Lessons from the divorce defeat

page 5

LESSONS FROM THE

DIVORCE DEFEAT

When Archbishop McNamara compared the possible introduction of divorce to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster he let everyone know what the Catholic church regarded as the stakes in the divorce referendum. For many women it was scarcely an exaggeration. For all women it is a big setback and one also for the struggle for a united Ireland for the struggle for a united Ireland and the struggle of the working class against austerity. The result of the referendum (63% to 37% against the introduction of divorce) shows above all the complete incapacity of bourgois forces in Ireland to deliver basic democratic rights to Irish women. It demonstrated in particular their incapacity to stand up to the church.

Was the result inevitable, or could the limited measures proposed in the referendum have been won under a different campaign leadership? This article argues that not only could the vote have been won but that a major ideological and political victory could have been scored against the Catholic church and right wing reactionary forces in Ireland.

In the media and in political circles the result has been widely proclaimed as a massive defeat. It is certainly a major gain for the right and gives them the green light to go on a full scale attack against women and other oppressed groups.

But the result also shows that there is a substantial minority -in Ireland who refuse to accept Catholic church diktats and if organised could have a big impact in challenging the right wing offensive. The anger and alienation felt by many who voted ‘Yes’ must be given afocus and used constructively otherwise it will turn into real demoralisation and despair.

THE CAMPAIGN

The Government announced its intention in early May to hold a referendum to remove the constitutional ban on divorce before the Dail recess in late June. Throughout the campaign Fine Gael did almost nothing to get the referendum passed unwilling to risk a confrontation in their own ranks and amongst their traditional supporters in rural areas. But they could hardly have believed that a short campaign would mean the anti-divorce forces following their example and doing nothing. It appears that the decision to hold the referendum like this had more to do with narrow political selfinterest than in dealing with the problem of marital breakdown.A victory in the referendum, which the opinion polls predicted, would have increased the Government’s popularity , in the run-up to the next general election and would have promoted Garrett's ‘constitutional crusade’.

The other Coalition party, the Labour party, was only slightly less opportunistic. They did canvass in some areas; in those where they had lost electoral support and in particular in the Dublin region. However in Dick Spring’s constituency in Kerry they failed to mount any campaign at all.

It was left mainly to the Divorce Action Group (DAG), the group fighting for divorce rights, to mobilise support and win the vote. DAG had been in existence for several years and it was in a good position to lead a national campaign. Numerous opinion polls had shown approximately 60 - 70% of the electorate in favour of divorce yet DAG failed to turn this support into votes. It has explained this failure as due to the vicious campaign of distortion and fear ran by the Anti-Divorce campaign and to their own lack of organisation. In fact the success of the anti-divorce canpaign and the failure of DAG are symptoms of.

the underlying political weakness of the pro-divorce campaign. DAG refused to address itself to the forces who could have won the campaign - the working class in general and women and youth in particular. The anti- divorce campaign did, by playing on the fears of thousands of women that they would have no means of financial support if divorced by their husbands (ignoring the as many as 70,000 women already deserted). It appealed to youth by ridiculing a referendum on divorce when what was really needed was work. A reactionary and unpopular Government dedicated to cutting welfare and jobs was relied upon to rebut these arguements! The launching rally of the campaign in liberty hall gave a good indication of the politics of the people heading up DAG and the shape the pro-divorce campaign would take. The platform consisted of speakers from all the Leinster House parties. Missing from the platform were speakers from the women’s, workers and anti-imperialist movements. The Labour party speakers welcomed the restrictive nature of the proposed amendment and emphasised that Labour would only support restrictive divorce legislation. This theme was supported by Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats.

Throughout the campaign they argued that divorce legislation must be restrictive to protect the family. The Divorce Action group unfortunately accepted this argument right from the start.

THE ARGUMENT

The whole debate on the family was handed over to the rightwing sectarian forces in the Anti-Divorce campaign. The pro-divorce lobby never challenged the idealised view of the family put forward by the right. The notion of the family as a loving caring unit is very far from reality for many Irish families. The increase in the separation rate and marital breakdown and the growth in the number of women facing violence in the home are all evidence of the serious crisis which the family is going through. This crisis is also reflected in the number of battered children and the increase in the number of children born to single women. The most recent evidence showing the reality as opposed to the myth of the Irish family was provided by the most recent issue of ‘Magill’ magazine which caried a report showing that in 1 in 4 families there is child sexual abuse. The idea of the family as a relationship which institutionalises womens oppression was completely absent from the campaign.

