File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 387


Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 15:53:31 +0000
From: Fergal Finnegan <fergalf-AT-meta.dublin.iona.ie>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Finnegal slanders Sparts again and still has no


Okay Balecki,

Now I usually try and avoid these type of cyber spats 
with Sparts because very little of use comes from
them but you have decided while sitting at your
computer in Sweden to tell me all about a campaign 
in Ireland that I was involved in by reproducing 
from your seemingly endless archives some screed
from a Spart newspaper or leaflet as if you were 
bringing tablets of stone down from the hillside. The
irritable, pernickity Underground man in me resents
this a wee bit so prepare for a magisterial refutation.
(irony Bob!)

Before I address some of the _interpretations_ of events in Ireland
during the abortion rights campaign (which is still going) that you
put foward I want to say a couple of thing about having a_ program_.
Having a program is fine and dandy. It may even make you a bit special
or it may even be necessary for a revolution but there are programs and 
there are_ programs_.

Lenin says somewhere that communist ideology is like a block of steel 
and as far as I can see when the Sparts were devising their _program _
they took this remark a little bit too seriously. Wherever I go these latter 
day Mormons of Leninism arrive in groups of two or three (one of them
is nearly always an American) and start bashing people around the head 
with their steel block of a program. You see I am not interested in
a Marxism of antiquated mantras and neither is anybody else as 
far as I can see and this for me is the crux of matter. There is no point 
in having a beautifully correct program if noone is listening to you.
If you want to get involved in elite sect with archaic and abstruse 
rituals and language why not join the Masons or the Rosicrucians or
even declare yourself the King of Spain and give all your friends 
ritzy titles like the Vizier of Catalonia  and Lord of the Arctic ?.
Maybe it is the presentation of the program or maybe it is the ideas in the
program or maybe it is the tardy masses who are at fault. You can 
decide but definitely something is not working.

Now to those stubborn little things ....facts.


My anecdote about Sparts on abortion rights demo  haranguing feminists 
about being petty bourgeois snipped.....Bob replied

>>The above is a lie and slander of the Spartacists. The point is that the 
>Sparts did turn up at the demonstrations or were the iniators of these 
>demonstrations in Ireland. Where the entire left has capitulated on the 
>abortion question!

No the anecdote is true. (pantomine style)

Before I continue I should explain first that there are very few people
involved
in  radical politics in the 26 counties and for the most part we all know
each other
and tend to have more contact with each other than similar left wing
circles in other
European countries. Consequently, everyone has a very clear idea of each
group's input
and effect in any given campaign.

..the sparts as intiators..?

Hmmn, the Sparts turned up to sell papers at everything I suppose (as did
all the far left but that is the nature  of the beast) but they didn't initate
any demonstration that attracted more then a dozen people that I am aware of.
The actual 'x'  march ( x being the girl who was raped and prevented by the 
Irish state from travelling to the UK for an abortion) was the real turning
point. 
It consisted of some 15,000 people was called by Dublin Abortion Information
Campaign (DAIC) which had it's roots in student Unions defying the ban on
abortion information in Ireland ( the situation was appaling ; books were
been taken
out of libraries and womens' magazines like Cosmo which were printed in the UK
 had abortion clinic addresses blanked out). All the other sizeable demos
(ie more 
than 4-500 hundred) were called by DAIC or REAC and with the SWP calling a
couple 
of counter demos against anti abortion groups of 200 people or so.

Bob on the referendum........ 

>To defuse the enormous anger over what came to be called the "X case," in 
>1992 the government held three referenda on the question of abortion rights. 
>Two were on the availability of abortion information and travel, and the 
>Dublin Spartacist Group advocated a "yes" vote, while fighting for free 
>abortion on demand. But our comrades opposed the third, which sought to 
>limit the legality of abortion, as well as the 1995 Abortion Information 
>Bill, now law, because of its imposition of severe restrictions on abortion 
>information.

The way the sparts did this was make up leaflets distributed at left wing 
meetings or demos where everyone else would also have been calling for
the same voting pattern.  Indeed even all the liberals were calling for this
and of course this was how the country voted.

>> Dublin Abortion Information Campaign (DAIC), a coalition of
>>groups including IWG, Red Action and the Workers Solidarity Movement, calls
>only for abortion information. 

This of course isn't true, we concentrated at the time on information
as an immediate goal (hence the name) but from the start or pretty 
near the start DAIC was for 'every womens right to choose', this 
was the main slogan at the time of the 'X' demonstrations. The current
Abortion rights group uses the same_ program_ as DAIC.

Here it is http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/darg.html

and it amounts to a lot more than the right to distribute abortion info 



> The recent divorce referendum was similarly designed ... the DSG called
>for a "yes" vote. 

Again in leaflets given out to other leftists all of whom were also
calling for a yes vote.  What a waste of time!! (except of course
for that all important 'historic record')

>> While the SWP and Militant Labour have ignored the
>>threat posed by Youth Defense, the DSG has fought for united front
mobilizations to stop these shock troops for Catholic reaction

This would of course be the same Youth Defence who the Sparts
have a paper sale less then 100m most Saturday's.  Sometimes I
think they don't take their own proaganda terribly seriously.  Mind
you I believe there are still waiting for the fleet of flat bed trucks full of
Steel workers to arrive before they cross that 100m to 'confront' YD.
I can't remember any particularly heroic interventions by your comrades
in any street fracas with the shock troops of reaction during the X case
either. Either on a national level or amongst the tiny left wing the 
efforts  of the sparts have been negligible and risible. Ideologically
or on the streets the DSG to my knowledge have contributed nothing
but you do have a program I will give you that.

Finally just as an aside....

>The Catholic church also dominates social life in the republic of Ireland, 
>where the fundamental right to abortion is a match to the explosive tinder 
>of women’s oppression. In this terribly backward country, women can not get 
>abortions. 

I hate all this Ireland is terribly backward shit. I and other Irish people
are
not here to play  modern primitives in your drama of good and evil.
There are disgraceful restrictions on people's freedoms but Ireland's 
modernisation has been uneven and complex and deserves more analysis
than glib remarks like that.

Well there you go I know I will regret this

Warmest regards,

Fergal aka Finnegal



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