Subsequently the idea of a unity candidate was dropped.
principled. First of all, this has proved a
But this discussion was symptomatic.
concrete basis for Sinn Fein to have discussions internally on working with people outside the movement. Such discussions have been going on at various levels. In that sense, it has been useful, and certainly it would appear that there is a great majority within the organization for that kind of
The difficulty arises in the overall context of developing unity of the anti- imperialist forces, both North and South. I think a measure of the seriousness of Sinn
Fein's approach is their concern for working out an overall strategy for unity in action, basic unity on a program with other groups. The problem is the timing of this proposal. I tend to think myself that if you are in the business of building unity, there are serious problems raised by creating
• Illusions in what?
In the degree of success it might have.
We're talking here about an election where a broad candidate will not make any meaningful difference in the vote. The movement will not make any inroads on the
SDLP vote, will not make a dent in John
Hume's position. I think that's a bad start for a fledgling broad front.
The people involved in the discussions clearly understand what's afoot. The mass of the people don't. I do think that at this stage of the struggle we have to be very careful about marching people to the top of yet another hill.
• Why do you think it's not possible to make any dent in Hume's vote?
Because between the last election and this one, we are in a retrieving situation, we would be moving forward to stand still. I think the Sinn Fein vote is holding. But the electoral device here is a difficult one.
The elements that would make up the broad front are probably passively included in the Sinn Fein vote anyway. Therefore the electoral tactic seems to be me to be a bad tactic to demonstrate a move forward. I would rather see unity in action built around smaller projects, where people can see some progress, especially in the South. • What sort of projects?
Well, there are any number of issues around which we can begin to mobilize on a more unified basis — emigration, extradition, the economy in Souther Ireland. • The economy is not a smaller issue.
No, but I mean in terms of smaller groups actively working on them. When I say smaller, it's smaller steps I mean. The European election is going to be a threeweek fanfare. But for what? • There has been controversy in Sinn Fein for some time over wheth-
Labour Party (SDLP). er the SDLP vote is a straight class vote, and therefore that a working-class organization cannot make any inroads into it.
I don't think it's a straight class vote, because a lot of working-class people still vote for the SDLP. • Others say that the problem of the SDLP is a problem of program, that they don't have a program for going after the SDLP voters. What sort of a program could that be in the context of the EEC election?
I don't think that in terms of the EEC election, starting now and moving toward the EEC election, I don't think it matters. I think the political realities are that in the existing European election neither the program nor the candidate will make any sizable difference, because we are in a position where hard lines are drawn. We can begin to break those down with the correct program. But that's not something we are going to do by the European election. And that's why I think you could create an illusion that within the European election you could do it, and by setting an unrealistic goal you could lose support for 1. On the republican proiet, see the interview with Jim 1 3 Gibney in /V 160, April 3, 1989. April 17, 1989 • #161 International Viewpoint
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IRELAND revolution
IRELAND the whole concept, certainly among the rank and file of the movement, who are very pragmatic.
• You have already lost a European election.
But I won the issue. That's the pragmatic problem. People say, well it worked the last time. There is no reason why, because it worked the last time, it will work this time.
The conditions are different.
• You see no possibility for identifying an issue or issues that could make an impact on the vote?
You have to be clear about what the issue is here. If you go back to the first European election, it was much easier because it was on a single issue. Externally - that is publicly — it was about prisoners. And internally, in the movement, it was about the right to independence of
Here we're not talking about an issue.
We are not talking about a disagreement within the movement about politics or organization. We are all agreed about what we should be doing in principle. The question is whether or not taking it into the electoral area at this particular point has any benefit. It would stand to reason for the grassroots person, as opposed to a political person, that the broad movement ought to be bigger than part of it, and ought to be able at least in some way to move forward.
Elections are not necessarily a good measure of that. But that's how people would
You could have a serious problem after the European election of your rank-and-file republican saying, "Sure we could have done all that on our own." • The problem is that what the republicans seem to be proposing now is not an immediate action, but a series of discussions. Presumably the discussions are supposed to produce a program, and on the basis of the program, the alliances would be made. Do you see any possibilities through the European elections for making progress in developing this program? is Europe part of the problem of the program, a new program for the Irish revolution?
