For a Workers Republic: Vol. 2 no. 1, April 1995

[Ap nn das oY | For A Workers Republic Journal of the Irish Committee for a Marxist programme Volume 2 The Bnitish are staying. They intend to continue determining the political fate of the Irish people. Not only that, the whole idea of a united Ireland is to be ruled out and support for a democratic settlement ruled illegitimate. A partitionist assembly is to be reestablished in the North. In return Dublin and the SDLP are to be given some leverage to control the worst excesses of a bigoted Unionism and crossborder bodies will “harmonise” the 2 capitalist States to improve overall capitalist exploitation without in any way removing the border as a political barrier to working-class unity.

The Sinn Fein leadership expect to use this process as a stepping-stone to a united Ireland.

Having pursued a disastrous militarist strategy Number 1 Message of the framework; rere price 30p SE They'r re =e they have switched to an even more disastrous strategy of diplomacy and alliance with Irish capitalism. A diplomatic strategy in Palestine has won Arafat a handshake from John Major at the price of becoming a police sergeant for imperialism against the Palestinian people. In Ireland the Sinn Fein strategy can only demobilise their own support and leave the way open for imperialist victory. There is an alternative - organising working class militants for a workers republic and against both imperialism and native Irish capitalism.

That means a long road of struggle, but the first step is to expose the fraud that the framework document represents. + eR a ae

ORTHERN | I ELAND

BSS5e) ‘ ih J ICAL ¢C

Framework document four pillars of oppression Faced with rabid outpourings of Unionist bigotry on the days following the publication of the framework document, British ministers repeated the same phrase over and over; “Please read the document closely.”

That was good advice. It was of absolutely no use against a Loyalist reaction that rejects everything but the status quo of Stormont as it once was, However a close read of the agreement makes it clear that the positive spin put on it by the republican leadership depends absolutely on no-one reading it closely.

The document maps out a strategic orientation for the London and Dublin governments. There are four pillars to the strategy. None of them will act as a “stepping - stone” or a “transiticnal phase” to a united Ireland. In fact each of them is designed as a barrier to any real democratic settlement. Constitutional issues The first plank reeks of the decay of Irish nationalism. Just as the clause 4 debate in the British labour party shows that that leadership can no longer stomach even a hollow aspiration to socialism which they would never have enacted, so the eagerness with which ali the parties of the Dail unite torip out articles 2 and 3 show there is no longer room for the fake “republicanism” so long used by Irish capitalism to win support. In fact the demand for the right of self-determination which the articles were designed to placate are now condemned as irredentist and immoral. If this is what they are now they must always have been so and the whcie history of the Irish national struggle is being repudiated. In practice this “green” framework document has atits core arepudiation of Irish self-determination and a willingness by all the recognised political parties in the South to apologise for ever having seemed to demand a democratic setdement to the Irish question.

“_.the Irish government will introduce and support proposals for change in the Irish constitution to implement the commitments in the joint declaration. These changes... wili fully reflect the principle of consent in Northern Ireland and demonstrably be such that no territorial claim of right to jurisdiction over N.I. contrary to the will of its people is asserted.”

{para 21] So the “bastard state”, the “artificial statelet’, the “failed political entity” is to gain formal recognition from Dublin. In any future protest by Northern nationalists Britain will be able to point out that the northern state is democratic. This massive betrayal of national rights is to be “balanced” by British amendments to article 73 of the Government of Ireland act; “the supreme authority of the Parliament shall remain ....undiminished over all matters and things in Northern Ireland” Yet this is simply pious fraud. Dr. Trimble, Unionist legal expert, pointed out that this had been superseded by the Northern Ireland constitution act of 1973. Section one says; **..Northern Ireland or any part of it cease to be part of her majesty’s dominions and of the United Kingdom without the consent of the majority of the people in Northern Ireland voting in a poll held for the purposes of this section.”

Given that it is British guns and British money which maintain the North and that as long as they are able to maintain privileges over catholics there is no reason why the unionists should vote to give up the guns, money and privilege this section simply becomes a cynical manoeuvre which has allowed Britain for 20 years to claim it is defending democracy in Ireland when it is in fact thwarting that democracy.

The claims of balance thinly disguise a massive suppression of national rights by the framework document.

North - South bodies The nationalist apologists for the framework document dismiss criticism of the constitutional deal as airy-fairy theorising. What matters, they say. is the practical and the concrete. The North - South bodies will have a real

oso uNraaarae ca 1 For my next trick... | presence and will in practice be an eventual steppingstone to a united Ireland.

