More
than twenty years ago, every group on the British
left used to publish books outlining their position
on the Irish conflict. However, very few bothered
to do so since. So it is significant that Alan Woods,
one of the leaders of Ted Grant's Committee for
a Marxist International, recently published a book
on what he calls the "revolutionary dialectic
of republicanism". Also significant is the
space he devotes in it to the IRSM, as many groups
tended to ignore that organisation. The IRSP has
been in contact with Alan Woods' political tendency
for a few years, and our Political Secretary has
written a foreword to this book. But unfortunately
the book is very weak.
The
first problem is that in terms of analysis Woods
is often crude. For example his analysis of the
causes of partition (66-67) or alleged moves towards
integration of North and South during the 1960s
(83, 108) is highly questionable (For a more sophisticated
approach of those issues see Paul Bew and Henry
Patterson The State in Northern Ireland: political
forces and social classes, Manchester University
Press 1979, pp.62-70 and 129-133).
His
analysis of class divisions during the war of independence,
treaty and civil war has been undermined by historical
research. (See Richard English, Nationalism and
the Class Question in his Radicals and the Republic:
Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State,
Oxford University Press, 1994, pp.1-66) Alan Woods
would probably defend himself by saying that he
is not a professional historian or expert on Ireland,
but is writing as a Marxist militant, and that his
book should be judged in terms of its contribution
to the debates within Irish Marxism. But here again,
he is on weak grounds.
He
shows no familiarity with the various debates on
Ireland within the different schools Marxism (he
should check: John Martin, The Conflict in Northern
Ireland: Marxist Interpretations in the journal
Capital
and Class). And his knowledge of Connolly, and
the various polemics his work gave rise to, is weak.
For example, Woods writes:
"In
the First World War, Connolly pursued a consistently
internationalist line. Although he had no direct
contact with Lenin, the two men instinctively adopted
the same position from the outbreak of the hostilities."
(53)
But
this is simply not true. Whatever the internationalist
propaganda written during the first six months of
the war, or the initial slogan of serving neither
King nor Kaiser, Connolly's position rapidly moved
from a declared stance of neutrality to an intensely
partisan, pro-German position. Connolly welcomed
German victories because the weaker Britain became,
"the stronger became every revolutionary
force". German victories for Connolly were
the victories "of the most enlightened nation
in Europe...whose democracy is most feared by the
cunning capitalists of the world." The
German working class "had advanced nearest
to the capture of the citadel of capitalism"
(Irish Worker, 5 September).
Connolly's
opinion did not change later. In the Workers
Republic (9 February 1916) he published an extraordinary
article by an American, Frederick C. Howe, which
ran two full pages of the paper praising the virtues
of "German State Socialism". It was this
'State Socialism', Connolly claimed in his article,
Secrets of Germany's success-state socialism,
that explained Germany's successes in the war. In
one of the last articles written by Connolly, he
argued that the German Empire was 'a homogenous
Empire of self-governing peoples' which contained
'in germ more of the possibilities of freedom
and civilisation' than the British (Workers
Republic, 18 March 1916).
Indeed
in the final issue of the Workers' Republic
a week before the Easter Rising, (in an article
included in Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh's Connolly:
Lost Writings), Connolly hailed "the wonderful
fight being made by the Germans against odds"
and inclined to the conclusion that "the
German Nation is incomparably superior to any nation
in Europe." It was not Lenin who appealed
to Connolly, but rather Lenin's life long opponent,
the Polish Socialist leader Joseph Pilsudski, who
also had allied himself militarily with Germany
and Austria and against Russia in order to fight
for an independent Poland. Connolly applauded Pilsudski's
Polish Legion for fighting alongside Germany against
Russia as a contingent on the Austrian army. (see
Workers Republic, 15 April 1916) This illustrates
the fact that Woods' grasp of Connolly and debates
within Irish Marxism is clearly limited and insufficient.
Alan
Woods' understanding of the dynamics of Republicanism
in general, and Provisionalism in particular, is
unsatisfactory. His argument is based on the distinction
between "left and right republicanism"
(75). However this is inadequate as the fundamental
opposition is that between revolutionary republicanism
and reformist constitutional nationalism. This was
Peadar O Donnell's point, when he opposed De Valera
not because he wasn't a socialist, but because he
was pretending to be a republican while really being
a constitutional nationalist.
