I
joined Sinn Féin in the middle of 1986 and
left Ireland permanently at the start of 1994, although
I was out of Ireland for much of the 18 months before
my final departure. My period of activity coincided
with the beginnings of the rightward shift although,
at the time I joined, it appeared that leftwing
politics were dominant in both major wings of the
movement (party and army). In particular, in the
late 1970s and early 1980s it appeared, certainly
to me, that the republican movement was in transition
from revolutionary nationalism, in the sense Lenin
used that term, to revolutionary socialism.
Given
that a generation of radicals in oppressed nations
had made this transition in the years immediately
following the Russian Revolution, it seemed perfectly
feasible to me that Irish republicans could also
do so.
This
view was reinforced by a number of factors. The
movement was overwhelmingly working class in social
composition, and the Irish bourgeoisie and most
of the middle class (especially in the south) were
completely hostile to the national liberation struggle.
In addition, hundreds of comrades were in prison
and studying Marxist texts there. However, the lowering
of the horizons of the movement, or at least of
its leaders, began to manifest itself not long after
I joined.
IRA
volunteers: took on the world’s number two
imperialist power
It
is important to put this in a wider political context,
as this leadership was not merely a bunch of ageing
yuppies, like the Blairites, but a layer of working
class fighters forged in the crucible of a life-and-death
struggle in the nationalist ghettoes of the north,
especially Belfast, taking on the world’s number
two imperialist power. Critiques of them as ‘middle
class’ by social workers and teachers belonging
to Irish Trotskyist groups which had never summoned
up the revolutionary spirit to so much as throw
a stone at the occupying imperialist army never
much impressed me (and do not today either).
A
major problem was simply the objective conditions
which the republicans had to confront. They faced
not only a powerful imperialist enemy, but also
repressive state apparatuses both sides of the border
in Ireland. The south, for instance, maintained
continual harassment and repression of republicans
all the way through the armed conflict of the past
generation. It was much easier to belong to any
of the small Trotskyist groups than it was to be
in Sinn Féin in any part of Ireland.
In
the wake of the 1981 hunger strikes and the mass
mobilisations around them in Ireland, republicans
made advances electorally, thereby showing they
were not a small and isolated ‘terrorist’
or ‘bandit’ group, as portrayed by the
British and Irish establishments. The ruling classes
on both sides of the Irish Sea were determined to
roll back these gains and did so using a combination
of repression against republicans and their base
and carrots for communities prepared to separate
themselves from the republican movement. The Dublin
government and the Stoop Down Low Party (SDLP) in
the six counties, both of which were threatened
by the rise of Sinn Féin and the radical
instability that might ensue from this, stepped
up collaboration with the Brits.
By
the late 1980s, the republican movement had been
pushed back to its hard-core base. Clearly, neither
relying on armed struggle as the major strategy
nor combining electoral politics and armed struggle
(the ballot box and the Armalite) were sufficient
for holding off the renewed offensive of the British
state and its lackeys in Ireland. A rethink was
necessary, and this did actually take place.
Unfortunately, it took place in very unfavourable
international circumstances. There were two elements
to this:
While
the republican movement had never regarded the Soviet
bloc as a model, the collapse of that bloc had the
effect of widely discrediting any form of collectivist-oriented
politics, including genuine revolutionary socialism.
There was certainly no Bolshevik Party leading a
healthy revolutionary process in Russia or anywhere
else that could inspire the republican movement
leadership to move leftwards, as had happened with
revolutionary nationalists immediately after 1917.
Moreover,
the collapse of the Soviet bloc had helped disorient
national liberation movements everywhere. The FSLN,
under pressure from Washington and the demise of
the Soviet bloc, had shifted rightwards, as had
the FMLN in El Salvador, and similar groups elsewhere
in central America. The African National Congress-South
African Communist Party was moving towards an accommodation
with the South African ruling class and its political
representatives, in which formal race laws would
be abolished, but capitalist social relations maintained
and strengthened. The Palestine Liberation Organisation
was being given the right to run a few refugee camps
in exchange for ending the struggle against the
Israeli state.
