Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 14:44:18 +1000 (EST) From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Irish Presidential election I read Rebecca's comments on the Irish election with considerable interest. I agree totally with her about the execrable nature of the main political parties -Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Irish Labor Party. But there were a couple of shades of emphasis that I did not share with her. And I would like to comment on these. Firstly I think it is significant that most of the candidates were female. That shows something of the modernizing process that is underway in Ireland. Secondly the attempt to cash in on the family connections to the legendary Michael Collins availed Banotti nothing. It looks like the Civil War is well and truly over as a political determinant in Irish public life. However I do think that the election of McAleese was important in terms of the Northern Irish situation. I tend to think that her endorsement of Sinn Fein, even though denied a thousand fold, is important. Certainly the unionist establishment wrote attacking her before the election. But Rebecca's point here about how the media & the establishment's attack may have actually assisted McAleese is most important. And it needs to be explained. Certainly it is what made me welcome McAleese's victory. I think Rebecca starts from correct premises. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are both bourgeois parties. However she ends up neglecting crucial differences. The rejection of the anti-republican campaign initiated by Bruton of Fine Gael is important. It reinforces that in the South of Ireland people are turning towards Sinn Fein - in small numbers perhaps, but there does appear to be something of an upsurge of Irish Nationalism. Which takes me to my final point. The Irish bourgeoisie abandoned nationalism in 1922. But the nationalist project was incomplete. Just as Marx argued that the American Civil War was in some ways the last round of the War of Independence so the current troubles in Ireland are the resumption of the incomplete struggle for true independence from Britain. The bourgeoisie have no interest at all in waging that struggle, but material circumstances dictate that Ireland must continually seek to finally break from Britain. In Ireland as elsewhere the Repressed continually returns. And it did so yesterday with McAleese's victory. regards Gary --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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