Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 00:29:21 +0100
From: Richard Bos <Richard.Bos-AT-hagcott.meganet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Malecki and the Hunger Strikers in Turkey and Kurdistan


CAGJimKane-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> I am clearly not the only one on this list who finds Malecki's comments
> offensive. The problem is that his attitude is all too typical of a certain
> brand of leftism as preached from the realtive safety of the imperialist
> heartlands.
> 
>Not content with slandering the struggle in Turkey and Kurdistan, Malecki
> moves on to malign the Irish Republican Movement. "The Irish Nationalists
> tactics are wrong also. Because replacing class struggle with suicidal
> adventurist action like the IRA or hunger strikes in prison does not in
> reality raise the consciousness of the workers."
> 
> When Bobby Sands stood for parliament while on Hunger Strike in 1981, he won
> more than 30,000 votes in a victory in an area where the Republicans had
> never previously won. Because of the Hunger Strike, mass protest began again
> in Ireland on a level that completely surprised all commentators - be they
> Republican, bourgeois or leftist. The Hunger Strike revived the political
> fortunes of the Republican Movement. The heroism of the ten men who died on
> the protest was a major factor in this revival. In what way did the Hunger
> Strike fail to raise the consciousness of workers in the occupied Six
> Counties of Ireland?
> 
> Were it not for the IRA, the nationalist community in occupied Ireland would
> be disarmed and defenceless in the face of a sectarian statelet and an armed
> imperialist presence. There is nothing adventurist in the tactics of the IRA.
> The real adventurism is on the part of those who, while preaching violent
> revolution in the most blood curdling tones, turn their back on the practical
> work of arming themselves and organising the defence of working class
> communities against attack. For to talk of revolution without preparing
> yourself for the battle is adventurism of the worst kind - though it also has
> other, less flattering, names.
> 
> The Trotskyists in Ireland always lecture the Republican Movement on how they
> should look for unity of the working class (usually, their lectures are
> drafted for them by their leaders in London - a special form of left-wing
> colonialism).  Buut on what basis is this unity to be organised? On bread and
> butter issues? OK, but do you know, dear Malecki, the consequences that have
> followed every initiative by Sinn Fein to unite across communities for basci
> demands? Gerry Adams tells of ones revealing example, when members of both
> communities united to demand a road crossing on a main road near a school
> which served both sides of the population. Sinn Fein and the Republican
> Movement gave the campaign their full support. The Loyalists, on the other
> hand, put out death threats against any Protestants who took part in the
> campaign. This has happened again and again, and for good reason in a sense.
> For the divisions in the Irish working class do not stem from religious or
> sectarian matters as such, but are rather political: they care caused and
> perpetuated by the partition of Ireland and the continued British occupation
> of the Six Counties. It is the national question, and the presence of
> imperialism, which divides the working class, and the only  way to overcome
> the division is to get rid of partition and British rule.
> 
> Perhaps Malecki has in mind trade union or work place unity? Dioes he know
> who runs the unions in the north? Does he know the links between the Loyalist
> death squads and union officials in Harland and Wolfe, for example? Does he
> know that amongst the nationalist community unemployments is more than 90
> percent in many areas?
> 
> In Ireland the national question has not been solved. The revolution cannot
> proceed immediately to socialist demands. The tasks of national liberation
> and socialism are intertwined, to be sure. But this is because there can be
> no working class unity until the border is abolished. Marxists in Irland have
> long understood this fact: look at James Connolly's analysis, which is
> confirmed every day in both the Six Counties and the Free State: Connolly
> warned that partition of Ireland would bring a carnival of reaction on both
> sides of the border.
> 
> In a war zone, unarmed political formations hold no sway. The bourgeois
> parties have their armed wing in the form of the repressive apparatus of the
> sectarian Six County statelet, and of course the British Army of occupation.
> The oppressed only have one effective defender: The Provisional Irish
> Republican Army, the Provos. Everyone has to choose a side: with British
> imperialism or with those who fight against it. Communists in Ireland should
> be playing a leading role in the struggle for national liberation, not
> condemning that struggle from the sidelines. On an individual level, that is
> already happening: many militants within the Republican Movement (both armed
> and political wings) are influenced by Marxism. It has to be said that this
> is because of Marxist-Leninist organisations outside of Ireland and Britain,
> and what they have achieved, and not because of the pious and hypocritical
> lectures offered them by Trotskyists and revisionists in Ireland and Britain.
> 
> But maybe I am wasting my efforts replying to someone who describes the
> Republican struggle as "stupid" and who counterposes the class struggle to
> the struggle for national liberation from imperialist domination. As if the
> struggle for national liberation were not itself a struggle between classes.
> In truth we know what kind of Marxism it is which preaches to the oppressed
> that they should stop their struggles against imperialism and concentrate on
> the "real" struggle for socialism. As we all, in truth, know whose interests
> this kind of "Marxism" ultimately serves.


Sorry to edit out the part about Turkey. You make your point very 
powerfully Jim. I agree absolutely about Ireland. It is a subject that 
most of the British Left avoid like the plague. To the extent that 
Mr.Rose's friends can get away with consorting with the Loyalist Facist 
friends of the Nazi British National Party, and call them "Protestant 
Socialists".

The record of the British Labour Movement on Ireland has been truly 
shameful. I think we could all learn a lot from a discussion around this. 
 
-- 
Best wishes,

Richard.




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