The Anglo-Irish Agreement

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ANGLO-IRISH AGREEMENT

“A BULWARK AGAINST A UNITED IRELAND

It's not for nothing that Britain has gained the name *Perfidious Albion’. It arises from a long diplomatic tradition of lying and duplicity and from wording treaties and deals in such a way that they can mean anything to anyone while preserving British interests.

This tradition is fully expressed in the wording of the Anglo-lrish deal. The contusion it has created is a deliberate part of the deal - the wording, the secret clauses and the pretence that imperialism’s subordinates in the Dublin Government are equal partners in the deal all go to deepen confusion and weaken opposition.

A careful reading of the Agreement helps alot, So tao: do the statements made by the British and Fitzgerald in response to unionist pressure, They make it quite clear that, far from being a step on the road to a United Irelanc the deal is designed to preserve partition, to preserve unionist ascendancy and to preserve British control in Ireland. But real understanding of the Anglo-lrish Agreement can only come from an understanding of Britain's role in Ireland and British strategy today.

Britain is in Ireland because it owns Ireland. The war of independence and the ‘economic war’ of the Thirties did not change Britain's majority shareholding in Irish industry, Since the sixties an influx of U.S., European and Japanese capital has made it a minority force in ind ustry, but it still maintains its dominant position in banking, insurance and finance and Ireland remains a top export market In any case, as the old colonial power, it is expected to act as policeman for all the imperialist powers. A second major reason is strategic. Britain sees a military base here as essential to maintain her own status as a military power and a lynchpin in coordinating aggression by Britain, Europe and the US.

Border Security cost the Republic |REZO0m Thirdly there is an intense fear of the Irish revolution.

The British see it leading to an Irish Cuba - a socialist revolution on the doorstep of Europe and threatening their hold over their own working class.

So when Thatcher says Out! Out! Out! she means it.

Only a mass uprising by the majority of the Irish people will force Britain out of Ireland.

This isn’t the whole story. The 50s and early 60s saw the collapse of old native industries, especially in the North, and an influx of multinational capital. The British wanted reform that would weld the economy and infrastructure on both parts of the border into co ordinated elements of imperialist economic domination. These economic reforms were to be accompanied by cosmetic reform in the North, but even the hint of reform was enough to blow up the whole powder keg and bring the unresolved National Question to the fore.

50 British strategy in lreland can be summed up as follows: * To maintain a presence in Ireland and extend imperialist economic and political domination there. *. To preserve Unionism in the North as the only firm base for their military presence and asa bulwark against [rish revolutionary forces and the unity of the working class, * To defeat the republican movement and crush the aspiration for unity and independence among Irish workers. * To develop a new role for the Irish capitalist class as managers of a ‘new Ireland’ whose economy has been rationalised and restructured to provide maximum benefit for imperialism.

The Sunningdale Agreement was the major attempt to achieve this. 11 did not mark any move towards a united Ireland but it contained two major concessions to Irish capitalists: “Power-sharing’ in the North and a proposed ‘Council of Ireland’ to cover the Dublin sellout. It was sufficient to bring the SDLP and Dublin Government to the forefront in defence of partition and active involvment in repression. The British thought that they had won significant Unionist support for the deal, but elec tions wiped out the pro-Sunningdale unionists and from that point on the British lost interest. The "74 stoppage and Unionist revolt was pushing against an open door.

The Sunningdale Agreement was not in the interests of Irish workers but its overthrow by Loyalism, ‘rather than Republicanism, marked a setback. The move to the

right that this represented meant that Dublin was able to maintain a high level of collaboration and the British were able to embark on a policy of military victory linked to a criminalisation policy that was to lead to the HLBlocks. The mass struggle around the prisoners broke that policy, but without breaking the hold of the Irish capi talist parties over the majority of Irish workers. They did, however, have to face up to brutal realities - that the National Question still had the power to pose a mass challenge to their rule and that they could not allow that challenge to continue in a situation of growing poverty and unemployment to which they had no solution.