A theoretical underpinning of this view is given by Sinn Fein and left groups like the SWM and Militant Labour who either privately or openly take seriously the British declaration - stated in the Downing Street declaration and reiterated in paragraph 20 of the framework document that they “have no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”. From this point of view Britain can be trusted to disengage from Ireland without a further fight and the North-South bodies are the way to create an exit door.

Again understanding is to take a back seat. No-one explains when Britain stopped being an imperialist power, why it alone of all the powers has no interest in a neighbouring country which it dominates, when British firms and capital withdrew from Ireland, who now owns the capital infrastructure in the North and why the good Samaritan - unable to meet its aid commitment to the third world - pours billions into the North each year. Still ess are they able to explain why the “independent” souttem state was forced to devalue in line with the British pound while Irish capitalist strategy was committed to maintining parity with the rest of Europe.

The new realists push all this aside. The pragmatic reality of North - South institutions proves their case. But even this reality is unable to face any serious examination. If Britain were moving to withdrawal and the cross- border institutions were the mechanism then there should be some strategy to protect the bodies from the inevitable unionist resistance. In fact the evidence is all the other way. "It would be for the Assembly and the Irish pariiament both to operate the body and decide whether its functions should be extended" {John Major. Framework prologue} It's clear the North/ South body is to be subordinate to a Unionist majority assembly stridently opposed to any formal obligation to the Dail. Even though it would have been easy to give the unionists only nominal powers of veto, the British chose not to do this.

In fact the proposals in the framework document flow naturally from British policy since the Hunger strike.

Reestablishing a six-county assembly has been a consistent policy all along. Unionism is too fragmented, weak and bigoted to serve as the sole base. The Dublin government have shown themselves willing to be co-opted and they need the cover provided by the cross-border bodies.

Alongside Dublin the SDLP and the Catholic middle class they represent stand ready to aid the British. For them this is the perfect deal - no separation from British capital that ensures their comfortable life-style and some measure of exclusion from the worst excesses of the sectarian regime, from which nationalist workers will continue to suffer.

A Six county Assembly The great defeat for Britain in the past 25 years of struggle was the destruction of the Stormontassembly. Essentially this allowed Britain to determine the direction of Irish politics without the instability that direct involvement brings. The violence associated with partition can be controlled by native forces and presented as a conflict between the Irish. The assembly itself become a shield, deflecting attention away from the British.

The main strategic aim of the British has been and is to reestablish that shield. It’s significant that this proposal is not part of the framework document - that carries only 2 pages of waffle on “structures in Northern Ireland”.

Attached are 9 pages of British proposals in enough detail to be transformed quickly into an act of parliament and then into actual structures. In terms of detail a modified

Stormont is the only concrete proposal - and Britain will hope to win it even if the rest of the pack of cards comes tumbling down. A new assembly only makes sense if it restores unionist power. This new assembly will do so, the main concem being to limit that power sufficiently so that their bigotry does not provoke another nationalist uprising. Overall .less is on offer to the nationalist population than was offered at the time of the Sunningdale agreement - but today there is no mass movement to be placated.

Some of the control mechanisms are familiar - rolling devolution - if the unionists behave themselves they will gain new powers. New mechanisms depend on a “last chance veto by one nationalist politician on a panel of two unionists and a nationalist and on weighting of certain votes. The whole package is meant to win middle-class catholic participation, but within a context of unionist power. Itoffers absolutely nothing to nationalist workers and will leave unchanged the fault lines in the working class. Significantly the token reform touted most assiduously over the past 25 years - a bill of rights - is nowhere mentioned. In fact a reference to compatibility with British structures would tend to rule it out. Instead there is to be a “Charter or Covenant” - pious wishes with no legal standing. In line with earlier British dismissal of a Sinn Fein “clarification” question on repression there is no commitment to the repeal of repressive legislation.

East-West structures The framework document contains significant new proposals strengthening and deepening the structures of the Hillsborough agreement of 1985.

Again the carrot and stick are present. Powers will move to the assembly if they behave. Itis however clear that this will not amount toa withering away of intergovernmental structures - not surprising when we consider that it is the one element of British strategy which has actually worked and enabled the British to tur the tide.

Conceived after the hunger strike, the agreement enabled the British to co-opt Southern capital and greatly expand the military pressure on the IRA on both sides of the border, survive unionist protest, halt the Sinn Fein electoral threat to the SDLP and exploited Sinn Fein’s confused attitude to constitutional nationalism - leading directly to the present “peace process”.

