The Plough
Volume 2, Number 36
22 May 2005

E-Mail Newsletter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party  

1) Editorial
2) Going Respectable
3) Behind the Betrayal
4) Basque Political Prisoner in England
5) Press Release: Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association
6) What's On

*******

EDITORIAL
 
This edition carries two important articles by Liam O'Ruairc and
Philip Ferguson on the evolution of Sinn Féin (Provisional) from a
republican party to that of a nationalist party. The articles were
first printed in the Weekly Worker, the paper of the CPGB, in late
April and early May 2005. Electoral success may have temporarily
blinded genuine republicans to the disastrous path that the Sinn
Féin leadership has embarked on. But sooner or later the failure of
the pan-nationalist strategy will force a rethink for those still
believe in the concept of a socialist republic in Ireland. It's time
all of us who adhere to Connolly socialism started to get together and
plot the way forward.
 
*******

GOING RESPECTABLE
 
[Liam O'Ruairc, a comrade from the Irish Republican Socialist Party,
looks at Sinn Féin's evolution under Gerry Adams over the last 20
years.]
 
The transition of Sinn Féin from principled revolutionary
organisation to opportunist, reformist, constitutional nationalist
party has been the subject of many a commentary. The whole process
traces its roots to the 1980s. Before the end of that decade, the
party was gradually becoming incorporated into the institutions it was
supposed to overthrow, mainly through the pressure of electoral
considerations and clientelist expectations.
 
At the beginning of the 1980s, the IRA's stance regarding
constitutional politics was "quite simple and clear-cut...outside of a
32-county sovereign independent democracy, the IRA will have no
involvement in what is loosely called constitutional politics" ('IRA
attitude on elections', An Poblachtach/Republican News, September 5
1981, p20). However, the movement soon introduced the tactic of
contesting elections through Sinn Féin. "Who here really believes
that we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here
object if with a ballot paper in this hand, and an Armalite in this
hand, we take power in Ireland?" declared Danny Morrison ('By ballot
and bullet', APRN, November 5 1981, p2).
 
The 'Armalite and ballot box' strategy was born. The purpose of
contesting elections and giving an increasingly important role to Sinn
Féin was not in order to become some respectable constitutional
party, but to introduce a new tactic in the anti-imperialist struggle.
The reasons advanced for electoral interventions were, first, that it
showed that the national struggle was political, not criminal, in
nature. It is difficult to label people as criminal when tens of
thousands go out to vote for them. It also refuted the British
government's propaganda that the republicans were a small isolated
group receiving no substantial support.
 
British strategy also demanded the representation of the nationalist
community in the north by constitutional nationalist parties like the
Social Democratic and Labour Party and, by challenging its electoral
monopoly, Sinn Féin was destabilising the government's plans (this
is made very clear in 'Revolutionary Politics', APRN, April 25 1985,
p2. See also 'Ballots and Bombs: Electoral Tactics Complement Armed
Struggle', APRN, February 18 1982, p1). SF portrayed itself as being
socially radical and representing the interests of working class
people, in contrast to the SDLP's electoral pool of conservative,
middle-aged and middle class voters.
 
Danny Morrison reassured the movement that tactical electoral
intervention would not lead to constitutionalism and reformism: "Sinn
Féin will be fighting the elections to consolidate republican
support and build a revolutionary organisation which will defend the
struggle, not a constitutional party to replace it." The Provisional
Movement is not "going Sticky", "there is no parliamentary road to a
united Ireland or socialism" and election results "cannot either
prejudice the future or the primacy of armed struggle" (Peter Arnlis,
'The War Will Go On', APRN, September 16 1982, pp6-7).
 
This was a fundamental point of principle. In 1984, Martin McGuinness
stressed that it was "the combination of the Armalite and the ballot
box" that would achieve victory, but made clear which was the
weightier of the two: "The Irish Republican Army offers the only
resolution to the present situation. It is their disciplined,
well-directed war against British forces which will eventually bring
Britain to withdraw. We know that elections, while important...will
not achieve a British withdrawal. If Sinn Féin were to win every
election it contested, it would still not get an agreement on British
withdrawal...We recognise the value and the limitations of electoral
success. We recognise that only disciplined, revolutionary armed
struggle by the IRA will end British rule" ('We Will Never Be Slaves
Again', APRN, June 28 1984, p7).
 
For his part, Gerry Adams declared that "to think that the British can
be 'talked out' of Ireland is contemptible" ('The Politics of
Revolution: The Main Speeches and Debates from the 1986 Sinn Féin
Ard-Fheis, Including the Presidential Address of Gerry Adams', p11)
and concluded: "The history of Ireland and of British colonial
involvement throughout the world tells us that the British government
rarely listens to the force of argument. It understands only the
argument of force" ('There is Only One Alternative', APRN, February 2
1989, pp8-9). But within a decade Sinn Féin and the IRA had totally
abandoned such a stance, and gradually transformed themselves into a
constitutional nationalist movement. How did this come about?
 
The first reason was that the leadership was intent on broadening the
base of the movement, and was prepared to pay the price through a
dilution of its radical socialist and later republican principles if
necessary. It first made clear that the party was not going to be too
radical, as this might scare off potential supporters who would be
more conservative. When elected president of Sinn Féin in 1983,
Gerry Adams declared: "We must be mindful of the dangers of
ultra-leftism and remember at all times that, while our struggle has a
major social and economic content, the securing of Irish independence
is the prerequisite for the advance to a socialist republican society.
Therefore...republicans have a duty to beware of any tendencies which
would narrow our demands and our base. This is true not only of forces
outside our movement, but also of tendencies within our party"
('Presidential Address', APRN, November 17 1983, pp8-9).
 