The
‘success’ with which the ANC and PLO had
gone mainstream appealed to much of the republican
leadership, including those who had studied Marxism
so intensely while in prison and written radical
critiques of the history of the movement. I recall
chatting after an anti-extradition conference in
Dublin around 1990 to a prominent Belfast republican
and former hunger-striker, who had been one of the
leading figures in the study of Marxism in the H-blocks
and was only recently out of prison. I naturally
assumed he and I would be on the same wavelength
politically, but was shocked when he started saying
to me how we had to take the ANC and PLO as our
model and how they would succeeded in ‘mainstreaming’
their agenda.
Of
course, the idea was not that the republican agenda
would be gutted, but that it would be promoted in
a way that made it the central political focus that
everyone in Ireland had to address. This was, supposedly,
what the PLO and ANC had achieved.
One
of the problems faced by comrades who studied in
prison and became, at least while behind bars, convinced
Marxists, was that it was all theoretical. Since
these comrades were locked up for 10, 15, 18 years,
there was little opportunity to develop their Marxism
in the changing, real world. When they got out there
was simply a huge chasm between their intellectual
Marxism and the more prosaic reality, including
the way the leadership was taking the movement rightwards.
A few stayed true to the revolutionary theory they
had learned in prison and tried to use it to analyse
reality, but for most the chasm was too wide and
they quickly fell into it, which meant falling into
line behind the leadership.
There
was also a good deal of conniving and dishonesty
from elements of the leadership, who set out fairly
consciously to destroy (either outright or through
cooption) the radical ideas gestating in the movement
and in the H-blocks in particular.
Around
the time I joined Sinn Féin I was involved
in typesetting and proofing a book by the H-block
prisoners. The two comrades who were in charge of
political education nationally in the party, and
who saw themselves very much as socialists of the
Connolly variety, were very excited about this book,
Questions of history. Smuggled out of the blocks
bit by bit, it was essentially a Marxist analysis
and critique of the history of Irish republicanism.
Rose
and Jim saw this as being the breakthrough. Because
it came from the blocks and the prisoners had immense
moral authority, this book would be read by everyone
in the movement, most would be convinced by it,
a whole study programme would be organised around
it and we were on the way to the republic of Connolly.
The book was even to be colour-coded, with questions
for discussion and so on and would come in several
volumes.
Even
though it only went up to the 1930s and was not
a direct critique of Provo politics, the first volume
of Questions of history was not welcomed in the
central leadership. Indeed, the book was pretty
much suppressed. Only 2,000 copies were allowed
to be printed and these were for circulation only
within the movement. Effectively it was turned into
an internal discussion document that could never
be internally discussed. There was a whispering
campaign that the book was ‘ultra-left’
and a shitty review was run in An Phoblacht/Republican
News, written by a party hack who had previously
been in the British Labour Party and Fourth International
(Usec). It was never be sold publicly, never used
for a serious internal education programme and the
second volume was never even published. Apparently
there is now a copy of the second volume in the
Linen Hall Library in Belfast.
Having
effectively suppressed the radical critique of the
POWs, the nationalist elements in the leadership
began a scare campaign that the national question
was in danger of disappearing from Irish public
discourse and everything had to be concentrated
on defending the idea of national unity.
This
came in the context of two counterposed papers about
the way forward being presented within Sinn Féin
and discussion of these before and at the annual
internal conference (SF usually held two national
conferences a year: a public ard fheis, based around
reports, remits and election of the leadership;
and an internal conference based around discussion
papers). The head of the party’s political
education, who was also a former OC of the prisoners
at Portlaoise, wrote a document in which he warned
that the movement itself was being politically partitioned,
with armed struggle in the north and clientelist
advice-centre/social reformist politics in the south.
The paper argued explicitly for Connolly-type politics,
uniting the political, social and economic aspects
of the struggle on a 32-county basis.
The
alternative paper was put forward by one of the
party’s two general secretaries, Tom Hartley.
