Discussion Bulletin, 8 May 1995

Ceasefire Ves Peace Process No Sames Gallagher Say I, BDes

Ceasefire Yes - Peace Process No.../(1) The discussion within the Irish Committee for a Marxist Programme has reached a critical stage. The main issues at stake are : The future of the National Liberation Struggle in Ireland Affiliation to the Fourth International In the Summer of 1993 the members of People's Democracy decided to dissolve the organisation. All present at that meeting agreed to found in its place the ICMP. I was sceptical about the proposal, but was prepared to go along with it while the ICMP retained an organisational link with the Fourth International.

I did not make any alternative proposals.

The deadline proposed for completion of this project has not been met.

I felt that the project contained the danger of sectarian degeneration, but was prepared - and was hoping against hope - to be proven wrong.

At the meeting held on Saturday, November 19 19941 proposed concluding the debate on the drafting of a programme by mid/end January 1995. This was defeated. I would like to know how long comrades feel they can go on with this? So far it has lasted for nearly two years, and comrades apparently feel no need to set a deadline.

Unfortunately political degeneration has gathered pace and is now publicly visible.

The line taken by the ICMP's publication For A Workers' Republic in the last period, especially since the IRA cease-fire, is a classic example of political sectarianism, of a type normally associated with sects like the Irish Workers' Group.

The main lowlights are : ° The proposal not to call for a vote for Sinn Féin in the June 1994 European Elections and instead call for a vote for the Irish Labour Party in the 26 Counties. ° The decision not to welcome the IRA cease-fire and to say that the Republican leadership has "consciously capitulated".

e The claim that the IRA's Standing Order not to confront militarily the State Forces in the 26 Counties means that "the IRA, and republicans generally, have never had a strategy to bring down the Southern neo-colony and rejected the demands of Socialism".

I will go into more detail on this shortly.

But first, some elementary points about the sectarian dangers of writing a "Programme" in the manner chosen by the ICMP.

The ICMP and the Fourth International When I raised some of these issues one comrade queried my right to be present. He said I should leave meetings of the ICMP. So much for having a debate or maintaining internal democracy! I attend meetings of the ICMP because this is the only organisational form left in Ireland of Fourth Internationalists. That has been the case since the foundation of the ICMP. If the ICMP breaks its organisational relationship with the FI., I will cease being a member - it is as simple as that.

To their credit other comrades did not attempt to bar me from the meeting. But incident is symptomatic of the process that is developing. I predict that comrades will, if they reach the end of the road they have started out on, break from the FI and e Either Move towards sectarian formations which claim to be Trotskyist.

e Or Become one of the many sectarian formations outside it.

This drift is taking place despite the conscious intentions of most comrades.

This is usually how such a process develops. It happened inside People’s Democracy from 1984-86 when warnings were ignored about certain comrades drifting over to the camp of the anti-Trotskyist SWP(USA).

I got the impression from the contributions of some comrades that they are already opposed to affiliation with the FI, or at least are doubtful about it. Perhaps comrades can clarify their position in a documented form as soon as possible. But some are already using the vocabulary of the "57 different varieties" of the FI's sectarian critics. Later in the meeting it turned out that Belfast comrades are having meetings with veteran opponents of the FI, namely the [WG. And what have these meetings revealed? We were informed that there is a lot of common ground between the comrades’ "programmatic" conclusions and those of the IWG.

The ICMP voted (I was the only person opposed) to have a formal meeting with the IWG about its programmatic discussions. Apparently the discussion broke down because the IWG wanted to raise the question of the Fourth International. This indicates a welcome limit exists on how far comrades are ready to explore sectarian groups. It is noted that some documentation exists in relation to these meetings - I would welcome the opportunity to see it.

A clear debate on the FI means prioritising the International Internal Discussion. It is also an infinitely better way to conduct a debate on the Marxist Programme.

One reason the FI debate has not started already is the decision to dissolve PD as a Section of the FI. Considerable time has been wasted in discussions on a programme outside the framework of the Fourth International. This in turn has facilitated the sectarian degeneration sketched above.

Another is the failure of the debate to take off. Just two International Discussion Bulletins have appeared, which I have seen.

International Events have placed the need for a thorough and well documented debate on the agenda. Membership of the International should have been a big help in this regard. It has not been up to now. We have seen in the space of a very short few years the collapse of the deformed workers’ states in Eastern Europe, and accommodations with Imperialism by important revolutionary movements like the PLO and the ANC, which in turn have influenced Sinn Féin in Ireland. In saying this we must do more than put an equals sign between the behaviour of SF, the PLO, and the ANC. There are obvious differences which can be teased out in a detailed debate.

