In
a recent article published in the Irish News,
Jim
Gibney claimed Republican dissidents where plotting
to kill leading members of SF. The article
was quickly followed with a denial from the leaderships
of the IRSP and RSF, whose spokespersons said
that their organizations have absolutely no plans
nor wish to physically harm any member of the
SF leadership. Other non-aligned Republicans have
ridiculed Jim Gibney's article, claiming that
the main source of his allegations was SF itself,
not the PSNI as was first implied, and thus Gibney's
scare-mongering is designed to make the SF membership
circle the wagons in support of Gerry Adams over
the policing issue.
Normally
I would put this matter behind me, viewing Gibney's
hackneyed offerings as yet another example of
Mr Adams playing politics with other people's
lives. However it is worth having a closer look
at the article as it highlights both the sleight
of hand politics as practiced by the SF leadership
clique and the failure of the dissidents to combat
SF with a viable political strategy.
That
Mr Gibney managed to attempt to link the dissidents,
in a single paragraph, with the deaths of Chris
Hani and Yitzak Rabin, the Spear of the Nation,
the Securocrats, the ANC and Loyalist Paramilitaries
and the Omagh bomb outrage, is a clear demonstration
of the Adamsite theory: the bigger the deception
is, the muddier the water gets, thus the more
likely is the lie to be believed.
It
should not be over looked that the Adams leadership
still feel it is imperative for them to attack
the dissidents in this manner, despite the fact
that in truth they have to date been unable to
come together in an organized way which would
allow them to have any real impact politically.
It is not what they do that Mr Adams fears, but
their political potential.
There
is little doubt that former members of the Provisional
Republican Movement now make up one of the largest
political factions within northern nationalism.
Yet their inability to come together to combat
their nemesis, even in a small way, has all but
left the playing field clear for the opportunistic
politics of Gerry Adam's SF. It is as if the dissidents
wish to replicate the mistakes of the British
Trotskyites. It is hard not to conclude that they
have failed to gain a major foothold within the
nationalist working class communities for the
simple reason they have retreated back into the
certainties of the political ghetto — RSF
and the 32 CSM, by returning to traditional Irish
Republicanism, and the IRSP by retreating back
into the comfort of the vanguard Leninist Party,
which so they claim will lead the working classes
out onto bright sunny uplands (whether they want
it or not one is tempted to add). To believe that
the northern working classes are liable to support
an organization which offers them a dictatorship,
after all that has happened in the north, is off
the edge to say the least.
What
people clearly want after decades of violence
is to increase their individual freedoms at both
the political and personal levels, not restrict
them further via a political dogma. Especially
one which has a track record of bloody failure
and in reality may well end up, despite the best
of intentions, being as bad if not worse than
the occupier's jackboot, or an out of control
local para-military satrap.
It
seems to me whilst the dissident Republicans hold
a host of differing political positions, there
are two main currents: those who believe armed
struggle is the strategy, and those who see it
as merely an option and a right if favorable conditions
prevail. The latter group in the main have concluded
that at the present time and for the foreseeable
future armed struggle is not a viable option and
in this, Adams was correct. Although they disagree
as to the way he decommissioned arms etc, [they]
concede that argument is now for the historians.
This
group consists of the majority of the independent
non-aligned Republicans, including former Provos,
plus, despite my criticism of their vanguardism,
the RSM, which includes the IRSP. The other group
of Republicans are those who either belong to
RSF or like them have sworn allegiance to the
politics of the Revolutionary Dáil (1919-1922);
these Republicans will neither recognize the Republic
of Ireland's Parliament nor if elected take their
places in the northern assembly.
Having
chosen their path, they will not veer from it
by one iota, as they believe to do so would be
to betray all who have gone before. Whilst this
group will remain active on the fringes of Irish
politics it is difficult to see why, under the
current more tranquil conditions, working class
people would support them in any great numbers
— respect them perhaps, but vote for them
when they refuse to participate in the political
process? It is doubtful.
The
other grouping of dissidents is a different matter
and whilst they may differ in the long term they
have a common thread. They are almost all for
a Democratic Socialist Republic, have no aversion
to taking part in electoral politics and they
recognize the days of the armed struggle are ended.
Organizationally
they are an Irish Republican version of the European
Left that existed prior to World War II. That
is, as a galaxy of small independent leftist parties
or individual socialists, the European Left concluded
it was unable effectively to combat the might
of Capital and its political representatives;
but if they could find a way to come together
under a single political umbrella organization,
they would by attracting mass support on the street
and at the polls have real influence.
Thus
the Popular Front was born. A program that would
attract the broadest level of support, from the
organized socialist parties and non party socialist
activists, was drawn up and signed by all those
who wished to co-operate. The Popular Front's
coming was not before time, as on the outbreak
of WWII, it was used as a base platform from which
the majority of the European Continent's home
grown anti Nazi Resistance movements emerged.
The
question that needs to be asked is this: is a
Republican-Socialist version of the Popular Front
beyond the wit of non SF Irish Republicans? It
is hard to believe that people, who could put
aside political differences to fight a war, cannot
do so to continue that struggle by political means.
Working
class people throughout Ireland are in desperate
need of principled political representatives,
not only on the streets and in their place of
work, but also in the Council Chambers and Parliamentary
Assemblies. Whether these bodies are to our liking
should not be the issue, they exist. Imagine what
a handful of Republican-Socialists could have
achieved within the Stormont Assembly, by exposing
publicly the disgraceful behavior of the SF mockney
'ministers' when they acquiesced to the privatization
of public services.
Unless
Republican-Socialists and their natural allies
attempt to occupy the democratic space that has
opened up with the ending of the armed struggle,
this ground will have been conceded without a
fight to SF and its ever more right-wing politics.
If this happens, disillusionment with Republicanism
will increasingly set in within nationalist working
class communities, and may well end with middle
class nationalists once again exclusively representing
electorally the northern working classes.
