CRISIS Part 11 Break needed from nationalism

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Of proof were needed t the road of pettyurgeois nationalism is a de-sac, the travels of h wings of the IRA * their 1969 split vides it. he progress of the cials along the yellowk road of reforming the thern State has led them er and closer to the inists.

Irom their immersion in Northern Ireland Civil its Association (NICRA) porting a Bill of Rights i calling only for "withral of troops to acks"". , they have moved irtation with the nakedly imperialist Women's * Movement.

Militarist their concentration on the owest of economic issues, as fishing rights and nation of cooperatives, the Northern streets to the Provisionals, whose militarist orientation attracted that section of youth who had empirically gone beyond Civil Rights demonstrations and throwing stones.

The crisis in August 1969 was a turning point in the aspirations of the Catholic working class.

Confidence

Before then there had been widespread confidence in the ability of the Civil Rights movement and its middle class leadership to gain reforms from the Stormont government.

The casting aside of this leadership in the process of defending the Bogside against the RUC and B-Specials, as well as the obvious intransigence of the Unionists who ordered the attack, demonstrated the fact that the Northern State could not be reformed, but only overthrown.

The tragedy of this situation was that the self-reliance and rejection of reformism built out of this episode found no leadership apart from the Provisionals.

In the absence of a revolutionary leadership their only progression could be to a higher level of pure militancy and heroism, which the Provisionals' brand of nationalism with its mystical self-sacrifice cashed in on and squandered.

The rise of the Provisionals began in earnest in mid1970. The 'honeymoon period" between the army and the Catholic population was short-lived.

Confrontation

Tension shown in various minor riots escalated in July to all out confrontation.

The election of the Tory government at Westminster in June 1970 produced a more hard line attitude to the Catholic population.

In July the army imposed a curfew over the Falls Road area of Belfast. During the curfew the army killed four civilians; and in anticipation of further attacks the Catholic ghettoes began to arm themselves.

Independent

It was in this context that the Provisional IRA grew in strength and established themselves as an independent force.

The Provisional campaign got under way properly in 1971. The first soldier to be killed in Northern Ireland was shot dead on February 6 of that year-a full 18 months after the army had first been brought in.

The killing of three Scottish soldiers on February 26 sparked off a reaction by the Loyalists. One of their leaders in the Belfast shipyard led 4,000 workers on a demonstration demanding internment.

The Unionist leadership, under pressure from Westminster for political reform but committed by its party to a policy of "No Surrender" became more and more untenable.

Chichester-Clark, who had succeeded the "moderate" O'Neill as Prime Minister, was himself ousted from the right by Faulkner in March 1971.

Pressure fol- internment increased and on August 9, 1971 Faulkner ordered its introduction. 342 antiUnionists were arrested and 226 of these were held.

Barricades The entire Catholic population was at war with the British army. Barricades went up in Belfast, Newry and Derry.

In Derry they remained up for almost a year, establishing the Bogside and Creggan areas as "Free Derry"

Such was the response of the Catholic working class, that even the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the mouthpiece of the Catholic middle class, had to withdraw from Stormont.

On August 16, . 8,000 workers went on strike in Derry against internment. Rent and rates strikes spread all over the six counties.

The reaction against internment greatly strengthened the Provisionals, both in support and in membership.

Their strategy in this period had been, as well as attacking military targets, to make Northern Ireland an economic liability for British imperialism.

Development

This was the thinking behind their bombing of businesses and factories. The sole political demand of this bombing campaign was for the ending of Stormont by the British government.

The paltriness of this demand (Britain granted it and the repression worsened) and the individualist methods the Provisionals used to gain it, prevented the development of an organised mass movement against imperialism, while it bred illusions in the good intentions of the British State.

Such illusions were tragically shattered by the events of Sunday January 30, 1972.

A Civil Rights demonstration of approximately 20,000 people marched from the Creggan towards the centre of Derry.

