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Republican
Socialists commemorate this year the 25th anniversary
of the assassination of Seamus Costello. If he is
unsurprisingly remembered as the founder of the IRSP
and the INLA, he should also be commemorated as one
of the main architects of the left turn taken by the
then unified Republican Movement during the 1960s.
In contrast to Connolly, whose background was the
workers movement, Costello came from the conspiratorial
politics of the "secret army", understood
their limits, and developed a strategy to reconstruct
them on a left-wing basis . Born in 1939, Seamus Costello
applied to join the IRA aged 16, and became the commander
of an ASU in South Derry during the border campaign.
He was arrested in 1957, and was interned in the Curragh.
Like others, he reflected on the reasons for the failure
of the 1956-1962 campaign, and came to realise that
there was an objective need to move away from a purely
military conception of struggle. The IRA had separated
itself from the people. Costello thought that the
Republican movement should be organically linked to
the masses, develop a solid political programme to
give political leadership and if necessary complement
mass struggle by military action. Through the efforts
of Costello and others, the Republican Movement adopted
a socialist stance by 1966/1967. This part of Costello's
political life has much relevance in 2002. Forty years
after the end of the border campaign, Republicans
have still to understand the defeat of the 1990s.
While some Republicans join the status quo and other
"pan nationalist fronts", Republican Socialists
will find inspiration in Costello's 1960s strategy.
What is required of Republicans is to be organically
linked to the struggles of the working class and give
political leadership.
With
the outbreak of the struggle in the North and the
split in the Republican Movement, Costello remained
with the Officials. He was on the left wing of the
Officials, pressing the rest of the leadership to
adopt a more militant stance. It was mainly due to
the pressure of Costello and his supporters that the
Official IRA adopted a more aggressive policy in 1971.
But under the pressure of reformist elements, the
Official IRA called a ceasefire in 1972. The strategy
of the Officials in the North was seeking to unite
Catholic and Protestant workers under the Civil Rights
banner, reform Stormont and demand a Westminster Bill
of Rights. The Official leadership argued that military
activity alienated the loyalist working class and
endangered electoral prospects in the 26 counties.
The Official leadership was totally out of step with
the mass struggle that was going on. They stated that
the abolition of Stormont was a regressive measure!
They were still stuck at the Civil Rights stage when
the struggle against British rule was the main issue.
No wonder that the Officials lost a lot of political
credibility with the Nationalist working class. This
political line was opposed by Costello and his supporters.
Strategically, Costello argued that there was too
much emphasis on appeasing loyalists rather than defending
Nationalists, that the principal contradiction was
partition and not the reform of Stormont. Tactically,
he criticised the absence of armed struggle
and the over-emphasis upon electoralism in the 26
counties. One of the lessons of this period, is the
necessity for Republican Socialists of never being
out of step with the mass struggle. Any struggle out
of step with mass struggle is condemned to fail. It
is also important to understand what the main contradiction
is, and how the principal aspect of that contradiction
manifests itself. The Officials failed to see what
the principal contradiction was and embarked on the
road to nowhere.
At
first, Costello tried to reform the Official Republican
Movement from within. In 1972, in an attempt to open
up a discussion on political and military strategy,
Costello (who was still OIRA Director of Operations)
and Sean Garland jointly formulated a policy document
called "A Brief Examination of the Republican
Position: An Attempt to Formulate the Correct Demands
and Methods of Struggle". Their position
was critical of the then leadership's gradual downgrading
of the national question. The document was adopted
at the October 1972 IRA convention and the subsequent
Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, but never implemented. The Goulding-MacGiolla
faction attempted to reverse the decision and tried
to isolate and undermine Costello by perverting methods
of internal democracy. In 1973, the Offical Sinn Fein
and Army Council adopted new organisational principles
as part of a strategy of isolating the opposition
without creating a split. Costello was weakened when
Garland changed sides. Things came to a head when
Seamus Costello was court martialled and dismissed
from the Official IRA in July 1974. At the 1974 Offical
Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, Costello was also dismissed from
the party. Costello supporters had been so thoroughly
purged from both the party and the army, that there
were only 15 votes against the motion. Costello was
certainly no "splitist". He tried to work
within the Officials until he was expelled, and when
the conflict later erupted between the Official IRA
and his movement, he did everything in his power to
resolve matters peacefully. He was probably correct
not to leave earlier, as he ultimately would have
ended up isolated.