The next stage was not just avoiding the dangers of being too far on
the left - it was about abandoning any pretence of being socialist
republican: "The republican struggle should not at this stage of its
development style itself 'socialist republican'. This would imply that
there is no place in it for non-socialists" (G. Adams, 'The Politics
of Irish Freedom', p132). The excuse was that "this inevitably must
narrow the potential support base of the Republican Movement and
enable other movements to claim that they are 'republican' though they
are not socialist: for example, Fianna Fáil or the SDLP" (G. Adams,
'Signposts Towards Independence and Socialism', 1988, p13).
 
Any principled leftwing position, in so far as it would narrow the
support base of the movement, had to be rejected. Adams finally
admitted in an interview: "I don't think socialism is on the agenda at
all at this stage except for political activists of the left" (Irish
Times, December 10 1986). The movement's growth would be weakened if
it could not rely on some conservative support.
 
If Adams understood the dangers of ultra-leftism, he certainly did not
understand the dangers of opportunism. The movement's growth was
everything; the principles nothing. And the next target was not
socialism, but republicanism itself: "We need to avoid
ultra-republican positions" (G. Adams, 'Signposts Towards Independence
and Socialism', 1988, p16). If the movement's republicanism was too
orthodox, it might not appeal to people who are simply nationalists.
Ultimately, Sinn Féin would abandon republicanism all together to
maximise the nationalist agenda. Republicanism was gradually diluted
into nationalism.
 
Concerns about widening the base of the movement were closely related
with that of widening its electoral support base. If the party wanted
to become the majority nationalist party in the north and make
considerable electoral progress in the south, it would have to
increase its share of the vote, and appeal to people who are neither
socialists nor republicans. Adams emphasised that the vote for Sinn
Féin from 1982 to 1984 was a "principled republican vote, as
opposed to a nationalist or Catholic vote...it is ideologically
sound...We have been stating our case bluntly and dogmatically, we
have not been trying to be 'all things to all men' and our vote
represents the people who came out in support of our position"
('Steady Progress and an Injection of Reality', APRN, 21 1984, pp2-3).
 
In a television interview, Adams even went so far as to say that it
might be a bad idea to overtake the SDLP electorally, as this might
lead to a diminution of social radicalism. But, as the movement
gradually transformed itself into a party of votes, it was less and
less concerned about what is politically principled. For example, in
1985, SF decided to support women's right to have abortion - only to
reverse that position in 1986. This had less to do with abortion being
immoral or wrong than with the opportunistic reason that it would go
badly with the southern electorate in general and conservative
nationalists in particular, and prevent the party getting more votes.
 
The objective increasingly became to win the votes of traditional
middle class SDLP or Fianna Fáil voters. So a core socialist
republican vote became a republican vote and finally a nationalist
vote. A very revealing recent example of this was given in a report
carried in An Phoblacht of the 2001 Westminster elections in West
Tyrone. In the contest between the SDLP and Sinn Féin, there could
be no doubt as to how the party represented itself:
 
"In the past days the enthusiastic reception canvassers have received
on doorsteps, including in staunch SDLP strongholds, have confirmed
that Doherty's support has never been so strong...'This constituency
is overwhelmingly nationalist and it is nothing short of a disgrace
that a unionist politician opposed to the peace process was elected
last time,' says Pat Doherty. 'Now is the time for the nationalist
people of West Tyrone to rally around a party and a politician who
will lead from the front to strengthen the peace process and
effectively represent all the people of this constituency on the
issues that matter the most, which include inward investment,
transport infrastructure and demilitarisation.'...Sinn Féin is
seen...as the only nationalist party committed to negotiating further
concessions on issues like policing and demilitarisation. But beyond
the figures and the short-term considerations, the battle in West
Tyrone is also a symbol of the direction nationalism is taking and the
future of the Six Counties...The rise of Sinn Féin across the Six
Counties will further confirm a trend of recent elections: Sinn
Féin is the fastest growing party on the island and is becoming the
largest nationalist party in the north" (my emphasis - 'Pat Doherty to
Win West Tyrone', APRN, June 1 2001, p6).
 
From once opposing the 'collaborationist' and middle class SDLP, Sinn
Féin now tries to replace the constitutional nationalist party and
appeal to middle class and conservative voters.
 
Another reason for Sinn Féin's evolution is that from the second
half of the 1980s onward, central to the Provisionals' strategy was
the building of 'broad fronts'. But the question is, on what political
basis is the front built, who qualifies and how broad should it be?
According to Adams, "We have to proceed on the basis of the lowest
common denominator and at the level of people's understanding" (G.
Adams, 'Signposts Towards Independence and Socialism', 1988, p16).
This means building fronts on so broad a basis that they can encompass
everything from the Catholic Church to corporate Irish America. 

In practice, the Provisionals sought to accommodate and build a
'pan-nationalist alliance' with Fianna Fáil, the Catholic Church -
and the SDLP, instead of confronting them, as in the past: "Rather
than denouncing the party, republicans should take a constructive
approach with the SDLP" ('Broadening the Base', APRN, June 30 1988,
p3). This could only but seriously weaken republicanism's
anti-partitionist thrust, as those elements have always been much more
hostile to the IRA than to British involvement in Ireland.
 
When Sinn Féin did succeed in building such alliances, it was not
on its own terms. It is not the Dublin government, the SDLP and the
Clinton/Bush administrations that have come to the republican
position, but rather the Provisional Movement which has moved to the
constitutional nationalist position.
 