Garrett Fitzgerald explains in the Irish Times [25/2/95]: “after the1985 agreement the Sinn Fein share of the minority community vote was down by no fewer than 10%. Thus one of the key objectives was achieved; the danger of Sinn Fein overtaking the SDLP in popular support had been averted.....It became clear that neither the conference nor the initially controversial Maryfield secretariat posed any threat to the unionist community - though it is doubtful if that community ever realised the extent to which these new structures had a positive impact upon North-South security cooperation.”’ So the most successful pillar of the framework document is a system designed to militarily crush the IRA, politically isolate Sinn Fein and co-opt Dublin as a junior support for partition [Paragraph 46 re-states the relationship - Dublin can consult but Britain rules]. And Sinn Fein and a large section of the left see this as a stepping stone to a united Ireland! A real solution The four pillars of the framework hang together. Do they constitute a solution to the Irish question? Are they the basis ofa short-term settlement? The Irish Committee for a Marxist programme is certain that they in no way represent a solution. Even as a temporary settlement the deal is extremely fragile. Amendments to articles 2 and 3 depends absolutely on them being presented as part of an overall settlement. -Cross border institutions in no way represent a stepping-stone to a united Ireland and even to fulfil the limited role outlined will require a unionist support which will not be forthcoming. The new sixcounty assembly will face pressure from a section of the republican community and will also be a focus for the unionist far right demanding a full-blooded return to sectarian rule. Even SDLP supporters will expect substantial reform. There will be very little of that from a majority unionist assembly. In any case the end of military action will release strong pressures from within the British economy for a major “peace dividend” for Britain itself. Anyone who imagines that a capitalist society that can find billions for war can find the same money to secure a peace is in for a rude shock. Both the SDLP and the Unionists will find themselves presiding over massive public service cuts.

Not only is the framework document not a solution, it is a very weak settlement that gains most of its immediate strength from the collapse of the republican programme and the present strategy and tactics of the republican leadership. The immediate battle is a battle for ideas - an unremitting opposition to any imperialist settlement without looking back to a failed militarist strategy and outlining the only real alternative of independence and workers power. We need a party of the working class and we need it now - not when the working class as a whole realise they’ ve been conned and begin to swing into action. Join the ICMP and help us build that party!

Sinn Fein Ard-fheis “Not waving -Drowning!" Where do Sinn Fein stand after their recent ard-fheis? Is this, as Gerry Adams says “the year in which Sinn Fein’s crucial and pivotal role ....became clear.” Or are they, as one dissident said, “floundering out of their depth in territory controlled by the enemy.”

The analogy is an apt one. Despite the hype of the Sinn Fein leadership, the movement is not waving signals of victory - it’s drowning. A simple test of the political health of the movement lay before it - the framework document presented by the British and Dublin governments. This document outlines at every stage a unionist veto on the future development of the Irish people. It proposes the return of a partitionist assembly at Stormont. It outlines plans to change the claim to a national independence contained in articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution. It offers crossborder bodies whose aim is not to quietly abolish partition but to reinforce it. ‘ Even this reactionary document has been shifted significantly to the right in the face of an explosion of unionist bigotry and reaction. Its overall status has been demoted from “framework” to “consultation” and last minute additions made to reinforce the unionist veto.

Significant Advances? What have Sinn Fein to say?

Formally nothing - the leadership claimed the publication date was too close and the issues too complex for a formal debate. This didn't prevent them from putting their own positive spin on the document. According to Gerry Adams; "great new possibilities have opened up" "one of the most significant advances of recent times is the widespread acceptance that an internal sixcounty settlement is not a solution."

“The framework document[s] .... publication.... is a clear recognition that partition has failed, that British rule in Ireland has failed.... the political framework envisaged is clearly an all-Ireland one..."

Significantly an assertion that Ireland's right to sovereignty needs to be upheld contains no opposition to proposals in the framework document to change article 2 and 3 of the Republic's constitution.

Code The Sinn Fein leaders are speaking in code. They are not yet ready to set out the full outlines of their strategy. Some of their supporters are not so shy. They claim that the IRA have won, that the British want to leave and have no strategic interest in Ireland. The only thing keeping them was the IRA campaign! Now that that's over the British will become persuaders. They will set up partitionist structures in order to reassure the unionists but these will be transitional. Cross - border bodies to manage tourism and other areas will weaken partition. In any case the British and Dublin governments will ensure equality of treatment for the nationalist minority and this plus the

growth in the Catholic population will eventually lead toa united Lreland. All that is needed to swallow this guff is the ability to believe that the IRA campaign was simultaneously the mechanism for British withdrawal and the main obstacle to that withdrawal, plus total amnesia about the nature of imperialism. To be fair to Sinn Fein, large sections of the British and Irish left are equally willing to accept elements of the analysis. The historic programme of the Republican movement is for Brits out now and self-determination for the Irish people. No amount of spin can make the framework document match these demands. How does the Sinn Fein leadership square this circle?

