Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 15:29:41 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-I: Ireland & civil rights 1 of 2


Rebecca,

I have placed my comments within your original text.  My apologies for that
but sometimes it is the easiest way to proceed

regards

Gary

Rebecca:
>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.

Gary:

My problem here with this is its abstract schematic nature, Rebecca.  You
will forgive me for saying so but nothing about this paragraph suggests
anything of the lived experience of being a Northern Irish Catholic.
Moreover it makes the crucial error  of deproblematising the Northern
state.  This is a mistake BTW which the Maoists helped to entrench with
their notorious reworking of Stalin on nationalism to produce the 'two
nations theory' which granted legitimacy to the 'nationalist aspirations of
the Ulster Protestants.

What is necessary is to see the creation of the northern state as a ploy to
frustrate Irish national ambitions. The 1922 settlement granted state power
to those forces which had fought to maintain British rule in Ireland.  Its
very creation was marked by ethnic cleansing, death squad activity and the
entrenchment of discrimination in jobs, education, housing etc against the
Catholic minority.  Norther Ireland was declared to have "a Protestant
p[parliament for a protestant people" by its first Prime Minister.
Moreover its longest serving Prime Minister Basil Brook in the 1930
attacked anyone who would give a Catholic a job.  "I would not have one
(i.e. a catholic) about the place" he said in parliament.

So Irish Nationalism was defeated in 1922.  The Southern bourgeoisie led by
Michael Collins ended the war of independence and the result of that was a
de facto acceptance of the Northern state.  This is still the attitude of
the Southern bourgeoisie as Sinn Fein discovered last week.  then the Prime
Minister of the South of Ireland totally sold out nationalist expectations
of the Irish-English framework document.

Now let me return to the Northern state.  You have a category here named
the "industrial working class".  In classic Marxist style this is the agent
of history.  Without it no progress can be made.   Now let me pose you a
problem.  What if this "industrial working class was a mere fragment of the
working class.  What if it did not get its identity from its class nature
but rather from its religious practices.  What moreover would happen if
this same fragment of the industrial working class enjoyed privileges when
it came to getting jobs.  What if it was paid more and constituted a labour
aristocracy.  What if both sides of the dialectic -material being and
consciousness meant that this working class saw itself as part of an
oppressive institution such as the British Empire?   what if it celebrated
Empire Day long after anyone else.  What if one of their folk heroes stages
demonstration in the city centre against Cypriot nationalism?  (By now you
should be recognizing something of a sketch of the main features of your
beloved "industrial working class" namely the Northern Irish Protestant
workers.)

Would this fragment still be the bearer of progress?  If you say "yes" then
how can it be so?  If you say "no" then you are saying that no progress is
possible.  You are anxious to avoid this situation so you take the only
remaining possible option.  You blame the victim.  the fault could not
possibly be that of the "industrial working class" .  Nor even of their
imperial paymasters the British. It must be the bad politics of the
Catholics who suffer discrimination etc.  Worse follows in your next comment.

Rebecca:

>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.


Gary:

Now you introduce another theoretical category - the Catholic masses.  Note
not the catholic working class. You do not motivate this category but I
assume that it is based on some recognition that unemployment among
Catholics was around 40%.  They were not working class because they could
not get jobs.  So let us accept the term "masses".  But you have a problem
here which I do not have.  Once someone becomes part of the "masses" they
cease to be an historical agent.  That role is exclusively reserved for the
working class in your theoretical schema. (Mao, thou shouldst be living at
this hour!)


However the poor bastards can't get jobs because the state is organized
around a partnership between the Northern Ireland Protestant bourgeoisie,
the Protestant industrial working class and British Imperialism.  It is all
held together with an ideology which is known as Orangeism.  It is
thoroughly reactionary, racist, sectarian and massively popular with your
beloved industrial working class.

Luckily however the Catholic masses have had scant contact with Marxist
theory so they set about opposing the state.  This opposition has taken
different forms over the years but by 1997 this resistance has brought
about the situation where your beloved Industrial working class are no
longer able to parade triumphantly through Catholic areas.  Whatever
happens in the so called peace talks the "catholic masses", who you think
are deluded by utopianism,  will never accept a return to the Orange state.
 That is something the British and their allies the industrial working
class  have yet to fully accept.

You have a note here about the sectarian nature of the Civil Rights
movement.  Could you give a single example of one sectarian word or deed
that the Civil Rights movement perpetrated.  Surely you cannot mean
something like if say an Afro -American opposes the white supremacists then
that Afro-American is "racist'?  In Northern Ireland then to oppose the
protestant parliament for the protestant people makes one "sectarian"?

In what follows you attempt to address the very vexed question of the
relationship of the national struggle in Ireland to the class struggle.
This is of course the very essence of the disagreements on the Left.
Should the National struggle get priority?  You want here what I and every
other Irish marxist has ever wanted - unity between the protestant and
catholic working class.  But such unity cannot be brought about while
Britain maintains an active role in Irish affairs.  They exploited the
religious divide and can only maintain their rule through that divide.
Only when the British finally turn their back on imperialism will the
Protestant working class be forced to break with their support for
imperialism.  The key is the existence of the Northern Irish state and its
ability to provide material privileges which guarantee protestant working
class support for British rule.

Now I agree with you that the leadership of the Civil rights movement were
politically bankrupt.  You neglect though to point out the role of Irish
communism here.  Its overall schema was to win full citizenship for
Catholics wishing the context of the Northern State.  But such an attempt
was and still is impossible.  It is quite simple really - if you unite the
catholics and the protestants within the context of the Northern state then
the raison d'etre of the Northern state vanishes.


I will take up the rest of your post later.  But my main point is that you
cannot come to this or any other situation with a few formulae.  Ours is a
struggle and a movement for emancipation.  If that means tackling that
section of the working class which has sold out, then so be it.







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