The price of the inclusion of republicans in the pan-nationalist
alliance was the exclusion of republicanism. Sinn Féin has allowed
those conservative elements to lead the whole nationalist struggle.
Constitutional nationalism is the emphasis upon unity by consent, and
republicanism has become subsumed within a partitionist nationalist
project. The people who have always sold the struggle out are the
people Sinn Féin was now relying on. Their aim was to effectively
decommission republicanism, and they succeeded. The price of meetings
with Clinton or Bush in the White House or of joint initiatives with
the leadership of Fianna Fáil were ceasefires, unilateral acts of
decommissioning and defeat.
 
When elected president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams expressed his
support for the armed struggle of the IRA: "Armed struggle is a
necessary and morally correct form of resistance in the Six Counties
against a government whose presence is rejected by the vast majority
of Irish people...There are those who tell us that the British
government will not be moved by armed struggle. As has been said
before, the history of Ireland and of British colonial involvement
throughout the word tells us that they will not be moved by anything
else" ('Presidential Address', APRN, November 17 1983, pp8-9).
 
But electoralism was soon to take its toll on Sinn Féin's
commitment to support the primacy of armed struggle. In 1985, all Sinn
Féin local election candidates had to sign a republican declaration
giving unequivocal support to armed struggle. But after the British
government introduced legislation making compulsory for anyone
standing to reject proscribed organisations or illegal activities, the
1989 Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis authorised councillors to sign up to this
'anti-violence' declaration. So, when it comes to a choice between
votes and expressing support for the armed struggle of the IRA, the
party chose electoralism. Sinn Féin had thus repudiated the
Armalite in favour of the ballot box long before it signed up to the
Mitchell Principles.
 
In the meantime, SF faced the contradictions of 'going into the state
to overthrow the state'. In 1985, it decided that its elected
representatives in the north would take their seats on local councils.
An editorial in An Phoblacht promised: "Within the councils of the Six
Counties, Sinn Féin elected representatives will challenge the
basis of the state itself and that is why they are seen as a threat
both by the loyalists and by the so-called 'constitutional
nationalists'" ('No Illusions', APRN May 2 1985, p1). In theory, the
republican objective was to overthrow the northern state. That was
what the IRA armed struggle was about. But, while the IRA was bombing
and destroying City Hall as a symbol of the state, Sinn Féin
councillor were de facto accepting the state and trying to make it
work by using it as a source of income, funding community initiatives,
investment for social development projects, etc. Rather than providing
an alternative structure to the state, as Adams had earlier envisaged
in his jail writings, Sinn Féin was now susceptible to cooption by
the state.
 
A few years later, it was evident that Sinn Féin's attitude towards
the state had evolved: "As one Sinn Féin councillor observed, 'The
loyalists and the council officials were genuinely apprehensive of
Sinn Féin in the council chamber, but within a short period of time
they saw that we were genuine and reasonable" ('Advancing Under Attack
- Sinn Féin in the Council Chambers', APRN March 2 1989, pp8-9).
The reason was that, for the purpose of running city councils, there
were practically no differences between Sinn Féin and the other
constitutionalist parties. Mairtin O'Muilleor, a well known Belfast
Sinn Féin councillor, admitted that, "When it comes to 'bins,
bodies and bogs' (the normal issues at council meetings), we are only
a few degrees to the left of the SDLP" ('Broadening the Base', APRN,
June 30 1988, p3).
 
Brendan O'Brien, the security correspondent for RTE who cannot be
suspected of republican or leftwing sympathies, was one of the first
who recognised the significance of this process: "In the 1970s,
abstentionist republicans would never have considered 'recognising'
Belfast City Hall. It was the bastion of unionism and of the British
state. The Republican Movement would have none of it. They would
insist on abstaining from the state until Britain was forced out
through the IRA campaign...By 1993 Sinn Féin had 10 seats at
Belfast City Hall and were looking ahead to a nationalist majority on
the council. They were claiming it as their own, despite the union
jack flying overhead and all the symbols of unionism and empire
inside. This would have far-reaching implications for a movement which
regarded itself not just as republican but revolutionary. They were
joining the system, not tearing it down" (B. O'Brien, 'The Long War',
1999, pp47-49).
 
Sinn Féin had de facto accepted the legitimacy of the state years
before it signed up to the Belfast Agreement. Unionist dominance of
Belfast city council ended with the local government elections of
1997. The first Sinn Féin lord mayor of Belfast to be appointed was
Alex Maskey for the year 2002-03. Photographs of him sitting with a
union jack in his parlour and proudly wearing his mayor necklace would
have been unthinkable two decades ago and symbolised how far Sinn
Féin had accepted the institutions it was once pledged to overthrow
(see B. McCaffrey and A. Maskey 'Man and Mayor', 2003).
 
This was also true of the recognition of the legitimacy of the
southern parliament. The Republican Movement traditionally considered
itself to be the legitimate government of Ireland, and the IRA the
sole legitimate army. When elected as president of Sinn Féin, Adams
stated: "On the question of Leinster House, we are an abstentionist
party. It is not my intention to advocate a change in this situation."
He promised the delegates that he was not "about to lead you into
Leinster House" ('Presidential Address', APRN, November 17 1983,
pp8-9).
 
The problem is that, once the legitimacy of the Dublin government is
recognised, there cannot be two legitimate governments and two
legitimate armies; one has to recognise that the official Irish army
is the only legitimate army and that an illegal army is therefore
illegitimate. The republican objective is to bring down Leinster
House, not enter it. However, in 1986, in order to grow electorally in
the south, the Provisionals dropped abstentionism and recognised its
legitimacy.
 
