Perspectives for Their Sh

Scan page 7

This week we begin publication in three instalments of the perspectives document on Ireland adopted on September 10 by a national meeting of the Workers Socialist League. The document takes up the thorny question of the national struggle in Ireland, and the necessity to fight for a Trotskyist party thin that struggle, and concludes on the tasks to be undertaken by the Workers Socialist League in Britain in solidarity with the Irish liberation fight.

We must reaffirm at the very outset the obvious fact that emerges from our extended study of the history of the Irish struggle [SP73-83] -that the basic problem for revolutionaries in Ireland is the uncompleted national revolution that was aborted by both the British imperialists and Irish bourgeoisie with the partition of the island.

Thus neither in the North nor in the South has the yoke of British imperialism been thrown off.

Part of the reason for this was undoubtedly the failure of the post-war revolutionary possibilities of 1919-21 in Britain to materialise-reflecting the crisis of working class It was this uneven development that allowed the breathing space for the native bourgeoisie to establish its grip in Ireland, and to consolidate a lasting ailiance with the British bourgeoisie.

Completion

The struggle for social revolution in Ireland cannot be separated from the necessary completion of this national The oppression and exploitation against which the Irish proletariat, together with the small farmers, must be mobilised, flows not merely from Dublin-still less independently from Belfast-but is rooted in the British bourgeoisie's age-old imperialist exploitation of This is expressed openly in North through direct British military rule brazenly enforcing vicious repressive measures.

In the South it is expressed through the economic stranglehold Britain still exerts over the bourgeois government, which has ensured that repressive measures against the nationalist forces have been enforced by the police and army of the Southern state.

Political independence In fighting against the Lynch government and for political independence of the working class in the South, workers are in fact fighting the native agents of British imperialism, and confronting tne unresolved problems of the national revolution.

It would be entirely wrong to downgrade the importance of this national struggle against British imperialism.

In striking a blow against their own exploitation and national oppression, Irish workers and small farmers would also be weakening the whole apparatus of British imperialism-opening up new revolutionary possibilities in Britain itself and throughout Europe.

The obligation of revolutionaries is both to support the national struggle and to fight within it for the leading role of the organised working class around a socialist programme.

Divisions

We cannot begin the development of a programme for Ireland by accepting the divisions enforced on Ireland by the British and Irish bourgeoisie.

Nor can we tailor our programme to appealing to the present undoubtedly pro-imperialist state of consciousness of the Protestant working class in the North-any more than our programme to combat unemployment or racial discrimination in Britain begins from the prejudices and nationalist illusions of backward workers.

The conflict involved in Ireland is not a struggle between two "rival" nationalities and national aspirations-the Protestant workers in the summer of 1977 clearly demonstrated their refusal to go to the lengths of severing the direct link with Britain when they refused to back Paisiey's reactionary strike call.

The conflict is in reality between those fighting for an end to imperialist exploitation in Ireland and those forcesboth North and South-that stand opposed to that fight.

Self determination

For this reason we continue to uphold the principled call for the right to self-determination for the Irish people as a whole.

This demand'starts not from religious prejudice or political backwardness but from the objective requirements of the workers and small farmers North and South.

Their problems can only be resolved through a planned, integrated socialist economy, and it is our task as Trotskyists to formulate programmatic demands that will lead all sections of the oppressed in the course of their struggles to recognise the necessity for such a solution.

In fighting for such a programme we fight also for the construction of the vanguard party which must assert the independent leading role of the working class which alone can ensure the success of the combined struggle for the national and social revolution.

This ' is the method of Permanent Revolution and the Transitiona: Programme, and, if developed, will enable us to show the path from the present confused state of consciousness of the Catholic and Protestant workers to the necessary all-out struggle against democratic capitalism and imperialist exploitation and the fight for the establishment of a workers' and farmers' government.

Naturally no progress can be made in this direction without an absolute insistence at all points on the necessity for all British troops to be withdrawn from the island.

The troops were sent in by Wilson in 1969 to forestall any possibility of militant struggles for democratic and economic demands by the Catholic minority in the North spilling over into more widespread and conscious struggles on issues involving chronic mass unemployment and the impoverishment of both Protestant and Catholic workers, and galvanising the militant working class movement in the South.

Occupation

Continuing fear of the forces that could be unleashed if the Catholic minority seemed to have won concessions has forced successive British governments to maintain full-scale military occupation for the last eight years.

Meanwhile, Protestant politicians have divided into two camps-those prepared to negotiate a compromise deal with the British government and the petty bourgeois Catholic leaders: and those who have made it clear they would prefer to see a complete break with Britain than any concessions made.

A whole succession of the former variety have been replaced from the right during the period of army occupation but the limited scope of the latter type in proceeding to break the traditional ties with British capitalism was demon. strated by the failure of Paisley's reactionary strike last year.

Repression

In the South, Prime Minister Lynch has extended a somewhat ambiguous but nevertheless real hand of assistance to the British bourgeoisie-maintaining and even increasing the policemilitary repression of the republican movement at the border and within the South itself.

At the same time he continues sounding off verbally about the possibility of a future 'amnesty' for republican political prisoners in a speech that was used to disrupt delicate talks between the Lib-Lab gove government and the Loyalist political leaders.

The Southern bourgeoisietied as they are to the apron strings of the British imperialists and the EEC monopoliesremain both impotent and unwilling to further the cause of Irish liberation (clearly recognising the blow that it would deal to imperialism internationally and the problems it would create for them as a capitalist class). This political impotence is matched by that of the republican forces themselves.

Individual and conspiratorial military actions against imperialism and even sectarian attacks on Protestant areas have been combined with the most mal reformist demands.

The officials have completely abandoned the fight for the withdrawal of British troops, and simply call for them to be withdrawn from working Class areas-the same as the Stalinist call for troops to be "withdrawn to barracks"

Dropped call

The Provisionals for their part have called for the army to "set a date for its withdrawal" and have dropped the call for a "united Ireland" in favour of agitation for a Federal "Nine County Ulster"

And in the meantime both organisations concentrate on pressure campaigns for prison reforms, which while they must be supported, are completely inadequate for a long-term perspective for the Irish struggles.

In recognising that their fight is objectively in conflict with capital we critically support the nationalists' struggle against imperialism and in defence of the Catholic community against loyalist attacks.

We unconditionally defend them against police-military repression North or South of the border, but we must also be clear that the way forward in the irish liberation struggle involves a decisive break from both the bankrupt programme and the equally bankrupt political methods of the petty bourgeois nationalists.

Such a break can only be achieved by building a Trotskyist party that will establish the leading role of the working class in the national struggle.

Continued

Scan page 8

Trotsky-opposed worship of the accomplished fact.