Not part of the program, It's part of the problem. But it is not a question in the • You talk about broadening the anti-imperialist base, particularly in the South. But isn't one of the most important obstacles the argument that the time of independent small nations is past. What's the answer to that argument?
When I say that it is not a problem, there is not a dispute on the general political 14 position toward the EEC, or basically on how to fight it either. International Viewpoint #161 • April 17, 1989
• There is not a dispute in the sense that everybody is against it, but in the sense of having an alternative to it, some argument more than "We're against the EEC because it's a rich men's club," or that "It's a danger to
Irish sovereignty, and so back to
Irish sovereignty, back to the De
Valera era. "
I don't think that this is the position put forward by Sinn Fein. I think that part of the problem has been that people no longer start the European discussion by saying
"We are against the EEC." The fight is really against the particular and direct effects of the EEC on the community.
We're in a position where in this European election, despite the fact that 1992 is looming large, Europe is not the issue here.
The question is simply one of tactical use of the election.
• Some revolutionary organizations underestimate European elections, arguing that they are not real
Don't forget, we are talking about one
European seat here, one currently held by
John Hume. The deciding factor in making
John Hume the European MP is not his position on Europe, its agricultural policy, removal of tariffs, any of those things. He is the MEP because he is the leader of the SDLP. John Hume may or may not produce a political manifesto. But I can tell you now how many votes he'll get.
• On the other hand, isn't a large part of John Hume's position this image he has as an international statesman, someone who holds forth in the European parliament, holds forth in Washington - the voice of moderation, internationalism and so on.
Exactly. But I think we make a mistake by testing an attempt to get broader unity in our movement in an electoral arena before it even gets started. Regardless of how correct the program, or anything else is, we cannot produce any tangible gain, however small, by contesting the European election. And we could do serious damage by doing that, when we do not have to.
One of the things that has to be taken into consideration is that this movement of ours is still limited. My contention is that it is limited by the South of Ireland - not by the Dublin government, it is limited by our lack of strength there.
Our biggest historical mistake has been the South. We cannot make inroads in the Protestant working class until we begin to seriously weaken imperialism; we cannot weaken imperialism until we move a sizeable section of the Southern working class. We cannot begin to move a section of the Southern working class unless we begin to take up the class struggle in the South. Now it seems to me that that is where the great bulk of our energy should be concentrated. And we are in
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grave danger while we are still caught by not being able to do anything very much, we are in grave danger of marching our people to the top of one hill too many. We took them out on the streets in the H-Block campaign and we showed them how absolutely powerless they were.
We could expose the British. We couldn't do anything else. We couldn't force them to do anything. We couldn't force the Free State [Dublin] to do anything, because we had no power. We had no industrial base.
We couldn't call a strike. We could fool ourselves with the odd walkout here and there, that vaguely resembled a strike. • You can also lose out when you miss opportunities.
The problem with the European election is that the discussions have not gotten as far as program. Of course, it would be a pretty useless exercise if you didn't have a program that could inspire people.
Exactly, but I don't think that in the context of this European election you have the possibility of doing that. Therefore, you're on a morale booster. You're really thinking that with my beauty and their brains, you can hold the line until we find a program! • How much can you initiate the program yourself, if you're a candidate?
I've no doubt that I could write any program I wanted, if I was the candidate for the European elections. I don't see that there would be any disagreement over principle, that Sinn Fein would say you have to take that out. But I don't think that that is a program. • But if it caught on? You know what the republican movement is like historically. The biggest weakness in Sinn Fein's proposals for a broad anti-imperialist front seems to be a lack of any concrete perspectives.
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Everyone is at the same stage. Every conference that is called has conflicting resolutions from the various participants for more conferences. This is the hallmark of where we are. What people are not calling for, what people are not coming to meetings and conferences with, is concrete activity, saying "that is an issue, that is how we should organize around it, that is where it fits into the overall picture." • But in a way, the workerist left has done that. What they propose is very clear. They propose a conference in three months to build a demonstration in August against 20 years of British troops. The problem is not that they were not concrete, but that their view of the problem is too narrow, that they do not see the connection between the economic questions and the national question.