Reformism Easily. All that is required is for the central demands to be shifted into the future - the far future - and for a schematic and mechanical theory of historical stages to be adopted.

It then becomes not only dangerous but positively wrong to fight for your maximum programme in the present. All you have left are immediate demands and an attempt to modify existing capitalist society to meet the needs of your supporters. Atthe beginning of this process you arearevolutionary. At the end you are a reformist.

Of course this doesn’t work. Political processes in capitalist society aren't part of a debate but the outcome of class struggle. The negotiations that the Sinn Fem leaders hold up like a magic wand are simply mechanisms for confinming the terms of the stronger force - in this case British imperialism. At the same time by refusing to fight for your own programme you demobilise your own supporters. As you get weaker less and less is on offer and as you lose your original bearings all sorts of weird concepts hold sway that British and world imperialism can play a progressive role - that they can be “persuaders” who will help deliver a better world for the Irish people.

Road to nowhere Irish history, and the history of the worker's movement internationally, is littered with the political corpses of individuals and movements who followed the reformist road. In the Middle East and at slower rate in South Africa we see the decay of anti -imperialist movements which turned to reform. The last attempt at a gradualist solution to the Irish question was the Treaty - and that led directly to a half-century of bloody reaction and then the present troubles. A dramatic result of the evolution of reformism can be seen in the British labour movement today - with leaders who openly repudiate socialism and whose principles centre around the worship of capitalism and the market. The attraction of reformism is not based o= its historical successes. Rather it serves the interests 07 social layers whose needs can be met within existing cap: alist property relations. The programme and the historic social base of Republicanism meet these criteria. The programme is revolutionary nationalist with no formal commitment to socialism. The petty-bourgeois rural base have always looked to "Nationalist unity” and alliances with Irish capitalism. The working class base in the Northem nationalist ghettos has exerted a social weight without exerting a political or programmatic weight.

The mass mobilisations that pushed Sinn Fein to the left are long gone. They ended with the hunger strikes and for over a decade the day to day work of militants has been elections, community work and activity based on local town councils. In all of these Sinn Fein has taken a determined reformist line. The straw poll a the Ard fheis which indicated that 20% of delegates would support changes in articles 2 and 3 indicate the development of a hardened reformist current in the middle ayers of Sinn Fein. The rank and file define revolution as support for armed action rather than organisation around a revolutionary programme and are badly placed to challenge the politics of the new turn.

Reality breaks through At the Ard-fheis reality broke through in asession where ‘the leaders asked for comments and criticisms on the peace process. The delegates sat in sullen and demoralised silence. There was no serious challenge to the leadership but the rhetoric of victory ran strangely dry against that funereal silence. Where there was a formal chalienge in the debate it was concentrated in the Dublin branch - they see too much of the effects of Irish capitalism at first hand to buy easily the new alliance.

The framework document is not a solution to the Irish question - rather it is the latest and most determined attempt by imperialism to impose its own sealement. The decay of republican politics has done great damage in demobilising resistance and promoting pro-imperialist currents within the population as a whole. But it is not in their gift to deliver a capitulation by the irish working class as a whole. The class struggle will continue and the republican movement will face greater and greater difficulties as imperialism demands greater asd greater capitulation and begins to call on the ieaderskip to condemn and repudiate the forces moving into oppesition.

The tasks of Irish socialists are clear. They should repudiate the framework document and stend in unremitting opposition to an imperialist settlement They should stand for a united opposition to attacks on democratic and national rights and they should seek to builc the independent organisation of the working class that is the only real solution to the imperialist oppression of Ireland.

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WHICH WAY TO

WORKERS UNITY?

While imperialism has succeeded by dividing Ireland’s workers socialism can only succeed by uniting them. So how dowe do this? Two false roads must be rejected from the start. The first is the ever so trendy call for equality of the two traditions - that is loyalism and nationalism: We say no. There is no equals sign between a British nationalism which has oppressed a subject people and survives only on the basis of discrimination and bigotry arid the nationalism of an oppressed people which has fought against all these things. In point of fact both can’t be equal in anyone’s book because they assert totally different things. This does not mean that we can all become Irish nationalists because all varieties of Irish nationalism have totally failed to unite Ireland’s workers. Not only do they fail to unite Catholic and Protestant, but they are unable even to unite nationalist workers in the North with those in the South. Like every nationalism the Irish variety cannot represent all the people because the interests of Irish people are not all the same. Irish capitalists and their system have ensured the poverty of one third of the 26 county population, massive emigration and unemployment and created a reactionary conservative State that has a truly rotten history of oppression of women, youth, travellers, gay people and other oppressed groups.