The march was banned from the city centre and was stopped by troops outskirts of the Bogside:

A minor riot occurred but the troops, the Ist Parachute Regiment, responded not with the usual rubber bullets and CS gas but with real bullets.

. They killed 13 civilians, including children and old men. It was an open and premeditated attempt by the British government to intimidate the Catholic working class off the streets.

As happened with a similar attempt by the Unionists on October 5 1968, their plan blew up in their faces.

The Catholic community all over Ireland were completely outraged. There was a three-day strike in Derry and a one day strike all over the North.

New recruits Workers downed tools and demonstrated in Dundalk, cork, Galway, Limerick and Dublin. The British Embassy in Dublin was burned down by a 30,000 strong crowd.

A march on February 6 in Newry attracted 60,000 people.

Once again the Provisionals gained new recruits and support, not tor then political programme--whict barely existed-but because they had access to guns and were fighting imperialism in a fashion.

Nevertheless the Provisionals at precisely this point were being given unconditional support by the International Marxist Group. (with " Victory to the PRA Ken their on its cover) on 7 February 1972 asserted:

"It is vital to solidarise with the IRA, the only force capable of giving an immediate perspective of struggle against an enemy which is determined to crush the resistance of the Irish people"

This opportunist adaptation to petty-bourgeois nationalism by the IMG (and in Ireland by People's Democracy) came at the very moment when the IRA were demonstrating their lack of political direction.

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marras.

Bloody Sunday had produced such a massive explosion of anti-imperialist feeling not only in Northern Ireland but all over the South that the possibility of genuine mass movement in the whole of Ireland against imperialism and its Green and Orange allies definitely existed.

The Tanure -picho Provisionals to give a clear potitical leadership to this movement lies in the fact that they themselves had not qualitatively broken from the pressure politics of the Civil Rights movement.

They had merely upped the stakes-from "One manOne Vote" to the abolition of Stormont.

Heath • The decision of the Tories to concede this was based on the spontaneous outburst of militancy following Bloody Sunday, which had brought home to the Tory government that their interests, North and South, were in jeopardy.

On March 24, 1972 Heath prorogued Stormont, appointing Whitelaw as Secretary of State for Northern At the beginning of July a series of negotiations between the Provisionals and Whitelaw took place, and a ceasefire was arranged.

On the face of it, mid1972 was the high point of the Provisionals' campaign. Yet the rejoicing was •to prove premature.

The army, who had opposed the ceasefire from the beginning seized the first opportunity they could to break it.

Within nine days hostilities had been resumed because of an incident in the Lenadoon estate in Belfast.

The negotiations with the Provisionals were terminated, Whitelaw congratulates troops in 1972 and, by the end of the month, Whitelaw acceded to Loyalist demands and instructed the army to take over the "no-go" areas Derry and Belfast.

July 1972 also saw the escalation of the campaign of sectarian assassination by Loyalist murder squads.

The reaction among eseust arainst surect rul saw as a capitulation to the IRA, had produced strikes and Protestant "No go" areas.

The latter half of 1972 was marked by the hardening of this reaction.

The summer of 1972 marked a clear turning point in the Irish struggle.

Faced with the breakdown of the ceasefire and inten sified army belligerence, the Provisionals retreated into the ghettoes and fight back.

Yet this retreat signified as no other event had done, the bankruptcy of the entire Provisional strategy. In the face of the army's offensive, the Provisionals could only respond militarily at a time when clear political response on class lines was required.

Such a response only. led to confusion among the Catholic working class.

The crisis of proletarian leadership is not of course a crisis of a single moment, and failure to capitalise on the gains of 1971 would not in itself be sufficient testimony to the bankruptcy of the Provisionals.

But the sudden changes of July 1972 were themselves the direct result of the Provisionals' failure to advance a programme capable of uniting the working class on a clear anti-imperialist basis.