Denying that the current leadership "are intent on edging the
Republican Movement on to a constitutional path", Martin McGuinness
then declared: "I can give a commitment on behalf of the leadership
that we have absolutely no intention of going to Westminster or
Stormont...Our position is clear and it will never, never, never
change. The war against British rule must continue until freedom is
achieved...We will lead you to the republic" ('The Politics of
Revolution - The Main Speeches and Debates from the 1986 Sinn Féin
Ard-Fheis, Including the Presidential Address of Gerry Adams',
pp26-27).
 
Eight years later, the 'war against British rule' was over, and five
years after that Martin McGuinness was a British minister of education
in the Stormont Assembly. 

*******

BEHIND THE BETRAYAL
 
[Former Sinn Féin member Philip Ferguson recalls and analyses the
organisation's move to the right - and points a finger at the British
left.]

In last week's Weekly Worker my socialist republican comrade, Liam
O'Ruairc, outlined major developments in the degeneration of the
Republican Movement (Sinn Féin and the IRA) into constitutional
nationalism (April 21). As a former Sinn Féin activist, including
being a full-time organiser for several years, I would like to add to
the picture by looking at some of the internal developments and
disputes, the external context in Ireland and globally and the role of
the British left in this degeneration.
 
I joined Sinn Féin in the middle of 1986 and left Ireland
permanently at the start of 1994, although I was out of Ireland for
much of the 18 months before my final departure. My period of activity
coincided with the beginnings of the rightward shift although, at the
time I joined, it appeared that leftwing politics were dominant in
both major wings of the movement (party and army). In particular, in
the late 1970s and early 1980s it appeared, certainly to me, that the
Republican Movement was in transition from revolutionary nationalism,
in the sense Lenin used that term, to revolutionary socialism. 

Given that a generation of radicals in oppressed nations had made this
transition in the years immediately following the Russian Revolution,
it seemed perfectly feasible to me that Irish republicans could also
do so.
 
This view was reinforced by a number of factors. The movement was
overwhelmingly working class in social composition, and the Irish
bourgeoisie and most of the middle class (especially in the south)
were completely hostile to the national liberation struggle. In
addition, hundreds of comrades were in prison and studying Marxist
texts there. However, the lowering of the horizons of the movement, or
at least of its leaders, began to manifest itself not long after I
joined.
 
IRA volunteers: took on the world's number two imperialist power
 
It is important to put this in a wider political context, as this
leadership was not merely a bunch of ageing yuppies, like the
Blairites, but a layer of working class fighters forged in the
crucible of a life-and-death struggle in the nationalist ghettoes of
the north, especially Belfast, taking on the world's number two
imperialist power. Critiques of them as 'middle class' by social
workers and teachers belonging to Irish Trotskyist groups which had
never summoned up the revolutionary spirit to so much as throw a stone
at the occupying imperialist army never much impressed me (and do not
today either).
 
A major problem was simply the objective conditions which the
republicans had to confront. They faced not only a powerful
imperialist enemy, but also repressive state apparatuses both sides of
the border in Ireland. The south, for instance, maintained continual
harassment and repression of republicans all the way through the armed
conflict of the past generation. It was much easier to belong to any
of the small Trotskyist groups than it was to be in Sinn Féin in
any part of Ireland.

In the wake of the 1981 hunger strikes and the mass mobilisations
around them in Ireland, republicans made advances electorally, thereby
showing they were not a small and isolated 'terrorist' or 'bandit'
group, as portrayed by the British and Irish establishments. The
ruling classes on both sides of the Irish Sea were determined to roll
back these gains and did so using a combination of repression against
republicans and their base and carrots for communities prepared to
separate themselves from the Republican Movement. The Dublin
government and the Stoop Down Low Party (SDLP) in the six counties,
both of which were threatened by the rise of Sinn Féin and the
radical instability that might ensue from this, stepped up
collaboration with the Brits.
 
By the late 1980s, the Republican Movement had been pushed back to its
hard-core base. Clearly, neither relying on armed struggle as the
major strategy nor combining electoral politics and armed struggle
(the ballot box and the Armalite) were sufficient for holding off the
renewed offensive of the British state and its lackeys in Ireland. A
rethink was necessary, and this did actually take place.

Unfortunately, it took place in very unfavourable international
circumstances. There were two elements to this:
 
1. the collapse of national liberation movements elsewhere, along with
the collapse of collectivism associated with the Soviet bloc;
 
2. the dismal politics of the British left.
 
While the Republican Movement had never regarded the Soviet bloc as a
model, the collapse of that bloc had the effect of widely discrediting
any form of collectivist-oriented politics, including genuine
revolutionary socialism. There was certainly no Bolshevik Party
leading a healthy revolutionary process in Russia or anywhere else
that could inspire the Republican Movement leadership to move
leftwards, as had happened with revolutionary nationalists immediately
after 1917.
 
Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet bloc had helped disorient
national liberation movements everywhere. The FSLN, under pressure
from Washington and the demise of the Soviet bloc, had shifted
rightwards, as had the FMLN in El Salvador, and similar groups
elsewhere in central America. The African National Congress-South
African Communist Party was moving towards an accommodation with the
South African ruling class and its political representatives, in which
formal race laws would be abolished, but capitalist social relations
maintained and strengthened. The Palestine Liberation Organisation was
being given the right to run a few refugee camps in exchange for
ending the struggle against the Israeli state.
 
The 'success' with which the ANC and PLO had gone mainstream appealed
to much of the republican leadership, including those who had studied
Marxism so intensely while in prison and written radical critiques of
the history of the movement. I recall chatting after an
anti-extradition conference in Dublin around 1990 to a prominent
Belfast republican and former hunger-striker, who had been one of the
leading figures in the study of Marxism in the H-blocks and was only
recently out of prison. I naturally assumed he and I would be on the
same wavelength politically, but was shocked when he started saying to
me how we had to take the ANC and PLO as our model and how they would
succeeded in 'mainstreaming' their agenda.
 
