Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 09:15:32 +0100
From: Jim <jim-AT-cag1.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Northern Ireland and the Left


In message <l03010d01b009bcb7b1fe-AT-[137.92.42.62]>, Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comse
rver.canberra.edu.au> writes

> I just reckon the East End and Manchester bombs were
>indiscriminate and murderous  - not sectarian,
>particularly, just a fucking disgrace. 

Both bombs were directed at economic targets. Both bombs were preceded
by ample coded warnings to the authorities, who then decided *not* to
evacuate the area. If they had, no one would have died or even been
injured.

The effect of IRA bombs on economic targets has been enormous, and in no
small way contributed to the change in Britian imperialist tactics and
the approach to the IRA which led to the ceasefire of 1994. That
imperialism used the ceasefire to try to outmanoeuvre the IRA changes
none of this.

Now turning to the Workers Party. Much of what they say is fine as far
as it goes. But there are a number of outright lies and distortions,
which you, Rob, should be able to recognise a mile off, even thousands
of miles off.



>___________________
>The Workers' Party has a proud history of struggle against oppression
>in Ireland stretching back to long before the days of the Easter Rising
>in Ireland. Indeed, the early history of the WP is the history of
>republicanism in Ireland. Most would agree that the founding father
>of Irish Republicanism was Wolfe Tone.

The Workers Party is of course a remnant of what once was Official Sinn
Fein. Their claiming that they go back to before the Easter Rising all
the way back to Tone is a bit rich. OK if they say this is the tradition
they adhere to, but they seem to be claiming much more than that here.
Maybe I am being picky.


>
>How far from this ideal has the so-called "armed struggle" in the
>present day six counties degenerated! Does sectarian murder unite
>Catholic and Dissenter? Does assassination, massacre, and plunder
>further the cause of true Republicanism? How dare the provos style
>themselves 'republicans'? The Workers' Party condemns the provos
>for this bastardisation of the republican ideal.
>

This is outrageous. The Provos do not carry out sectarian murders. It
does not plunder. For their part, the WP armed wing (oh yes, it has one)
has killed more people from splinter republican groups (mostly the INLA
from the early 1970s on) that anyone else. For more than a decade, their
guns have been used only for criminal purposes: bank jobs, extortion
(revolutionary taxation) and drug running. And these people dare to say
that the Provos are degenerate!


>
>At the same time, leading republican activists, such as Cathal
>Goulding, were preaching the ideals of Marx and James Connolly, and
>socialism within the Party.

If you read Cathal Goulding's speech at the graveside of Joe McCann, it
gives a classic Marxist revolutionary line on national liberation and
socialism. The problem is that it was a lie. Rather than move towards
the creation of a communist party which would give working class
leadership to the war for national liberation, Goulding took the
Stickies in the opposite direction. First unite the working class, then
get rid of the border. Trouble is, it is theborder (the national
question and the continued existence of British colonial rule) which
divides the working class in the north in the first place.

>
>The explosion of civil disorder eventually came in 1968, and a
>Campaign of Civil Rights, led by Sinn Féin, began in Northern
>Ireland. At the same time Sinn Féin was active in housing issues, and
>agitation based on land and waterway ownership.
>
>Such socialist preaching, and a call for a non-violent approach to
>Northern politics, caused great alarm amongst other political parties
>in Ireland, particularly within Fianna F=E1il, then led by Jack Lynch.


Here it is - Goulding wanted a non-violent struggle at the time of an
all-out offensive, pogroms and all, against the nationalist ghettoes in
the north. What, Rob, has non-violence got to do with Marx ("this weapon
of criticism cannot replace the criticism of weapons") and Connolly (the
Easter Uprising, which Trotsky dismissed as a putsch and which Lenin
recognised and the start of revolutionary upheaval in Europe) ?