Costello
and his supporters had little choice but form a new
political movement. On 8 December 1974, Costello and
eighty of his supporters set up the Irish Republican
Socialist Party. The same day, they also discussed
the formation of a new armed group that would continue
the struggle the Official IRA had abandoned. They
recognised the need for a revolutionary socialist
party who would understand the relationship between
the national question and the class struggle in Ireland,
and would have a programme of political action based
on this understanding. Costello and his supporters
were at first busy laying the foundation and structures
of their party. In April 1975 was the first national
conference, the same year the party paper "The
Starry Plough" was established and party
premises were purchased in Dublin. But the party had
to fight for its very survival before even thinking
of developing. The party was faced with very serious
objective and subjective problems that crippled its
development and growth.
First,
the Officials attempted to wipe out Costello's organisation
before it got off the ground, beating, pistol whipping
and kneecapping its members, and on 20 February shooting
dead Hugh Ferguson. Until a ceasefire between the
two organisations was brokered in May, three comrades
lay dead and over forty injured. But the Officials
never lifted their directive to execute Costello,
and assassinated him in 1977. Those who had refused
to use their weapons against the armed forces of British
occupation had no qualms about turning them against
fellow Republicans! If the fighting with the Officials
had been mostly concentrated in Belfast, it nevertheless
had a debilitating effect on the movement in the country
as a whole. Costello's supporters had also to cope
with hostility of some Provisionals. A number of people
left the Provisional IRA (then on ceasefire) to join
Costello's organisation. To dissuade further defections,
the IRA assassinated one of its members that had joined
the IRSP, and blamed the killing on the Officials.
In such a climate, the immediate threat to the movement
was not even the state or the loyalists, but former
comrades.
On
top of that, state repression attempted to crush the
IRSP, in the 26 counties in particular. This was no
ordinary Garda harassment. In June 1975, they lay
the blame on the IRSP for a UDA attempt to blow up
a train carrying Officials to Bodenstown. On 31 March
1976 at Sallins, the Cork-Dublin train was robbed.
Although the Provisionals later admitted responsibility
for the robbery, the Free State government used it
as an excuse to launch a vicious political attack
on the IRSP. About 40 IRSP members were arrested,
and most reported that they were tortured, deprived
of sleep and food, brutally kicked and beaten. Doctors
and human rights observers later confirmed their injuries.
Three IRSP members were eventually sentenced to long
term prison imprisonment by the Dublin Special Criminal
Court in December 1978. All three had been framed,
and after intense efforts by organisations such as
Amnesty International to prove their innocence, two
were released in 1980. The last, Nicky Kelly, had
to wait 1992 before being officially cleared! Costello
always maintained that there had been a state conspiracy
to smash the IRSP. What is certain is that round 1976,
the Free State took a particularly repressive stance
against left-wing groups. For example, Noel and Marie
Murray, two Anarchists accused of killing a Garda
during a robbery, were threatened with death penalty.
But the IRSP particularly suffered. Ta Power estimated
that the IRSM had by late 1975 about 800 members.
Up to 15% of them had been injured - or even killed
- in arrests or by the Officials. That means that
for the first two years, due to these difficult objective
circumstances, the movement had little breathing space
and simply struggled for survival.
At
the same time, Costello was busy building an armed
organisation organically distinct from the party.
The resumption of armed struggle was one of the decisive
reasons for leaving the Officials. As Connolly wrote,
"agitation to attain a political or economic
end must rest upon an implied willingness and ability
to use force. Without that, it is mere wind and attitudinising"
(Selected Works, p.45) In early 1976, the Army Council
of a "National Liberation Army" issued its
first statement. "The National Liberation Army
was recently formed with the aim of ending British
imperialist rule in Ireland and creating a 32 county
Democratic Socialist Republic. As revolutionaries,
we recognise the paramount necessity for the existence
of an armed anti-imperialist organisation which will
play an effective role in the current struggle. After
five years of struggle against imperialism, the Irish
people have victory within their grasp. We see it
as our task, as revolutionaries, that they are not
deprived of victory through the acceptance of any
compromise solution negotiated without reference to
the long term interests of the Irish working class."
