From: "Rebecca Peoples" <wellsfargo-AT-tinet.ie>
Subject: M-I: Ireland & civil rights
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 20:31:09 -0000



The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement

Given the sectarian character of the six county capitalist state in the
north of Ireland it is clear that full civil rights cannot be achieved
without the dynamic of the industrial working class. Given conditions as
they existed in 1968 it was just as clear then that the industrial working
class would not be available to provide the necessary dynamic that would
make full civil rights achievable. In short the industrial working class
lacked the necessary class consciousness and corresponding political
character to offer itself as this dynamic.
To organise a civil rights campaign, under these circumstances, constituted
a utopian venture designed to delude the Catholic masses and thereby
obstruct the development of their political consciousness. The civil rights
campaign was a form by which  the development of the unity of the six county
working class was to be obstructed. In this way the leadership of that
campaign promoted a submerged sectarian agenda. Given the inability of this
campaign to achieve civil rights in the absence of the support of the
industrial working class the achievement of civil rights within the context
of the six county state was impossible. As I intimated the civil rights
leadership was petty bourgeois, utopian and sectarian in its politics. The
unfolding of events verifies the correctness of this thesis.
Given the inability of the civil rights movement to achieve civil rights
when confronted by the full resources of the sectarian capitalist state
supported by the unionist and loyalist para- and extra- statal forces the
only options left open was abject retreat or the development of the civl
rights movement into the national struggle. The latter was the course taken.
Consequently the leadership of the mass upsurge of the Catholic masses was
taken over by the PIRA. The very fluid situation among the Catholic masses
led to the replacement of one leadership by another --the civil rights
leadership by the PIRA.
Since the civil rights leadership was verified by history as politically
bankrupt it was replaced by a different leadership --the IRA. Given the
failure of the industrial working class (predominantly Protestant) in the
six counties to support civil rights the only other alternative was to
broaden and deepen the struggle to a new level thereby transforming the
civil rights movement into the national struggle. In this way it was hoped
that the dynamic underlying the national struggle would serve as a
substitute for the absent industrial working class. This was an admission
that the Catholic masses were not immanently powerful enough to force
through civil rights. The development of the civil rights struggle into the
national struggle was an expression of the inherent weakness of the Catholic
masses and the necessity of the industrial working as the driving force for
any such struggle. The existence of the national struggle constituted a
further turning away from the industrial working class by the leadership of
the Catholic masses. Such a further shift away from the industrial working
class constituted a programme for increased polarisation between Catholic
and Protestant worker. Instead of taking the Catholic section of the working
class towards the Protestant section of the working class thereby forging a
revolutionary unity of the six county working class the former’s leadership
lead it in the opposite direction thereby promoting sectarianism and
guaranteeing that civil rights and the needs of the Catholic masses were
never going to be met.
The national struggle was to prove essentially just as weak as the civil
rights struggle. The national struggle proved inherently weak because again
the industrial working class was absent as its driving force. Consequently,
in so far as it can justifiably be deemed a national struggle, it assumed
the form of a narrow petty bourgeois movement generating all kinds of
stratagems, gimmicks etc. as substitutes for the central and necessary
dynamic --the industrial working class north and south. Because of its
inherent weakness and the inherent weakness of the Catholic masses as a
driving force the struggle assumed an elitist character in the form of a
guerrilla force that was essentially private in character and independent of
the masses.
It is the inherent weakness of the national struggle that also explains its
leadership’s desire to ally itself with this and that petty bourgeois and
even bourgeois force including the southern government and the Roman
Catholic Church. It is this weakness that explains its crass opportunism and
the confidence of the Unionist forces.
Indeed as the so called current peace process shows Sinn Fein is even
prepared to ally itself with imperialism in the form of  Washington and
London. Over twenty five years on we are witnessing the truth of this in the
present leadership of the struggle --its betrayal of its very own programme
through its abject capitulation to the British and Irish bourgeoisie.
In the development of revolutionary politics there is never any substitute
for the industrial working class as the agent of social revolution. There
can only be one revolutionary vanguard --there are no shortcuts. Endless
seeking of new vanguards -the Catholic masses in the north; the student
movement etc.- is a reactionary policy that betrays the class interests of
the working class.

Warm regards
Rebecca









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