In terms of the reality we're discussing, how do we begin to deal with the economic question in the South? As far as I can see, at none of the conferences has there been any clear setting out of this elusive program. Nobody has got it. If somebody at least put the program on the table for everybody else to argue over. ... • Someone has to take the initiative.
Nobody's got the program. • OK, but it's no use sitting back and waiting for other people to do it either. You've got as much right to do it as anybody else - more than most. As an outsider, of course, l don't know what the electoral prospects are in a campaign against Hume. But what seems interesting is the chance to discuss Ireland's place in the world. The traditional anti-imperialist arguments seem to be losing credibility.
Yes, in an overall context. But in this election, unity is only being talked about in the North. There's no question of broad candidates in the South, where that argument might very clearly help to make the breakthrough. • If you offer new ideas, when no one else does, a campaign can become exemplary and influence other things. There are already a number of coalitions around the idea of a "Europe of the Peoples."
This has become more of an issue since the Govan by-election in Scotland, where the Scottish Nationalist Party raised the slogan of "independence in Europe" responded by saying that she would have no truck with separatism" nor would any other members of the EEC. That exposes the real nature of the EEC as an alliance of imperialist powers, not a European unity that involves the various peoples on an equal basis.
The majority of people in Ireland, for good, bad and indifferent reasons do not like being in Europe. They have not perceived over ten years any great benefits. And they perceive even less coming • In the South, at least for a while some sections of farmers benefitted, and then there is European money coming in.
Maybe in the South. But in the North, people are not impressed with money coming in. They have seen that for a long while and it has not changed anything. And in many sections, they are annoyed by European interference. It has seriously affected the quality of lives of the people in the country areas, of small farmers, dairy farmers, who are now being paid to do what they don't want to do, to become market gardners — much to the annoyance of market gardners. The whole question of food hygiene has created an anti-EEC feeling as • One good reason is the EEC convention on terrorism and European collaboration against the IRA.
Yes, people are very conscious of the European influence in the extradition treaty in the South. • But, if Europe is a problem, isn't it also worth campaigning against?
Except that in the European election, Europe itself is not the center of the campaign. On the outermost fringe of Europe, when the European election is fought in the North, like all other elections it will be a polling exercise on internal issues. • On internal issues in the sense that Hume is the moderate, the modernist, and therefore best suited to represent Ireland in the EEC. It is true, that is domestic. It is the whole problem of why people continue to
IRELAND vote for the SDLP. But it also involves the way in which the EEC and the world bear on Ireland.
I don't think we can change that in this • Surely this time, or the next, this is something that has to be There is not enough debate on Ireland's place in the world. It is as if there are two reflexes, the old soldiers with the old arguments, and the new lefties who think Ireland is Nicaragua or South Africa.
Ireland is an old European country, the Irish liberation movement has had traditional alliances in Europe, and there is the question of the destiny of small nations in the European order. That is something that the left in Sinn Fein doesn't think about, if they did they would pay attention to the rise of the national movements in the USSR, which is posing once again the question of a democratic world order in which there is room for the development of small nationalities.
That's my biggest problem with all of them. People have become used to 20 years of struggle, and look forward to 20 more and 20 more and so on. There doesn't seem to be, anywhere, amongst the far left or any of the groups a serious realization of what we are about, the consequences of being about it and the relationships to other people. They don't see 1992 and the effect that the free-trade zone in Europe is going to
Nobody in the movement took the opportunity of the Russians pulling out of Afghanistan to make a comparison with the British soldiers here. They could have pointed out that nobody asked the Russian government for a guarantee that there would be instant peace on their departure.
Nobody's talking about 1992, what's going on in Russia and its relationship to disarmament in the West, to NATO. Nobody seems to think that any of those things have any bearing on Ireland. • What Sinn Fein is doing now is what we would have hoped it would have done after the H-Block campaign. Instead, for five years after the hunger strike, it turned inwards. And now the Marxist left is not in as good a position to help as it would have been five years ago.
That is a problem.. I have that feeling that people keep applying to today's problem the solution that they should have applied to yesterday's. I have that feeling about the European election.
At the minute, we're holding on, and we have to be careful about tactics. And I don't think that if you're in the process of building unity that it is a good idea to put it in the front line when you are under attack, when hown been tried, when you're not sure 15 how it will work. *