperialism, and that the solution to the problems are to be found in a program to be constructed by radical democrats." I'm satisfied that we can bring those people together. It is a wide open question as to what we can do when we bring those people together, the quality of the movement we can build. All this is purely speculative.
• When you say "radical democrats," do you see this as a radical democratic movement, a socialist movement, or both?
I'm a socialist, so I have a vested interest in trying to push politics in the direction of socialist conclusions. But we have got to concede at this stage that we are not talking about a socialist movement, that what we are talking about is a movement of people from different walks of life, some in political organizations, community organizations, trade unions, some ordinary people,
IRELAND hopefully the mass of the movement. So, I don't want to put labels on the movement, but I think that what we are trying to do is galvanize the opposition that there is in the country and put it together into one single movement of opposition, which is going to challenge the status quo, which is going to say "You have governed us for 60 years, and you've made a mess of it, it's time for you to go." Those are the things that lie before us. • Do you see an international dimension to this campaign?
There are international organizations that have done valuable work over the last 20 years in supporting the struggle for national freedom. I would expect that as the political circumstances change in this country, in terms of the strategy that republicans are advocating, that that would be reflected in the international arena. And we've a number of people, Bernadette McAliskey principally, who can go to address international forums on questions related to imperialism in Ireland. And we would hope that there would be a very positive response to what
As we change the quality and type of struggle, we presume that those international organizations that exist would also change. And I think that it is interesting to watch what is happening in Britain, the
Time To Go Movement [a broad coalition for British withdrawal], and the way it's shaping up and the plans they have for this year. Support organizations for Irish independence could take a leaf from their book.
• How do you see the perspectives for Irish liberation in a world context? For example, the explosion of the national movements in the USSR has again posed the question of how national independence and world economic interdependence can be
On a number of occasions, when Gerry
Adams has talked about internationalism and international solidarity, what he's spoken about is a federation of free peoples, an international order where there is no longer the threat of war from the imperialist powers — and I'm not speaking about the Soviet Union, I am speaking specifically about the capitalist powers, because they're the people who pose the grievous threat to humanity in the world today.
Sinn Fein's policy would be to pursue that international solidarity, where the free peoples of the world, particularly those emerging from colonial domination, can align themselves. Because you're perfectly right, no country is capable of remaining in splendid isolation, so we prefer to have working, trading fraternal relationships with countries that have experienced the sort of history that we've experienced at the hands of the British. But we've also got to acknowledge that we live within Western
Europe. * 17 April 3, 1989 • #159 International Viewpoint
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