Alan
Woods is extremely hostile to the Provisionals,
who are the 'villains' of the book so to speak.
For him they are a "bourgeois right-wing
trend in Republicanism" (111). However
the fundamental problem with the Provisionals is
that they belonged more to the tradition of Catholic
defenderism and nationalism than that of Republicanism.
According to Woods, the Provisionals are a product
of a bourgeois conspiracy:
"It
was the Southern state intelligence services that
set up and organised the Provisionals. The money
and the guns of the Provos were supplied through
the agency of two right-wing ministers in the Dublin
government." (86)
Woods's
understanding of the arms crisis is approximate
and superficial. There has been considerable debate
about the role of Fianna Fail in financing the Provisionals
and the extent to which the former was responsible
for the development of the latter (See Justin O
Brien, The Arms Trial, Dublin: Gill&Macmillan,
2001 for the most serious treatment of the question).
This remains highly speculative and cannot displace
defence as the primary determinant in the formation
of the organisation, and offers a conspiratorial
distinct from a structural rationale for the formation
of the Provos. August 1969, not Fianna Fail machinations
was the central reason for the formation of Provisional
IRA (Point made clearly by Anthony McIntyre, A
Structural Analysis of Modern Irish Republicanism
1969 - 1973: thesis submitted for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Economic and
Social Sciences, Queens University Belfast, 1999).
Woods
omits to mention that the Officials also benefited
from the financial backing of the same two "right-wing
ministers in the Dublin government". Cathal
Goulding asked them for £50 000 and was promised
£1500 on account in 1969 (See Henry Patterson,
The Politics of Illusion for more details).
Woods reduces the Republican armed struggle to acts
of 'individual terrorism' (pp.117ff). For all his
opposition to the 'individual terrorism' of the
IRA, Woods should take note that Trotsky said that
"under conditions of civil war, the assassination
of individual oppressors ceases to be an act of
individual terror" (Leon Trotsky, Their
Moral and Ours, New Park, 1968, p.46). The conditions
in the six counties were those of open conflict.
In that context, the armed struggle is qualitatively
different from individual acts of terrorism. As
Connolly put it: "we believe that in times
of war we should act as in war".
Woods
also mentions on three occasions that the Provisionals
engaged in the burning of left-wing books (pp 15,
87, 111). This looks apocryphal given that there
were at least eleven copies of Lenin's State
and Revolution and many copies of the Communist
Manifesto in the Provisional IRA's library in
Long Kesh; as well as hundreds of Marxist Leninist
titles (Cfr. Kirsty Scott, Men of Letters, Men of
Arms, The Guardian 2 December 2000).
Woods'
strategic alternative to 'individual terrorism'
is based on the primacy of trade union work and
the construction of 'a party of labour based on
trade unions' (124). For Woods, trade unions
"are
probably the only real non-sectarian mass organisations
that still exist. This is the base upon which we
can build! That would undoubtedly be the message
of James Connolly, were he alive at this time."
(134)
The
problem here is that his assumption is that sectarianism
and trade unionism are opposites. Sectarianism is
seen to exist outside trade unionism, or if inside,
a regrettable aberration. But sectarianism and trade
unionism are not opposites, except in the realms
of abstract analysis. Trade unions in a sectarian
society cannot remain insulated from the society
of which they are part. In 1971 for example, a militant
engineers' march against the British Government's
Industrial Relations Act was led by Billy Hull.
Just weeks later, the same shop steward led the
same workers out on a march to demand internment
and repression.
There
is a whole literature about the development of sectarian
trade unionism and about the mutual acceptance between
unionism and trade unions. The
first problem facing activists in the unions is
that of a divided clientele and an institutionally
divided movement. Woods appeals to the tradition
of Larkin and Connolly. James Larkin had some successes
in 1907 not least because he was an official of
an English union, and therefore less open to attack
by Loyalists on grounds of national allegiance.
Connolly was far less successful. For example, his
organising of mine workers in Larne were thwarted
overnight once workers discovered that he represented
a Southern union; which resulted in the miners not
only abandoning Connolly, but the strike as well.
When Larkin criticised Connolly for not making as
much headway as he had, Connolly's reply was instructive:
"...he (Larkin) is for ever snarling at
me and drawing comparisons between what he accomplished
in Belfast in 1907, and what I have done, conveniently
ignoring the fact that he was then the secretary
of an English organisation, and that as soon as
he started an Irish one his union fell to pieces,
and he had to leave members to their fate."