Special After Bloody Sunday the Southern Irish work demonstrated their supp ort for the liberation struggle in the North.

Yet the Provisionals let this support fritter away to such an extent that by caster ine sournern aamın- Danton -1-istration had established special criminal court to try political cases, a court which was to send hundreds of Provisionals to Southern jails.

And in the North, Provisional failure even to try to win Protestant workers to its side on a common working class anti-imperialist basis left those workers in the hands of reactionary demagogues like Craig and Paisley.

The result-the creation of that anti-Catholic paramilitary outfit, the UDA, and the campaign sectarian murders-was almost inevitable.

Westminster's strategy during this period was to give the British army a free hand to smash the Catholic resistance (the army enlisting UDA help in this task while at the same time concocting a "solution" which would appear as all things to all men.

chamber They came up with a White Paper on March 20 1973 which proposed the setting up of a single chamber Assembly and Executive, the latter giving a measure of "power-sharing" , allowing the Catholic middle class their "share" in government.

A Council of Ireland was also planned as a sop to the Nationalists in the hope of undermining the Provisionals support in Catholic areas.

The main function of this council was in fact to maintain the Northern and Southern states intact.

The White Paper, the last makeshift solution for Ireland to date, was doomed from the start.

Rejected by both Loyalists and Provisionals it was warmly received only by the SDLP who saw their chance for a piece of the action.

The latter, along with the Official Unionists, led by Faulkner, and the Alliance Party that stood between them, gained a majority of seats when the Assembly elections were held in mid1973.

Together they established tha "Dower-sharing" Executive.

The • details of the proposed Council of Ireland were ironed out at the Sunningdale Conference in December 1973.

Wiped On January 4, 1974 the Ulster Unionist Council rejected the Sunningdale package by a majority of 80.

Faulkner resigned as leader of the Unionist Party. In the General Election to Westminster on February 28, Faulkner and his supporters were completely wiped out.

The extreme right wing United Ulster Unionist Council led by Paisley and Craig gained eleven out of twelve seats.

The UUUC conference of April 1974 agreed on the scrapping of the Sunningdale agreement, the bringing down of the power-sharing Execu38 PET tive and demanded an immediate Stormont election.

Their campaign came to a climax in the Ulster Workers Council strike of May 1974.

The success of this reactionary strike was guaranteed by massive intimidation from the Loyalist para-military organisations. Road blocks were set up all over Belfast.

However these methods would have had little effect if there had not been overwhelming support for the strike in the Protestant working class. (This is shown by the contrasting failure of Paisley's strike call in May 1977).

The UWC strike highlighted the British army's stance on the Northern Ireland conflict.

Ordered by Wilson to remove the UDA barricades and to operate the main power stations the army command refused.

The objective role that the army was playing in the North-that of strengthening reaction and the sectarian divisions-had clearly become also a subjective one.

This experience confirmed more than any other the fact that the complete prerequisite for any solution to the problems of Northern After two weeks of the strike, the Faulkner Unionists capitulated and resigned, bringing down the executive.

Prorogued

The UWC called off the strike and the Assembly was prorogued indefinitely.

The support for the strike had encouraged sectarian attacks by Loyalist thugs.

The logic of this was seen during the strike when three car bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan, killing 33 people.

The reaction to these bombings in the British press was predictably much more reserved than that to the bombings at the end: of 1974 in Birmingham.

The latter bombs which were planted in pubs killed 21 people. Universally attributed by the British press to the Provisional IRA, these bombs were definitely the work of agents provocateurs -probably within the British state.

The Provisionals denied any responsiblity for these bombs-something which they had not done even when a number of civilians had been killed in Belfast in 1972.

Same excuse

The Birmingham bombings provided the same excuse for the British government as the Liberty, Hall bombs of 1972 had given the Southern Irish government for introducing reactionary "anti-terrorist" legislation. (The bombing at the Liberty Hall in Dublin had taken place the day before, a vote was due in the Dail on anti-IRA measures).