DAG didn’t argue for divorce as a civil right - its propaganda was a mirror image of Labour and Fine Gael’s. They argued for divorce on compassionate grounds which had the effect of making women appear as victims and separated people as failures. Divorce as a civil right respecting the independence

page 6 and freedom of the individual was hardly referred to.

Demanding the right for women and men to take control over their lives would surely have encouraged more to vote yes.

Projecting separated people as unfortunates and failures needing compassion had the effect of strengthening the antidivorce campaign arguments - the hard-pressed taxpayer would be called on yet again to support these unfortunates.

THE CHURCH

But fundimentally the liberals in the pro-divorce lobby refused to challenge the Catholic church’s powerful intervention into the anti-divorce campaign. The insertion of the clause whereby marrages had to have failed for 5 years was a concessionary sop to the Bishops. The government hoped that such restrictions would prevent the church hierarchy from actively opposing the referendum. The government was only prepared to counter the church in the most cautious and cowardly way since Fine Gael and the capitalist class they represent depends on the church to maintain social control and order in society. The anti-divorce campaign supported by the church ran a vicious campaign every arguement was used to intimidate and frighten people.

The pulpits became political platforms and the few clergy who supported the referendum were silenced. The divorce campaign, like the 1984 anti-amendment campaign, shows the tremendious power which the church still holds in Ireland.

and it shows that this power will not gradually fade away. It will have to be consistently confronted and fought against something which the ‘two nationists’ of the Labour and Workers patties refuse to accept.

The notion put forward by the revisionists of the Workers party and their allies is that with the opening up of the Irish economy to multi-national capitalist industry and the subsequent development of a large working class Ireland had gradually since the 60’s become a modern bourgois democracy. This has been shown by the divorce referendum to be utter nonsense. Prionsais De Rossa of the Workers party, speaking at the DAG launching rally, welcomed the referendum claiming that our ability to hold the referendum showed the extent Pug AGH S4Q0 UAT, oe Leixlip: Christ versus civil rights to. which’ we were now truely a democracy like other European bourgois democracies. Yet Ireland in the only country in Europe where the church exerts such a tremendious influence. He made no effort to explain this.

The reality is that the power and influence of organised religion is a feature of all countries which have been dominated by imperialism. In Ireland the Catholic church’s specific power lies in its historic political association with the struggle of the Irish people to free themselves from centuries of British rule. But its power is also dependent upon imperialism and partition. The completely opportunistic and hypocritical assertion by the church of being on the side of the people has given it a central ideological and "political place in the life of the 26 counties. It has been ‘on the side of the people’ when it stood to gain some concessions for the church but when the establishment came under threat it then changed. This history has permitted it to dominated state policies for a long time and to have its social and moral teachings written into the Free State constitution.

THE 1937 CONSTITUTION

In some respects an analogy can be drawn with the events surrounding the 1937 constitution. Margaret Ward in her book ‘Unmanageable Revolutionaries’ pointed out that the result of the referendum held on enacting the constitution showed a lukewarm acceptance of it. In fact voting patterns.

in 1937 were similiar to the recent divorce results with approximately 35% voting against the constitution. She argued that if Cumann na Mban had mobilised its residual support the outcome could have been a decisive defeat for De Valera. The striking common feature of 1937 and today is that the same social forces are united in their opposition to democratic rights for women - the church, the catholic nationalists of Fianna Fail and -the traditionalist right of Fine Gael. The campaigns of the two periods experienced similiar obstacles for example in the schism between the Feminist and Republican movements was seen in the divorce campaign as it was in the 1937 anti-constitution campaign.

THE LEADERSHIP NEEDED

If we return to our original question, could the campaign have been won by a different leadership, we must ask where this alternative was. The proclaimed leadership of the working class, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, declared their support for the amendment and produced a leaflet for their members encouraging them to vote ‘Yes’. Donal Nevin however declared that they did not seek to ‘confront’ the Catholic church. Having surrendered to the opposition right away the movement refused in reality to mount an active campaign. The potential power of the union movement was not mobilised, the bureaucracy which leads it were afraid to do so. No such timidity affected Fianna Fail. While officially declaring a neutrality it in practice made no bones about its position. In a further retreat into Catholic nationalism it stood quite clearly for the maintenance and strengthening of Church-State relations. While Fine Gael has sought to protect the family and Free State capitalism through modernising legislation, basing itself on the liberal middle class, Fianna Fail as the states most sucessful party has understood that the best protection is in reinforcing the Catholic church and Catholic nationalism - the traditional social and ideological props of the Free State capitalist class.

