The
McCartney killing
On
30 January, members of the IRA were involved in
the killing of nationalist Robert McCartney following
a bar-room brawl in Belfast. Since then the family
of Robert McCartney have led a campaign to reveal
the truth and the identity of the killers. The campaign
is led by McCartney's sisters and fiancé
from the strongly Republican enclave of Short Strand
in East Belfast, and has mobilised many nationalists
on the streets against what many view as increasing
criminality and misrule of Republican areas by members
of the Republican Movement. Sinn Fein responded
to this pressure by suspending 7 of its members,
and the IRA expelled three of its own volunteers.
The family maintains that up to twelve members of
the IRA were involved in the killing. The family
have indicated that they may stand in the forthcoming
election campaigning in their local area for justice
for Robert. Sinn Fein's Martin McGuniness issued
a warning that 'The McCartneys need to be very careful.
To step over that line, which is a very important
line, into the world of party political politics,
can do a huge disservice to their campaign.' Catherine
McCartney responded by stating 'We have to be very
careful that we're not being used by anybody and
that includes Sinn Fein and all political parties,
we're not stupid women'.
Since
the McCartney incident, families from within nationalist
areas have began to speak out against the Republican
Movement, some accusing the IRA of killings nationalists
Mark Robinson and James McGinley in separate incidents
in Derry in recent years. Many nationalists increasingly
view the IRA's role as being one of policing the
Good Friday Agreement. The McCartney killing comes
as another embarrassment for Sinn Fein, so soon
after the Northern Bank robbery in December (see
FRFI 183). It further undermines the party's aspirations
to bourgeois respectability with general elections
looming for both Britain and Ireland.
A
key element of Sinn Fein's peace strategy has been
the influence the United States could exert on political
developments in Ireland. Sinn Fein persuaded the
IRA to engage in a ceasefire in 1994 partly on the
basis that Irish America could play a progressive
role in Irish reunification. In the years ten years
since the IRA ceasefire, the Sinn Fein leadership
have been wined and dined at the White House and
around the US on a regular basis. Since the change
of U.S. Administration in 2000, President Bush has
showed little interest in Irish affairs other than
to insist that the IRA must to disband. Following
the McCartney killing Senator Edward Kennedy cancelled
talks in the US with Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams
during the annual St Patrick's Day celebrations,
citing 'the IRA's ongoing criminal activity and
contempt for the rule of law' and New York Republican
Congressman Peter King, a key Adams ally in Congress,
has called on the IRA to disband. Former US Irish
envoy Richard Hass has stated that Adams could become
an 'international pariah', drawing comparisons with
Yasser Arafat. Imperialism will squeeze Adams and
the Republican Movement in the next period until
the IRA disbands.
Unionism
and the peace process
In
the early 1990's Sinn Fein argued that key to the
development of a successful peace process was the
emergence of progressive Unionism. Based upon a
optimistic assessment of imperialist-inspired peace
processes in Palestine and South Africa, Sinn Fein
saw imperialism as able to play a progressive role
in Ireland. speaking in 1994 in the period leading
up to the IRA cessation, Adams suggested that the
Protestant people needed a figure such as former
apartheid president de Klerk 'to lead them and us
into the next century' (An Phoblacht/Republican
News 3 March 1994) The election of the British Labour
Party in 1997 fuelled their illusions.
The
Unionist veto is enshrined in the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) briefly
shared power at Stormont with Sinn Fein before the
institutions were collapsed in October 2002. The
peace process, far from breaking or weakening Ulster
Unionism, has served to further strengthen loyalist
reaction and has elevated Ian Paisley and the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) to the position of main Unionist
party.
Paisley's
hard-line DUP has long been eclipsed by the UUP
in electoral terms; in the 1997 British general
election the UUP polled 32.7% of the vote to the
DUP's 13.6%. Following the UUP's power sharing with
Sinn Fein in the Stromont Assembly, the Unionist
community have increasingly favoured Paisley's reactionary
politics; in the 2001 general election the UUP polled
26.8% to the DUP's 22.5%. In the 2003 Elections
to the Stormont Assembly, Paisley eclipsed the UUP
as the main voice of Unionism with 25.7% of the
vote compared to the declining UUP's 22.7%. This
is the context in which Unionism, supported by British
imperialism has stalled the peace process and blocked
the return of devolved power to Stormont. Key to
this is the nature of Unionism as a profoundly reactionary
force where any perceived threat to its supremacy
gives rise to deepening reaction. This allowed Paisley
to raise the stakes by insisting on photographic
evidence of IRA decommissioning of weapons prior
to any re-establishment of devolved government.