Of course, the idea was not that the republican agenda would be
gutted, but that it would be promoted in a way that made it the
central political focus that everyone in Ireland had to address. This
was, supposedly, what the PLO and ANC had achieved.
 
One of the problems faced by comrades who studied in prison and
became, at least while behind bars, convinced Marxists, was that it
was all theoretical. Since these comrades were locked up for 10, 15,
18 years, there was little opportunity to develop their Marxism in the
changing, real world. When they got out there was simply a huge chasm
between their intellectual Marxism and the more prosaic reality,
including the way the leadership was taking the movement rightwards. A
few stayed true to the revolutionary theory they had learned in prison
and tried to use it to analyse reality, but for most the chasm was too
wide and they quickly fell into it, which meant falling into line
behind the leadership.
 
There was also a good deal of conniving and dishonesty from elements
of the leadership, who set out fairly consciously to destroy (either
outright or through cooption) the radical ideas gestating in the
movement and in the H-blocks in particular.
 
Around the time I joined Sinn Féin I was involved in typesetting
and proofing a book by the H-block prisoners. The two comrades who
were in charge of political education nationally in the party, and who
saw themselves very much as socialists of the Connolly variety, were
very excited about this book, 'Questions of History'. Smuggled out of
the blocks bit by bit, it was essentially a Marxist analysis and
critique of the history of Irish republicanism.
 
Rose and Jim saw this as being the breakthrough. Because it came from
the blocks and the prisoners had immense moral authority, this book
would be read by everyone in the movement, most would be convinced by
it, a whole study programme would be organised around it and we were
on the way to the republic of Connolly. The book was even to be
colour-coded, with questions for discussion and so on and would come
in several volumes.
 
Even though it only went up to the 1930s and was not a direct critique
of Provo politics, the first volume of 'Questions of History' was not
welcomed in the central leadership. Indeed, the book was pretty much
suppressed. Only 2,000 copies were allowed to be printed and these
were for circulation only within the movement. Effectively it was
turned into an internal discussion document that could never be
internally discussed. There was a whispering campaign that the book
was 'ultra-left' and a shitty review was run in An
Phoblacht/Republican News, written by a party hack who had previously
been in the British Labour Party and Fourth International (Usec). It
was never be sold publicly, never used for a serious internal
education programme and the second volume was never even published.
Apparently there is now a copy of the second volume in the Linen Hall
Library in Belfast.
 
Having effectively suppressed the radical critique of the POWs, the
nationalist elements in the leadership began a scare campaign that the
national question was in danger of disappearing from Irish public
discourse and everything had to be concentrated on defending the idea
of national unity.
 
This came in the context of two counterposed papers about the way
forward being presented within Sinn Féin and discussion of these
before and at the annual internal conference (SF usually held two
national conferences a year: a public Ard-Fheis, based around reports,
remits and election of the leadership; and an internal conference
based around discussion papers). The head of the party's political
education, who was also a former OC of the prisoners at Portlaoise,
wrote a document in which he warned that the movement itself was being
politically partitioned, with armed struggle in the north and
clientelist advice-centre/social reformist politics in the south. The
paper argued explicitly for Connolly-type politics, uniting the
political, social and economic aspects of the struggle on a 32-county
basis.
 
The alternative paper was put forward by one of the party's two
general secretaries, Tom Hartley. Hartley, whose politics seemed quite
influenced by the nationalist wing of the pro-Moscow Communist Party
of Ireland (CPI), argued in favour of a pan-nationalist front. This
would be formed by working for unity with Fianna Fail, the SDLP - and
even Fine Gael! - to advance an Irish national agenda. This paper was
extraordinary, considering Irish history. It basically turned its back
on the lesson of every significant struggle and leader since Wolfe
Tone, by rejecting a struggle for national liberation based on the
people of no property - a concept at the very heart of Irish
republicanism - and advocated class collaboration with the very
sections of Irish society which had always sold out the struggle and
which were clearly working with the Brits to maintain the status quo.
 
In order to bolster up the pan-nationalist side, a whispering campaign
was mounted that the people behind the Connolly paper were hostile to
the armed struggle and wanted it called off. It was more or less
implied that a vote for that paper was a vote for the end of the armed
struggle. Also, various people were removed from the leadership in
both the party and the army without any transparency in the process at
all. Supporters of the nationalist position would sometimes go so far
as to throw a tantrum, shrieking and carrying on, as if voting for the
Connolly position was a betrayal of the nationalist population of the
north.
 
Needless to say, the pan-nationalist position triumphed, and the key
architects of the Connolly paper pretty much dropped out.
 
The shift rightwards also took other forms. When Dessie Ellis was
extradited to Britain from the south on a stretcher around the fifth
or sixth week of his hunger strike, the leadership were very worried
about trouble on the streets of Dublin. There was a march that night
organised by the anti-extradition campaign, in which I was the party
full-timer, and we wanted to take it to a venue where Haughey, who was
taoiseach at the time, was speaking and at least ruin his night. Adams
rang me in the anti-extradition office to suggest the march be called
off, especially as there was an Ireland-England soccer match in Dublin
that afternoon and the leadership worried that republicans and English
soccer fans might clash in the streets in the evening. I found this
extraordinary. One of our comrades had been handed over to the Brits
on a stretcher almost blind and we were not supposed to protest in the
capital city because of the presence of English soccer fans.

