Review: Republicans analyse deal

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REPUBLICANS ANALYSE

‘DEAL

imperialists, the need to involve all the Irish people directly in What does the Anglo-Irish deal represent? What is the Republican movement's analysis of this agreement and their strategy for moving the revolution forward? Readers of Danny Morrison’s booklet will not find any clear answers to.

these questions. Indeed they are likely to end with an impression of continuing Republican confusion and uncertainty. Close reading will give some hints of a continuing strategic debaté in the Republican movement and «it is in these hints of continuing debate and discussion that we can find hope that republicans will meet the call for effective Jeadership. The booklet,’ containing the text of the Bobby Sands commemorative lecture given by DFanny Morrison in May, claims to examine-the Hillsborough agreement. In fact there is no detailed analysis of the deal. The central section hardly goes beyond a restatement of the main elements given in the text of the treaty and other references are scattered throughout the text. So on page 15 we are told; ‘no Sinn Fein statement or spokesperson ever referred to the Agreement as a sell-out or to the SDLP as having sold out’’. So what do they say? In the section ‘Republican Position’ the valuable point is made that Loyalist reaction to the agreement shows that their violence is not a response to the IRA but is their response to any nationalist attempt to achieve their rights. The booklet goes on to make the following points: @The implementation of the agreement is not worth such a violent Loyalist response.

WCatholics are being burnt out of their homes for an agreement that enshrines the Loyalist veto.

M@The Agreement has not been followed by any reforms or any change in the pattern of sectarianism and repression in the North. : @ Republicans should not rule out the possibility that Britain ‘may make concessions on these issues to back up constitutional nationalists.

This leaves us back where we started. If the deal is not a sellout then it contains substantial reforms won by the advance of the anti-imperialist movement. We should be able to identify these, and explain the need to press onward for revolutionary change around these advances. If it is a sell-out then we should be organising to defend ourselves and to expose the forces leading the betrayal.

Of course the Anglo-Irish deal is a sell-out. So why has the Republican movement fudged this central issue?

A reading of the section on the H-Block struggle gives us something of an answer. The main lesson taken from the struggle is of the importance of electoral intervention. Thus the forum report and the negotiations around the Anglo-Irish deal are seen solely as responses to the threat that Sinn Fein posed to the SDLP at the polls. This is certainly a major factor, but it tends to blind ‘Danny Morrison to the wider strategic and political background against which British policy is forged.

There are lots of other lessons to be learnt from the H-Block struggle - lessons on the need for political unity of antithe battle for freedom through mass struggle ans the need to bring all oppressed groups together in one struggle.

On eother lesson was posed in the H-Block struggle. That is that when it comes to the crunch Irish capitalism will stand shoulder to shoulder with its imperialist master and that a successful challenge means not just standing in elections against the capitalists but in unity with organised workers in a fight that links opposition to economic exploitation and deprivation with the fight against imperialism.

That’s the central issue in understanding this agreement.

what it does above all is recognise the increasing weight of the Irish capitalist class, the hold that they continues to have over the majority of Irish workers, and their role in supporting imperialist rule in Ireland. Through the Anglo-Irish deal they are brought into the front line and a successful defence consists first and foremost of exposing their collaboration and smashing their support amongst Irish workers.

An analysis by Sinn Fein that doesn’t deal with their calls for unity with the SDLP in the last two elections can’t hope to show the way forward. So the booklet can’t be described as a finished policy or a final statement. It is a position paper, summing up some elements of an ongoing debate but leaving many questions open. It finishes on this open note - calling on Republicans to develop strategies to suit conditions and to “face particular challenges to its traditional perceptions’’ ‘‘With some fexibility, through comradely debate and discussion, it can meet these challenges’’.

There are many other points that could be made. The analysis of Loyalism is insufficient, the vulnerability of British rule seems overstated and there is a particularly good quote from the Daily Telegraph about Britain’s use of the Anglo-Irish deal in international propaganda - revolutionists should read the booklet and see for themselves.

As an analysis of the Anglo- Irish deal and a strategic signpost for the struggle ‘The Hillsborough Agreement’ by Danny Morrison is inadaquate. As a glimpse into the internal discussion in the Republican movement it is of real interest.

Perhaps the most important point is that it has been published. At the last Sinn Fein Ard Fheis Gerry Adams.

made it clear that he saw the anti-imperialist movement as extending well beyond the Republican movement and their supporters. This booklet is the first doorway between the Republicans and that wider movement. It is perhaps worth while reminding Danny that the issue of electoral participation which he defends so strongly was no only resolved by internal debate but by actively involving, in open debate, all the anti-imperialist fighters in the H-Block movement. A similiar openess is needed now.

JOHN NORTH.

THE HILLSBOROUGH AGREEMENT

BY DANNY MORRISON

Published by Republican publications,