The Republican Movement have engaged in a strategy
which is dependent upon the emergence of a moderate
Unionist leadership - it is precisely this strategy
which has led directly to the resuscitation of Paisley's
brand of intransigent Unionism.
The
origins of a reformist strategy
The
present state of degeneration of the Republican
Movement can be traced back to decisions made in
the late 1970s. Two different strategies were at
separate periods adopted to mobilise support for
the campaign against criminalisation of the political
struggle, led by prisoners in the H-Block prison
and Armagh women's prison. The prison protest led
hundreds of IRA and INLA prisoners to refuse to
wear prison uniform and engage in various protests
inside the prison culminating in the historic hunger
strike of 1981 in which ten republican prisoners
died. The 'blanket protests' by the prisoners led
to regular street mobilisations led primarily by
women organised through the Relatives Action Committees
(RAC). The RACs arose organically out of the urgent
need to mobilise in support of the prisoners; Sinn
Fein was on the outside of this development. This
political movement had remarkable resonance around
the world, beyond the working class districts of
the north of Ireland, and served to dramatically
illustrate and directly expose the myth that republican
fighters were criminals and had no popular support
among the nationalist working class. The RACs viewed
the prisoners struggle and the revolutionary struggle
to drive British imperialism out of Ireland as one
and the same struggle. Militant marches on the streets
by the RACs combined with IRA and INLA armed actions
were used to demand political status for Irish political
prisoners.
As
the campaign intensified, the brutality inflicted
upon the prisoners increased and the prospect of
a hunger strike emerged. If the hunger strike was
to be avoided then the struggle needed to be intensified.
This did not occur. Instead the National H-Block
Committee was formed in October 1979 to replace
the RAC and determined thereafter the political
direction of the prisoners' campaign.
The
political campaign for political status was reduced
to a humanitarian campaign in order to win support
of sections of the Irish middle class through the
Irish government, the SDLP and the Catholic Church
to pressurise the British government to give way.
The Republican Movement chose to relate to established
middle class organisations as a vehicle to achieve
its aims. Fearing that militant demands and street
campaigning would undermine the respectability of
the prisoner's demands, concessions were made to
middle class forces. It was the development of the
pan-nationalist bourgeois strategy which dictates
Sinn Fein's present-day strategy. However, it failed.
The hunger strike was defeated. Not even the election
of Bobby Sands as a Westminster MP could alter the
balance of forces necessary to restore political
status. With the demobilisation of the popular movement
a key feature of this reformist strategy, the prisoner's
campaign was undermined and this allowed British
imperialism to isolate the previously growing revolutionary
forcers against its rule in Ireland. Sinn Fein member
Owen Carroll was elected on 20 August 1981 to the
seat made vacant by Sands' death. That same day
INLA volunteer Mickey Devine became the tenth and
final hunger striker die. Six weeks later the hunger
strike was called off. Revolutionary nationalism
had suffered a major defeat from British imperialism.
The
election successes in this turbulent period led
to the adoption of the electoral strategy which
would later significantly alter the balance of forces
within the Republican Movement in favour of those
who saw a constitutional reformist way forward.
The pursuit of respectability has directed Sinn
Fein's political strategy since then.
Armed
struggle must always be subordinate to revolutionary
politics if it is to be successful. It is the separation
of armed struggle from revolutionary politics which
leads to the current situation where the Republican
Movement no longer express the interests of working
class nationalism. Since the defeats suffered by
the Republican Movement following the hunger strike,
the nationalist working class has been increasingly
demobilised and depoliticised in favour of the bourgeois
electoral strategy.
Recent
events demonstrate the complete incompatibility
of pursuing a bourgeois strategy on the one hand
and armed struggle on the other and have placed
the disbandment of the IRA at the top of the political
agenda in Ireland.
Fight
Racism! Fight Imperialism! is the bi-monthly publication
of the Revolutionary Communist Group in Britain.
www.revolutionarycommunist.com