The Birmingham bombs were thus the cynical means by which the British government introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

While the Provisionals were not responsible for the planting of the pub bombs in Birmingham, they must accept responsiblity for the fact that the British government was able to use such a provocation against them and other Irish militants in Britain.

It is the clearest indictment of the method of individual terrorism that the bourgeois state can itself use it to discredit its opposition.

Bombings, hijackings, etc. only serve to isolate militants from the mass of the working class and can never succeed in mobilising the masses into coherent political movement.

The Provisionals, despite their individual heroism, seek to substitute themselves for the independent action of the working class and they cannot pose any fundamental challenge to the British State.

Reliance on terrorism by the Provisionals at the expense of developing any political programme directed at solving the class questions in Ireland also assisted in the development of the Women's Peace Movement.

This movement, arising initially as an expression of the war-weariness in the whole population, was immediately adopted and encouraged by imperialism as means of defeating the Provisionals.

Yet it was the Provisionals' own lack of policy that allowed this pro-imperialist movement to posture as "peace" confronting While carrying out hysterical attacks on the Provisionals, this "peace-atany-price" brigade whitewashed the British army in an attempt to restore their rather tarnished 1969 image of peace-makers.

Confused

However if the confused terrorism of the Provisionals was unwittingly providing meat for these vultures of peace, the reformists of the Officials (and the Communist Party) were out feeding them.

The Officials saw in the Peace Movement some move towards their conception of "working class unity"

But the Peace Movement offers nothing more than 'unity' with British imperialsim.

Unity of the Irish working class, a task central to revolutionary development in Ireland, cannot be achieved LI. by these means.

Nor can it be achieved by ignoring the political tasks and restricting activity to economic questions of wages and housing, as the left reformists of the Militant group attempt to do.

Their recent election campaign in Ballymena was fought on the most minimum of programmes, avoiding even such basic political questions as the presence of an imperialist army on the voters' doorsteps.

Perspective The road to unity of the Irish working class lies neither in accommodation to Green nationalism by supporting it (IMG) nor in accommodation to Orange nationalism by ignoring it (Militant), but in developing a working class perspective which confronts head-on both nationalisms.

Such a task requires the building of a revolutionary party based on an independent working class programme and which forms part of an international revolutionary movement.

Central to such a programme must be the questions of massive unemployment, depressed wages, colonial exploitation and discrimination on religious grounds, which affect and divide workers both North and South of the border, along with demands to mobilise the small farmers against the big ranchers, the banks and the food monopolies.

In posing demands answer such problems, socialists must insist that none can be solved while the imperialist occupation and partition of the island prevents the development of a planned, socialist economy and while British and foreign capital, in alliance with Irish capitalists North and South continue to exploit the underdeveloped economy and massive pool of unemployed as a source of cheap sweated As Trotsky wrote as long ago as 1916:

• the independent Irish commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, in so far as it has formed over the past decades, immediately adopted an antagonistic position towards the young Irish proletariat, giving up the national revolutionary struggle and entering the camp of imperialism. The young Irish working class, taking shape in an atmosphere saturated with the heroic recollections of national rebellions, and clashing with the egoistic, narrow minded imperial arrogance of British trade unionism, naturally swing between nationalism and syndicalism, ever ready to unite these two concepts in their revolutionary consciousness. It attracts the young intelligentsia and individual nationalist enthusiasts who, in their turn, supply the movement with a preponderance of the green flag over the red. In this way the 'national revolution' even in Ireland, in practice has become an uprising of workers"

Writings on Britain, Vol.

The construction of a revolutionary party to prepare the way for such an uprising is the urgent task confronting the Irish working class.

And it is the duty of socialists who take their commitment to proletarian internationalism seriously to assist this task in every way possible, and continually campaign in the British labour movement for action to force the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland, and in support of the right of the Irish people to self-determination.

Concluded