Hartley, whose politics seemed quite influenced
by the nationalist wing of the pro-Moscow Communist
Party of Ireland (CPI), argued in favour of a pan-nationalist
front. This would be formed by working for unity
with Fianna Fail, the SDLP - and even Fine Gael!
- to advance an Irish national agenda. This paper
was extraordinary, considering Irish history. It
basically turned its back on the lesson of every
significant struggle and leader since Wolfe Tone,
by rejecting a struggle for national liberation
based on the people of no property - a concept at
the very heart of Irish republicanism - and advocated
class collaboration with the very sections of Irish
society which had always sold out the struggle and
which were clearly working with the Brits to maintain
the status quo.
In
order to bolster up the pan-nationalist side, a
whispering campaign was mounted that the people
behind the Connolly paper were hostile to the armed
struggle and wanted it called off. It was more or
less implied that a vote for that paper was a vote
for the end of the armed struggle. Also, various
people were removed from the leadership in both
the party and the army without any transparency
in the process at all. Supporters of the nationalist
position would sometimes go so far as to throw a
tantrum, shrieking and carrying on, as if voting
for the Connolly position was a betrayal of the
nationalist population of the north.
Needless
to say, the pan-nationalist position triumphed,
and the key architects of the Connolly paper pretty
much dropped out.
The
shift rightwards also took other forms. When Dessie
Ellis was extradited to Britain from the south on
a stretcher around the fifth or sixth week of his
hunger strike, the leadership were very worried
about trouble on the streets of Dublin. There was
a march that night organised by the anti-extradition
campaign, in which I was the party full-timer, and
we wanted to take it to a venue where Haughey, who
was taoiseach at the time, was speaking and at least
ruin his night. Adams rang me in the anti-extradition
office to suggest the march be called off, especially
as there was an Ireland-England soccer match in
Dublin that afternoon and the leadership worried
that republicans and English soccer fans might clash
in the streets in the evening. I found this extraordinary.
One of our comrades had been handed over to the
Brits on a stretcher almost blind and we were not
supposed to protest in the capital city because
of the presence of English soccer fans.
In
fact, this was one of the great weaknesses of the
Provo leadership. They wanted to avoid creating
any trouble in the south, let alone destabilising
the southern state.
From
the traditional standpoint, however, of militant
republicanism and Marxism, it is rather difficult
to imagine driving British imperialism out of Ireland
and freeing the country without the southern state
being destabilised. It is after all, as Liam Mellows
noted back in 1922, not a step towards liberation,
but a barrier between the Irish people and freedom
that has to be removed.
As
it was, the party leadership sent members of the
IRA’s Dublin Brigade to ‘marshal’
the march and ensure nothing untoward took place
- although some of the army comrades later expressed
regret and shame about their role.
The
leadership also engaged in a substantial effort
at what might be called ‘reformism by stealth’.
Adams and co knew that they could not come out and
say they wanted an end to the armed struggle and
a peace deal little different from the 1973 Sunningdale
agreement. So, instead of nailing their colours
to the mast and fighting for their rotten capitulation
to imperialism, we had the spectacle of ‘discussion
papers’ on pathways to peace and justice (and
later, just to peace).
When
comrades critical of this would try to criticise
these, the standard leadership response would be
that these were not up for votes, they were not
official policy: they just ideas that some people
thought were interesting or useful. Within a couple
of years, however, the positions in these documents
were being used as the basis for official party
statements. Without being voted on - in fact without
ever being seriously debated - they became the de
facto, and eventually de jure, position of Sinn
Féin (and, presumably, of the army as well).
By
about 1992, without the new line ever having been
formally voted on, reformism was dominant and the
road opened to its full flowering in the form of
the republican movement embracing the constitutional
nationalism which had been the deadly enemy of republicanism
throughout its entire 200-year history.
