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When
one looks at the current political situation in the
northeastern six counties of Ireland that still come
under the British States jurisdiction, it becomes
increasingly clear that many radicals and socialists
there have reached the same crossroads that their
political counterparts, in other European countries
and beyond, reached decades ago, in some cases during
the first part of the 20th Century. In the North of
Ireland, the sheer harshness, inequality, brutality
and resistance that had been laying dormant since
the inception of the Six Counties State-let and erupted
in 1969, had all but buried 'normal' class based political
activity as practised elsewhere, due to the sectarianism
inherently built within the six county State-let.
Thus political allegiances have more often than not
been split along communal lines, which on the surface
allowed the British State to portray them to outsiders
in a crude sectarian manner.
No matter how strongly a socialist may have felt about
certain issues that are fundamental to their core
political beliefs, the overwhelming majority would
have cast their vote along community lines, or not
at all. This is as true of Unionists as Republicans
and Nationalists. A recent example of this was that
socialist members of Sinn Fein, publicly hardly turned
a hair, apart from a swift shuffle of their feet,
when their Party's Ministers in the Stormont Coalition
Government, which was brought about under the terms
of the Good Friday Agreement, implemented Public Private
Finance initiatives whilst in office. These socialist
Shinners having been persuaded by their leadership
that their community, or rather SF’s position
within it, i.e. the bigger picture, came before their
individual socialist beliefs.
Now that the PIRA ceasefire, at least as far as militarily
fighting the British is concerned, is all but permanent,
these SF socialists, along with those who whilst once
members of the Provisional Republican Movement have
since the signing of the GFA split from SF without
returning to supporting the Traditional Republican
methods of armed struggle, find themselves for the
first time since the northern State-let was set up
in all its gerrymandered glory in the same shoes as
their European counterparts. That is, should they
give their political support, however reluctantly,
to a reformist party of the Centre-Left, which Sinn
Fein increasingly resembles. Albeit being a Reformist
Party that still has the authoritarian and military
hang over from the days prior to the ceasefire and
the GFA when it was a traditional Republican Party.
Or should they reject this emerging all Ireland Social
Democratic Party, the likes of which many European
Left socialists have long ago rejected before them,
with varying degrees of success. A fair number of
whom, especially just across the Irish Sea in England
and Wales, by their rejection of all things reformist
have ended up spending their political lives in the
wilderness, raging against the injustices of a system
they are so politically remote from to bring about
the slightest change for the better. In their defence,
the best that can be said for their impotence is that
it ensures that, unlike the UK Labourites, they do
not make life any worse for people by supporting a
leadership that wages illegal war on Iraq and helps
to occupy that unhappy land.
If northern socialists were to accept the latter option,
the alternative to Sinn Fein is hardly inviting. Socialists
could throw in their lot with the Irish Greens, or
one of the 57 Varieties of Irish Trotskyist organisations.
Or perhaps if they feel their pond is big enough and
their energy intense enough, to attempt to build a
new Irish Party of the left, or to begin with at least
a coalition of northern leftist groups. Something
clearly many of them once hoped Sinn Fein would become.
As
to the Trots, as elsewhere there are the usual 57
varieties, of whose individual memberships could gather
in a telephone box or two. Socialist Republicans look
upon them with a fraternal gaze, admiring their commitment,
yet in their hearts knowing full well these so called
revolutionary groups, for all their energy and fervour
are no such thing, but groups of adolescents led by
over grown, mainly middle class ex Public School boys,
who believe all political problems can be overcome
by a handful of slogans, a willing army of unquestioning
paper sellers and studying the great man's words.
They are not serious people politically.
The
current position the majority of ex SF socialists
now hold is none of these, but to stay on the sidelines,
sniping away at their former comrades in SF, giving
no quarter, exposing every retreat by Adams and Co
from all they once believed and suffered for. A United
Socialist Democratic Republic. Which is sadly something
few of them can now foresee as they once could, not
even in the distant Irish mists.
They rage and rain down on Adams' words of exposure,
at his every betrayal, real, suspected or otherwise.
Yet just as Adams and Co know they are betraying all
they once believed in, their opponents on the left
know they have no immediate viable political alternative
to offer outside of the ranks of Sinn Fein, ever conscious
that the northern nationalist working class still
desperately need a political advocate. They correctly
say that Sinn Fein should have become the opposition
within the Assembly and not have helped administer
the northern State-let for the British. Yet they themselves
refused to play the role of socialist opposition within
SF; by so refusing, has not SF slipped further to
the right, whereas today its fate, if their words
have effect and those leftist that remain within SF
leave, may not Adams Party end up being not Social
Democratic, but a Christian Democratic Party? It is
surely not unfair to ask how can this help the working
classes of Belfast, Derry and beyond?
When one looks at the calibre of those Socialist Republicans
who once belonged within the ranks of the Provisional
Republican Movement and then at the gaping hole that
exists within SF as far as experienced socialist activists
is concerned, one cannot help thinking, if only. If
only these activists were still within the ranks of
SF. One of the greatest tragedies of the Irish Republican
movement is that history continues to repeat itself.
Not as farce as some would claim but as fact, hard
and brutally demoralising. After De Valera split the
Republican movement by recognising the Free State,
Republican socialists remained loyal to the Republican
Movement, refusing to enter Fianna Fail. Yet within
a decade they too had left the movement or been expelled,
forming first Republican Congress in 1934 then drifting
into the wilderness or conventional constitutional
politics. When one considers that the political climate
in the 1930s was more favourable to left politics
than it is today, it is difficult to see that away
from SF, today's Republican socialists will fare politically
any better. Which for the individuals involved, and
the working classes is a bitter, bitter shame.
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