(Levenson, James Connolly biography, 221)
The
second problem is that with a divided movement,
taking political stances outside purely trade union
issues would drive away one section or another of
the divided clientele. The trade union movement
only exists on the basis of least common denominator
between workers. 'Politics' have to be avoided.
So for instance, the trade union movement has been
reluctant to take up the issue of repression because
it would alienate Protestant workers. A few trade
unionists set up the Trade Unions Committee Against
Repression. When Brian Maguire, a AUEW/TASS TUCAR
activist, was found hanged while in police custody
in 1978, the trade union movement was notorious
for its self-castration on the issue fearing to
alienate orange workers. Woods does not mention
this incident.
However,
he makes a great deal of the fact that in August
1969 a meeting of trade unionists in Harland and
Wolff declared their opposition to sectarianism
(pp 88, 123). Referring to this incident, even a
labour historian sympathetic to Woods' view maintains
that "there is a danger here of exaggerating
the trade union contribution. The number of Catholic
workers in the shipyards for example had fallen
dramatically since 1969..." (Civil strife
and the growth of trade union activity: the case
of Ireland, Government and Opposition, issue
4, 1973, p.407).
Woods
should meditate Connolly's conclusions about trade
unions in the North:
"The
historical backgrounds of the movement in England
and Ireland are so essentially different that...the
phrases and watchwords which might serve to express
the soul of the movement in one country may possibly
stifle its soul and suffocate its expression in
the other...the doctrine that, because the workers
of Belfast live under the same industrial conditions
as those of Great Britain, they are subject to the
same passions and to be influenced by the same methods
of propaganda is a doctrine almost screamingly funny
in its absurdity."
The
most questionable part of the book is the part dealing
with the British left (110-112). The majority of
organisations on the British left are a variety
of Trotskyite groups which, in common with Trotsky
on the Irish revolution, have an abstract and idealist
understanding of the Irish question. However Woods
presents Trotsky as if he had been a defender of
the 1916 Rising instead of one of its detractors
(57). It was against the likes of Trotsky that Lenin
wrote his defence of the 1916 Rising.
Alan
Woods castigates the British left for supporting
the sending of troops to the North in 1969. According
to him a "honourable exception" (110)
was the Militant Tendency (to which Woods and Grant
belong), and this political tendency "has a
proud record on Ireland": "We were
the only consistent ones who opposed the sending
in of British troops in 1969." (112). Woods
goes on to quote a resolution they tried to pass
at a 1969 Labour Party conference and a September
1969 article from The Militant newspaper.
However,
he omits to mention that the same article supported
the introduction of British troops under guise of
preventing a 'blood bath':
"A
slaughter would have followed in comparison with
which the blood-letting in Belfast would have paled
into insignificance if the Labour Government had
not intervened with British troops." (Militant,
September 1969)
In
fact, the IMG (to mention just one organisation)
had explicitly opposed the sending of troops (see
USFI statement, September 1969). It is dishonest
for Alan Woods to rewrite history as if the political
tendency to which he belongs was supportive of the
anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland because it
has a disgraceful record as it was the group on
the British left which was the most vehemently opposed
and hostile to the liberation struggle in the North.
No wonder that Woods does not venture beyond 1969.
He wouldn't be able to point to any progressive
intervention his political tendency made during
the 1981 hunger strikes for example.
Woods
then attacks the rest of the British left for "uncritical
support for the Provisional IRA" and ignoring
the Republican Socialist tendency (111). This is
laughable. The only groups on the British left who
gave any real support for liberation struggle and
the IRA were the RCG/Irish Solidarity Movement,
RCP/Irish Freedom Movement, Red Action, the Leninists
of the CPGB/Hands Off Ireland. The rest of the left
came with inanities about 'individual terrorism',
'petit bourgeois' etc. Far from ignoring the Republican
Socialist Movement, members of Red Action have been
jailed for participating in INLA activities, and
the Leninists of the CPGB held a number of joint
schools and statements with the IRSP.
It
is unfortunate that Alan Woods nowhere explains
why his political tendency made a U turn in its
position on Ireland. There is nothing wrong about
being mistaken, everyone makes mistakes. But he
should have admitted it, a dishonest piece of revisionist
rewriting of history will never win anyone to his
political line.
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