In fact, this was one of the great weaknesses of the Provo leadership.
They wanted to avoid creating any trouble in the south, let alone
destabilising the southern state.
 
From the traditional standpoint, however, of militant republicanism
and Marxism, it is rather difficult to imagine driving British
imperialism out of Ireland and freeing the country without the
southern state being destabilised. It is after all, as Liam Mellows
noted back in 1922, not a step towards liberation, but a barrier
between the Irish people and freedom that has to be removed.
 
As it was, the party leadership sent members of the IRA's Dublin
Brigade to 'marshal' the march and ensure nothing untoward took place
- although some of the army comrades later expressed regret and shame
about their role.
 
The leadership also engaged in a substantial effort at what might be
called 'reformism by stealth'. Adams and co. knew that they could not
come out and say they wanted an end to the armed struggle and a peace
deal little different from the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. So, instead
of nailing their colours to the mast and fighting for their rotten
capitulation to imperialism, we had the spectacle of 'discussion
papers' on pathways to peace and justice (and later, just to peace).
 
When comrades critical of this would try to criticise these, the
standard leadership response would be that these were not up for
votes, they were not official policy: they just ideas that some people
thought were interesting or useful. Within a couple of years, however,
the positions in these documents were being used as the basis for
official party statements. Without being voted on - in fact without
ever being seriously debated - they became the de facto, and
eventually de jure, position of Sinn Féin (and, presumably, of the
army as well).
 
By about 1992, without the new line ever having been formally voted
on, reformism was dominant and the road opened to its full flowering
in the form of the Republican Movement embracing the constitutional
nationalism which had been the deadly enemy of republicanism
throughout its entire 200-year history.
 
Another, almost surreal, aspect - indeed it reminded me of Animal Farm
- was the suppression of the 'left' Adams of the late 1970s and early
1980s and the emergence of the 'moderate statesman' Adams. For
instance, my local cumann decided to hold regular monthly public
forums, starting with one on poverty and featuring Dublin speakers and
Bernadette McAliskey. For this forum, we wanted some literature and
one of our members, who was also a member of the national leadership
and worked in the party's political education department, grabbed a
few copies from her office of stuff written about socialism and
republicanism by Adams in the late 70s and 80s that the education
department had put together as a little pamphlet. She was physically
prevented from taking this material out of SF head office to the forum
on the basis that what Adams said in these collected pieces was no
longer the party view.
 
Each edition of Adams' first political book, 'The Politics of Irish
Freedom', was re-edited several times to remove certain criticisms of
the SDLP and Fianna Fáil and any other views of his subsequently
deemed to have been 'ultra-left'. Needless to say, the first version
was much more interesting and inspiring than the insipid liberalism he
repetitively churns out in book after book these days.
 
After about 1992, the shift rightwards gathered more and more steam,
genuine left-republicans began dropping away over the next few years
and, as the party became more respectable, a new layer of members were
signed up on the basis of the new line.
 
The shift also reflected a dramatic truth about the objective
importance of class in modern politics. If you became increasingly
hostile to class politics, in terms of a revolutionary strategy based
on the working class, this does not mean class politics go away.
Rejecting the working class as the agent of struggle and social change
simply means there is only one place left to go politically - towards
the capitalist class. And so off went the republican leadership -
towards the Irish bourgeoisie, the British bourgeoisie and the
American ruling class. And the returns for betrayal are always
lucrative: positions in power, even if only in Stormont, state money,
an end to censorship and the opening up of the media, book publishing
deals, visits to the White House and enough money from the States to
make Sinn Féin the richest party in Ireland. After years of
struggle and sacrifice, the temptations are not hard to understand,
even if the capitulation is contemptible.
 
This sell-out by the leadership of the Republican Movement has been
widely condemned by the British left. This is rather surreal,
considering that few of them actually supported the republican
struggle while it was being waged. And this brings us to the
culpability of the British left, especially the major organisations,
in terms of the sell-out.
 
The rise of the Provos was not an isolated event. It was part and
parcel of the massive upsurge of workers and students in the late
1960s and early 1970s. It was part of the process that produced the
events of 1968 and the rebirth of the far left in Europe.
 
In Britain, it coincided with student occupations, anti-imperialist
protests against the Vietnam War and huge industrial struggles against
the Wilson government's 'in place of strife' legislation and the
massive strike wave during the Heath government, culminating in the
miners' defeat of Heath in 1974. The British bourgeoisie faced a
militant working class at home and a militant national liberation
struggle just a few miles of sea away. If the two had come together,
the result would have been at the very least a political and social
crisis for the British ruling class - something that class was only
too aware of.
 
There were some auspicious signs. In 1971, over 30,000 people took
part in the Anti-Internment League's march for the withdrawal of
troops and an end to internment. In the early 1970s an Irish
revolutionary like Bernadette Devlin could be given a rousing response
by 4,000 Dagenham car workers during an industrial dispute. Bloody
Sunday showed people on both sides of the Irish Sea what imperialist
rule meant, if there was any doubt. The possibilities for the British
left being able to make common cause with the struggle in Ireland and
create a social and political crisis in Britain were real.
 
However, it was a challenge in which the British left totally failed.
This was especially true when the British state began to fully clamp
down on the struggle in Ireland around the time of Bloody Sunday and,
especially, after Sunningdale and then the collapse of the mid-70s
ceasefire. The unedifying flight of the British left was also linked
to the war being brought to Britain itself. Most of the British left
preferred their revolutions in the pages of history books and in fiery
speeches they made at Labour Party and trade union conferences. They
could support revolutions if they were on the other side of the world
and against some other imperialist power, like the US in Vietnam. But
a national liberation struggle against the British state that actually
thought that if there was going to be fighting and dying some of it
should take place on British soil - whoa, that was not in the script
for the revolutionary heroes of the Brit left.
 