Another,
almost surreal, aspect - indeed it reminded me of
Animal Farm - was the suppression of the
‘left’ Adams of the late 1970s and early
1980s and the emergence of the ‘moderate statesman’
Adams. For instance, my local cumann decided to
hold regular monthly public forums, starting with
one on poverty and featuring Dublin speakers and
Bernadette McAliskey. For this forum, we wanted
some literature and one of our members, who was
also a member of the national leadership and worked
in the party’s political education department,
grabbed a few copies from her office of stuff written
about socialism and republicanism by Adams in the
late 70s and 80s that the education department had
put together as a little pamphlet. She was physically
prevented from taking this material out of SF head
office to the forum on the basis that what Adams
said in these collected pieces was no longer the
party view.
Each
edition of Adams’ first political book, The
politics of Irish freedom, was re-edited several
times to remove certain criticisms of the SDLP and
Fianna Fáil and any other views of his subsequently
deemed to have been ‘ultra-left’. Needless
to say, the first version was much more interesting
and inspiring than the insipid liberalism he repetitively
churns out in book after book these days.
After
about 1992, the shift rightwards gathered more and
more steam, genuine left-republicans began dropping
away over the next few years and, as the party became
more respectable, a new layer of members were signed
up on the basis of the new line.
The
shift also reflected a dramatic truth about the
objective importance of class in modern politics.
If you became increasingly hostile to class politics,
in terms of a revolutionary strategy based on the
working class, this does not mean class politics
go away. Rejecting the working class as the agent
of struggle and social change simply means there
is only one place left to go politically - towards
the capitalist class. And so off went the republican
leadership - towards the Irish bourgeoisie, the
British bourgeoisie and the American ruling class.
And the returns for betrayal are always lucrative:
positions in power, even if only in Stormont, state
money, an end to censorship and the opening up of
the media, book publishing deals, visits to the
White House and enough money from the States to
make Sinn Féin the richest party in Ireland.
After years of struggle and sacrifice, the temptations
are not hard to understand, even if the capitulation
is contemptible.
This
sell-out by the leadership of the republican movement
has been widely condemned by the British left. This
is rather surreal, considering that few of them
actually supported the republican struggle while
it was being waged. And this brings us to the culpability
of the British left, especially the major organisations,
in terms of the sell-out.
The
rise of the Provos was not an isolated event. It
was part and parcel of the massive upsurge of workers
and students in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
It was part of the process that produced the events
of 1968 and the rebirth of the far left in Europe.
In
Britain, it coincided with student occupations,
anti-imperialist protests against the Vietnam war
and huge industrial struggles against the Wilson
government’s In place of strife legislation
and the massive strike wave during the Heath government,
culminating in the miners’ defeat of Heath
in 1974. The British bourgeoisie faced a militant
working class at home and a militant national liberation
struggle just a few miles of sea away. If the two
had come together, the result would have been at
the very least a political and social crisis for
the British ruling class - something that class
was only too aware of.
There
were some auspicious signs. In 1971, over 30,000
people took part in the Anti-Internment League’s
march for the withdrawal of troops and an end to
internment. In the early 1970s an Irish revolutionary
like Bernadette Devlin could be given a rousing
response by 4,000 Dagenham car workers during an
industrial dispute. Bloody Sunday showed people
on both sides of the Irish Sea what imperialist
rule meant, if there was any doubt. The possibilities
for the British left being able to make common cause
with the struggle in Ireland and create a social
and political crisis in Britain were real.
However,
it was a challenge in which the British left totally
failed. This was especially true when the British
state began to fully clamp down on the struggle
in Ireland around the time of Bloody Sunday and,
especially, after Sunningdale and then the collapse
of the mid-70s ceasefire. The unedifying flight
of the British left was also linked to the war being
brought to Britain itself. Most of the British left
preferred their revolutions in the pages of history
books and in fiery speeches they made at Labour
Party and trade union conferences. They could support
revolutions if they were on the other side of the
world and against some other imperialist power,
like the US in Vietnam. But a national liberation
struggle against the British state that actually
thought that if there was going to be fighting and
dying some of it should take place on British soil
- whoa, that was not in the script for the revolutionary
heroes of the Brit left.