Unfortunately, despite our hopes, there has been marked international shift to the right since the fall of the Berlin Wall and most of what it symbolised.

Despite this, the most notable feature of the International Discussion is its slowness, and the insubstantial nature of the documents so far published. Our contacts with the Centre have loosened, and real disagreements exist over various articles/documents/ etc that have been published in International Viewpoint and elsewhere. Compared with the early 1980's, the FI is organisationally weaker in most countries. The worst decline has occurred in English Speaking Countries. That hits a small group like ours particularly hard. In this context I welcome the decision, made at the November 1994 ICMP meeting, to invite a representative of the USec to visit Ireland and try to these issues clarified politically. It is appropriate to ask now what the result of the request was (Assuming of course that correspondence was sent to the USFI, or at least that appropriate telephone calls were made).

THEORY AND PRACTICE

The point was made in the discussion that some of the I[WG's theoretical work was well researched, but their practice in the class struggle was extremely sectarian. This profoundly correct observation made by Comrade McCracken goes to the heart of why the ICMP is going, despite the conscious intentions of comrades, down the sectarian road. The purpose of Marxist theory is to be a guide to action, to help an active participation in the class struggle. But small Marxist Organisations have great difficulty participating effectively in the class struggle due to their small size, relative to the tasks they set themselves. They often use theory as a sectarian justification for their own total isolation. They tend not to analyse a political problem objectively, but instead target what rival organisations are doing and saying , and generously issue slanders. A pristine pure example of this is the ICMP declaration that the Republican decision not to take armed action in the South means that "Republicans generally" have never had a strategy to bring down the Southern neo-colony and "have consistently rejected the demands of socialism".

Let us be blunt - a decision (especially at the present time!) to militarily confront the armed forces of the 26 County State would be a wild ultra left deviation. There is a disturbing implication in the ICMP’s statement (it is not spelt out) that the taking of armed action in the South would be evidence of “a strategy to bring down the Southern neo-colony”. It is obvious that there are compelling tactical reasons for not launching an armed campaign in the South at the present time. In general, the right political conditions have not been present for such a strategy since the Civil War defeat in the 1920’s.

While a historical debate on this topic might have some merit - there were better political conditions for an armed strategy in the period 1968-72 than there are now the sweeping nature of the formulation means it is a slander, pure and simple. That tends to be the problem with a lot of the ICMP’s line.

The proposal to call for a vote for the Irish Labour Party in the 1994 European Elections (and not for Sinn Féin) indicates how extreme sectarian formulas shade into political opportunism (a trend sadly familiar in the history of Irish far left groups saddled with a sectarian line on the National Question). Much material has been produced by the comrades on the “petit bourgeois” nature of Republicanism, and the current illusions of the movement’s leadership in the 26 County Bourgeoisie. But weak and all as Adams and Co. are they cannot begin to compare with the treacherous record of the Irish Labour Party. The party of Dick Spring has far more illusions in the 26 County bourgeoisie than the Republicans. It actively collaborates with bourgeois parties in coalition governments. As we have written before, the electoral revival of the Labour Party in the 1992 election was built by a tactical refusal to enter coalitions with bourgeois parties. Once Labour changed course, the electoral writing has been on the wall (just look at the results of the Cork and Dublin by-elections, or the European poll). In terms of programme SF is significantly better (we are happy to say this is hardly a compliment!). The obvious electoral formula stands : a N°1 vote for SF, preferences to Labour and/or other reformist left parties, and basic propaganda against coalition with the bourgeois parties. The comrades’ propagandism towards the reformist social democrats owes a lot to their false counterposition of Republicanism to Socialism :

For example : The claim that the Republicans “have consistently rejected the demands of socialism”.

This reasoning is typical of sectarian “Black and White” schools of Trotskyism . In one corner there are the White “Revolutionaries”. In the black corner you find opponent forces, the “Counter-Revolutionaries”, the “Stalinists”, the “petty bourgeois nationalists”, or whatever.

The more complex truth is that as the struggle for Ireland’s National Liberation from Britain has ebbed and flowed since the mid 19th. Century to the present day, the Republican movement has gone through several different evolutions. Often it works closely with the revolutionary left (the founding of the Volunteers before the First World War and the launch of the Rising with James Connolly). Sometimes it absorbs the left, at other times it produces radical offshoots (including incidentally the modern Irish Trotskyist tradition); it has transformed itself organically into a bourgeois nationalist formation (for example, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail); it has combined a dogmatic militarism with rejection of a left leadership seen as “soft” on the National Question (the Official/Provisional split of 1969). So, what is the balance of forces with the Republicans now?