They denounced bombings in Britain as if they seriously believed a
national liberation struggle against an imperialist power a few miles
away, which had incorporated part of the oppressed nation's territory
within its own state, could possibly be won without armed actions,
including within the imperialist state (I am not making a blanket
defence of IRA bombings in Britain - some of them were stupid: merely
establishing the principle about what is entailed in a real
flesh-and-blood national liberation struggle).
 
Essentially the Brit left, in terms of its major organisations
('official' Communist Party, SWP, Militant, International Marxist
Group) abandoned the Irish national liberation struggle against the
British state. As soon as the going got tough, the Brit left got
going...as far as possible, away from the Irish struggle. None of
those involved in this abandonment therefore have any right to
criticise the subsequent abandonment of the same struggle by the
republican leaders themselves.
 
The worst were the 'official' CP and Militant, who basically sided
with the British state by obstructing any attempts to build a
solidarity movement within the British working class and repeating
imperialist propaganda about the Republican Movement. In fact the
'official' CP acted in no small part as the actual agent of the
British state in terms of TUC policies it pursued within the six
counties. The SWP and IMG did their bit more by just simply abandoning
any serious prioritising of Irish solidarity work.
 
I recall living in London at the time of the 1981 hunger strikes. One
weekend there would be 250,000 people in Hyde Park protesting about
non-existent nuclear wars on the basis of middle class pacifist
politics. The British far left would be there in their thousands,
selling their papers and promoting their own special brand of militant
pacifism. The next week there would be a national march in support of
the hunger strikers with a few hundred people - a thousand at most -
in attendance and the far left notable mainly for its absence.
 
Basically, the bulk of the Brit left let the British government kill
the hunger strikers without doing a damn thing. Building the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament was the soft option and never challenged
anything about British people's attachment to the British nation-state
and capitalist ideology. Organising real solidarity around Ireland was
hard and not likely to result in immediate large gains in recruitment
and paper sales. And it meant challenging trade union politics as a
form of bourgeois ideology.
 
Of course, Marx and Engels had championed Irish freedom and argued
that, as long as British workers remained tied to the apron-strings of
the British bourgeoisie in Ireland, they would never attain real class
consciousness or achieve anything significant in Britain itself. Lenin
was devastating about the record of the British left of his day in
relation to Ireland. The Bolsheviks ensured that one of the conditions
of membership of the Third International was that if a party was in an
imperialist country and there was a national liberation struggle going
on against your government you had to provide it with material
support. Trotsky declared that any British socialist who refused to
provide full support for the struggle in Ireland (and India and Egypt)
deserved to be branded with infamy, if not with an actual bullet.
 
Sadly, the great Marxists had sown dragons' teeth and, in Britain,
harvested chickens.
 
At the end of the day, the Republican Movement and its struggle
capitulated in the context of having been abandoned long beforehand by
the bulk of the British left and in the context of the collapse of
both the supposedly collectivist Soviet Union and most other national
liberation struggles. What is remarkable is not the betrayal of the
republican leadership - as pitiful and dishonest as that has been -
but the duration of the struggle in Ireland, given the real, material
difficulties it faced.
 
However, the betrayal within Ireland also points up the weakness of a
national liberation struggle which does not transcend the political
limitations of radical nationalism. It shows that the period in which
national liberation struggles could be taken at least to the
achievement of independence and some radical social changes by radical
nationalist leaderships is over. Only a conscious, revolutionary
socialist movement can develop and maintain the politics, strategy and
tactics necessary to prosecute a struggle for national liberation with
any serious hope of success.
 
In Ireland, that places a huge burden on the Irish Republican
Socialist Party and on other revolutionary republicans and socialists,
including former members of the Republican Movement who left over the
Good Friday Agreement and leadership betrayal generally.
 
It seems to me that what is urgently needed are ways to get the
dispersed genuine revolutionary forces - not the gas-and-water
socialists Connolly denounced - in Ireland talking together and trying
to develop a partyist culture among them, based on a Connolly-type
politics for the Ireland of the 21st century.

******* 

BASQUE POLITICAL PRISONER IN ENGLAND
 
ON MAY 5 BASQUE POLITICAL PRISONER INIGO MAGAZAKA COMPLETED 4 YEARS AS
A POLITICAL PRISONER IN BELMARSH PRISON, LONDON.

IN JANUARY OF THIS YEAR HE SUCCESSFULLY MANAGED TO HAVE HIS CATEGORY
REVIEWED - AND CONSEQUENTLY DOWNGRADED  - FROM 'CATEGORY A'  TO THE
LESS RESTRICTIVE 'CATEGORY B' STATUS.  THIS MEANS HE IS NO LONGER IN
THE 23 HOUR LOCK-DOWN MODE IN THE HSU UNIT -  BUT IN THE 'HOUSE BLOCK'
- WHICH ENABLES HIM TO USE THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AND THE GYMNASIUM
ON A DAILY BASIS.

INIGO TELLS US THAT DESPITE ALMOST ALL THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM BEING
DROPPED, HE IS STILL FIGHTING EXTRADITION, AND THE ONLY TIME HE
VENTURES OUTSIDE THE PRISON WALLS IS WHEN HE IS TRANSPORTED BY PRISON
VAN - UNDER ARMED ESCORT - TO COURT APPEARANCES TO CONTEST EXTRADITION
PROCEEDINGS.