Out of this sense of desperation they constructed an offensive around the Forum report. Behind all the rhetoric about a United Ireland was the reality that this was to be dropped as even a formal demand, A propaganda drive to prove a United Ireland was impossible was linked to negotiations with the British around the restructuring of partition leading directly to the Anglo-Irish deal. The British themselves were seriously worried by the H-Block/ Armagh struggle and by the Sinn Fein election victories. The Dublin offer was an offer they couldn't refuse and discussion boiled down to the ‘reforms’ on offer to cover the Dublin sell-out. This quickly became a discussion about what the unionists would accept and that proved to be damned little - a ‘consultative role’ for Dublin and some restrictions on Orange triumphalism. So part of the ambiguity of the deal was the limt tations imposed by the anti-imperialist struggle on what could be agreed. An open abandonment by Dublin of the demand for a United Ireland would have been tlie basis for a full-blooded counter-revolutionary drive by Imperialism. Instead Dublin is limited to re-stating their support for the Unionist veto - ‘a united Ireland by consent’ and recognising ‘that the present wish is for no change in the status of Northern Ireland’.

a es page 13 In another direction the British could have attempted stability by giving Dublin real authority in the North and co-opting Irish capitalism over the heads of the Unionists. But unionism is too valuable, Irish capitalism too weak and the ant+imperialist movement too strong for that sort of risk to be taken, 50 instead the Dublin Government are given a consultative role - the ‘right’ to express an opinion which the British will ‘carefully consider’. ) The major options having been fudged, it’s not surprising that the major thrust of the deal is towards a return to Stormont, or that the SDLP have made yet another retreat - towards a Stormont based on ‘widespread acceptance’ rather than power-sharing.

All this leaves very little room for concessions. The conference “will concern itself with measures to recog.

nise and accommodate the rights and identities of the two traditions in Northern freland. This includes cultural heritage, electoral arrangements, Flags and Emblems and avoidance of discrimination’.

This is followed by: ‘The Irish government may put forward views on the composition of: the Human Rights Commission; the Fair Employment Agency; the Equal Opportunities Commission; the Police Authority and the Police Complaints Board.” These two elements of the deal are the basis of a new Redmondism. There are no actual concessions - if anything the British record on discrimination, cultural rights and human rights are as bad as they have ever been and there is absolutely no indication of any major move. What the deal does is put the Irish capitalists in the position of lobbyists. Irish workers are to look, not towards revolution or global reforms, but towards a client relationship with capitalists who will have the ear of Britain eae lng : ert 3 a a = iw, ¥ a= | Loyalists march past the scene of earlier rioting in Portadown on Easter Monday (Photo: Pacemaker} © ai -_ -_ 2 re ake : 2 — oo a —-

page 14 All this is very insubstantial, but it enables Britain and Dublin to get some real business done: A major programme of economic rationalisation on both sides of the border, secret clauses drawing Dublin closer to NATO, and proposals to adopt major aspects of British emergency legislation in the 26 Counties.

Top of the agenda is a 32 County offensive against Republicanism. It's not for nothing that both sides talk of the ‘Anglo-Irish process. They don’t have a sol ution, but they have won some room and a successful offensive against republicanism would win them still more. But Dublin has to get same concession in return, and Britain seems less and less able to provide it, espectally given the need to soothe Loyalist bigotry.

The crisis in Ireland today is the crisis of an unresolved National Question. The weakness of the Anglo-Irish Agreement is that it does not deal with this question.

The Irish capitalists are unable to claim it as any kind of step towards a united Ireland, Instead they focus in on ‘equality of two traditions’ in the North - ignoring the fact that the rationale for the foundation of the North and its continued existence is inequality and Unionist supremacy. For their part the British have made it clear that there is to be no challenge to that supremacy. The RUC are to contain and erode the Orange mob but not to confront it, in the hope of gradually winning a measure of acceptance for the deal.

Dublin and the SDLP have responsibility for the discrimination an repression without any power to change it.

These are weaknesses in capitalist and imperialist strategy - weaknesses that give a real opportunity to the anti-imperialist movement. But the capitalists have one big advantage - they are putting forward a coherent plan of anew freland - partitioned, republicanism smashed, democratic rights suspended, wage cuts, tax hikes, an economy structured around the needs of multinationals, British emergency legislation applying in all 32 Counties and membership of NATO and the U.S. war drive. This mass of lies is to be supported by one big lie that there is no alternative, We in People’s Democracy believe that a starting point for resistance should be a Forum of Republicans and Socialists, to re-state again the promise of the Easter proclamation 70 years ago, to point out how that proclamation has been betrayed and to redraft a freedom charter for today: the demands of the oppressed - of Irish workers, youth, women, gays, Northem nationalists demanding freedom and independence in a united socialist Ireland.

_ A Loyalist upsurge which overthrew this deal would leave Dublin looking to further appeasement and further attacks on Nationalists by the British. If Socialists and Republicans unite now they can move to the centre of this struggle and make the collapse of this deal a stepping-stone to Freedom.

Shankhill Road (Photo: Pacemaker)

POBLACHT NA H-EIREANN

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

IRISH REPUBLIC

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasable. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish Nation must, by its valour and discipline and the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

THE 1916 PROCLAMATION