A liberating philosophy...

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A LIBERATING PHILOSOPHY...

Back in August, as part of the West Belfast Festival, the ’63 committee organised a public meeting inthe Conway Mill, Belfast to discuss the last 20 years of struggle and to look to the future. The meeting was chaired by Gerry Adams, MP and President of Sinn Fein and platform speakers included Bernadette McAliskey, Nell McCafferty and Jim Gibney.

An Reabhloid is printing the speech made by Jim Gibney at the meeting because of the important themes taken up within it. Gibney is a member of Sinn Fein and a tireless political activist for many years. The speech is clearly a personal statement and not an exposition of the formal policy of Sinn Fein. However we believe it is a significant element of the debate currently ongoing within Sinn Fein and therefore deserves wider circulation than afforded by the Conway Mill meeting.

In the accompanying article John North discusses some of the themes of the speech from the point of view of Peoples Democracy. An Reabhloid welcomes views from our readers for future publication. Just looking around the hall, there are a lot of people here tonight, some just home from prison, some whose families have been devastated by the last 20 years of war, who have lostrelatives tothe British forces. There are others who have left us at some stage along the way because the struggle for them has got too heavy.

So there isa legacy of broken people, destroyed minds over the past 20 years and for some people... the last 20 years for a lot of people in the North and the South, and but also on the opposite side of the political divide. the last 20 years have been a nightmare for all to have lived through. And I suppose, because the stnuggle iscli has almost settled into a military conflict between the ingenuity of the IRA to outmanoeuvre the British Army, that the essential questions which should have been looked at over the past 20 years, political questions about the nature of the society, the new society that we are trying to bring about, that those sort of questions are not reall being asked. Becausc what most of us are observing, and it is probably one of the major weaknesses of the struggle, is that the number of people who have actually participated in this struggle over the past 20 years, compared with the people that we're trying to liberate and bring mto some sort of new socicty, ts minuscule.

So, the larger number of people out there are spectators and they have been spectating on a struggle, ona war of positions between the Republican forces and the British forces. Attempts have been made to focus our minds on the quality of life, on the vision that the leadership of this struggle have in their head and have the capacity to put down on paper, for the rest of us to pick up and read and ZO out into the streets and convince other people that this is something worth putting your life on the line for, this is something worth joining the IRA, joining a political struggle or going to prison for...

I don’t believe, .his is a personal thing, I don’t believe

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struggle over the last 20 years has the capacity any more tomotivate people. While the republican struggle holds out the prospect of a united country, this is a vague notion and we don’t know the composition of that state, we don’t know the ingredients of that society. This is what Gerry (Adams)... talked about, the ‘limitations of republicanism’, as a philosophy to deal with the 20th century and I think he was absolutely correct. Republicanism holds out the prospect for political independence while socialism holds out the prospects for a new society. The anti-imperialist community in this country, before its too late, have got to produce a liberating philosophy, a liberating ideology which is capable of motivating people again, which is capable of bringing people out of the apathy which they are sunk under, under the type of society that we’re living in today.

The fact that people are still resisting after 20 years is commendable and I’m not decrying the sacrifices that have been made in the last 20 years, the sacrifices that are being made at the present time by people in the struggle. What I am saying is that there needs to be a new ideology, a new philosophy to take on board the questions that people are asking themselves; the working people of thiscountry who are ground down, notjust by military repression, but who are ground down by the economic circumstances that they live in, who have an intellectual poverty as much as an economic poverty, hecause they don’t havea culture, not just the absence of @ gaelic culture which inspires them, that means something to them. | believe that there is a philosophy, that it hasn't entered into the political debate in this country and that for me is creative marxism. I think that it is long past the time when the leadership of this anti-imperialist movement, and I'm not just talking about the Republican movement, it is the largest constituent element in it and there is expected to produce a lot more argument than other people who are involved in the struggle, but I just feel, that the terrain in which, the ideological terrain if you like, the philosophical terrain in which the struggle has been waged over the last 20 years, needs to be looked at because within marxism, a creative and not a dogmatic view, is a liberating philosophy.

Itisan ideology which will meet the needs of the people who have been ground down, not just by the war, but who have been ground down by the economic and social circumstances in which they live.

There is a lotof work to be done to develop that concept, to bring out that argument and a lot more meetings need to take place and a lot more writing needs to be done in order that we popularise the notions contained in marxism, that we graft on to the dynamism, and there has been a tremendous dynamism associated with this struggle over the past 20 years, and its come from ordinary

people who were motivated and have been motivated by the notion of Irish independence, by the aspiration that their country will be restored to them free from military occupation, free from partition.

But if we don’t begin now the debate as to the quality of that life, the other side of British withdrawal, then we Tun not only the risk that we repeat 1921 all over again and that we will have the border rolled back and a 32counties ‘Free State’, you don’t only run that risk, but you actually run the risk of being defeated, that this sttuggle, because it’s confined, it’s restricted to one particular political philosophy, that you run the risk of the thing actually being defeated.