AN OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP

The ICMP declares the Republican Leadership is "consciously" capitulating. This is hysterical nonsense. If you examine the statements by Republican leaders, their actions, and the reactions of their members, you can see that subjectively they argue they are making progress by going into diplomatic negotiations with the Bntish Government and its allies. It is one thing to say that objectively they are wrong, that they are leading the movement down the road to a defeat. That is the position argued for here. It is much more serious to say that the leadership has already planned consciously to bring this about. There is no evidence for this. It is a slander.

The Republicans say that people may feel critical of the course Adams and Company have chosen, but they should "trust" the leadership.

Saying the leadership has "consciously capitulated" is a mirror image of the "trust the leadership" line - they say white, therefore I will say black. It gets into a futile debate on, for example, whether Adams is lying when he says he has not given up his Republican principles. The Republican leadership makes odjectively incorrect claims about what it can achieve via diplomatic negotiation with the British Government and its bourgeois allies in Ireland. They present it as an alternative to the Armed Struggle. Intelligent bourgeois commentators are well aware of this.

Take for example the interview Gerry Adams gave to Frank Millar (ex General Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Party [UUP]) , the London Correspondent of The Irish Times , on Monday November 21 1994. For convenience a copy of this interview is attached to the end of this document.

@ On an "Internal Settlement" ie. a Return to Stormont Adams says it is "not a solution". Pressed on the fact that the Unionists won't even accept anew version of the failed Sunningdale Agreement of 1974, Adams pins his hopes on negotiations.

@ On the Likely Abandoning of Articles 2 & 3 by the Dublin Government Adams resists the proposal that Dublin is working along these lines, he suggests that discussion about the 26 County Constitution is a “distraction” and an “Orange Herring”, but ends with the statement that “Our objective in negotiations will be to end the British Jurisdiction and replace it with an Irish Jurisdiction....it is in that context we will judge any sort of transitional arrangements’.

¢ Ona Proposed Referendum North and South of the Border Millar puts it to Adams that the likely effect of this would be to copper-fasten partition. Would it constitute self-determination?

Adams says no. He says, leaving the door open to Hume and Co., it “could constitute a very worthwhile way of measuring agreement”.

¢ On Sinn Féin Not Getting What it Wants From the Negotiations Adams resists answering. Would failure of the negotiations lead to resuming the Armed Struggle? Adams insists on trying to “make the alternative work”.

He insists the struggle won’t be over until “the Union is replaced with an inclusive democratic agreed Ireland”.

One thing stands out from the negotiations process - the British are set on dragging it out for as long as possible. The net effect of this is that the longer the ceasefire lasts, the more difficult it will be for any republican organisation to resume it. In the opinion of Bernadette McAliskey (personal conversation) any attempt to restart it would lead to the crushing of the Republican Movement in two or three days. When I put this to one SF member (a supporter of the leadership) he would not agree, but did say the movement would be left a broken and demoralised rump, like it was at the end of the 1956-62 campaign. Others I have talked to have suggested that maybe it could go on for about two or three months. Either way we can say for sure that “the war is over”.

We must also say that in any case the armed struggle was in a cul-de-sac. It had to be ended. It was right to end it, even though we do not agree with the alternative course advocated by the Republican Leadership. It is impossible to have a constructive involvement in the National Liberation Struggle at the present time without saying this.

It is ABC. The ICMP does not even have A on the scoreboard.

A balanced analysis of the current situation includes saying that there are some gains from the process, above all the ending of the Loyalist Assassination Campaign. Calling a cease-fire was essential if the Loyalists were to be stopped. Of course other things could have been done, but that is no excuse for not welcoming the Republican ceasefire. The ICMP is so lost in sectarian abstractions it ignores basic problems of this type. Even prior to the ceasefire some sacred cows went to a deserved slaughter. The British dogma of “never talking to terrorists” was held up to widespread ridicule. The secret manoeuvres of the London Government helped destroy the credibility of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, and facilitated its disappearance. Pro Unionist attacks on John Hume for talking with Sinn Féin generated significant public revulsion in the 26 Counties. A debate on the true nature of partition opened up a bit, a process inconceivable while the continuation of the Armed Struggle was taken for granted.

The Sinn Féin leadership found itself between a rock and a hard place after the Downing Street Declaration (DSD) was issued on December 15 1993. For months SF declared it was “studying” the document, sought tortuous “clarifications”, but eventually a special SF conference rejected it at Letterkenny in Summer 1994.

The SF leadership then continued negotiations with the bourgeois forces, making the Letterkenny rejection of the Downing Street Declaration a symbolic gesture. The DSD is the agreed position of the London and Dublin governments, is backed by the SDLP and Alliance Parties in the North, and got the grudging approval of the Ulster Unionist Party. Independent anti-imperialist analysts had no problem rejecting the DSD. For Example Bernadette MacAliksey : “ it is a fraudulent document whose political intent is to deceive; to create illusions of agreement where none exists, and to hint at concessions where none are contemplated... a. only Article 7 (in part) and 9 and 10 (in total) are agreed by both governments.