The statement ended with a list of 15 operations carried
out since May 1975 ("New Army Announced",
The Starry Plough n.10, January 1976, p.4)
Due to the lack of weapons and ammunitions, it was
not easy for Costello's army to make an impact. In
May 1977, the Starry Plough stated for example:
"There is little known about the National Liberation
Army (NLA) who have remained relatively quiet since
December 1975." ("National Liberation Army
on the Offensive", The Starry Plough n.21,
May 1977, p.6) The 1978 British Army document "Future
Terrorist Trends" barely mentions Costello's
organisation. The name of the group itself was not
even clear. It is only in March 1978 that the armed
group adopted the INLA name, and by that time Costello
was already dead. Even if he was undeniably left-leaning,
Costello remained true to the physical force Republican
tradition, and for him the army was the privileged
vehicle for revolutionary struggle. This gave rise
to a debate leading to a split (or resignations) in
the IRSP in 1975. A faction led by Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey
argued that the army should be subordinated to the
party on the basis of democratic centralism. Otherwise,
"Group B" would just be a smaller version
of the IRA with left-leanings. The split significantly
weakened the movement, as it lost experienced political
cadres.
Whether
with the party or the army, Costello was committed
to the Connolly position on the relation between the
national question and the class
struggle. The Officials concentrated on the class
question while ignoring the national one, and the
Provisional Republican movement concentrated on the
national question while ignoring class issues. In
contrast, the Republican Socialist movement would
concretely link the two. Unfortunately, since Costello's
death, the idea of "For National Liberation and
Socialism" merely remained a slogan and was not
developed into a concrete programme. This partly related
to the fact that the IRSP put too much emphasis upon
the strategy of the Broad Front. For its time, the
proposal to form a united front was very advanced
- it broke with exclusivism and elitism latent within
Republican politics to this day. Costello recognised
that armed struggle on its own could not succeed,
it needed to be grounded on a mass movement and collaborate
with other progressive organisations. One must also
note that the Broad Front envisaged by Costello had
little to do with the so-called "pan-nationalist
front" of today, as it would be limited to progressive
social forces. The problem was that Costello elevated
the tactic of the Broad Front to the level of a strategy.
As a tactic, it is very valid for the IRSP to engage
in joint actions, in a united front with other political
organisations on specific issues and specific goals.
However, the Broad Front is not the decisive catalyst
for struggle. The development of the Broad Front should
be subordinated to the necessity of building the revolutionary
vanguard party based on scientific socialism as the
decisive vehicle to bring about national liberation
and socialism. There was a problem of priorities because
in effect, the IRSP tended to subordinate the development
of the party to the construction of the Broad Front,
and was willing to submerge its particular political
outlook in a Broad Front (see for instance the experience
of the Irish Front in Derry in 1977-78). Costello
called for the Broad Front without clear indications
of the dangers of popular frontism. The result is
that the party was unable to develop a clear ideology
nor define its politics beyond the slogan "For
National Liberation and Socialism" and a vague
call for the "Broad Front". However, this
failure is not unique: from the 1930s Republican Congress
to the League of Communist Republicans in the 1980s,
no group really solved the problem of the relation
between the strategy of party building and the constitution
of the united popular front.
Added
to objective (attacks on the movement) and subjective
(resignations, political hesitations), the assassination
of Seamus Costello in October 1977
by the Official IRA was a decisive blow against the
IRSP. To all intents and purposes, he was the party.
He was the main political and organisational brains
behind the movement. It left the party in confusion
and without direction. Today, the organisational strategy
of the Republican Socialist Movement would differ
significantly from that of Costello in at least one
important aspect: the stress on collective leadership.
Collective leadership would have helped avoid many
of the problems that rose within the movement after
the death of Costello. Twenty five years after the
assassination of Seamus Costello, those are just some
of the most important issues of Costello's legacy
that Republican Socialists should reflect on.
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