Journal of the Irish Committee for a Marxist Programme No to Capitulation! For a Workers Republic!
For a Workers Republic1994Republicanism and the IRAPeace process and British initiativesPartition and the national questionLabour, the left and left unityRepublicanism and the IRAPeace process and British initiativesPartition and the national questionLabour, the left and left unity
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On the one hand the Downing Street declaration asserts a Unionist veto on the Irish Peoples right to self-determination... on the other hand it contains nositive elements. What are we to make of the convoluted and contradictory outcome of Sinn Fein's Letterkenny conference?
There's a simple explanation. It's a balancing act by the Republican leadership - balancing between the unremitting hostility of their own membership to the whole Downing Street process and the need to placate their new friends in the Dublin Government and the SDLP.
### UNSUCCESSFUL
In the event the act was unsuccessful. The most that could be squeezed past a Sinn Fein convention was far too little to satsfy the senior capitalist partners
### Fora
in the imaginary "Nationalist Family". Their storm of protest led Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness to make a rapid U-tum an assure their new friends that they remain cn course on the road to capitulation.
It's no longer necessary to focus in on the fine details of the "Peace Process”. The Republican leadership are consciously committed to a policy of capitulation. That's clear from the way in which Sinn Fein delegates were humiliated at Letterkenny: Delegated to vote on a document that wasn't available until they were in the conference hall. Subject to a stage-managed debate. Abstentions in voting ignored to declare in the true spirit of stalinism a "unanimous" support for the resolutions. Best of all they were able to declare support for a Hume - Adams agreement, which has been kept secret from the rank and file but freely available to the impenalists. To cap it all the reassurances to delegates are immediately negated as the |eadership move to reassure imperialism.
### PROGRAMME
Those who doubt this analysis have only to ask themselves what the present program of the republican leadership really is. Whatever the answer is itis obviously not the traditional democratic program of Republicanism. Yet Brits out now and a United Ireland remain the demands of Sinn Fein activists, and the fact that they hold to it remains a serious obstacle to capitulation.
ORGANISE!
But unhappiness and individual resistance are not enough. We need conscious organisation around an altemative program and strategy. Doing that means drawing a harsh lesson. After 25 years of struggle what we are facing is not the failure of individual leaders but the failure of republicanism. The tasks of national independence remain uncompleted, but now it will not be a republican organisation that completes them but a socialist one. The alternative to either a bankrupt militanst strategy ora policy of capitulation and the "Nationalist Family" is the independent self-organisation of [msh Workers fighting both impenalism and capitalism for a Worker's Republic. That's what we in the Insh Committee for a Marxist Programme are committed to.