Militant Irish nationalists like republicans say they want a new Ireland with none of these things, but have just united with parties like Fianna Fail and Fine Gael who created the old one. Of course they say that Irish freedom comes first and then workers freedom, but we have heard and seen this before and Irish workers will not be conned again. The fight against capitalist oppression will not be given up just because republicans have set their sights on a seat at the negotiating table with imperialism and are seeking the support of enemies of the working class like Bruton and Reynolds. They only political programme that can unite Ireland’s workers is socialism. If that were all there was to it the situation wouldn’t be too bad - after all, there are many people in Ireland who declare a sympathy with socialism.

But most of these people don’t have a clue what real worker’s unity means. These socialists accept partition because they don’t want to come into conflict with the majority of Protestant workers who support it. At best they ignore the issue and say that the border, “flags” and history are not important.

“You can’t eat a flag” is a favourite saying.

But what if the flag means you can’t get a job, promotion, equal treatment or might even be killed because of your religion? Then these “socialists” are denying reality.

They talk about workers unity the most but refuse to recognise that partition is the fundamental cause of division between Norther and Southern workers and also the mechanism for ensuring the sectarian division of Protestant and Catholic workers in the North.

In fact they are afraid to confront partition because they are afraid to confront the loyalist sectarianism of many Protestant workers. Many claim that it doesn’t exist - so of course there is no need to fight it. They then go on to say that it is sectarian even to suggest that this sectarianismexists! They quietly ignore the sorry sectarian history of the Northem state and Protestant workers support for it and the vicious bigoted unionist politicians who ran it. In practice this means sacrificing catholic workers by minimising their specific oppression - claiming falsely that all workers suffer the same oppression [like black and white workers?]. What nonsense! If there was no real basis to divisions among workers they would have been overcome long ago and we would be living in a socialist society.

Even many of those socialists who do sincerely oppose partition think that the road to workers unity lies in emphasising “bread and butter” issues. They are usually to be found shouting “Tories Out!” They believe [sometimes unconsciously] that economic issues are more immediate and that once unity is achieved on these then a united working class can move forward to the more difficult constitutional issues. But as we have said already, issues of discrimination, civil rights, repression and all the political questions are no less immediate than questions of wages and working conditions. To seek unity around the latter as a prelude to hoped - for unity around the former is an illusion.

Once you take this position you begin to build a “workers unity” which has to exclude political issues and the politically conscious working class militants who organise toresist. As well as this you exclude the most powerful component of the socialist programme - the understanding that all aspects of exploitation, oppression and repression are linked together by a decayed capitalist system

which has to be overthrown and replaced by socialism.

Finally you are unable to prevent workers from organising and struggling around political questions - you have simply excluded socialism and socialists from the leadership of that struggle.

There is no short - cut or alternative. In order to unite workers North and South in any longterm and realistic way you have to be in the forefront of the fight against partition. People want to avoid this conclusion because its so difficult. Sectarianism won’t be defeated by ideas, debates or propaganda alone, although they are important in setting the agenda. Neither will itbe defeated by appeals for solidarity or even episodic examples of Catholic and Protestant workers in the North uniting around specific issues. These things have happened in the past, sometimes with very powerful effect, they will happen again but will not by themselves inflict lasting wounds on the sectarian system.

The truth is there is no squaring the circle within the artificial area of the six-county statelet. We need to build an immense force on an all-Ireland basis - a working class movement strong enough not only to oppose partition but also to demonstrate in action that there is a real alternative both to the sectarian state in the North and to the gombeen politicians in the South like Bruton and Ahern.

Instead of “cross-border bodies with executive powers” we need fighting organisations with workers powers that take on the institutions and inequality in both rotten states.

Instead of a smug Ireland mouthing “equality of the two traditions” and meaning the victory of partition we need a Republic were the workers will be equal and the bosses will be gone. As James Connolly once said we don’t want much - we only want the Earth! But at least knowing what you want stops you from wasting your energy marching down the wrong road. The task would be a lot easier if we could clear a lot of fuzzy and incorrect ideas about “workers unity’ out of the socialist movement - and thatitself would be a lot easier with more working class militants joining our ranks and taking a decisive stand against the fake “frameworks” for preserving capitalism and in favour of a real and uncompromising working - class alternative.

oin the ICMP! Further Information: PO Box 40 Belfast