Fianna Fail’s identification of republicanism with catholic nationalism made it more imperative that the Republican movement provided a loud and consistently secular republican voice to combat this. By and large however they failed. Their ‘Yes’ campaign was low key and localised with fo national impact. It asked those of its supporters who opposed divorce to at least not vote ‘No’. Instead it should have strongly declared that consistent republicanism demanded that they vote ‘Yes’. That the Republican movement’s approach failed is shown by the fact that in the border counties where it has significant support many of its supporters voted ‘No’. It missed a unique opportunity to” demonstrate to the Irish working class and especially to women that the struggle for a United Ireland is indivisible from the struggle for women’s rights and the rights of all the oppressed.

The movement clearly did not understand the importance of it identifying with this particular struggle for democratic rights, exposing the hypocrisy of the Coatition parties and the reactionary stance of the Fianna Fail ‘Republicans’. By identifying itself with all struggles for democratic rights it can begin to create a situation where in turn these struggles are identified with it. Until then it will not be in a position to rally all the oppressed behind its banner and will fail to make the alliances with the only forces that can achieve national freedom - the working class and the oppressed.

One initiative was taken by a number of anti-imperialist feminists involving members of Peoples Democracy.

Page 7 A public meeting was organised in order to bring into the campaign an anti-imperialist, feminist voice and to publically call for all republicans, socialists and feminists to actively mobilise for a ‘Yes’ vote.

Unfortunately this was only a small event which could only point the way for larger forces to follow. That they did not.

‘points up perhaps the most immediate and fundamental lesson to be learned from the referendum failure - that women car only rely on themselves. Just as Ireland must free itself and the working class can only be free through its own struggle so women can only guarantee their own liberation through their own activity.

THE FALLOUT

‘MOST MEDIA ATTENTION IN THE North and Britain has focussed on the damage that the ‘Noe’ vote has done to the Anglo-Irish agreement. The unionists led by Paisley have used the result to claim that fhe agreement 1s on tts last legs because it shows the South’s unwillingness to make concessions to Protestants and thus encourage a, united Ireland. That the Northern fundamentalist Protestant alsoopposed divorce is quietly ignored.

Nevertheless the vote signifcantly damages the credibility of Fitzgerald’s ‘Constitutional, his support for a ‘new Ireland’ and the democratic gloss on the throughtly reactionary Hillsborough deal. Not only has it failed to deliver anything substantial to Nationalist workers in the North, it has failed the cause of democracy in the South.

The marxist analysis of Peoples Democracy is confirmed in that those who deny the struggle for national liberation are incapable of delivering on civil rights. This is one of the messages that anti-imperialists must drive home both North and South following the referendum.

The most immediate fallout from the referendum defeat is the continued offensive of the right. Their next target is the Clinics which provide pregnancy councilling and abortion referral facilities. At present they are taking court action against the Well Women Centre in Dublin. All those who voted ‘Yes’ must now rally to the defense of the clinics including DAG who must be convinced that divorce is not an issue separate from the rest of the struggles confronting women. The campaign to defend the clinics must be open tc all who for whatever reason support them staying open.

This however cannot be the political basis of the clinics campaign. It is high time a clear line was drawn and a restatement was made of the principles which the women’s movement have stood for. Thus we must be quite clear that it is the right of women to control their own fertility, their own bodies and their own lives which is the nub of the issue in the clinics campaign. The right wing has denied the right o!

women to abortion in their own country, now they intend tc stop women exercising their choice elsewhere. It is on this issue which all those claiming to stand for women’s rights ang.

freedom generally must take a stand on. In particular the anti-imperialist movement must take the initiative in defending the clinics and in attempting to win over and mobilise the people who voted yes in the referendum. We must learn the lesson that avoiding the real arguments and issues as happened in the divorce campaign will not lead to victory. Peoples Democracy will play its part in trying to advance the clear political lead which is now necessary following the divorce defeat and will be launching a propaganda campaign demanding the separating of church and state. A special responsibility also rests on the Republican movement to put Ard Fheis policies on these issues into practice. As we have said already however above all, women must rely on themselves first and foremost!

ANN CONWAY.