They
denounced bombings in Britain as if they seriously
believed a national liberation struggle against
an imperialist power a few miles away, which had
incorporated part of the oppressed nation’s
territory within its own state, could possibly be
won without armed actions, including within the
imperialist state (I am not making a blanket defence
of IRA bombings in Britain - some of them were stupid:
merely establishing the principle about what is
entailed in a real flesh-and-blood national liberation
struggle).
Essentially
the Brit left, in terms of its major organisations
(‘official’ Communist Party, SWP, Militant,
International Marxist Group) abandoned the Irish
national liberation struggle against the British
state. As soon as the going got tough, the Brit
left got going … as far as possible, away from
the Irish struggle. None of those involved in this
abandonment therefore have any right to criticise
the subsequent abandonment of the same struggle
by the republican leaders themselves.
The
worst were the ‘official’ CP and Militant,
who basically sided with the British state by obstructing
any attempts to build a solidarity movement within
the British working class and repeating imperialist
propaganda about the republican movement. In fact
the ‘official’ CP acted in no small part
as the actual agent of the British state in terms
of TUC policies it pursued within the six counties.
The SWP and IMG did their bit more by just simply
abandoning any serious prioritising of Irish solidarity
work.
I
recall living in London at the time of the 1981
hunger strikes. One weekend there would be 250,000
people in Hyde Park protesting about non-existent
nuclear wars on the basis of middle class pacifist
politics. The British far left would be there in
their thousands, selling their papers and promoting
their own special brand of militant pacifism. The
next week there would be a national march in support
of the hunger strikers with a few hundred people
- a thousand at most - in attendance and the far
left notable mainly for its absence.
Basically,
the bulk of the Brit left let the British government
kill the hunger strikers without doing a damn thing.
Building the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was
the soft option and never challenged anything about
British people’s attachment to the British
nation-state and capitalist ideology. Organising
real solidarity around Ireland was hard and not
likely to result in immediate large gains in recruitment
and paper sales. And it meant challenging trade
union politics as a form of bourgeois ideology.
Of
course, Marx and Engels had championed Irish freedom
and argued that, as long as British workers remained
tied to the apron-strings of the British bourgeoisie
in Ireland, they would never attain real class consciousness
or achieve anything significant in Britain itself.
Lenin was devastating about the record of the British
left of his day in relation to Ireland. The Bolsheviks
ensured that one of the conditions of membership
of the Third International was that if a party was
in an imperialist country and there was a national
liberation struggle going on against your government
you had to provide it with material support. Trotsky
declared that any British socialist who refused
to provide full support for the struggle in Ireland
(and India and Egypt) deserved to be branded with
infamy, if not with an actual bullet.
Sadly,
the great Marxists had sown dragons’ teeth
and, in Britain, harvested chickens.
At
the end of the day, the republican movement and
its struggle capitulated in the context of having
been abandoned long beforehand by the bulk of the
British left and in the context of the collapse
of both the supposedly collectivist Soviet Union
and most other national liberation struggles. What
is remarkable is not the betrayal of the republican
leadership - as pitiful and dishonest as that has
been - but the duration of the struggle in Ireland,
given the real, material difficulties it faced.
However,
the betrayal within Ireland also points up the weakness
of a national liberation struggle which does not
transcend the political limitations of radical nationalism.
It shows that the period in which national liberation
struggles could be taken at least to the achievement
of independence and some radical social changes
by radical nationalist leaderships is over. Only
a conscious, revolutionary socialist movement can
develop and maintain the politics, strategy and
tactics necessary to prosecute a struggle for national
liberation with any serious hope of success.
In
Ireland, that places a huge burden on the Irish
Republican Socialist Party and on other revolutionary
republicans and socialists, including former members
of the republican movement who left over the Good
Friday agreement and leadership betrayal generally.
It
seems to me that what is urgently needed are ways
to get the dispersed genuine revolutionary forces
- not the gas-and-water socialists Connolly denounced
- in Ireland talking together and trying to develop
a partyist culture among them, based on a Connolly-type
politics for the Ireland of the 21st century.