>Within Fianna F=E1il, a secret fund-raising organisation called Taca
>made clandestine links with dissident Sinn Féin members with a view
>to supplying arms for war in the six counties. (This is a matter of
>D=E1il record, when former Minister, Neil Blaney admitted as much).
>These dissidents split from us, as Sinn Féin, to style themselves
>"Provisional Sinn Féin", with an attendant military wing which was
>the Provisional IRA. (See also the bottom frame of our homepage).
>Thus it can rightly be said that the provos are the spawn of Fianna
>F=E1il.

This is outrageous, Rob, and you should know better. In the nationalist
areas, the IRA was so badly armed and so ill-prepared for defending the
communities, that the locals joked that the initials stood for "I Ran
Away". Those elements who refused to run away, and who insisted on their
revolutionary duty to defend these working class communities and take
the fight to the British, had to look in whatever direction they could
to get hold of the weapons they needed. Why? Because they *agreed* with
Fianna Fail? No. Because the IRA leadership kept the guns in Dublin,
where they were not needed, thus leaving a vulnerable community with
only *non-violence* as a defence. It is a token of the complete
bankrupcy of Goulding's IRA/Sinn Fein that it was left to a mainstream
Irish bourgeois party to comme up with the goods when the so-called
marxist revolutionaries were content to stand by and watch for the most
part.


>
>Those of us (the majority at that time in the early seventies) who
>remained loyal to Sinn Féin, were quickly dubbed as "Official" Sinn
>Féin by the media. In a keynote speech in County Tyrone in May
>1972, the then party president, Tom=E1s Mac Giolla declared complete
>opposition to violence in the six counties, and prophetically pointed
>out the tragic consequences of such violence.
>
>The party then changed its name to Sinn Féin The Workers' Party, in
>1977, to distance itself from the provos and their murderous methods,
>and also to emphasise our socialist principles. Later this name became
>simply The Workers' Party in 1982. By then the party had a coherent
>democratic socialist ideology based on the revolutionary philosophies
>of Tone, Marx, and Connolly.
>

No further comment needed on this rubbish. I have said it all above.


>In the eighties the party made significant progress, winning 7 D=E1il
>seats and a seat in the European Parliament. However the party
>suffered a serious set-back when 6 of the 7 TD's, who resented party
>control, broke away for reasons of careerism, amidst the general
>panic that affected so many socialist organisations, in the wake of the
>collapse of the East European socialist countries. Tom=E1s Mac Giolla
>remained true to his principles and stayed with the Workers' Party.
>(See also under "Organisation").

Yes, the vast majority of the organisation went on the form Democratic
Left. What is missing here is why, politically speaking, were two
organisations necessary? Neither the Workers Party nor Demcoratic Left
actually stand for revolution. Neither, therefore, stand for socialism,
but instead for - at best - democratic and social reforms within the
existing system. Why, then, two parties? And why, then, the accusation
that only Mac Giolla and his rump "remained true" to their principles. I
reckon both sides did, actually: the principles of compromise with
capitalism, capitulation in the face of imperialism, and rampant
reformism. Why single out Da Rossa and co as the traitors, when the real
selling out had already taken place over two decades previously?

>
>The defectors left the party with massive debts, which compelled us to
>sell our Party Headquarters. Although the "glamour and the glory"
>had departed from us, our membership strength remained high, and
>the past few years of rebuilding has seen the emergence of a party
>more determined than ever to see through our obligations to secure a
>real republic here in Ireland. Two hundred years after Wolfe Tone
>that objective remains!
>________________________

There has been nothing sublime, and so the transition to the outright
ridiculous in the last paragraph is perhaps not surprising at all. But
please, Rob, do you really swallow this crap?

"Our membership strength remains high"??? There is next to nothing left
of the Stickies, north or south. In recent elections, both Democratic
Left and Workers Party were wiped out in the north. They used to poll
1000 votes per candidate, now together it was a quarter of that. In the
south, sinn Fein has begun to fill the vacuum to the left of Labour that
the Workers Party occupied at the time of the 7 TDs. In the north, Sinn
Fein *is* the force to the left of the SDLP.

Get real, Rob. Drop the Stickes, and wise up to the real struggle in
Ireland.

For communism and Irish freedom

Jim H


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