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I don't have all the answers ... what I am saying is that it needs thought out, ... we need to talk about it, we need to examine what it was that in the 20th century brought liberation to most of those countries who were occupied by imperial powers. In my opinion it was a philosophy based on the needs of ordinary working people and that philosophy was marxism, a creative marxism, not one that isdogmatic thatis not going todrive us all in despair over whether Lenin said this, or Trotsky said that, or Stalin said the other but something contained in there that we need in Ireland today... to rekindle the hope that all of us know who have lived through the last 20 years, brought us into this struggle and | am convinced that if we set about that task then we can bring other people into this struggle and move forward to a new Ireland.

OUR RESPONSE...

There is a lot in Jim Gibney’s speech with which Peoples Democracy can agree. After twenty years it is very welcome to hear a member of the Republican movement publicly accept the limitations of the Republican programme and base the need to overcome these limitation on “the liberating philosophy of Marxism”.

That is a case that we have argued for the past twenty years. With some slight quibbles, which I will explain later, we certainly believe that Marxism should be creative rather than dogmatic. Any discussion of a future programme for the anti-imperialist movement should take account of the relative success of third world liberation movements and the use of the marxist programme in those struggles. And Jim Gibney is right to say we will have to put in a lot of hard work. A discussion which up to now has been sporadic, fragmented, split between the republicans and the left and to a large extent limited to a handful of cadre in the republican movement will have to be brought to and made real for the vast section of anti-imperialist militants who are central to the continuation and development of this struggle and also force the interest and attention of a generation of young people who must be convinced anew of the necessity of struggle and the potential for victory.

It this need that fuels our overall support for the Gibney speech, that makes it important to make it available to a wider audience and develop the discussion. Above all we agree that it is on the issues raised that the final success or failure of the present struggle will be decided.

Jim Gibney is night to say that we run the risk of being defeated. No matter how angry this makes some militants, being silent about the weaknesses of the struggle will not protect us. Jim Gibney’s views are far more realistic and positive than the static militarist conceptions of the ‘long war’ - holding in the face of all historical evidence that there is a hard core support that can not be broken, that the character and direction of the military campaign are unaffected by demoralisation and inaction, or that military action can give an isolated minority the power to defeat imperialism, or even to survive repeated imperialist offensives, in the face of apathy or hostility from the mass of the Irish population.

This is not to say that we are in complete agreement. Far from it. Jim Gibnevy’s view, from the standpoint of the republican acuvist, is seriously askew. He says that the number of people who have actively participated in the struggle is minuscule. This may be true in relation to

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IRA membership or membership of Sinn Fein, but it totally ignore the real dynamic of this struggle - the series of mass mobilisations in the North and the promise of victory that has been held out on the occasions when the mobilisations have spilt across the border to involve major sections of the Irish people. It is in fact this process, and the central role that the working class have had at these key points (for example the general strike following Bloody Sunday) that makes the question of a marxist programme a concrete issue rather that the rather abstract question of philosophy that the tone of the speech tends to pose.

This has the effect of breaking the direct link between theory and action. It is important that a marxist proeramme help to motivate militants to continue supporting the struggle and that we have a clear view of a future free Ireland that poses an alternative in socialism, but what is really crucial is our actions now - that we develop a critique of Insh capitalism that enables us to tum the movement today away from futile attempts to build pan-nationalist unity and towards a struggle for the leadership of the working class.

There are other criticisms that we could make. The questions of national independence and socialism tend to appear as separate in the speech. Opposition to “dogmatism’” can too easily mean throwing out the Marxism - a major current in 3rd world struggies heritage of marxist theory which ts, after all, the condensed experience of the working class ona world scale.

Right now these aren't the important issues. What is important is that we teat Jim Gibney’s warning about the future of the struggle with the seriousness that it deserves, and that we give to the debate the urgency that it so obviously requires.

OPEN CONFERENCE -

ACTION PACK RELEASED

In the last issue of An Reabhloid Peoples Democracy released a call for an open conference of Anti-imperialists that could begin to resolve the political crisis facing the movement and build a 32-county resistance firmly oriented to the Working class. Since then we have held a number of internal discussions and discussions with sympathisers.

One outcome of these discussions was a firm decision that we as an organisation would not go ahead and call a small conference of the far left. The sort of conference needed must be a good deal broader and have considerably more authority if it is to plot a way forward and stand any chance of seeing its ideas translated into action by militants in the street.

We will be looking in the coming period for a series of open discussions with other political parties, trade union, campaign and community groups to gain their views and hopefully win support and sponsorship for the canference. A number of the articles in the present Journal are aimed at stimulating that debate. We would point especially tothe publication of Jim Gibney’s speech and our response and also to the analysis of debate in the Labour left in the 26 counties.

We welcomea response from our readers to this call and intend to devote space in the next issue to seu FSEP ID StscHL RAGESRLA oF Tem SAPS ormally W groups. At present an li os of lealets is ee.

produced and can be obtained by writing to any of the addresses in the journal. We would also welcome the opportunity to provide speakers or members of the organisation to join in local discussions.