These clearly state : (a) Northern Ireland is and will remain a singular and separate entity with in the British union, until Northern Ireland as a unit decides otherwise (b) In the meantime, Northern Ireland will be given back “structures and institutions” - i.e. authority.

(c) Sinn Féin will continue to be excluded from access to and participation in anything until the IRA joins the Quakers ....None of these are new positions. All of them are unacceptable to all republicans and most nationalists” (Sunday Tribune, December 1993) In essence the political basis of the London/Dublin/SDLP axis has remained true to this course since then (especially in the Framework Document of 1995). The only development relates to point (c); the IRA called a ceasefire on August 31 1995, and Sinn Féin has been involved in negotiations.

A return to the IRA’s armed campaign is no solution. We can have some sympathy with a leadership which realised that 25 years of armed struggle had left the movement in a cul-de-sac. But we must reject the illusions they are cultivating in the “Peace Process”. The movement is vot going forward (in fact the cease fire was necessary because the movement has been getting more isolated, a process that would have got worse as the campaign continued). It was up to the Republican Leadership to argue the case for a ceasefire on its merits, not on false hopes in a negotiations process.

A series of democratic demands could be campaigned for : e Amnesty for Political Prisoners e No return to devolved government in the 6 Counties (No Return to Stormont) ¢ No amendment to Articles 2 & 3 incorporating a Unionist Veto (the “Unity By Consent” formula of the Downing Street Surrender Declaration) e British Troops off the Streets e Disarm and Disband the RUC and Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) e = Areturn to Jury Courts on both sides of the border.

These are limited objectives that could be modified. But the debate must centre on the best way to rebuild a resistance that has been dangerously demobilised. In the late 1970s remobilisation was built around the issue of political status for political prisoners. The struggle in 1968 was detonated over Civil Rights demands.

The present document is not exhaustive or fully comprehensive. It constitutes a possible basis to rescue small benefits from the collapse of People’s Democracy and the sectarian degeneration of its successor, the ICMP. The organisational conclusions are : e@ The speedy dissolution of the ICMP e The re-organisation of Fourth International supporters around its international debates and publications, under the name of People’s Democracy e A discussion on how best to intervene (given very limited resources) at the present time along the lines of the above document James Gallagher 8 May, 1995

The road to the DSD was paved with the corpse of the “Hume/Adams Peace Initiative”. People were urged to support a process based on a document which was not published. It was presented by these two men as the basis for the IRA to suspend its armed campaign. These are false alternatives which must be categorically rejected.

The whole mechanism of secret talks has to be stopped. There are very basic reasons for opposing this secret process.

It creates a dynamic where the leadership of a revolutionary movement is cut off from its popular roots. A complex discussion is under way and a comprehensive set of proposals will eventually emerge from the bourgeois forces. The shape of what they will try to implement is already very clear. The Republican leadership has some input into these debates, (for example SF’s membership of the ill-named “Forum for Peace and Reconciliation” in Dublin Castle). It follows that ifan agreed “package” emerges from this process (and from the British government’s talks aimed at resurrecting Stormont) it will be impossible to criticise these plans without also expressing a vote of no confidence in the so-called “Peace Process”. At the very least this will call into question the strategic perspective of the Republican leadership. We could see some or all of the movement signing up for an new Imperialist backed settlement. But of course until this happens, it is outrageous sectarianism to imply this has already happened (i.e. saying that the leadership has already “sold out”).

Throughout these developments people at the base of the Republican movement (and in its milieu) have allowed themselves to be intellectually blackmailed into “trusting the leadership” against their own independent judgement. But as the realisation dawns that the Adams perspective of a negotiated end to British jurisdiction is a mirage, the balance of forces will inevitably change.

It is impossible to outline a revolutionary strategy in these changed circumstances without frankly stating that the Republican leadership opened the road to the DSD because of a correct perception that it was impossible to force the Bnitish out militarily.

At its conclusion in August 1995 the armed campaign had, at best, the support of a sizeable proportion of the Nationalist Minority in the Six Counties. It had no support in the 26 Counties. It was a dangerous provocation in England. Any return to the strategy of an offensive armed struggle will face exactly the same dilemma.

A correct political strategy involves mobilising sufficient political forces in Ireland (and abroad) that could end the occupation.

It involves admitting that the struggle against partition is on the defensive and is under a severe danger of a generational defeat. It allows us to see that the ending of the military campaign provides an opening for challenging the violence of British Imperialism and its Irish junior partners.