INIGO ALSO WISHES TO THANK THOSE WELL-WISHERS IN IRELAND AND BRITAIN
WHO HAVE WRITTEN TO HIM RECENTLY. HE WILL ENDEAVOUR TO REPLY TO ALL
CORRESPONDENCE IN DUE COURSE. 

*******

PRESS RELEASE: IRISH REPUBLICAN PRISONERS WELFARE ASSOCIATION

20 May 2005
Contact: Marian Price/Martin Mulholland
Phone: 07801 729 412 or e-mail irpwa@hotmail.com  

Double Standards in British 'Justice' System

The IRPWA view today's decision by a British Court to free UDA/UFF
leader William 'Mo' Courtney on bail despite being held on a murder
charge as displaying Double Standards given the treatment of
Republicans by the same court in recent times. This incident is the
latest in a long line of events that highlight the disparity in the
way that the British Justice system views Loyalist and Republican
suspects. Not only has Mr Courtney been released but also his
co-accused Ihab Shoukri was released on Bail a number of months
earlier. Shoukri's Brother André also felt the full force of
British Judicial leniency when caught with an illegal firearm and
ammunition.

Shoukri was initially charged with possession of a firearm with intent
to endanger life but was eventually given an extremely short sentence
for having a gun without a license. If we compare the sentence handed
down recently to a Lurgan Loyalist who was caught with information
likely to be of use to terrorists who was given a suspended sentence
and that of a South Armagh Republican who charged with the same
offence was give six years it is not hard to see a pattern emerging.
In late 2003 and throughout 2004 a number of Republicans were released
from custody when it was decided that there were no charges to answer
or when it became obvious that the RUC/PSNI and the British Army
framed these men. Most of these men continually applied for high court
bail knowing that they had no case to answer yet the courts refused on
almost every occasion. A number of men are still being held in
Maghaberry goal on much less serious charges than Mr Courtney and the
Shoukri's brothers yet they too are refused bail on every occasion due
to RUC intervention and so called Œsecurity assessments'.

Although Mo Courtney has a right to be presumed innocent until proven
guilty it is not lost on the republican community that this right has
not been extended to Republicans. It is clear that as loyalists
proclaim to defend the same state that the courts administer justice
for, then they are treated more leniently than those who do not
recognise that same state. The actions of the court and the
politically motivated intervention of other agencies of the state in
the cases of republicans show that these men are political prisoners
and the difference in treatment between Republicans and Loyalists only
serves to bear out this fact.

POLITICAL STATUS NOW.

Message Ends.

Ernie Lynch
http://www.32csm.org/

*******

WHAT'S ON 

*

AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY, WED 25 MAY 2005.
 
EVENT IN SUPPORT OF THE WOMEN IN KENYA
 
IN FRONT OF BBC, BEDFORD ST, BELFAST, 1PM
 
This event is being organised by TFS with support of the Nexus
Institute (help survivors of sexual abuse and rape in N. Ireland) &
members of the local African community. Phone TFS 028 90747473 for
more details and ask for Annie or Hamish.
 
For the last 30 years British soldiers have raped women and boys from
villages in eastern Kenya. When the women in Kenya took the courageous
decision to seek justice, little did they know that they would expose
the alliance between both the British and Kenyan Governments to
suppress the truth and the painful reality that their own government,
though elected by Kenyans, takes instructions from London. The Kenyan
government failed to conduct its own investigation and ensure that its
citizens received both justice and compensation.  Instead the British
Ministry of Defence (MOD) investigated itself. The Royal Military
Police concluded that of the 800 allegations of rape made, "...no more
than 30 are credible." Is this not like asking an accused thief to
investigate the robbery?  There has been a smear campaign and all the
major British newspapers have published reports on the alleged Kenya
rapes and have presented the women as gold-diggers. If hypothetically,
African soldiers stationed in the south of England had raped white
women from a nearby village would the British Government be satisfied
with an African government making the investigation?  This case is
about justice and both the British and Kenyan Governments share joint
responsibility for the horrendous crimes that have been committed.
 
We have been told that due to threats made to them, the women
cancelled a demo last March in Nairobi.
 
The above has been summarised from information passed on to us by the
London-based African Liberation Support Campaign with whom Tools For
Solidarity (TFS) is affiliated. They have direct contacts with the
Kenyan women.
 
*

5 May - 28 May 2005

The Unkindest  Cut: A Cartoon History of Ulster in the Twentieth
Century 

5th May - 28th May 2005, admission free, Linen Hall Library
(enter via Fountain St).

This lively exhibition presents historian and librarian John Killen's
selection of  170 of the best of these cartoons. Demonstrating the
characteristic dark humour common to all sides in the north, the
selection also suggests some interesting, if quirky, scenarios for a
better  future.

*

Sunday, May 29

From: Pegseeger@aol.com 
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 08:18:28 EDT 
  
Hello - this is a mass mailout with the final lineup for my birthday 
concert. 

greetings to friends, family, workmates, acquaintances and apologies 
to those to whom this e.mail is of absolutely no interest or 
pertinence. all the best, Peggy 

Celebration of Peggy Seeger's 70th year! Queen Elizabeth Hall , 
London, England 

Sunday, May 29 - 7 p.m. 
 
Booking from inside UK: 08703-800-400 
Booking from outside UK: +44-8703-800-400 

Guest Artists: Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Calum 
MacColl, Kitty MacColl, Neill MacColl, Irene Pyper-Scott, Mike 
Seeger, Pete Seeger and Norma Waterson with instrumentalists James 
McNally, Roy Dodds, Graham Henderson and probably a few more! 

London, UK 0870-382-8000 
 
Email for more information 

*******

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*

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